Here comes your favorite holiday of the year, as the leaves start to change and the temperatures begin to cool. However, the most exciting part is when the Jack-o-lanterns and pumpkins show up on porches, signaling the beginning of Halloween fever.
Excited? Well, if you love Halloween so much, then it would be a shame not to be able to experience it in all its glory. Below is a list of fall destinations awaiting your arrival as one of the most anticipated annual holiday draws nearer.
You may not know this, but the country of Ireland is often considered to be the birthplace of your favorite celebration of the year. It goes back to the customs followed by the Celtic and is also known as a pagan tradition.
Dublin is a wonderful place for you to start your Halloween celebrations. Meath, which is located at an hour’s drive from the city, hosts a handful of exciting activities at The Spirits Of Meath Festival. You can also make your way to Derry, which includes a grand costume parade, as well as fireworks on account of the holiday.
New York City is popular for hosting one of the largest parades for Halloween across the globe. Over 2 million participants dress up in creative costumes every year, as per a chosen theme. You can also attend one of the many exciting parties organized in the Big Apple or just go trick and treating with your loved ones.
Oaxaca is one of the several fall destinations that kick off Halloween on the 31st of October and keep the party going until the 2nd of November. It is considered to be an important holiday for Mexicans, especially to honor the deceased.
Feel free to dress up in skeleton costumes or paint your face and join the locals, as they use colorful flowers and bright colors to make each Halloween memorable.
28 Days Later and Jack The Ripper have given London the reputation of a spooky place, which is often covered in white fog. Where else would you find a better place to embrace your Halloween spirit? So, put on your best costume and attend the holiday celebrations that are hosted at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Like Ireland, Scotland also has ancient Celtic roots and celebrates the Samhain every year. Therefore, it is safe to say that the country is one of the two to have bragging rights with respect to the origination of the spooky festival.
If you enjoy going into haunted castles and standing around frightening tombs, you cannot miss out on the holiday celebrations in Edinburgh. You are bound to enjoy the haunted stories that are told in this town and have the time of your life.
So, what are you waiting for? Figure which of the aforementioned fall destinations you will be spending Halloween in this year and book your tickets right away. Happy trick-or-treating!
DR. FRANKENSTEIN’S LAB — Isn’t there something about Halloween that just makes old-timey, melodramatic movies sing?
Sure, you can enjoy a few episodes of “The Twilight Zone” any time of the year, and cruising down some highway with a 1920s radio drama playing is heaps of fun even before Oct. 31. But for some reason, adding the anticipation of trick-or-treaters, a bowl of fun-size candy, and a few well-lit jack-o-lanterns turns hackneyed dialogue and hammy delivery into something melodious.
That’s why, for this month’s classic film article, we’re recommending one of the most gloriously melodramatic and rightfully influential horror movies of all time: James Whale’s “The Bride of Frankenstein.” As The Guardian declares, “Bride is a wild ride, even today. It flits between the classical and the gutter, the camp and the serious in a manner that’s hard to pin down.”
Here are some reasons why this classic is still relevant today.
The history
In 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was beginning his third year in office, 20% of the American population was unemployed, and filmmakers were ushering in the beginning of what we now call “The Golden Age of Hollywood.”
Silent films were being replaced with “talkies,” color films were making a comeback and studios were, according to AMC’s film site, exploring genres such as “gangster films, musicals, newspaper-reporting films, historical biopics, social-realism films, lighthearted screwball comedies, westerns and horror to name a few.”
The year 1935 was teeming with hardship and creativity, and it was also the year an openly gay director released, as the Alamo Draft House puts it, “the first sequel in Hollywood history to be better than the original.
To this day few titles enjoy that honor, and of those less than a handful followed an opening chapter met with as much praise as the original “Frankenstein.” Much like Joe Dante and his “Gremlins” sequel, that success can be credited to Whale’s insistence on more control.
Stephen Brophy of MIT’s “The Tech” said, “He (Whale) resisted a sequel but eventually gave in, insisting that he be allowed to develop the project in his own way. The mordant humor of ‘Bride’ is the delicious result.”
“Bride” was met with both commercial and financial success for Universal Pictures, but with that success came Whale’s narrowing circle of projects he was willing to work on.
