Wow, what a score! We visited our local “Halloween City” last night, which is sort of like a lower-rent Spirit in a much vaster space. Taking the place of a former Circuit City, it was an enormous warehouse full of costumes, decorations and totally random, awesome shit.

Unlike the Spirit stores, where everything is Spirit-branded and there’s just a more polished “feel” to everything, Halloween City serves more as a liquidator for old store stock. Yeah, all of 2009’s hottest costumes and decorations were out in full force, but with a Circuit City-sized store to fill, they also dusted off Halloween goods that I hadn’t seen in ten years or more. (One example: They had a few Robocop kiddie costumes leftover from the early ’90s.)

There was also a terrific section closer to the registers, filled will all sorts of cheap Halloween bric-a-brac. Really inane, old and pointlessly magnificent stuff, running the gamut from gag store X-ray specs to large bags of rubber millipedes with header cards that said “BUGS” and absolutely nothing else. The best part? It was all dirt cheap. I’m used to Halloween stores marking everything up by 5000%, but this random selection of oddities seemed more like a spooky yard sale. I snatched up everything that the lone $20 bill in my wallet could cover, and among the treasures was the focus of today’s post: Halloween Mood DVDs!

You know those “virtual fireplace” DVDs that stores sell during the Christmas season? Well, they have the same deal going for Halloween. It started with the “Ghoul Log” (sixty minutes of jack o’ lantern footage set to creepy music and thunder claps), but lo and behold, the collection has greatly expanded. Halloween City must’ve had 20 different mood DVDs on sale, but even at the low price of a buck each, I thought I’d live conservatively and stick with the eight shown above.

Since the same tired mix of spooky pop songs might not cut it if you want your Halloween party to be one for the ages, the idea is that you’d throw on one of these, and turn your television into the focal point of fright. Each of the titles has its own theme, but they all meet the same criteria: Creepy, with frightening visuals, loud and appropriate sound effects, and in select cases, bad techno music.

I really, really love these. They’re low rent productions, and what you’ll see and hear is often much more “silly” than “scary”, but they still go so a long way in setting the right mood. After all, you can’t leave everything up to rubber bats, animatronic Draculas and cotton spider webs.

Course, some of the mood DVDs are better than others, so before you run out to blow your bucks, you may want to read the reviews below.

Halloween Mood DVD #1: “Ghoul Log”
Description: “The fiery Jack-O’ Lantern featured in our Ghoul Log DVD is sure to scare up some fun this Halloween! Complete with spooky sound effects, this funky pumpkin will haunt the living through the night!”

The original, and still possibly the best. With twelve different songs and about as many different pumpkin movies, the “Ghoul Log” is probably the best choice if you want to add to your party’s spooky feel without totally drowning it out. (As you’ll see, many of the other DVDs are very overstated.)

The great thing about the Ghoul Log is that you don’t really need a party to play it. It’s subdued enough to work on any old night, even if you’re home alone with nothing but a book and a beer. You might argue that most folks don’t drink while they’re reading, but some do, and they’re exactly the type of people who’d be able to put up with the crackling sights and sounds of pumpkins-on-fire while they do it.

Also note that the fire shown inside the pumpkins seems a bit…out of scale. I’m almost positive that they just reused the “virtual fireplace” scene from an earlier Christmas DVD and threw pumpkin photos over it. Somehow, that makes me like the Ghoul Log even more.

Halloween Mood DVD #2: “Bone Chilling X-Ray”
Description: “Want to cause some fright this Halloween night? Do skulls and spiders give you the chills? Crawling with creepy creatures, these horrifying X-rays will haunt you to the BONE!”

This one is all-ambiance, only using subtle sound effects to convey its terror. I like its simplicity.

They’re using the term “X-ray” rather loosely, though. The stuff in the above clip is pretty on target, but the DVD is much longer than that, and includes many shots of random body parts and creepy animals to fill its running time. In a lot of cases, they’re not really “X-rays” so much as they are “pictures of stuff glowing green.” But then, I’d rather see pictures of bats glowing green than bat X-rays anyway. My complaint is weak.

Another strong mood DVD. If the Ghoul Log is a little too “precious” and some of the other ones just too “insane,” this one is a happy medium. It sets the tone, but it won’t inspire a 20 minute deconstruction by your guests.

Halloween Mood DVD #3: “The Undead Come Alive”
Description: “Create the ultimate haunted house this Halloween night! Watch as your screen comes alive with terrifying images that will surely spook you and your guests! Not for the faint of heart!”

I can appreciate that this mood DVD is more “high concept” than the rest, but I’m not a big fan. This is partly due to my residual angst over its gross DVD cover, featuring clipart of a bleeding skull and parasitic flies. There’s a fine line between spooky and gross, and flies dining on a clipart skull’s blood crosses it.

The content of the DVD is extremely weird. It alternates between television static with annoying beeping sounds, and shots of completely random, horrific images. (Everything from clowns to nuns, old hospitals, broken toys and piles of bones.) It’d work if you were putting together some kind of haunted house walkthrough for brave trick-or-treaters, but as the background visual for a party, it comes on a bit strong.

On the other hand, it’s the only mood DVD that’s actually, honestly creepy. Watching it feels like the precursor to a call from Samara.

Halloween Mood DVD #4: “Sorceress”
Description: “What does the future hold for you? The mystical sorceress has answers to all your burning questions! Ask her anything, and watch as her responses magically appear before your very eyes!”

Hmm. I like the idea of a mood DVD version of the Magic 8-Ball, but this one’s pretty ineffective. Here, you’re supposed to ask the witch a question and wait for her to summon the answer in her crystal ball. Fine in theory, but awful in practice.

You can use your remote to stall the witch’s delivery of everyone’s fortunes, but there’s nothing lamer than stopping a party to have everyone ask a virtual witch if they’ll ever get married. That’s like being one of those asshole Thanksgiving hosts who insist that everyone talk about what they’re thankful for before letting anyone eat.

Course, if you put the remote down and just leave the DVD on, the cackling witch will continue to provide answers even when nobody’s asking her anything. There’s no mystique in that.

Halloween Mood DVD #5: “Messages From Beyond”
Description: “Don’t take your eyes off the moving skeleton’s hand as it carves spine-chilling messages to your unsuspecting guests…the strange sights and sounds will wrap you in a dark, forbidding doom!” (What the fuck?!)

I have a soft spot for this one, even if it’s a tad insipid. Here, a skeleton hand reaches up and writes one of many spooky phrases on a foggy mirror, such as “BEWARE” and “DON’T LOOK BEHIND YOU.” And yet, despite the macabre motif, there’s something undeniably friendly about this. Maybe it’s the way the skeleton alternates between “frightening” penmanship and handwriting that looks it belongs to a seven-year-old girl. It’s all so oddly inviting and cheerful, even considering the funeral march music and all of the disembodied, pained groans.

Mostly though, I love “Messages From Beyond” because the skeleton hand writes its horrible messages with such precision and joy. We never see the full skeleton, but you can bet that this hand belonged to a skull adorned with a red baseball cap and sunglasses.

Halloween Mood DVD #6: “Party Strobe Light”
Description: “This Halloween, prepare to be dazzled by the ultimate light and sound experience! Watch in amazement as the pulsating strobe light throbs along to the sinister sounds of the season. Your guests will go batty for this party treat!”

Yeah, I suppose sending your guests into epileptic fits could be construed as them going “batty.” What’s even more amazing is the copyright messaging at the start of this DVD, warning against unlicensed redistribution. Could you really sue someone over content that consists of nothing but a flashing white screen?

Serving as the virtual strobe light for your drug-addled Halloween hoedown, this mood DVD assaults the senses with eye-destroying visuals and a musical score that sounds like a B-side from the Mortal Kombat movie soundtrack.

Halloween Mood DVD #7: Haunted Night In The Museum”
Description: “This thrilling DVD features classic works of art — with a horrifying twist! Shock party guests and trick-or-treaters alike this Halloween as our Haunted Museum comes alive on your screen!”

“Haunted Night In The Museum” is fantastic! Forget mood DVDs — this feels more like an extended teaser trailer for some horrific 1995 computer game that never quite made it onto a floppy disk. Here, we’re treated to a three-dimensional tour of an art museum, where all of the pictures hide some dark and deadly secret. (Many of the morbid paintings are based on real life works of art, too!)

It totally works, no matter how you use it. It’s eerie enough to drive an especially spooky Halloween party, but it’s also “quiet” enough to leave on in the background without running the risk of entrancing your guests into bored and steady comas.

Halloween Mood DVD #8: BOO!”
Description: “Welcome to the ghost show! Enter, if you dare. Watch in fright as ghouls and goblins swirl across your TV screen! The scary sights and sounds are sure to make your Halloween party guests shiver!”

Okay, so I guess we aren’t ending on a huge high note, but “BOO!” isn’t without its merits. It’s probably the safest Halloween mood DVD for a party that’s going to include young guests, so if you’re slated to play host for a bunch of children, look no further. Set to werewolf howls and really uppity folks yelling “BOO,” the video shows a misty, otherworldly dimension populated by the kinds of ghosts who more typically frequent the pages of awful Halloween coloring books sold at Dollar Trees nationwide. It’s not the kind of mood DVD that’s going to keep you awake at night, but maybe that’s the point.

Incredibly, there were even more Halloween mood DVDs available, and I can’t say that I’m not tempted to go back and collect the rest. They really make me wish that the 2009 Halloween season had more than one pathetic week left in it. For fans of the ghoulish, there are few things more alluring than October evenings spent with Ghoul Logs and witches who tell our fortunes. Love these, and so should you!

Posted by Matt. E-mail me!