Monday Night Bites: Halloween Movies

 Entertainment: Halloween Movies

This week, I really binged some Halloween content before the holiday. Along with some The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episodes, I enjoyed It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, The Addams Family, both family favorites, in addition to my first viewing of the horror classic Scream. With all these great movies, I’ll dedicate a separate column to each, right? Wrong. I’ll take a page out of the NFL’s book and throw a bunch of desirable pieces of content together tightly so consumers can’t get the full product. 

Let’s start with Charlie Brown’s late October adventures. First of all, I think Charles Schultz was bullied as a child. With the characters of the cartoons saying uplifting things to the protagonist like (Disclaimer: not verbatim, but expresses the point) “You were on the list of people not to invite to the party” and “lemme give you a rock for your trick-or-treating,” there’s no plausible explanation other than the assumption that Schultz grew up with the meanest kids this side of the Trump household. He’s not subtle either: if the cartoonist wanted to cover it up, it would be wise to give his main character a name that wasn’t his own. 

Another funny thing about It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is the time loop concept. As exasperated as Lucy gets while her brother hails the existence of the Great Pumpkin, and as many times as Charlie Brown falls flat on his face kicking that football, the loop of the comic means that will always continue. Since they never age, Linus will continue to believe in the wonders of Halloween’s response to Santa Claus until our alien overlords arrive in the year {numbers don’t exist any more and we use these weird parentheses to replace them}. 

Now, let’s talk about The Addams Family. For those Addams Family truthers (it doesn’t explicitly take place at Halloween until the end), I explain it as the reverse Die Hard: while John McClane doesn’t make me feel the Christmas season despite taking place on December 24th, the Addams Family gets me in the Halloween spirit without having an autumn setting. The film strikes a perfect balance; making the titular household creepy and spooky while still portraying them as both good-natured and silly.

I would like to use this space to give shoutouts to two of the greatest characters in the family. 

Let’s look at Fester. I have never analyzed makeup departments before. I know nothing about makeup. However, that group of people hit it out of the park with Gomez’s brother. Uncle Fester has the most perfectly drawn eyes and face, where the marriage of great setup and fantastic expressions from Christopher Lloyd make a character that makes me laugh every time I see him. Uncle Fester’s design is just so perfect, it fits into the Addams Family like Kevin Durant on the Warriors.

Secondly, we must pay homage to one of the greatest characters EVER: Cousin It. He makes his entrance to MC Hammer. According to the Pew Research Center, nobody who enters to MC Hammer has never NOT been legendary. He then charms a woman, and exits just as quickly. We see him next months later, happily with the woman. Forgot to mention, he’s a big ball of hair who just squeaks for dialogue. This is one of those where you have to watch the film to enjoy the godliness. Go watch on Netflix!

Finally, let’s discuss Scream. It’s a fantastically flawed movie. The meta levels are higher than Seahawk fans’ heart rates, making fun of the horror genre while making fun of itself while making an awesome movie. The film creates good balance: we get many frantic moments of horror, but enough calm time as well. 

The calm moments may not be as thrilling, but they allow the viewer to help solve the whodunit. It can’t just be some random person, because that’s not how movies work. The killer must be one of the people we’ve been interacting with for the past couple hours, just adding more tension to the situation.

(Spoilers start here) 

It wasn’t surprising that Billy was one of the killers:

 A. Billy is a villainous name in many horror-adjacent genres. See: Stranger Things. You couldn’t just go as William. You had to shorten it to Bill, and then you lengthen that out to Billy?! You deserve whatever your fate is if you apply 2 nicknames. Also looking at you, Willie.

B. He’s the boyfriend. Take Horror for Dummies and this is obvious

I was surprised by Stu’s role:

1. That guy is an idiot. There’s no way he hatched an elaborate murder scheme. Put it this way: if Scream was a battle royale game, Billy would have 20 kills and Stu would have zero. The killer failed MANY times. I wouldn’t be surprised if Billy carried the successes while Stu was responsible for the failures

2. That guy is a jerk. It just seems too obvious for him to be the killer because he already seems like a bad guy. Props to Wes Craven: he almost made him look like so much of a pest that it was too obviously him for it to be him

Fun movie overall: perfectly understood the horror genre and created a fun adventure.

No sports today, maybe later this week

Rabbit Holes of the Week:

Cousin It: https://youtu.be/xpvZlIZcXhg: I can’t blame you if you don’t want to sit through the whole movie. However, at least just skip to 1:30 on this video and enjoy Cousin It. You deserve it

Scream Mask: https://www.amazon.com/Fun-World-Deluxe-Ghost-Face/dp/B00I5RBIOW: a bargain! Only $13 for a Scream mask. Go scare some people!