2025 Halloween awards and commendations

Saturday 11/1/25

We're officially in November now, but the spooky season has a long ways to go, and besides, that season is always in attendance as far as I'm concerned, and I don't like to be beholden to the calendar anyway. I'm just as apt to watch a Christmas film in mid-February as I am to look forward to Halloween in late November. The spirit of the thing is the thing for me, not the date of the thing.

November 1 is a day of Halloween hangover, and it extends if it happens to fall on a Saturday, as it does this year. I thought I'd mention a few of my "top" selections in various scare-related/Halloween categories, if you will, and commend some other works more generally, which also means indirectly making some recommendations, so snatch them up like the next piece of candy and have at it.

I'll start with what for me is the most viscerally scary movie. It's actually playing right now on TCM as write this entry, and if I hadn't already gone to bed and woken up--that is, if I was going to try and sleep after--I wouldn't be watching this now because it disturbs me too much. The film is Carnival of Souls, from 1962, directed by Herk Harvey, who also plays "the Ghoul," and if you've seen the film those two words might be enough to trigger some fresh nightmares.

No film creeps me out like this one. It's a variation on an E.F. Benson story called "The Bus Conductor," which later served as the basis for Lucille Fletcher's radio play, "The Hitch-Hiker." I've written in these pages about a particular version with Orson Welles that is a contender for the scariest radio program I've ever heard, but more on the subject of horror radio soon enough.

Carnival of Souls features what might be the scariest piece of architecture in all of film, that bath house out on the great salt pans in Utah. I should also note that as I was writing this entry here at three in the morning, a visitor from Utah popped up in the analytics as a "live" (hmmmm) visitor, which made me think, but it seems unlikely that the Ghoul would be reading about how bad Junot Diaz and Joshua Cohen are at writing and how rigged and revolting publishing is, but hey, you never know.

You also have Mr. Linden's remark, "That's just what I need--to be left alone with a girl who's offer her rocker," that's lends itself to a knowing response of "Amen, brother," as some resistance to the forces of malevolence.

You'll note how I qualified the above with the words "viscerally scary movie." That's because I think Brian Desmond Hurst's 1951 film Scrooge is the most ideologically scary film, which is part of the reason I published an entire book about it. You don't get that with other adaptations of A Christmas Carol, which aren't horror films at all, for the most part once we get into the sound era. As the book notes (and discusses the reaction to), Scrooge was released on Halloween. That was not a coincidence.

It's always puzzling to me when people say how much they don't like The Blair Witch Project. To me, it's one of the very few perfect horror films, along with Frankenstein (1931), Return to Glennascaul (1951), Scrooge (1951), and Night of the Living Dead (1968). I downloaded a three hour and fourteen minute rendering of the film called the Extended Sight Cut which became available yesterday that someone out there worked on for years, in the vein of the detail-laden Star Wars fan projects that some people dedicate a big chunk of their lives to. The people behind them, I mean. And to a lesser extent, the people who discuss them on message boards.

Then again, I've seen many posts this October on reddit from people asking others to explain The Blair Witch Project to them, because they "don't get it," which depresses me. It's all in there. Everything is in there. You don't have to even think that hard. You just need to pay attention. But, people can't do that. Why the last scene happens as it does is in there. Consequently, you should "get it," when it occurs. It's not some random tacked on thing. It fits perfectly. You should look back on what you've seen and know why you just saw what you did.

Honestly, I don't know what more you can ask of a horror film. It's believable--very--and relatable and it makes brilliant use of the viewer's imagination, or what should be their imagination. Waking up to find those sticks...so simple, but not so simple. That is the stuff, that's how you do it. Elemental, timeless fear. It's a very human horror film because we're right there inside of it, too.

Normally I'm not into these types of endeavors, but I think this is the kind of film where it can be worthwhile. It's a composited film--in theory--to begin with. That was the hook, right? And it's also a film that inspires a special curatorial devotion in those who love it. You can find it yourself with a savvy Google search. Doesn't take much, but I don't want to include the link here because you just want to make sure a resource of this nature remains available.

Obviously I love the writings of M.R. James--across the breadth of his writing, and not just his ghost stories, but really all of it--but I think that most James readers associate his ghosts with the Christmas season, rather than Halloween. Which got me to thinking about what James story is best for the latter. Most hits the spot, in other words.

I have this book I'm doing that looks at key ghost stories and talks about how they came to be, the person who wrote them and what that entailed, why they're so important, their influence. A chapter on each. The M.R. James story for this book is "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad." It's one of the best stories of any kind I've ever read. It does many things I admire and that I believe are essential if a story is going to be great.

But it isn't what I'd pick as the best answer for this discussion. I'd go with "Count Magnus" instead. You have faces being sucked off in the dark forest, a crypt, a vampire. It's James at his most Halloweenesque.

