It's a harvest holiday that marks a transition period
It's a harvest holiday that marks times of transition. But when so many Americans are already feeling uncertain and unstable — and in mourning — the traditional celebration of the macabre can feel a little, well, off.
So let's consider something radical: A warm and fuzzy Halloween, via Hollywood. Horror movies for 'fraidy cats are a long and underappreciated tradition rooted deeply in film history. Think of those great old Universal horror classics of the 1930s. Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff! Dracula with Bela Lugosi! Terrifying monsters for audiences seeking distraction from the Great Depression. But today? Not even a little scary
Anything starring Vincent Price. Anything directed by Tim Burton. Horror-lite is the uncanny space where indie film and mainstream cinema uneasily coexist, where family-friendly rubs against the subversive. It doesn't have to be Squid Game all the time. The softer side of horror isn't a bad place to be.
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Horror-lite creeps onto screens in the form of beloved cult classics. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. The Little Shop of Horrors. (Be sure to check out the original 1960 version, filmed in less than a week and featuring an impossibly young Jack Nicholson as a pain-loving dental patient.)
Since the original 1990 film, the franchise has spawned six sequels (okay, mostly straight to video) based on what's essentially an old- school creature feature about rural Nevadans terrorized by a monster they call the Graboid. (Actor Michael Gross has appeared in every single Tremors iteration; you can watch him express his feelings about this unexpected side hustle in a documentary on Youtube titled Tremors: Making Perfection.)
Last year, when things felt really scary in October 2020, Weekend Edition Sunday asked me to put together a list of not-so-scary scary movies. This year, upon request, a revisit.
House, a 1977 Japanese haunted house movie that might be scary if it wasn't so flagrantly silly. Directed by the esteemed auteur Nobuhiko Obayashi and recently re-packaged by none other than the Criterion Collection, House features a group of schoolgirls fighting off a possessed futon, a finger-chomping grand piano and a flying severed head with a taste for biting bottoms. Given the dated, over-the-top special effects and the entire absurdity of the enterprise (think early John Waters), it would take a lot of effort to really be frightened by House. It's safe to say you will never see anything else like it.
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