I've spent a good amount of time this month gravitating towards anywhere that might be engulfed in the holiday spirit on the hunt for more things to fill up the Halloween Countdown, and I've gotta admit, it's kind of depressing to watch most houses' giant lawn inflatables run out of air by the 20th, not to mention the huge amount of stores that swapped their Draculas for Santas long before the former could even enjoy his day. You know what we need? A Linus Speech. He got us past the dark times when Christmas' material world let us down, but what about Halloween? Where's our Halloween Linus Speech?
I guess the moral is: holidays are only what you make of them, and just because you envisioned it as being some absolutely great occasion doesn't mean you're penciled into automatically having one. You've gotta create it yourself. There's a good chance I'm just plagiarizing a Hallmark card, but hey, those guys should know what they're talking about. They created like 40,000 holidays. So, the other night, in a fit of missing something this Halloween season, but not really sure what it was, I set out to find my fanged smile. A group of us went to go see the new Texas Chainsaw flick, because come on -- if you're gonna see that movie, this is the time of year. Still, I'm not so sure it was a good idea to waste one of the few nights left before the Big Day on a movie that only succeeded in causing me to break the Guinness Book's record for "person who said 'this sucks' most time in succession for a period of 90 minutes." Naw, I kid, it wasn't that bad. If it was a sequel to "Serving Sara," it'd even be better than the first.
No matter what I thought, a movie wasn't going to help me get back into the Halloween spirit. Way too easy. If the spirit was that accessible, nobody would think of it as something special. On the way home, we spotted something. A house. A house so absolutely covered in Halloween decorations, people driving packed cars would risk the lives of their passengers by doing complete Dukes of Hazzard flips so they could turn around and get another look. The house was amazing; it seemed like the perfect thing to cure the Halloween blues...
I couldn't believe my eyes. The city I live in is more suburban than urban, but just a little more crowded. Generally, a high percentage of the houses have some Halloween decorations up outside, but usually nothing more than a few paper-towel ghosts, a pumpkin, and a seasonal doormat with stupid slogans like "Wipe Those Claws!" printed on top. The house shown above wasn't just out of the ordinary -- it was one of a kind. From afar, all we could really tell was that there were giant, monstrous mannequins lining the distance of their front lawn. That was enough to warrant a quick park-and-peruse, but we had no idea just how entrenched in Halloween Hell this place actually was. It was like the family raided every last one of those cheesy sideshow "haunted house" rides, providing all of the best parts without an admission price or a bunch of face-painted idiots jumping out of the walls at you. Plus, no scared brats were screaming "but I don't wanna be a big kid!" with wishful tears of escape running down their insipid shit-stained cheeks. Hey, it's Halloween. It's okay to be colorful.
I know this might seem like an odd article to choose for the big ol' "Halloween finale." Honestly, I've been debating what to do for that all week, but no matter what I chose, it was always going to be what was the most important to me. With my social standing on the line, I not so proudly admit that this stupid decorated house is the most important thing to me this Halloween. Very close runner-up is the fact that Nick@Nite keeps replaying the "Roseanne" episode where Darlene puppets that rubber baby devil through her shirt. I've always wanted one of those things.
With that, here's a picture gallery of all the horrifying things we witnessed. More sincerely, here's a picture gallery of all the horrifying things I deemed cool enough to take pictures of. There was other stuff too, but I couldn't justify more than two dozen pictures of Macy's boxes cut up and made to look like tombstones. This place was absolutely terrific -- even on my trip to the progressively turned tourist trap city of Salem a few weeks back, nothing struck me with holiday lightning quite like this. Enjoy the pics -- they're kind of shitty since I had my camera set on low quality and the fog obscured some of the better shots, but I claim that this only adds to their devilish charm.
PS, take a look at the top floor window. Bates Motel, baby. Every classic horror movie and slasher icon you could imagine was covered, and as an added bonus, the woman running the show dressed up as a bloody vampire with red contact lenses, looming around making "dying seal" noises. I've never heard a seal die before, but I'm sure that's what it'd sound like.