The horror films produced by Val Lewton screen often at this time of year. I believe the best of them--and really one of the best of all American films--is 1944's The Curse of the Cat People, which I published a lengthy piece about, and which I also proposed to our friend Rebecca Barden--whose discriminatory practices I'll soon be documenting more expansively in this record--as a possible entry in the BFI's Film Classics series, to no response. Predictably.

But Curse has too much range in too many ways to stand out as Halloween fare. You could watch it at Halloween, of course, but it wouldn't feel like there's a direct correlation between the film and the day. For that, 1942's Cat People is the way to go. It's also a really useful way to introduce someone to the world of Lewton's RKO horror films.

Meet Me in St. Louis is most commonly thought of as a Christmas film. It airs time and again throughout December, and few musical moments are more affecting than Judy Garland singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" near the end--though you're also going to want to check out the first ever time she sang the song live, which was on the radio on December 17, 1944.

The film's Halloween scene, though, is bang on. It achieves so much, feels like this voluminous summation of the holiday--an expansive summation, to flirt with an oxymoron--in such a relative short amount of screen time. But time can be like word count if someone is masterful; what, really, does it mean? Not a lot. It's not an automatic indicator "more" or "less" based upon its numerical value.

There's no shortage of excellent radio episodes for Halloween, and goodness knows I've discussed many of them in this record and in interviews I've given over the years. I'll say this again: Radio is one of this country's greatest art forms. Or it was. If you're going to talk about Moby-Dick, Elvis' Sun sides, and Citizen Kane, you also need to talk about the radio version of Gunsmoke, and no one else really does within that framework.

But my choice for best Halloween radio episode for 2025 goes to the Cape Cod Radio Mystery Theater's "The Buoy" from 1987. A contender for the scariest radio episode ever. In the horror vein. There are, for instance, parts of the program Tales of the Texas Rangers, that are more frightening than anything you'll hear in radio drama, especially at the beginning of certain episodes.

"The Buoy" is both M.R. James-ian and Edgar Allan Poe-esque, but also wholly Cape Cod. And what's Cape Cod? An elemental place, a place like no other, which is, by way of explanation once again, part of the reason I published a book set there, in which the Cape itself was a character. Actually, more than a character, I'd say. More than a setting, a character, a backdrop. A power, a force, a presence, a substrate, a channel, a bay of human connectivity, open waters of that which is beyond the human veil but impactful of human life and itself human as a result.

"The Buoy" moves between place and time well, while maintaining a unity of place and time. Again, kind of like an oxymoron and not easy to do, but essential.

My choice for the best non-animated television Halloween episode goes to "Fairy Tales Can Come True" from the third season of Cheers in 1984. First of all, the bar looks great. The interspersion of Halloween decor and garb with those felt sports pennants tacked to the walls gets me right in my soul. Feels like home to me, and I don't mean a place you go to, but rather what you take around inside of you. Which is also the crux of Cheers, I'd say, and what Norm is getting at with his final exchange--or at least the final exchange we see--with Sam at the end of the series finale.

Cliff Clavin is one of the all-time great American side characters. Such a character is never really "just" a side character. This is a sweet episode that's scary in the vulnerability sense, and the potential heartbreak sense. A Halloween episode to be treasured.

People talk about the 20th Century Fox fanfare as something they associate with the opening notes of Star Wars, or as if they're linked. They are in a way--they're in the same key. It's similar to how the rooster's crow at the end of "Good Morning Good Morning"--that clipped rooster's crow--is in the same key as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)" on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. That Star Wars fanfare can be quite Pavlovian. You hear it and expect to then see a Star Destroyer. The title card for Tod Browning's Dracula, with Swan Lake playing, is the same for me. I watched the film again yesterday, and it gets my vote for the quintessential Halloween film. A piece about it will be the first work in my horror film book, and it's not going too far to say that it changed my life.

Too little is made of how outstanding Dwight Frye is in the picture, and how important he is to it. He's our first point of entry as he travels to castle Dracula, and is on stage for those early scenes with all of their still-quotable lines. Then we have him looking up at us and cackling from the hold of the Vesta as she arrives in England. But as he was a point of entry, he also becomes a conduit, an intermediary between viewer and Dracula as the film progresses.

Think, too, of how shocking it was to see him advance upon the maid who has fainted, because what he's going to do right as the camera cuts away. It's shocking. Then when we see him again, he's impassioned and quoting Hamlet. I wonder who ever picks up on that. Anyway, it's what he does. There's a lot of torment in Frye's performance, and he's very believable. Then consider the scene on the great staircase at the abbey. Have you ever seen a shot like that when we're far away and there are those small human--and not so human--forms in the background, where the action is playing out? What scope. And the anguish as Frye's Renfield is thrown to his death, bouncing off the stairs.

