Campy or comedic, here are some fun Halloween flicks from the vault
In preparing what you are going to do on Halloween, we’d bet it involves watching movies at home. Here are some Halloween/horror-themed movies perfect for your own at-home fright film festival.
Here’s a look back at his salute to Halloween — you can watch teasers for all of his YouTube Halloween movie suggestions in about 30 minutes in his Old Broads’ Tales from the Crypt — a phenomenon due to the success of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? which inspired a flurry of movies featuring older actresses from the Hollywood studio system.
Bette Davis continued with movies such as Dead Ringer and The Nanny as well as Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte, which would have co-starred Joan Crawford but was replaced by Olivia de Havilland.
The old broad movies also include Joan Fontaine, Tallulah Bankhead, Shelley Winters, Debbie Reynolds, Deborah Kerr and Barbara Stanwyck.
If you prefer Halloween horror options that are funny, check out the roundup in “Halloween’s Funny Bone.” This episode is perfect for those who aren’t really into gore and gushing blood. Rather, it’s for someone who likes a little comedy mixed in with their ghosts and ghouls.
A highlight from this episode is President Evil, in which an orange-faced-masked president is going around killing people who are not white and anyone who is not a citizen and is transgender. It is filmed like “Halloween” but rings very true in today’s current political climate.
Other highlights include the Mel Brooks parody of Hitchcock with High Anxiety, a drag remake of Baby Jane? and even one in which the title says it all: Halloweed. This episode also includes access to get Here TV for free.
The festival continues with Award-Winning Bad Movies. This embraces movies that are so bad, they’re good. Movies include The Folks at Red Woof Inn where their guests are future meals, Evil Toons, which is a Roger Rabbit type of movie where a cartoon rapes and kills, The Creeping Terror where people walk slowly yet a shag carpet still catches them and eats them and, big drum roll, there are two movies with two-headed people – including one with Ray Milland and Rosie Grier as a white bigot whose head is put on a soul brothers body.
As a big fan of musicals, I couldn’t skip a horror tribute to the genre. So the next episode is called “Sing Your Heart Out Before a Zombie Eats Your Heart Out.” This includes some filmed stage shows that are on BroadwayHD like The Toxic Avenger and Sweeney Todd (the Broadway production and not the Johnny Depp film). For Halloween musicals, most of us think The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but I like to find lesser-known films including Stage Freight about a young girl who goes to theatre camp and has to do the same musical that her mother performed on Broadway where her mother was murdered. Will history repeat itself?
Happy Halloween at home, on your screen of choice.
