Buy Your Candy, Pick Your Flicks
This year Halloween falls on a Monday — the worst possible day! I don't know about you, but I'm in no condition to get up before the sun has risen the morning after Halloween, with the work week ahead giving me the evil eye. If you've celebrated Halloween right, you've pushed your body and psyche to the limit with a horror movie, candy gorging bacchanal that leaves you so jazzed up on sugar, nightmare images and candy chemicals that you have to spend the next day detoxing body and mind. The day after Halloween should be a holiday! Why? 1) So we can stay up late watching horror movies on Halloween night. 2) So we can recover at home, flushing the sugar demons out with some kind of flower petal tea from a health food store, while nibbling leftover candy (following the hair of the dog that bit you principle…)
Listen: if you take your Halloween fun as seriously as I take mine, you'd better start working on your movie line-up. You won't be able to pick your flicks at leisure if you have to work all day Monday. And you'll be especially pressed for time if you have little ghouls and boys to take trick or treating. Even if you don't, consider that Halloween night is book-ended by two working days this year. That leaves you only a few hours (if you plan to get any sleep, that is.) I urge you to start a list of potential movie choices now, take a day or two to whittle it down, and you'll be all set for Halloween night. Procrastinate, and you might end up watching a full on shark-o-rama:
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I love comedy-horror mash-ups like Shaun of the dead and Zombieland, but on Halloween night, I want to be scared. I want movies that cut into my cranium like rusty saws, ripping into the trap door in my mind — you know the one I mean, because you have one too — the door you spend the rest of the year trying to keep bolted shut. That brings me to the third reason for making November first a holiday: 3) After letting the demons romp around on All Hallows' Eve, we need to round them up, wrestle them back into the shadows, and bolt the door. If we can. This is best done at home, in the soft glow of lamplight, preferably with a friendly fur ball on your lap.
The library is a veritable gold mine for movie lovers. In addition to DVDs, there are digital movies always available, accessed via Hoopla, and the Criterion Collection. Here's just a small sample of the many movies available from the library, for your Halloween viewing horror.
Currently available in Hoopla:
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Currently available in the Criterion Collection:
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DVDs:
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There are some great horror movie suggestions in this blog post by my colleague, Viveca: 20 Best Horror Films on DVD.
Have a look at these books, for more suggestions:
Essential horror movies: matinee monsters to cult classics
Monsters in the movies: 100 years of cinematic nightmares
To learn more about Hoopla, see Getting started with Hoopla.
6 thoughts on “Buy Your Candy, Pick Your Flicks”
“Trick or Treat” is the best Halloween mood movie!
Let Me In is a good movie for Halloween! But there are so many of them! You’ve done an amazing job naming horror movies so enough said! Thanks for getting me into the Halloween spirit Maureen! I love your blogs!
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Thanks for the recommendation, Patrick. Unfortunately the library doesn’t have “Trick ‘r treat” but we do have another scary movie directed by Michael Dougherty: “Krampus”.
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDM3416077&R=3416077
Aww! Thanks Cleo. So glad you enjoy my posts. I recommend “The descent” if you haven’t seen it. It’s about a group of women who go on a caving expedition that goes very, very wrong. And if you like pop-up books, watch the Australian movie, “The Babadook.” Best scary pop-up book ever!
I’ve started my list – I’m definitely going to watch David Cronenberg’s Scanners. I haven’t seen it yet, despite the fact that it came out in 1981!
The 1958 film “Fiend without a face” is also a contender, it has such a weird plot line: A scientist’s thoughts materialize as an army of invisible brain-shaped monsters (complete with spinal-cord tails!) who terrorize an American military base in this nightmarish chiller…This outstanding sci-fi/horror hybrid is a special effects bonanza, and a high-water mark in British genre filmmaking.” (Description from the Criterion Collection website)
Happy Halloween!
Too chicken to watch horror movies but your post makes me want to find room on your couch to eat treats and watch ghouls & zombies all night. Funny & informative as always.
I’m also too chicken to watch SOME horror movies. And others I can watch, provided I have a lot of chips and candy to nervously nibble and gnaw during the scariest moments. Alas, my Rockets were all eaten two days before Halloween, and the potato chips are going fast! Going to have to stock up again for the big night.
Maybe you could start with something scary-ish? Such as “The others” starring Nicole Kidman. It’s a good, spooky movie, but won’t traumatize you. The library has copies.
http://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/detail.jsp?Entt=RDM121780&R=121780
Glad you liked my Halloween confection, Vicki.