Worth keeping in mind: more horror art on this day before Halloween

Friday 10/30/26

People who think (and post) Frankenstein the book is this quintessential Halloween thing are usually people who haven't read Frankenstein the book and are trying to look sophisticated. A lot of it is disquisition. Pop culture Frankenstein is very different from novel Frankenstein. The latter often resembles a philosophical tract.

The people who pretend to have read Frankenstein or read it simply by making their eyes go over the words which is different than actually reading something wouldn't even understand the sentence preceding this one. They wouldn't know how "latter" works and what "tract" means and also wouldn't be able to glean their meaning from the context. You cannot overstate people's lack of literacy and reading skills, and I'm going to break that down exactingly moving forward in these pages like no one has or could.

Spooky reading recommendation: Amyas Northcote's 1921 story, "Brickett Bottom." Woman goes out exploring in the forest. Finds a cottage. Interacts with the nice people there. Problem is, no one else knows of this place. Northcote wrote a single (not "singular," people who think they're upping their smart person game by using that word like it's a fancier version of "single") book: In Ghostly Company. "Brickett Bottom" story was adapted for radio by Beyond Midnight on November 11, 1968 with its titled changed to "The Paxton's House." Most would consider this incredibly obscure, niche, etc., but it's rather basic if one knows one's stuff at all when it comes to horror fiction or radio, which for all intents and purposes leaves no one.

A treat for Halloween but not only: Philly Joe Jones' Blues for Dracula, cut September 17, 1958. The title track features Jones' well-honed Bela Lugosi imitation, but this is no novelty LP. Instead, it's a fine example of the "blowing session" subgenre prevalent in the late 1950s. Johnny Griffin--who was very good at this kind of thing--is here, as well as Nat Adderley and Tommy Flanagan. I like how the bat is hanging from the Count's drumstick on the cover.

Come this time of the year I find myself thinking about Cliff Clavin’s contention on Cheers that what we don’t see with Casper the Friendly Ghost is him slaking his thirst for human blood.

It'd be difficult to overstate the impact that Creature Double Feature had on my life. You were able to watch this range of horror films on Saturdays here in the Boston environs without having to stay up late--which you almost surely weren't allowed to do as a kid. Boom, there was The Mummy. Boom, a Hammer film. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Godzilla. Tarantula with John Agar. Val Lewton flicks. And just a little bit before you'd been watching The Smurfs.

A ranking of the films in which Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff co-starred:

1. The Black Cat (1934) 2. The Raven (1935) 3. The Invisible Ray (1936) 4. Black Friday (1940)

I didn't include Son of Frankenstein (1939) and The Body Snatcher (1945) as they weren't equally featured (though technically the same can be said for Black Friday), but: Lugosi is excellent in Son. The Val Lewton-produced The Body Snatcher is possibly the best thing here, with Karloff's finest performance.

As Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) begins, Jonathan Harker really doesn't want to go to Transylvania for work, but now that he's here, he decides to be a good tourist and make the most of it. He writes down the names of the various dishes and their recipes he tries along the way in his journal, thinking he'll soon share them with his fiancée, Mina. Little does he know...

Granted, its title sounds like the name of a vibrator, but William Castle's 1959 picture, The Tingler, is perhaps his best after that same year's House on Haunted Hill, and also makes for smashing Halloween viewing. Only Vincent Price could have brought this off, but bring it off he does. Character actor Philip Coolidge is simply wonderful as well.

Quick rating of Castle's pictures:

1. House on Haunted Hill 2. The Tingler 3. 13 Ghosts (1960). Those three are in the top tier. Then 4. Mr. Sardonicus (1961) 5. Macabre (1958). I'll put 1965's I Saw What You Did in its own oddity category.

Didn't include The Old Dark House (1963) because it's not really in the horror spirit of these core Castle horror works. Strange that he did this remake.

As I watch Halloween (1978) and Halloween II (1981), I find myself thinking, "You're not good at this, sir," as pertains Dr. Loomis, who is meant to be a Van Helsing type but is largely a dope who restates the plot. True, Van Helsing wasn't some grand expert but rather this guy who read one basic book about vampires and that was more than everyone else, which is kind of like what happens in 2026 when someone reads a book.

1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch: the connoisseur’s choice for the best film in the Halloween franchise.

Listened to the 1946 Orson Welles radio production of "The Hitch-Hiker" again. He liked to tout Lucille Fletcher's "Sorry, Wrong Number" as the greatest radio script ever written, but "The Hitch-Hiker" is the far superior work by Fletcher. Welles didn't normally make errors of critical judgment like this, but I suspect he wanted to pump up Agnes Moorehead for whom "Sorry, Wrong Number" was practically a one-woman show. Welles had a soft spot for Moorehead that would result in him overlooking her tendency to histrionics or making like these histrionics were instead tell-tale elements of impressive acting of great feeling.

