Before I get to talking about Halloween I’d like to congratulate Carrie Wade on winning the giveaway from my blog. Congrats, I hope you enjoy your CSUStan swag/gift/treat/whatever it may be.

Anyways, it’s Halloween! To be honest guys and gals I didn’t actually realize it was Halloween until I was already dressed and ready to leave for work. It seems that at this point in the semester that the days just kind of seem to lump together and feel the same. So anyways, I’m not really doing anything special for Halloween, I have class until 9 at night and a soccer game at 10, so there will not be much celebrating for me. However I might just watch some “spooky” movie off Netflix to semi-celebrate. Anyways I thought a might make a short little list of my favorite Halloween related media (movies, TV Specials, comics, short stories, etc.). *I spent Halloween night writing a Philiopshy paper and watching the Swamp Thing movie from the 1980s * -sign Frank from the future.

Movie:
My favorite “horror” movie isn’t really a normal Halloween slasher flick like “Halloween” or “Nightmare on Elm Street” but rather it’s a SciFi film. If I had to watch one “scary” movie today it would be Ridley Scott’s “Alien.” The film is done so brilliantly in my opinion. There is only this one Alien and you never know quite when it’s going to pop up. The film does an excellent job of keeping the audience in a state of suspense and having the movie set in a dim lighted spaceship is brilliant. The famous tagline of the film says it all: In space no one can hear you scream. And that describes it pretty well.

The other Halloween like movie I really enjoy is Henry Selick’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (I don’t consider this a Tim Burton movie all he did was produce it and throw his name on it to appeal to a wider audience). The movie is done in fantastic stop-motion, like Selick’s previous two films The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, and quite frankly it is pretty dark for a children’s movie. I must admit I’m a sucker for animation so I have zero problems watching this at all. Also watch out for scary Spider-ladies with button eyes, they’re not very nice.

TV:
When it comes to TV specials you can never go wrong with Peanuts/Charlie Brown and in this case the “Great Pumpkin” episode of Peanuts/Charlie Brown. Although we never get to see the Great Pumpkin, although Snoopy does trick us for a second, you still can’t hope but tune in every year and hope that Linus finds the Great Pumpkin (even though we know he won’t).

The other TV specials I’ve been watching as of late are from Regular Show and Adventure Time. These specials aren’t anything amazingly special but are the perfect show to watch to kill 15-60 minutes of your day and are highly enjoyable and will at least get a chuckle out of you. What I like most about these two particular shows is that I feel that I’m getting the most out of my time in terms of visuals. The shows are a great piece of animation and really take full advantage of their medium (particularly Adventure Time).

Comics/Short Stories:
For comics you can’t go wrong with Jeph Loeb and Time Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween, which follows a murder mystery that starts on Halloween and occurs once every month during a Holiday and concludes on Hallowing of the following year. This bad boy is a little long at 12 issues but is a great read that has some very interesting twists at the end, and that’s all I’ll say about that. Tim Sale’s art work is also fantastic and Jeph Loeb gives us a great story from when he was in his prime (don’t read Leob’s modern work!).

Finally for short stories you can never go wrong with Edgar Allen Poe, I mean it should be mandatory that you read a Poe tale on Halloween. Seriously just pick one of his many great “horror/scary” stories and enjoy, I’m particularly fond of Tell Tale Heart. If you’re not feeling Poe James Salter has a fantastic story entitled Akhnilo.

I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween!