A Spooky Oversight

First of all, Happy Halloween. As I've said on this blog more than a few times, I thoroughly enjoy Halloween and I am far from the only one. I think one of the reasons Halloween is so popular with so many people is that it does not attempt to tie itself to any one religion or political organization. It is pretty much the most equal of all the holidays, allowing anyone with some imagination to participate, yet if you asked people to list their favorite holidays I don't think Halloween would be at the top of anyone's list. (Top 10? Definitely. Top 5? Depends on who you are asking.) However you would never know just how low on the holiday totem pole Halloween falls if you went strictly by movies. Seriously, for a day which doesn't have that much cultural impact (my gym felt the need to put up a notice that it would be open this afternoon and I couldn't figure out who would need this clarification), Halloween probably has more movies made about it than any day of the year except Christmas (certainly more than Thanksgiving, which I think many people would rank as the second most-important holiday). Of course, there is a lot to work with in terms of plot lines when it comes to Halloween. It started out as a pagan ritual and gradually transitioned to a day for kids to dress up in costumes and start asking for candy, so you have a wide range of subjects to pick a premise from. It is far more versatile than say, the 4th of July. And judging from my TV this week there is no shortage of people willing to prove that by making a Halloween movie.

Obviously, if you are a horror buff this week is right up your alley. For the last few days every channel has gone into horror-flick overdrive, showing as many slasher pictures as the time will allow. Of course showing a horror movie on basic cable sort of defeats the purpose because thanks to the FCC they aren't allowed to show the blood and guts as the director intended, so there are entire chunks of the movie which go missing. But, no worries, the cable movie channels have you covered if you need your fix. Several of them have spent the day running franchises such as "Friday the 13th" and "Halloween" on a near-continual loop. (Oddly, no love for "Jaws" today, even though many people consider it to be one of the scariest movies of all time.) But if horror isn't your thing you don't have to worry because there are also plenty of less-scary, more-campy options. There are plenty of kids movies about Halloween which is kind of nuts when you remember that scaring kids is a really bad idea. Short-term it leads to nightmares and long-term it leads to therapy, so I don't see the appeal. Fortunately there are plenty of family-friendly Halloween movies you can also watch, which tend to focus more on the "getting candy" aspect of the night. What this all means is that no matter what your film tastes are Halloween probably has a movie for you and they won't share much else besides the day on the calendar. Sadly, the one thing most of them will share is one major flaw.

I would guess that roughly 95% of all Halloween movies, whether they intend to make you laugh or scream, feature a scene in which a character goes to a costume party. That part is fine, but something which has always bothered me about these scenes is the quality of the costumes in them. Every single person in these scenes will be dressed in amazingly elaborate costumes that would have taken weeks to think up and build and, frankly, that just doesn't happen. I have been to a few costume parties in my lifetime, which is how I know there are always a few people there who spent no time deciding what to wear before half-assing costume that afternoon by throwing on the uniform of some team they used to play for or the same costume they wore last year. (The worst person of all? The one person who shows up in no costume at all but then spends all night making fun of what other people wore.) But not in the movies. No, in the movies you're supposed to believe that everyone in attendance has the sewing ability of an entire wardrobe department and the free time to create elaborate costumes they will wear for one night of their lives. Even in Salem, Massachusetts - the hub for all things Halloween - they would find these standards too high. Also, I am shocked by the obscure characters people are supposed to be. The people in these movies are always random characters from literature to show how cultured they are. Realistically, everyone knows the worst part of Halloween is constantly telling people who you are supposed to be, which is why the reality is that half the people at your average costume party dress as a Super Hero because those costumes are easy to get a hold of and everyone recognized them instantly. All of this is I would believe reading from a cursed book would bring a demon back to life before I will believe some of these party scenes.

Sure, you could argue that I am nit-picking but that's only because I am. The problem is that I happen to believe there are only so many leaps of faith a movie can ask a person to take before it starts to overwhelm the rest of the movie. I expect a certain amount of reality to be suspended when watching a movie but the problem is most Halloween movies have already pushed me to the limit. For example, as long as an action movie has a semi-believable plot I can overlook the fact that jumping from a moving helicopter probably should have killed the hero. Horror films don't have that luxury. Because I don't believe in things like ghosts, witches, zombies or vampires I have to give that part of my brain the night off before I have even taken my seat. Then, because of how your average horror movie is written, I'm asked to believe that any human could be so stupid as to stay in a house which is supposed to be haunted or elect to fight a monster instead of running to find cell service. You can't ask me to ignore that kind of stuff without expecting me to start focusing on the mundane details as a way to keep my brain from eating itself, which is why I notice the big jump between Halloween movie costumes and the real thing. I'm not asking for much - just throw the occasional poorly-fitted, clearly store-bought costume in to the mix and I'll be satisfied. If nothing else it will help me keep my mouth shut when the killer who has been shot, stabbed, set on fire and decapitated emerges from the dead for that one last scare.