Halloween Movie Marathon--Fright Night

I liked the reboot of Fright Night with Anton Yelchin and Colin Farrell but I liked the original, 1985 version with Chris Sarandon, William Ragsdale and Roddy McDowall even more. In the remake, Peter Vincent is kind of a rock star/Mind Freak kind of guy (and that's a really interesting idea) but in the original, as played by Roddy McDowall, he was a beloved local monster movie host of the sort beloved of movie geeks everywhere.
Fright Night was written and directed by Tom Holland, who has also worked as an actor in a lot of genre movies, including Stephen King's The Stand and Langoliers. He's got a movie called The Ten O'Clock People coming out in 2013.
William Ragsdale, the young male lead, was kind of the Shia LeBeouf of his day. Fright Night was only his second movie (in his first, his character was called "the kid") and he's since gone on to a career that mixes television and feature films. He's also got a film coming out next year, the noir-ish Broken City.
Chris Sarandon as the vampire Ragsdale's character runs across, is smooth and seductive and quite scary. He doesn't have quite the feral ferocity of Colin Farrell's vampire, but you would not want to run into him in a dark alley. (Or maybe you would if you're inclined to fantasize about tall, dark and handsome vampires.)
I liked he way Fright Night played with the vampire mythos. This is another movie that's suitable for family viewing but still scary.

A spooky gig

I occasionally work catering gigs with my friend Alex of Word of Mouth Catering. Last night we catered a party for 200 that took place in a mausoleum in Pasadena. It was a gorgeous space--all stained glass and marble, and spooky as all get out because outside of the lighted area where the event was being held, there were no lights anywhere. I'm on record as being afraid of the dark until I was an adult, and there's nothing that'll bring back childhood fears faster than taking the wrong turn down a corridor filled with crypts.
The party--a fund-raiser for a group of artists--was a big success and a good time was had by all, but we were really surprised that the hit of the evening was a little appetizer we put together on the fly.

Olive Tapenade and Cream Cheese on Crackers...

We bought a big tub of cream cheese at Costco.
We bought jars of olive tapenade at Costco.
We bought boxes of crackers at Costco.
At the event we slathered about an inch of cream cheese on a dish and then poured the tapenade over it. We put out knives to spread the mixture on crackers.
We refilled that platter four times before we ran out (and believe me when I tell you we NEVER run out of goodies at events). We saw people just eating it with a fork.

I highly recommend the combination if you're planning a party during the upcoming holiday season. It was a real crowd pleaser.  If you want to make your own tapenade, there are a bazillion recipes on the Internet. I like this one from allrecipes.com

the Zombie Apocalypse comes in on the high tide

Photo by Chris Pallister Gulf Keepers of Alaska

I have been haunted by the images of tsunami debris floating across the Pacific for more than a year. Now it's starting to come ashore in Canada and Washington and Oregon. It's only a matter of time before it arrives here in So. Cal.
All those bits of metal that used to be cars ad bits of wood that used to be boats and also black gunk that might have been anything...
That's the visual fertilizer that nourished my story "Tourist Visa." You can read onChristopher Grant's  Eaten Alive site, here.

Halloween Movie Marathon: Night Gallery

Rod Serling was one of the writers who shaped my own fiction. (He was only 50 when he died, but he'd packed a lot of living into those 50 years.)
I loved Twilight Zone so much and even today rarely miss the hoiday episode marathons they show here in L.A., even though I know most of the episodes they show by heart. I was never that huge a fan of Night Gallery, but the pilot episode (available as part of the first season DVD) has three stories that are scary in very different ways.
The famous segment, "Eyes" starred Joan Crawford and is notable because it was a young Steven Spielberg's break-out directing gig. For me it was kind of a knockoff of the famous Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall." The other two stories gripped my imagination in a much stronger way. The first episode was about a greedy man in the south who is scared to death by paintings showing relatives coming out of their graves. Roddy McDowall and Ossie Davis starred in the episode and I remember Ossie Davis' character was named "Portifoy." That episode was directed by Boris Sagal, father of Sons of Anarchy's Katy Sagal.
For me the most powerful of the pilot's episodes was "Escape Route," starring Richard Kiley as a Nazi war criminal who imagines himself into a painting of an idyllic scene, only to discover someone's moved the painting and he's now trapped in a living hell. It was not a subtle story, but was really effective.
The first season of the show was the strongest, and the disk is something to watch over a long weekend when all the broadcast channels are showing cheesy made-for-television horror movies and theatrical films with the profanity and sex cut out.

Halloween Movie Marathon: Poltergeist

I used to be afraid of the dark. When I was little, we lived in a house with a great back yard filled with trees that were perfect for climbing. But one of those trees had branches that would rattle against my bedroom window whenever the wind was up and I always felt like it was going to break the window and come in after me.
So when I saw Poltergeist and that kid-eating tree in it, I knew that I was not alone in my fear, and I totally bought into what happened next.
I really liked JoBeth Williams as the mother in this movie, and found Craig T. Nelson a very sympathetic suburban dad. both actors are still working, but JoBeth's career as a leading lady never really blew up the way it should have. 
It's really sad to think that two of the three kids who played the children in the movie are dead--Heather O'Rourke at twelve from cardiac arrest and intestinal stenosis and Dominique Dunne murdered by her abusive boyfriend. One of the last hard-news stories I covered as a reporter was a meeting of Parents of Murdered Children (POMC) where Dominique's mother Ellen was a speaker.
Ellen was in a wheelchair then, gaunt from the disease that finally killed her and still regally beautiful. John Van De Kamp, who was then the California Attorney General, was also a guest and his law and order platitudes fell on deaf ears and unsympathetic hearts. It was a tough room.
Zelda Rubenstein's Tangina was a terrific character, and the character was a highlight of the veteran character actress' career, which also included an ongoing gig as the narrator of a show called The Scariest Places on Earth.  (I didn't know this, but before Zelda turned to acting, she earned a degree in bacteriology and worked for years as a lab technician at various blood banks.)

