Oct 12 2008
Halloween Viewing for the Month of October
As usual, when the month of October arrives, I and Mr. Hall make an attempt to watch exclusively Halloween-related films until Halloween.
The problem is that we either are stymied by Netflix or wind up watching non-Halloween related things and run out of time. Last year I don’t remember watching any Halloween-related films, namely because Mr. Hall was working nights and I don’t like to watch scary things by myself… in an empty house… in the dark…
The year before that, though, I was particularly proud of us. We decided we would watch representative films of the Vampire, Werewolf and Frankenstein genres and compare and contrast them as an intellectual exercise during October. So we selected the classic Universal versions of Dracula , The Wolf Man and Frankenstein , and two or three more modern remakes/redos of each, and then compared and contrasted. This actually went surprisingly well and was very interesting and insightful. It was very interesting to see, for instance, how the werewolf genre developed and changed over time without really changing the essential points of the original Wolf Man movie. Also, now I know that the Jack Nicholson movie Wolf sucks, as does The Bride , and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . (Sorry, Branagh.) However, we discovered An American Werewolf In London , a movie we both enjoyed, so all and all I feel it was a successful endeavor.
This year we’re trying something slightly different. Mr. Hall and I have never seen the famous Hammer Horror movies, so we’re making an attempt to watch all of the Hammer Frankenstein and Dracula movies before Halloween. This may be a tough squeeze, especially since there are a heck of a lot of them and nearer to Halloween they’ll doubltessly get harder to get through Netflix - but we’re trying. So far we’ve watched the first Hammer Dracula, The Horror of Dracula , and two Frankensteins - we’ve got a third lying on the table in wait. So, we’re a bit behind. But I’m stacking them at the top of our queue, so if nothing else we’ll give them a run for their money. More thoughts (on the Hammer movies we’ve watched) to come later. - Mrs. Hall