This version of "The Hitch-Hiker" was for The Mercury Summer Theatre of the Air, which ran from June 7 to September 13. The episodes were only a half hour long, which hindered some ("Moby-Dick," obviously) but worked perfectly for "The Hitch-Hiker." Pay attention to the details in the script and the verbal leitmotifs. The patches of fresh rain on the hitch-hiker's shoulders, for instance. The arc, the pacing, it's textbook radio script-writing.

I find it so creepy that the dead narrator goes around meeting people, doing business with some of them, buying food and drink (and thus eating and drinking). His money is still good, you know? It's also as if those people who interact with the dead person are made to do so sans consent. Truly one of the scariest stories ever broadcast in this country.

It isn't a coincidence that "The Hitch-Hiker" and Carnival of Souls--which I've called the most viscerally frightening of American films--share the same source material, which each handling that material inventively. These aren't meager knock-offs of E.F. Benson's 1906 short story "The Bus-Conductor," from which they in part derive.

I also listened for the latest time to Welles' 1938 adaptation of Dracula, which was the first episode in a series called First Person Singular. Imagine that: a show thusly titled. There is virtually no one in this country today who would know what "first person singular" means. And this was the meaty part of the curve back then.

Okay, sure, the average Mercury listener was smarter than the average person during that era, which is why Mercury programs didn't do the big numbers that the broad, lowest common denominator comedies did. But it was still primetime type of entertainment. It was expected to bring in listeners. This wasn't some unreadable "experimental" fiction book at the nonprofit press run by one or two people.

As we mentioned above, people have no clue that "singular" doesn't mean "single," but rather notably different in some self-contained kind of way, and they also don't know what it means in connection with narrative point of view. Who knows that now? Seriously? How many people would you need to ask on the street before one of them correctly told you what it means? 1000? 10,000?

First Person Singular was Welles's first radio series in which he had total creative control. In other words, the first that really his. There were only nine episodes, from July 11 to September 5, before First Person Singular became The Mercury Theatre on the Air, which became a catch-all (and thus oft-inaccurate) label for Welles's various series moving forward with listeners in the early days of vintage radio collecting and trading and up through the present day with the few people who care about such things.

If this was a world where people liked and partook of good things instead of one where they gorge themselves on shit, have no inkling that the good things even exist, and likely couldn't understand the good things if they tried to read/watch/listen to them because anything that isn't shit is too much for them now.

Which isn't to say that they enjoy shit. People have lost the ability to enjoy anything that isn't of the body. The latest bag of chips. That middle-aged guy's once-a-month opportunity when his wife lets him haul his flabby self atop her to pump away for a couple minutes. Or that isn't sophomoric. The posting of the AI-generated meme that really sticks it to those libs.

I said you're better off dead if you're smart and moral. But that doesn't mean there's any point in these other people being alive. But they do have each other. And they're too stupid to know what they don't know. Honestly, how miserable can you be if you aren't sentient? You wouldn't even know.

But as for the best of these radio programs: They're massively entertaining. They're good for you. I don't mean in some "eat your bland vegetables" manner. But because they don't suck, because they are great, people aren't going to have anything to do with them. They aren't even going to know they exist. And if they did, they wouldn't care.

They're slaves to their sloth, stupidity, mind-numbing simplicity, and the algorithm (think of 1956's The Mole People with mutant humanoids marching in line under the earth. If the algorithm doesn't put it in front of their fat faces, people will never know about it. Nothing else exists for most people but that algorithm and the shit it shoves at them. Looking elsewhere is now inconceivable to the vast majority. It honestly would never occur to them.

Remember, in 1938, we're seven years removed from the Tod Browning/Bela Lugosi Dracula, which itself followed shortly after the Broadway play. Welles likely saw both play and film. I find it interesting that neither has any bearing on his radio adaptation, but also completely unsurprising.

Welles was someone who answered to and was governed by that which was on the inside. You can tell he loves Stoker's novel. The adaptation puts that across, as do his comments in interviews. He remarked that no one had ever done a faithful adaptation on the screen, and you'd really have something if you did.

This remains true. There have been more faithful adaptations. The 1977 BBC version with Louis Jourdan, for instance. But they only went so far and were hamstrung for various reasons. There's never been all-out, full-force, faithful adaptation without constraints. It isn't the unwatchable garbage that's the 1992 movie.

There are certainly no Lugosi-isms in Welles's radio adaptation, which is arguably the most faithful adaptation of any kind there is and numbers among the high points of his exceedingly varied artistic career. Do you know how many times I've listened to it? Neither do I. This is like me trying to answer how many times I've heard the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper.