There is a lot of speculation concerning what ultimately ended Whale’s career as a director, but biographer James Curtis says, “Whale’s success was short-lived. With his troubled production of Remarque’s ‘The Road Back‘, he was pitted against ominous forces that didn’t want the film made. His career faltered and, being openly gay, he found work increasingly hard to get. He quit just ten years after the triumph of ‘Frankenstein’, and died a suicide only months before the film’s eventual release to television.”
The influence
As Senses of Cinema points out concerning Whale, “one can make a strong case that he was the greatest director of horror in the history of cinema, or at least the most influential.”
Long before Tim Burton was dazzling our darker sides with striped villains and spiraled mountains, Whale’s flair for emotionally disorienting set pieces and theatrical reflection was defining the genre. Part of Whale’s influence came from his love of German silent sci-fi films like “Metropolis” and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” while, again from Senses, “Whale was (also) a painter before he was a stage and film director, and his eye for design is part of what makes his films so memorable.”
Burton is perhaps the director who embraces Whale’s spirit most obviously, going as far as to create multiple versions of “Frankenweenie”— a love letter to both “Frankenstein” and “The Bride of Frankenstein” — but Lloyd Rose of The Washington Post notes several additional Hollywood juggernauts who are better off for Whale’s influence.
From Rose: “The mix of beauty, perversity, wit and fear in Whale’s monster pictures is the goal that every horror director worth his salt has aspired to since. His dark, horrid, funny work paved the way for Alfred Hitchcock‘s American career.” Rose goes onto include Brian De Palma’s “Carrie,” Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” and “Gordon Willis‘ moodily lit interiors in the ‘Godfather’ films” as examples of Whale’s influence.
But Whale wasn’t only a visual artist, as Gloria Stuart semi-famously details on the laserdisc commentary of “The Old Dark House.” (A tip-of-the-hat to anyone who knows what makes that commentary semi-famous.)
Stuart said of Whale (as recorded by Dennis Polkow in the Chicago Tribune), “He was a real actor’s director. I worked twice with John Ford and there was no comparison. Ford would just say, ‘Action,’ and left you on your own. With James, everything you were to do had been carefully thought through and worked out in the most minute detail. He was a ‘hands-on’ director in that he was into every aspect of the picture — makeup, costumes, scenery, lighting, props: everything. He was always meticulous, discerning and helpful.”
Does it hold up today?
There are so many reasons to watch “The Bride of Frankenstein” this Halloween season, the least of which is its place in history. There will always be time to discuss what modern audiences see in Whale’s dark tale, but “The Bride of Frankenstein” is still a mesmerizing stand-alone classic.
As Roger Ebert said of the film, “You don’t have to deconstruct it to enjoy it; it’s satirical, exciting, funny, and an influential masterpiece of art direction.”
“The Bride of Frankenstein” should be taken moment by moment, as entire sub-plots just disappear and conclusions come suddenly. As a result, some viewers may find a few of Whale’s decisions frustrating, but taken scene-by-scene, it’s everything right with monster movies.
The best places for Halloween celebrations depend on what kind of fun you’re searching for: spooky and bone chilling tours or just plain pumpkin fun! Places such as New Orleans and Princeton, New Jersey is not for the faint of heart. Whereas Harbor Springs, Michigan, Delray Beach in Florida, and Snowmass Village, Colorado boast family friendly environments.
New Orleans
New Orleans is said to be “the most haunted city in America” and that is a pretty accurate description for this ghost-ridden city. From a creepy pharmacy museum to grisly murder scenes, New Orleans has many spooky sights to fascinate even the most hard core thrill seeker. Haunted tours are available to take tourists around to some of the more popular attractions. Meanwhile, the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood hosts a huge annual Halloween party, complete with alcoholic beverages, its own kind of “spirits”, and shopping booths.
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton has its own brand of fun with ghost hunting tours through a cemetery, historic neighborhoods, a battlefield and surprisingly enough, a university campus. Skeptics and believers alike are wowed by the ghost hunting equipment The Princeton Tour Company supplies. These tools include dowsing rods, electromagnetic-field meters and thermal meters that sense heat. They also teach tourists how to take “orb shots” using phone cameras. Princeton’s Terhune Orchards offer a more kid-friendly fun with corn mazes, pumpkin patches and the Barn of Legends and Lore.
