You may not have heard of all of the characters in our Halloween countdown this year, and that’s okay. We hope the articles have been enlightening if that’s the case. But our next character is certainly one that everyone is well acquainted with, unless for some reason you’ve been living under a rock your entire life.
Continue reading Countdown to Halloween #19: Dr. Frankenstein and His Monster
Strange how one of the most iconic characters in horror lore were never meant to be. In the original movie, Jason popped up as part of Mrs. Voorhees damaged brain, and then briefly at the very end. Somehow though, the supposed drown child grew up to adult hood and took up a new past time; slashing up camp councilors. It’s not till the third film that he actually grabbed his iconic hockey mask, but boy did things change then. He became a horror movie icon, with his mug splashed all over everything. Heck he even appeared on talk shows where he does not speak! After 8 movies though, people started to tire of machete wielding maniac and he disappeared for a few years when filmmakers sent him to Hell once and for all. Or at least until he popped up again a few years later during a trip into space. We were also shown the residents of Elm Street being used as cannon fodder during Jason’s brief tussle with rival icon Freddy Kruger. Most recently though the character was subject to a 2009 reboot which introduced him to a whole new generation. Why though does he still hold a spot in our hearts? Well let’s have a look…
Once upon a time, Tim Burton did what he does very well and gave us the movie Edward Scissorhands. The hero of this movie was, as you can guess, Edward Scissorhands, a man created by an eccentric inventor (Vincent Price) who died before being able to give him regular hands. Edward is taken in by the Boggs family, and he falls in love with their teenage daughter, Kim (Winona Ryder). However, due to mistrust from neighbors and many unfortunate situations, Edward’s character is called into question and he is eventually forced to go live alone again, but not before Kim lets him know that she loves him back.
Continue reading Countdown to Halloween #22: Edward Scissorhands
In a genre that benefits from creepy kids doing creepy things, none of them compare to Damien Thorn, the literal son of the Dark Lord himself. Portrayed four times by four different people in four different movies, Damien’s never gotten the cinematic treatment he deserved. The one true great Damien is the original Damien, starring in the 1976 film The Omen directed by Richard Donner, who went on to direct a film about the purest soul in Earth’s existence (gotta savor that irony, no?).
Monsters are one of the most popular mainstays in all of fiction. Nearly every child has a universal connection with monsters in one way or another. From childhood it can manifest as a fear, typically of the quintessential “monster in the closet”, or simply just a fascination with them after conquering your fear of them. I think in a way, children can relate to monsters. When you’re young, by the virtue of being younger and less knowledgable, you tend to feel like an outsider. In much the same way that only children can relate to other children at that age, monsters only really get along with other monsters, and there’s a mixture of empathy there that children feel for monsters. For example, who didn’t feel remorse after seeing King Kong die? Not all monsters are as relatable as others, but we know that our fear of them only stems from our misunderstanding of them, and ourselves. So what am I getting at?
Continue reading Countdown To Halloween #28: The Monster Squad
As a child, I was obsessed with Ghostbusters. I remember as a 4 year old when my parents got me the Ghostbusters VHS for Christmas and I watched that constantly. I owned all the toys, the firehouse, the slime, Ecto-1 and even the Proton Pack. I wanted to be a ghostbuster. I wanted to be the asian member of the squad. I felt that role had yet to be filled so I set my hopes and dreams on that. I declared this much to my mother: I want to be a ghostbuster for Halloween. And with that, Mama Tansuche set out to make sure her youngest was the best damn ghostbuster on the block. Granted, my mom took some liberties with the costume. There was no brown jumpsuit (apparently that meant I would probably get hit by a car while trick-or-treating) and in its place was a jean jacket with a giant logo that she made and sewn on that back with my name (because apparently we lived in Canada and had a surplus of denim). Yeah, it was awesome and I got so much candy that year because of my awesome homemade outfit. Because of all that, the thing I most associate with Halloween are the Ghostbusters movies and because of that, I jumped at the chance to writeup this section of the Countdown, featuring not 1, but 2 of the villains from the movies. We had a tie when we took a poll amongst the writers with these two characters so we decided to combine both in order to deliver the awesomeness.
Continue reading Countdown to Halloween #29: Stay Puft & Vigo
Grizzly Bomb 