Poltergeist was directed by Tobe Hooper, whose big claim to fame before that was directing the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and the Stephen King miniseries Salem's Lot, starring David Soul, Lance Kerwin (the James at 15 star turns 50 next month--don't you feel old?) and James Mason. (There's one heart-stopping moment in that mini that scared me to death and I knew the book really well and was expecting it.)
Poltergeist came out 30 years ago (the same year as E.T., actually) and it would be interesting to see if it still has the power to scare.

Happpy 25th birthday Princess Bride

I was listening to an interview with Mandy Patinkin today and he was talking about how people still come up to him and ask him to say Inigo Montoya's deathless lines, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."  Those are good lines, but I'm fond of "Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line."
I really liked The Princess Bride and have seen it several times since it came out 25 years ago.  I just saw Robin Wright in the English version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and she is still lovely, with the kind of beauty that will be with her until she's 100.
And wasn't Cary Elwes perfect as Westley?  He turns 50 later this month. Hard to believe. He still works all the time, IMDB shows he has eight different movies in release this  year.
My best friend is actually related to the "Dread Pirate Roberts," the Welsh pirate Bartholomew Roberts, who raided off the coast of America and Africa from 1719 to 1722.  His death (in battle with the English Navy) is often seen as the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. I get an enormous kick out of that association. (Family lore has often said that my family had connections to Sir Thomas More, but you know, I'd much rather have a pirate than a saint in my background.)
I read William Goldman's novel, The Princess Bride, and didn't really like it very much. I am a huge fan of the man, though, and think he's written some absolutely flawless screenplays, and this is one of them.
There are so many great lines in The Princess Bride that are still wonderfully quotable. ("I do not think that word means what you think  it means.")
This is a year for anniversaries--the 30th anniversary of E.T., the 50th of James Bond, and this, the 25th anniversary of The Princess Bride, the best fractured fairy tale since Jay Ward closed up shop.

Halloween Movie Marathon: What Lies Beneath

This is a ghost story that's subtle enough to really be more of a psychological thriller. I saw it at a screening with a friend who, as it turns out, has an almost pathological fear of drowning. She had to leave the theater during the most suspenseful and nerve-wracking scene in the movie and it was harrowing enough  I was thinking of joinging her.
I really liked Michelle Pfeiffer in this movie. She was incredibly sympathetic.
The movie poster (as you can see) features a bath tub. Creepy bathtub/shower scenes are a staple of horror movies. (Let's talk The Shining, or Psycho for that matter.)  There's something extra menacing about something supernatural lurking around when you're totally naked. (I used to rent a house that had one of those makeup mirrors bolted to the tile by the sink. If you caught it at just the right angle, the image it reflected was upside down. Imagine how scary that would be the first night you used the bathroom and caught a glimpse in the moonlight of SOMETHING upside down.) 
I liked all the cast in the movie--from Miranda Otto and James Remar as the neighbors to a blink-and-you-missed-her Amber Valletta.  (I have really liked her in other movies where she had a chance to show some acting chops, like Hitch and Transporter 2.)  Harrison Ford made a good villain.
The scares in this movie are atmospheric, designed to come to a slow build and leave you wondering what's real and what's spooky.
The movie was written by Clark Gregg, who is also an actor. (He played Agent Coulson in Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and The Avengers.) He also wrote and directed the screen adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's Choke (starring Sam Rockwell, who was also in Iron Man 2). 

The movie was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who has actually produced a lot of horror movies in his partnership with Joel Silver, including Ghost Ship, Thirteen Ghosts and Gothika. I didn't find any of those movies particularly scary although there's a moment in Ghost Ship with a wire that's flinch-producing.  Still, Bob Z directed one of my favorite movies, Romancing the Stone, so who am I to complain about the scare-factor of his other movies?  (And I also liked the poster for Ghost Ship, which was in the same vein as Cabin Fever, which I thought was...wretched.)
On the other hand, Cabin Fever was made for $1.5 million and earned $30 million worldwide, so clearly mine is a minority opinion.
What Lies Beneath is not like either Ghost Ship or Cabin Fever, which would probably work well as a double feature movie night if you're feeling nostalgic for old school horror that's heavy on gore and not really offering much else.  (The best thing about Cabin Fever is Ryder Strong, who was from Boy Meets World. One of his costars was Jordan Ladd, daughter of Charlie's Angel Cheryl Ladd.)
If you're looking for something you can watch in "mixed company" (that is, with people who aren't necessarily horror movie fans), What Lies Beneath is a good choice. Just make sure no one's afraid of drowning.