Harbor Springs, Michigan
Known to be a great family vacation destination, Harbor Springs throws a fun child-friendly celebration for Halloween. Every year the community hosts a large “Trunk-or-Treat” event along with a parade for kids to show off their costumes. Harbor Springs starts their gala as early as the first week of October kicking off their festivities with a glass pumpkin blowing demonstration!
Delray Beach, Florida
At Delray Beach, kids can show off their costumes in the children’s parade and Trick-or-Treat event, all without having to fear the chilly autumn air. Kidsfest is held at Veterans Park which includes activities such as crafts, bounce-houses, live entertainment and most importantly, food. After all, what’s a Halloween party without food?
Snowmass Village, Colorado
Bones are scattered around this little town. Old bones, fossilized remains of mastodon and mammoth skeletons which are displayed at the Ice Age Discovery Center. It’s said wolf howls echo off the cliffs of the Rocky Mountain. Perhaps it is the malamutes and mix-breed huskies that pull dogsled rides at Krabloonik. Now Snowmass Village certainly has it own style of a cool Halloween.
In this, our third episode of the Halloween Place podcast, we chat with Pedal Provo’s Derek Jacobs about the haunted side of Utah County.
Halloween starts the holiday season off with beautiful weather, vivid foliage, and a great selection of cinematic classics.
To some, it’s a time to turn out the lights and watch movies that will ruin a perfectly good night’s sleep. To others, it’s simply an evening to celebrate autumn’s wonderment while sipping a warm cup of hot chocolate and enjoying a nostalgic family-favorite.
But wherever you fall in the spectrum of movie preferences, it’s hard to argue that there’s a better night of the year to enjoy a good film. And for those of you looking for a few suggestions, here are five mostly family-friendly films for your consideration.
5: It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown
Let’s get this one out of the way. The animation is simple, the colors are laughably dated, and if by chance it was excluded from this list there’d be 120 comments about how this article missed the most beloved Halloween special of all time.
So why do we love it? Who knows? But every year, people snuggle up to this classic with or without children present. Everything from Snoopy’s Red Baron battle to Charlie Brown getting yet another rock makes Halloween a little better. In fact, to some Charles M. Schulz fans, it’s simply not Halloween without it.
4: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wallace & Gromit fans were a little surprised at the spooky direction “Were-Rabbit” took our favorite, inventive protagonists. But let’s be honest, nothing was creepier than the evil chicken/penguin character from “Wrong Trousers.” And while on the subject, that robot-dog thing that was trying to catch Shaun the Sheep? Very unsettling.
In fact, while “Curse of the Were-Rabbit” is the obvious spooky choice from the series, feel free to just have a Wallace & Gromit film festival on Halloween night. They’re all great, and they all have their moments of creepy-goodness.
3: Monster Squad
“Monster Squad” is a little known treasure that has a very devout group of followers. Two years after the success of “Goonies,” director Fred Dekker gave us his own misfit-kid adventure with humor, tone, and potty-language similar to the 1985 Richard Donner classic.
So how do you top a bunch of kids searching for a lost pirate treasure so well guarded that even Chester Copperpot couldn’t find it? You have them take on every classic monster from the Universal collection. “Monster Squad” is a really great blend of classic horror and 80’s camp, but also might be a bit scary and edgy for younger kids.
If you’re worried about the content, you can also catch another team of unlikely heroes battling the Universal monsters in “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.”
2: Ghostbusters
There’s a reason Hollywood is moving forward with “Ghostbusters 3,” and it’s not “Ghostbusters 2.” The original “Ghostbusters” was so clever, so quotable, and so iconic, that not even the painful sequel could derail public interest in another proton pack adventure.
If you’re looking for a Halloween staple this year, there are few effects-driven movies that have aged as well as “Ghostbusters.” It’s funny, a little scary and showcases a classic cast doing some of their finest ensemble work.
At the very least, it might help your kids understand that weird smirk you get every time someone says, “Who you gonna call?”
1: The Nightmare Before Christmas
For those of you who officially start the holiday season on October 31st, this is a perfect film. While unapologetic in its adoration for Halloween, “Nightmare” spins one of the most unusual Christmas tales ever set to celluloid. The music is beautiful, the animation is mezmerizing, and every year more and more people fall in love with it.
Until recently, you could catch Jack Skellington and his ghostly dog Zero on the big screen every Halloween season. This year however, Disney has decided to release a threee-disc combo set of the film, which includes a copy of the 3D transfer on Blu-ray 3D.