Can the time of year make a difference with a concert? Of course. Consider the Grateful Dead's 12/26/69 at S.M.U. or any of a number of their December 1971 affairs. The wondrous has infiltrated the proceedings. And the warmth. The bonhomie. The fireside spirit. With Halloween shows, there may be this sense of taking especially imaginative flight. Of mischief, of playfulness. There are some strong Frank Zappa examples. You can tell that tapping into the Halloween vein was important to him.

So what's the choice as best Halloween gig? I think that's between the Grateful Dead in Cleveland on 10/31/71 and Bob Dylan at Philharmonic Hall on 10/31/64. If you're going to listen to the Dylan show, which has been officially released in a Bootleg Series entry, make sure you don't do so on streaming services, because none of them preserved the between-song commentary, exchanges, jokes, or a request from Dylan as to how some lyrics go because he's forgotten them. It's a different experience and document minus the betwixt.

I'd opt for the Grateful Dead show, though, whose second set was released as a Dick's Picks, but you want the whole thing, which you can find elsewhere. The second set is staggering, through, with a regal and soulful and swinging and elegant "Dark Star" that features the final "Tighten Up" jam which hadn't featured in a "Dark Star" since 9/17/70. The Dead's Halloween show from 1970 from S.U.N.Y. is excellent as well, though without the same grandeur; it plays closer to ground level, more in the dirt, which is fine, too.

In 1948, a six-year-old Jerry Garcia attended a screening of Universal's Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a classic gateway horror film, and one much beloved by those who value the horror film experience in its purest form. The movie was a horror-comedy, but the comedy almost doesn't matter. What does matter is that you had the Frankenstein monster, the Wolf Man, and Dracula--with Bela Lugosi reprising his 1931 role--together, intoxicating you with their horror brew.

The 1940s Universals--once we get past 1941's The Wolf Man--weren't exactly smoothly produced affairs. I guess you could call the likes of House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula rollicking, if you're looking for a favorable descriptor. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was well and smoothly made, though. Care was lavished on it, which was a rarity by that time with Universal horrors. 1954's Creature from the Black Lagoon would be another classy affair, but that's how long the wait would be.

Garcia would have seen Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein about the same age I first saw the Lugosi Dracula, and the experience changed his life as well. It was a picture you could have brought a young kid to, given the comedy angle. And how horrifying could anything starring--or co-starring, I suppose I should say, because the monsters take no backseats here--Bud Abbott and Lou Costello be? But that's how it often goes, right? Something hits our personal fear nerve, and it's like we never get over it, which can be a very good good thing.

Garcia spoke later about being terrified, but also how the film foster a love of the bizarre in him, the weird. You know what I find weird in the pejorative sense? The sterile. The ordinary. Typical people. Cowards. Poseurs. What many people think of as "normal." It's not normal, because not being yourself is unhealthy and unnatural. Your un-replicatable self.

But had Garcia not attended that showing, perhaps we wouldn't have "Dark Star," which I regard as the finest music that humans have made. The apex of music-making. Is "Dark Star" weird? Well, again, it depends on how we're looking at it. I don't find the fascinating and rich weird. I find plasticized humans weird. As in nonsensical. As in, "Why would you ever, when instead you can..."

Like Scrooge, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown ends after the holiday that it's "about," though I'd argue that mere holidays are the least of things that both works of art--and that's what they are--are about. I think we can think of Halloween as occurring on Saturday in the Great Pumpkin. Lucy gets up at four in the morning on November 1 to retrieve her brother in the pumpkin patch. Hard to imagine he'd have been out there on a school day.

We also sense that a minimum amount of time has passed--it's something about the tone--when Linus and Charlie Brown reconvene at the brick wall and discuss their Halloween nights. These are school kids--topics of conversation usually don't keep for more than a day or so. Once a holiday happens for a kid, it fades fast from the purview of their lives until it comes around again. I also suspect that Linus took a day to regather after his Halloween night disappointment. I just don't think he'd want to rehash events with Charlie Brown some twelve hours later or whatever.

I'd say that It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, is the quintessential Halloween work of art. The sounds, the feel, the spirit. Look at the art work. Those backgrounds for the night scenes. You could hang stills in a museum. The special is ultimately about imagination and wonder and faith, and seeing a world, via those things, in the likes of a pumpkin patch. Which is a wondrous place, allowing that you possess a degree of wonder yourself. And if you don't, and you encounter a pumpkin patch, you probably keep walking and barely notice or scarcely care.

Linus is no fool. Anything feels possible in Great Pumpkin. Look at the night Snoopy has. Is what he gets up to really any more far-fetched than what Linus hopes awaits him--and will find him--in the pumpkin patch? No. How open do you want to allow yourself to be? If the answer is "very," then you are bound to know disappointment. But you can also know and experience so much more than most people ever get to. That's how Linus lives, and the Great Pumpkin embodies--or maybe I should say represents--that idea for him.