The cavalcade of characters seemed endless -- some were pretty short, but others were well more than seven feet tall. And they were everywhere. Half of the neighborhood seemed to make a hangout of their property, and yet, the number of scary mannequin beasts vastly dwarfed the amount of living people walking around going "oooh look at that!" I only took pictures of the exceedingly cool stuff, but there were innumerable "little touches" littering the lawn. Even on tables stacked with thousands of dollars worth of spooky props, a quick glance underneath would reveal another boatload of black rubber scares. Lights and fog machines were all around you -- for however long you remained in the property's vicinity, you felt like you were in another world. A world of pain. A world that took donations for the local cancer charity society? Yup, they did. These folks might've been down with the devil, but Satan didn't smack all of the God out of 'em quite yet. Woof.
Check out Pinhead in the back. Looks like he's opening a jar of maraschino cherries. I bet the syrup is BLOOD.
Our first stop: Jason Voorhees. The colors seem a bit off, but after you get a load of some of the other creatures, you'll agree that this is one of the better representations. I was kinda glad that they were all a little wrong, though. Like I said, the appeal was in how much the place looked like a haunted house amusement ride's storage shed. No old haunted house is complete with modified horror icons to avoid any copyright issues. The Jason Mannequin isn't incorrect, it's just aware of Paramount's tough legal team.
Frankenstein's Monster and the Bride of Frankenstein made a star appearance just by the entrance, surrounded by lava lamps and those other novelty lights with the purple bubbles spinning around in circles. Both were animated, and their motions were surprisingly fluid. I didn't mistake them for the real thing, but that's only because I saw the plugs coming out of their asses. They were this close.
What would normally be the family's garden was converted into the most twisted graveyard ever, chock full of motionette corpses, bloodied rubber body parts, guts, bats, and the occasional wiffle ball bat sadly missed during the preshow cleanup. You can't buy most of that stuff in stores, folks. Besides, store-bought Halloween decorations seem to become less and less visceral as the years go by, instead depending on the patented "scary but CUTE" motif in an effort to spook up your home in ways only a fuzzy pink wolfman doll could. Cheesy as it was, my new favorite house didn't dog it. No concessions were made for the children. If you were going to approach this haunted place, you had to be prepared for only the truly terrifying. It said so right on the piece of orange posterboard stapled to the telephone pole down their street.
Bonus -- they're having a yard sale first weekend in November. Maybe I can buy a resin shinbone.
Ah, seeing this guy reminds me of something I noticed during the Texas Chainsaw remake. What do you think, did director Marcus Nipsel tell the actresses to strike that pose every time they stood up from any kind of seated position, under the guise of stretching? "Okay girls, here's what you do. Boys, you too. And make sure part of your crotch skin is exposed. Try to be sweaty." Speak of the devil, here's Leatherface...
It's either the best or worst interpretation of Leatherface I've ever seen. So much of it was thrown together all wrong, but at least the major points remained true to the roots. He had the chainsaw, the bloody apron, the mask of skin, the...Reebok Pumps? God, some of these things must be pretty old. Though less sturdy and statuesque than most of the others, the scarecrow-like Leatherface was demonically tall and easily seen from half a mile away. I actually measured. See, there was something good about the new flick. It pulled Leatherface's status is back up to snuff. In previous years, there was only a negligible chance that a family would include the character in their horror hit parade, so even if you hated the new movie, at least it reunited horror's top guns with the guy who inspired a large part of their genre. Daddy's home!
I really don't know what I can say about the Leatherface's head. I know there's something that should be said, something to point out or illustrate, but all I can come up with is...
Broilaphobia: fear that you left the house before turning the oven off.
I don't know. I've got to go with my heart on this one.
There's one of the home's several Draculas, along with some random headless lady. This Dracula was another motionette, repeating a series of arm movements that seemed to create a reason for a nearby stereo to play Sinatra's "My Way" on repeat. This Dracula had rhythm. So did the headless lady, come to think of it, and headless ladies who have rhythm is even more impressive.
Cut off from the picture is these three fellows' cauldron, with another rubber head inside. For whatever reason, this seemed to be the lawn's designated smoking area for parents who were tired of following their kids around. Maybe the cauldron was an ash tray -- I was too afraid of some burly guy in the biker jacket to check. At first I thought the biker was a stranger trying to blend in with the statues so he could surprise his victims, but after he started fiddling around with some of the motionettes' controls, I realized that he was one of the homeowners. Our eyes glued to his every move -- mostly because we were trying to figure out what messages from Hell the faded voodoo phrases printed on the back of his jacket were trying to convey -- we watched as he gave life (or electricity) to one of the lawn's most peculiar characters...
