By Salim Garami
What's Good? We're less than a week away from the spookiest time of the year so let's talk about what the holiday means in the cinematic sense. These are personal impressions and I hope you'll share your own as well.
We start with the actual season in itself: the autumn colors are there in a very muted way that signify the beginning of the end of the year in all its resigned reds and oranges. The palette chases away the greens and blues that took over the summer, although one could certainly see faint glimmers of those colors to remind us of the months past. Such as in Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and its Halloween scene, glowing with yellowish twilight and orange rays in the sun that reflect on the suburban homes and streets Elliot and his friends walk...
Beneath their feet a softly gravel-scraping noise, but not exactly the kind that I call the Halloweentime sounds. No, those autumnal feelings are elicited by hearing the crunch of deadened leaves underneath shoes, the kind of sound that reminds you of the end of things. It plays as the most complimentary soundtrack to the growing breeze, handing you the promise of winter to come. That's especially true in the night air. You can hear that feeling in To Kill a Mockingbird's soundtrack during Scout and Jem's humiliating-turned-horrifying Halloween walk home.
But what about Halloween night in the visual sense? At this point, I don't think anyone can pretend Mike Dougherty's Trick 'r' Treat doesn't adopt this perfectly well by having versatility in the nighttime airs. It's there in the streets, blackened darkness punctuated by the orange glimmer of greening pumpkins to watch your stroll. It's there in the presence of company and community, that orange overwhelms you from all directions to almost convince you it's daylight and bring you into more of the festive mood. In abandoned fields, you lose all light that might properly guide you home like glowing breadcrumbs. Instead you're strangled by a smokey haze texturing the slate-grey nights and shadowed by trees that hang above you like an omen.
Halloween night should feel scary -- a full deep dig into tropes such as graveyards and bats and spider webs and skeletons such as in the works of Mario Bava, all things that feel more organic than the artifice of coffins and crosses (ok, maybe not graveyards but work with me here...). These Hollywood touchstones should be lit by a big full white moon in the sky. The bigger the better, something you can't believe is in your face as if you're witnessing the gorgeous matte from Sam Raimi's Evil Dead films.
And then what of the interiors in Halloween season? Well, obviously one needs to imagine the dark spaces of a haunted house. Here's what I see when I think of Halloween interiors: the spacious aristocratic halls of The Curwen Palace in Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace with a history of curious fear in every brick and portrait, the rustic manor of Obayashi Nobuhiko's House with its jovial absurdism that makes the haunts and frights energize rather than petrify.
The familiarity of the house Jamie Lee Curtis babysits in in Halloween -- it's hardly any different from your neighbor's but layed on a shade of black and blue that drowns our nerves out. Similarly, my first viewing of The Exorcist ended as my own room turned into a dim blue from the window-shades blocking the sunset light outside.
But you don't want to do Halloween alone. Be surrounded by people in a party. Make sure there are whispers of witchcraft and a wolf's howl around, a steady soundtrack of a genre of music that sounds modern sorts of doomy like industrial or gothic rock, your Type O Negative or Skinny Puppy. If you must have synths, make it sound like John Carpenter's M.O.
Drown the party in garish neon colors like Dario Argento's most wonderful Suspiria dreams.
And speaking of parties, it should be obvious at this point that watching horror movies makes up my idea of Halloween celebration. Whether it's a midnight couch potato marathon with friends and my dog or a party in which a movie would be playing as background visuals. The band Coheed & Cambria had the Halloween night of their "Neverender" shows project Night of the Living Dead behind them. A local skating rink I took to in Halloween season projected Young Frankenstein. Hell, I've even seen The Devil's Rejects' making-of video in the background of a party I've been to.
And so I clearly find some of myself in the scene of Tim Burton's Ed Wood where the titular filmmaker watches vampire films with his hero and scares trick-or-treaters who dare to approach. Hence why images and sounds shape my idea of the holiday and fuel my anticipation for it.
What defines your Halloween? Do you have any particular activity, film-based or otherwise, that you try to make a habit of during the season? Any visuals or sounds in your mind the holiday brings to you? What about vice versa?
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!