It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

October 2, 2007 in Halloween

Halloween is coming!

Autumn is my favorite season, and Halloween is absolutely, without question, my favorite holiday. The month of October is my annual self-bestowed excuse to feast on bad horror movies (the older the better, generally speaking… I don’t consider the slasher/psycho-torture dreck that generally passes for “horror” these days to be worthy of the name), and give my inner child free reign to shiver in the dark and remember that sometimes we have to let our fears come out and play so that we can see them, name them and thereby keep them under reasonable control.

I’m not planning to spend the whole month talking about Halloween, but I did want to go ahead and share some of my favorite seasonal fare - some of it scary, some just fun - in time for y’all to enjoy it before the season is over.

The Walking Dead

Zombies seem to be making a comeback lately; I’m not sure why - but they sure are popular. These are a few of my favorite (zombie-related) things…

• Jonathan Coulton, “Re: Your Brains” (song) Scroll down to “Thing a Week Two”, it’s the last song in that section.
• Kingston Trio, “Zombie Jamboree” (song) Couldn’t find an online audio of the Harry Belafonte version.
• Wonderella - zombie attack (webcomic)
• The Ultimate Survival Guide (video)
• The Zombie Hunters (webcomic)
• El Despertar (animation) - The Pied Piper - with zombies! Be SURE to click the “back to movies” link and check out Katy’s other videos, especially “Cupid’s Last Stand”. She deserves to be much better known.
• Queen of Wands - Zombie Santa
• Voltaire - Zombie Prostitute (Not for the weak of stomach… and yes, I feel the need to give this warning in the middle of a list of zombie humor )
• F Minus (comic)

Some other stuff

• Great printable paper toys (including masks, board games, gift boxes and other cool stuff) from Ravensblight
• Spooky stories from American folklore
• Ghost Story - this Peter Straub novel is one of my favorite horror books of all time - and the movie version was surprisingly effective as well, especially for 1981. (Of course, with Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, John Houseman and Patricia Neal, it would be really, really hard to go wrong!)
• Alan Ryan - Cast a Cold Eye (novel)
• Raymond Feist - Faerie Tale (novel)

I could go on, of course… but that’s enough for now.