Halloween is Grinch Night!
After running so many horror movies on Dino Drac After Dark, I thought we were due for a change of pace. Let’s watch cartoons!
Tonight’s movie: Halloween is Grinch Night.
Okay, so it isn’t a movie.
The television special premiered in 1977 to rave reviews, but was scarcely seen even by the time I was a kid. In fact, it wasn’t until I was an old goon with an internet connection that I ever even heard of the thing, and the idea of the Grinch having his own Halloween special completely blew my mind.
I watched it years ago and admittedly wasn’t very into it, but with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized that I was probably being unfair. It was silly to expect this to match wits with the Grinch’s Christmas special, which had DECADES to eke out a permanent home in my stupid soul.
So tonight I wanna give it another chance with a fresh perspective. Join me, will ya?
Friday Night Movie!
The weekend is here! Don’t waste it, guys. Halloween sounds far away, but it ain’t. You only have a few spooky Saturdays left!
Why not kick things off with a bad movie?
Actually, I have no idea if it’s bad. I’ve never seen Curse of the Swamp Creature. I just randomly found it on YouTube and was immediately sold on the thumbnail alone. Look at that title screen! The video could be a full hour of just that, and I’d be satisfied. Like a yule log but way cooler.
From what I gather on Wikipedia, this is gonna be a tedious experience with a great payoff. (If you consider a monster that looks like Bat Boy’s slovenly uncle a “great payoff.”. I know I do, at least.)
Seems like the perfect thing to watch while I eat Oktoberfest pretzels and hide under sixteen ratty blankets.
Enjoy… I hope!
Autumn is awesome.
Today was the first day of autumn. Or maybe yesterday was, depending on when you read this. Either way, WE’RE IN IT NOW, chiefs.
Feels good. Feels so good. I mean, the stuff that came before felt good too, but between the switch of the seasons and the fact that it’s late September, this is the REALLY REAL DEAL Halloween season, now. Yes!
As most of you know, I’m also a nut for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and kind of lump them in with Halloween. So for me there’s that third of the year when everything is awesome, and then those two-thirds that are full of valleys and garbage. I love that I won’t have to face any harsh realities until stupid ass January.
But autumn, man… autumn is special. It still a bit hot now, but it won’t be long before it’s all hoodies and creepy winds and maybe those fingerless gloves that make me look 30% cooler. Hot cider and carved fruit and latex goblins and fun-sized Snickers. I could weep.
Tonight’s survey honors autumn’s arrival:
Name three “regular” things that are JUST BETTER during this season.
(I’ll go with big chain coffee, boxes of crayons, and the Food Network.)
House II: The Second Story.
First off, wanna apologize for the admittedly rushed nature of the last several After Dark posts. I mean, they’re meant to be short and sweet, but maybe not so obviously hurried!
*peels back curtain*
So the deal is that while I’m always working on the Funpacks in one respect or another, I have a few days each month when it’s SUPER HARDCORE Funpack assembly/boxing/labeling/shipping. I usually lose two “site days” to that.
This year, I really didn’t want to skip any weekdays for the Countdown for as long as I could conceivably stand it, so I gutted through this week even if it meant working (“working”) what could only generously be described as triple-shifts.
Tl; dr: By the time I finished my regular stuff, I barely had time to say “hi” before midnight.
Fortunately, I’ll have passed the storm as of tomorrow, so hopefully I can do a bit more than drop a YouTube video and run!
Speaking of which:
Guys, House II: The Second Story is AMAZING. Many of you have probably seen the original House, because it’s one of those quirky ‘80s horror movies that achieved cult status by sheer will of gleeful weirdness. Less celebrated is its sequel, which is so unfair, because it’s exactly to the original what Gremlins 2 was to Gremlins. That’s how much they turned up the volume.
Bonus points: It’s as much a sweeping sci-fi epic as a straight-up horror movie, and it ends up being a pretty sweet one, at that. The movie overachieved on every front and comes with my strongest recommendation. I’ve never met a person who watched House II in its entirety and did not like it.
