Review: Identity

Stop me if you've heard this one: a seemingly unconnected group of people find their lives entangled after an accident leaves them all stranded at a creepy motel in the middle of nowhere. As the hours drag on, folks start turning up dead, and the remaining survivors find that there's more to their blahblahblah...

Oh sorry, did I bore you? Yeah, the slasher film formula has gotten a little creaky over the years. While we still thrill at the sight of Jason hacking up his horny teenage victims, there's not a lot of mystery to the affair anymore. After watching Identity though, I think the ol' sub-genre still has a few gallons left in the tank.

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.   
 

You Don't Know Jack

It's Halloween! It's Halloween!
The moon is full and bright
And we shall see what can't be seen
On any other night.

Skeletons and ghosts and ghouls,
Grinning goblins fighting duels,
Werewolves rising from their tombs,
Witches on their magic brooms.

In masks and gowns
We haunt the street
And knock on doors
For trick or treat.

Tonight we are
The king and queen,
For oh tonight
It's Halloween!

-Jack Prelutsky

I love that poem, because in a very short amount of time, it seems to get across everything that's so great about this holiday. The ghosts and ghouls, the trick-or-treating, the feeling that something is different from the other 364 days of the year. And most importantly, the power of being whoever or whatever you want to be, if only for one night. It's intoxicating.

However, it also points out something about Halloween that makes it unique among holidays (in fact, Daffy laid it out very well in his last post): there's no central figure of representation. All Hallow's Eve is truly an ensemble cast of monsters, spirits, and other grotesques, and I have to confess that I rather like it that way. It just seems to fit that the holiday for misfits and outcasts would include everyone on the bill. I know some people like to equate a popular horror movie villain with the role, but if their story isn't expressly ABOUT Halloween (and not merely taking place on Halloween night, Mr. Myers), I don't think it works. Many folks think that Sam from the film Trick 'r Treat would be the perfect mascot, and while I do love Sam, he hasn't been around long enough to do the job. Give it a few more decades and we'll see.

He is a cutie though.

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.

Sugar, Rage, and Razor Blades

Trick-or-treating has got to be one of the greatest inventions the human race has ever come up with. One night a year, we were able to go door-to-door and get candy, for FREE, because of an ancient tradition of leaving out cakes for evil spirits as a sign of appeasement. Halloween is rich with history, and much of it has resulted in truly wonderful things like scoring candy and carving jack-o-lanterns. Unfortunately, that same history and those same traditions have often been twisted and neutered because of a few horrible people who were determined to ruin things for everybody else.

There's enough cocaine in this picture to put down a rhino.