The Pumpkin Song Must Be Preserved

As Mischief Night draws to a close and Halloween 2017 gears up, I find myself doing what I always do this time of year: scrambling to finish my annual watchlist before midnight tomorrow.

"Hurry up, hurry up! We've got 32 hours of horror movies to watch and only 27 hours to do it!"

How Do You Boo?

One of the great things about the horror genre is just how flexible it is. There's an implication that things will be scary, sure, but you can also go creepy, silly, funny, serious, depressing, and several other ways, and it can all be considered horror or a subgenre of horror. This stuff appeals to so many people because there's so many different takes on the same material.

I don't know about you, but my tastes are pretty eclectic. I can enjoy everything from melancholy ghost stories to family-friendly monster movies to R-rated zombie comedies. When October rolls around however, I tend to focus on one aspect of the Halloween season: the cornball.

Enter If You Da... Um, No One's In Line

I'm not old enough to remember when movie houses and drive-in theaters hosted live spook shows, but the ephemera of the era is fascinating. Tattered posters, cheesy trailers, and cheap giveaway items all paint the picture of a magical world, one where maybe, just maybe, a monster really could escape the screen and capture a girl from the audience.

This Is A Pretty Spooky Thing We're Doing Here

I hope all you boils and ghouls enjoyed the sheer number of posts I made this year. Man, 2015 was one wild and crazy ride, wasn't it? The things we saw, the shocks we received, the laughs we've had...

Yeah, sure. Uh HUH.

Something Wicked Awesome This Way Comes... Countdown to Halloween 2014

It's getting so close, everyone. Starbucks has rolled out the pumpkin spice lattes, cable channels have been running more horror movies than usual, and the air is turning just the tiniest bit chillier... Halloween is coming!

No More Clowning Around

Halloween has come and gone.  The costumes have all been put away.  The stores have swept all the Halloween stuff in the discount isle and put out the Christmas decorations.  The leftover candy is probably still sitting in the corner along with all the discount candy you bought.   Well, I'm still in the Halloween spirit and I promised a second Face of Halloween article.  So, here it is!  A post about my own personal Face of the Dark Side of Halloween!  

The spooky season doesn't start at the beginning of October for me.  Instead, the season really starts somewhere in August or September.  This is because important announcements are made during this month.  Announcements about one of the most creative Halloween attractions in Florida:  Universal Studio's Halloween Horror Nights.   
 

King of the Pumpkin Patch

Halloween is sort of an oddity in the holiday world.  It is one of the only national holidays without a set figurehead.  Christmas has Santa Claus, Easter has the Easter Bunny, Valentine's Day has Cupid, even Independence Day has Uncle Sam.  Halloween, however, doesn't have a mascot, a single face that defines the holiday.  It has dozens.  Think about it.  When you think of Halloween, you don't think of a face.  You think of skeletons and jack-o-lanterns.  You think of cemeteries and spider webs.  You think of ghosts, goblins, monsters, costumes, masks, and a tub load of candy.  You think of the general, ghoulish, frightful fun feeling that surrounds the holiday.

Pictured:  The very essence of Halloween.

Countdown to Halloween 2013: Real Live Horror!

A welcome to our regulars and a special growl of appreciation to all you creepy kids who've made your way here from Countdown to Halloween 2013! I hope you enjoy your time at The Haunted Drive-in, and come back and visit us often. We would love to discuss horror and science fiction of all kinds with you until the sun rises and the projector fades.

We don't plan on posting every single day, simply because Daffy and I are very busy folks, and we want the Drive-in to be a labor of love, not just labor. We do plan on adding new material often though, so please add us to your blogroll, follow us on Twitter and Tumblr, like us on Facebook, and above all else, comment! We love getting feedback and hearing suggestions.

So, to keep our focus during the countdown (and not just write about every single thing we love about Halloween), my writing partner and I have decided to give each week of October a theme for us to work with. This first week we've decided to focus on one of the oldest and most enjoyable of Halloween traditions, the walk-through haunted house attraction.

"Dear God! That guy over there... he isn't wearing ANY hair gel!"