Frightening Free-For-All Thread! (#2)
Gotta thank everybody for being a part of the Countdown’s first week. I was especially happy to see so many new faces pop up on After Dark! (Remember, this place exists for you!)
I just updated Dino Drac After Dark with the full run of posts for this week. This one is your Frightening Free-For-All Thread, where you can talk about anything — whether it’s Halloween-related or not! Chat about candy, movies, store runs, whatever! (You can find last week’s thread over here.)
Ideally, After Dark will give you a few little “extras” to see and do all throughout the Halloween season. Though it gets more attention on weekends, all four of last week’s posts were seeing action all week long. Drop by any/all of them whenever you need to kill a few mins!
Chat away in this thread, and then check out this week’s Sinister Survey, Macabre Movies of Week and Chilling Challenge. Above all, have fun!
Sinister Survey! (#2)
During last week’s Sinister Survey, I asked you to come up with a “Halloween makeover” for an existing junk food. There were soooo many great ideas! If anyone missed that thread, it’s required reading.
Now it’s time for our second Sinister Survey:
When we think about the Halloween traditions of our youth, our minds drift to the big stuff: Costumes, candies and pumpkins.
But I wanna know if you had any traditions that were a little less obvious. Think back! What was something you counted on as part of your childhood Halloween seasons that *wasn’t* one of the “major” things?
Mine was stickers. Yeah, stickers. As in Halloween-themed stickers. Like those Hallmark stickers that came with four sheets per package. Straight through elementary school and even beyond, I needed at least one pack of those every single Halloween season.
I liked the stickers, of course, but what I remember most are the fun things they encouraged me to do, from mailing gaudily-decorated letters to prettying up my school notebooks.
To this day, I have an unusual reverence for Halloween stickers, even if I can find far fewer uses for them as an adult.
Your turn! Name some of *your* oddball childhood Halloween traditions, in the comments!
Macabre Movies of the Week! (#2)
Get ready for the second edition of Macabre Movies of the Week, featuring another trio of spoooooky vids that you can binge now or spread across the week. Your call!
First up is The Video Dead, a horror film that with a little more finesse might’ve been something huge. Course, I wouldn’t trade the final product for anything. I’ve run this on After Dark before, but it’s so worth a double-dip. Horror fans are generally aware of the film, but I feel like it isn’t talked about enough!
Synopsis, from Google: “Ghouls from the movie ’Zombie Blood Nightmare’ emerge from a brother and sister’s TV.”
Next we have the old My Pet Monster cartoon series — and I mean the whole series. This is a playlist containing every single episode, so if you enjoy what you see, you can let it play for hours.
The show ran on ABC for just one season in ‘87. Given the sheer implausibility of My Pet Monster getting a series to begin with, I’d still call that a rousing success.
This last video was suggested by our pal Jugendsehnsucht. It’s a 20/20 special report called VCR Horrors, which aired in 1987. (Fittingly enough, the same year The Video Dead was released.)
It was an exposé on the many “sadistic” movies available to impressionable kids, with the expected dose of heavy-handedness. After 30+ years, it’s more amusing than aggravating. It’s also especially resonant for someone my age, because when this aired, I was still young enough to envision all but the most mainstream horror movies as direct portals to Hell.
To view the previous Macabre Movies of the Week, click here. I’ll be back next Friday with more.
Chilling Challenge! (#2)
Last week, I challenged you to watch a horror movie you’d never seen. Looks like quite a few of you took me up on it! There are so many great “capsule” reviews of everyone’s discoveries in last week’s thread, so read it if you missed it!
Now get ready for your second Chilling Challenge of the 2020 season…
It’s time for you to EAT CANDY.
But wait — there’s a catch!
I want you to pick a candy you’ve never tried before, OR one that you normally avoid over some vague childhood memory of not liking it very much. Maybe it’ll hit differently now?
It doesn’t necessarily have to be a “Halloween” candy, because during this season, all candy is Halloweeny.
So many of us claim to hate Mary Janes — but when’s the last time we tried one? This could be your chance to give them another shot.
Most of us love Snickers — so much so that we completely ignore Milky Way. Maybe this’ll spur you to buy a full-sized Milky Way bar for the first time in your life?
Course, if you want to keep it simple, you can just sample one of the new-for-2020 candies, like the Franken Cups or those Hershey’s Vampire Kisses.
BONUS POINTS: This challenge may encourage you to hit a supermarket, department store or pharmacy to select your candy. Those little trips are the secret heart of the season.
When you’re done, report back on which candy you picked and what you thought of it. You have until next Friday to complete this challenge!