I'm not sure what the Hell this guy was supposed to be, but boy, he danced like nobody's business. I'd never seen such motion from a motionette. Apparently, the creature was to be some kind of wizard troll, standing behind a table full of assorted skulls and magical doodads...
Well, mostly skulls. The best part: underneath the table was a giant electronic rat that only came to life in the presence of human feet, so as you're standing there wittily complaining to your pals about how lame and not-scary all of the plastic skulls and brains are, the freak ass rubber rat starts biting your toes, making you scream like a little girl and forced you to live down the shame of your behavior for the rest of eternity. Okay, so maybe that's not the "best part." It's more like the worst part, all things considered. To be safe, let's just call it the rat part.
The rat part was pretty cool.
Ah, there's the classic guillotine setup, complete with the decapitated mannequin. Evidently, for just a dollar, the family would remove the dummy and let you act as the next victim for a photo op. Part of me wanted to give it a try, but I just assumed it'd be one of those deals where you hand the lady a dollar, and everyone stands there staring at you while you lay down like an idiot building to a huge climax scene that never seems to arrive. Finally, with your tail between your legs, you'll rise from the bench and thank the lady. Then you'll look towards the crowd, almost apologetic for their disappointment, explaining to anyone who'd listen that you figured she would at least let the plastic blade drop halfway. Then your ass will explode.
Don't worry, we haven't already peaked with this photo album. I'm just getting some of the lesser items out of the way so we can end on a high note. So long as you like guys with pins hammered into their skin, the best if yet to come. I started feeling whispers of the Halloween spirit as soon as I stepped foot on the lawn, but by the time I made it to the guillotine, I was sure it was there. Knowing that my case might've still had one or two holes in it, I looked around for the smoking gun. I looked around, looked up, looked left and right. Looked northeast, southwest. And somehow, eastwest. Finally, I looked straight down. There was my smoking gun. There was my Halloween spirit. There was my decapitated guillotine head...
Judging from the type of head injuries seen, this dude died long before they chopped his head off with the guillotine. Why'd they even bother? Kicks? Sick fucks.
Hey look, they even had a baby space alien. Locked in a dog cage. I wonder if there's a subversive social commentary hiding in there somewhere. Something about how man fears that which he does not understand? Eh, they probably just ran out of rubber heads. I mean, even this family had to put a cap on those at around a hundred. They already had enough heads to supply the integral props for at least fifteen high schools to put on a play based on Joe Pesci's worst movie -- anything more would've been overkill. So, instead of caged heads, we get a caged alien. I never knew caged aliens smelled so much like dog urine.
Young man, there's no need to feel down.
Their version of the Wolfman was interesting -- while it didn't look anything like the classic versions from the movies, it still retained enough human qualities to pass as a "Wolfman" and not a "Wolf mask put on top of a man." There's a big different between the two, folks. Following suit with an odd trend they set earlier with Leatherface, Wolfie's been dressed in a flannel shirt. At least fifteen of the fifteen-hundred characters had flannel shirts on. It was flannel here, flannel there, flannel flannel everywhere. Flannel mania. Man, the things you type when you just don't know what else to say about a Wolfman statue.
Oh, here's something: of the many creatures living on the lawn, kids seemed the most frightened by Wolfie. Granted, his giant green eyes were pretty haunting, but come on -- is the Wolfman aesthetically scarier than Pinhead or Freddy? I really need to figure this one out; I'm having loads of trouble accepting Wolfie as the monster who gets top billing. Loads of trouble with that there one yehup. Grrowwwl boooooo SCARE!
I loved the view from the back -- looked sort of like a scene out of "Night of the Living Dead," only with more iconic monsters than a bunch of extras wearing eyeliner. The only downside was seeing how many of these horror luminary tributes were wearing jeans from The Gap. For the entire time we were there, the usually speedily trafficked street rubbernecked down to a crawl; everyone who passed this place became entranced. The homeowners and some of their friends hung out in a big tent on the side of the house, even giving out cookies and soda to anyone who asked. Course, you had to be pretty ballsy to walk into the family's backyard after trampling all over their lawn just to ask for soda. We were starting to worry that they might've thought us a bit ungracious, so anytime we walked by someone from the house, we'd start asking the others in our group if they'd "put five bucks in the donation box yet." If the family later tallied up the number of times we said that at a secret rendezvous point in their basement, and held us to their findings, we'd owe 'em somewhere in the realm of 50,000 dollars.
That means, combined, we said "did you put five bucks in the donation box, yet?" a total of 10,000 times. It's absolutely the truth. We talk really fast.
Bet you thought they forgot this guy -- nope, no Halloween hit parade would be complete without Michael Myers. He's a lot skinnier here than we're used to seeing, but those no-carb diets didn't get hot until after his last big screen foray. Jeez, I must've taken a hundred pictures at this place, and yet the only statue that I succeeded in photographing "looking at the camera" is the one guy with no eyes. All of the other characters treated me like Demi treated Sam after he died and went to Heaven Vincent Schiavelli. HELLO I'M HERE SMILE FOR THE CAMERA. I thought these things were supposed to be motionettes? I thought everyone was doing a brand new dance now?
Almost missed the Cryptkeeper. They had him seated on their front stoop; it was as if
he was the only one smart enough to realize that standing up for three weeks straight with no payoff other than a million flashbulbs to the eyes wasn't something to aim for. The statue didn't have legs, so that might also be a factor.
Left: "Lady Hostess," who oddly had nothing at all spooky about her. I think they just needed something to obscure the view of their duck-shaped novelty mailbox. Would've totally killed the mood.
Right: The whole hanging setup is actually full-sized, and for an extra two bucks, one of the family members would take the place of the usual mannequin. We weren't that interested, but it's nice to know that we've got neighbors who'll tie a rope around their neck while wearing a spray-painted Beetlejuice mask for just two bucks. You know, I bet they could get at least 5 bucks for that in the off-season. I'd go up to 15 if they'd do it in mid April.
Another dog cage, this time housing a giant rubber alligator and the leftovers of its meal. For reasons I chose not to explore, visitors to this Halloween house decided that the cage would work great at some kind of wishing well. Thing was covered in nickels and pennies. And dirt. Even stranger was the fact that the owners cleaned it out regularly, putting all of the change in a coffee tin. Were they afraid someone would rather steal 70 cents than a 2,000 dollar lawn decoration? Were they CRAZY? Getting back to the good stuff, here's two more of the big guns...
Pinhead! Yaaaay Pinhead! Though not as popular as Freddy, Jason or Michael Myers, I'd say that he's easily the scariest of the bunch. Lookswise, he had you covered. He didn't need to show off any sort of weapon to inspire fear -- all this guy had to do was stand there staring at you. Plus, while the "Hellraiser" series started off great and slowly dwindled to crap with each passing sequel, you could always count on seeing Pinhead cause some excruciatingly graphic deaths. There was no real "human side" to the guy, 'cept in that one Hellraiser flick that I'm trying very hard to forget. Most of the time, he was just a cooler looking Satan who absolutely tormented his victims -- this guy wasn't about a bodycount; it was quality over quantity the whole way through.
That said, he's looking a bit bloated up there. Actually, he's looking half-bloated, half-deflated. You wouldn't think that was even possible, but Pinhead can pull anything off.
Finally, there's Freddy Krueger. I know the pic's a little off, but he's apparently carving his blood-inked name into a tombstone using his infamous bladed glove. That makes Freddy the only guy on the lawn who wasn't just standing around doing nothing. That makes Freddy #1.
Even the smaller points of interest were majorly souped up -- in one of the windows, there was an illuminated tarantula hanging on a web. I didn't give it a second glance at first, what with all of the horror icons scattered across the grass. Before we left, I noticed that the tarantula was actually walking around the web, in completely random fashion, managing to look amazingly like the real thing even despite the large number of Christmas lights pinned into its abdomen. I love this place.
Not just a rubber head -- a rubber head with a bat shoved into its mouth. It's the extra almond that makes that rubber head more than a Mounds. Sometimes you feel like a bat.
Well, that's pleasant.
Okay, so maybe it's a pretty lame way to end this year's Halloween season on X-E. Though, now that I look at the clock, it's already almost 3 PM on Halloween day -- by the time this gets published, anyone who really cares about the holiday will probably be off doing more spirited things than sitting on their ass reading websites. So, who am I writing this for?
Dracula, duh.
For what it's worth, the house restored my faith in the spooky occasion, so it looks like it's time to finally carve that half-rotted pumpkin that's been sitting outside our front door for the past two weeks. Hope everyone has a good Halloween -- try not to die, and don't eat any unwrapped Krackels.
Oh what the Hell, go for it. Eat the unwrapped Krackels. Halloween only comes once a year.