Sci-fi horror films usually don't make for exceptional Halloween fare, but there are some exceptions, like The Thing from Another World (1951). Another fine example is 1953's The War of the Worlds, in part because of Welles's adaptation of H.G. Wells' story for The Mercury Theatre on the Air from this day in 1938. That was when it became cemented as this Halloween story and an exception to the season's general rule of ghosts, goblins, vampires, and witches.

I also listened to the "Bells" episode of Suspense from 1961. The show was on fumes by this stage, and would be off the air soon. Gone were the days with the big stars. A couple get a great deal on a small house that they never thought they'd be able to afford. Always something to be concerned about in horror films and presentations. Too good to be true means you're screwed. The guys who move them in are quick to jet on out of there, having moved the previous occupants in and then out shortly thereafter.

The episode isn't well-paced. It takes too long to get going. The acting is herky-jerky. But the premise holds appeal: the couples' phone keeps ringing, even after it's been ripped from the wall. There are elements of The Twilight Zone episode, "Night Call" from 1964 and also 1982's Poltergeist, especially with the couple ending up at a motel and how that plays out (the people just want to get some shut-eye; in Poltergeist, this means wheeling the TV outside, and in the Suspense episode it involves sending the motel employee on his way).

Radio was huge for a couple decades. It was the dominant electronic-based art and entertainment form in American homes in the 1930s, the 1940s, and for much of the 1950s. Or if you prefer, the dominant non-musical form. People had record players. But how many records would they own? The radio provided constant entertainment. Turn it on, and something was on. You didn't have a TV, there were obviously no computers, no podcasts, no streaming services.

As a result of there being a ton of product, there was considerable variation in quality. I'm by no means suggesting that all these radio shows were good, or the majority of them. I am saying that these decades later, we can route ourselves to outstanding radio fare easily. You have to be curious, though. The algorithm isn't going to tell you to check out Gunsmoke or this super creepy episode of The Hall of Fantasy. Or you come here and read a 3500 word entry like this one.

But who can read more than two sentences? And who can understand those two sentences they read? And who isn't reliant on those two sentences appearing under their nose in order for them to be seen or read? These are ridiculously low numbers. That needs to change if our devolution is going to be halted, to say nothing of us going back in the other direction.

I want to make mention, too, about how timeless the best vintage radio is. It isn't "old-fashioned." I think that's one of the biggest surprises lying in wait for the current day listener. People ignorantly think that things get better over time. The opposite has proven true with art and entertainment, at least insofar as the last half century plus goes. You really want to compare today's AI-generated and/or AI-like background, processed digital nothingness/grating Muzak to what was coming out weekly in the late 1960s when it was like some competitive ultra-musical art competition without let-up?

People love to say the likes of "language is fluid" as a cover-up for their own ignorance, same as "art is subjective." If you don't know how to spell any words, you think "loose" means "lose," you cannot write a sentence and you don't even know what a sentence is--that is, if asked, you couldn't answer accurately--do you think you want to say, "I'm a (sic) uneducated moron who can't be bothered to learn because I'm a lazy fuck in every way with no standards for myself who adds nothing to the world or anyone's life within it," or do you want to say, "Language is fluid" and "It's subjective" and turn that blame around like it's the other person in the dark and you're moving with the times and progressive?

Let's see, blame or accountability? Gee, I wonder how that's going to shake out.

But when you listen to episodes of The Great Gildersleeve, for instance, once the show found its rhythm, it is shocking to these people how modern this program from 1946 is. Same goes--maybe more so--with William Sloane's 1937 novel To Walk the Night, which is far more modern than any fiction coming out in the world right now. And I don't mean because it's this prescient work of sci-fi or political allegory like a 1984 (To Walk the Night is neither). I mean in how it sounds. No fiction being published in 2026 sounds more modern than To Walk the Night. No characters in any fiction in 2026 sound more "right now" than the characters in To Walk the Night.

And this is a novel from nearly 100 years ago. You can stick that "language is fluid" business right up your ass, because you're really doing something else, and that's trying to cover for your ignorant ass. You have no idea what you're talking about. I'm talking the general "you," of course. Well, "you" you should that be relevant, but hopefully that's less and less the case for that particular person as they read these pages if they continue to do so. I can help you with what I have for you; I can't help you when it comes to what you won't let yourself have (or be or become).

But there was plenty of dross on those radio airwaves. Tons. This morning I listened to the 1946 Murder at Midnight episode, "The House Where Death Lived." Sounds like it could be good, right? This ghost hunter checks out the titular house. But man, does it get ropey fast. It's unintentionally funny. The part where the ghost hunter's wife turns up and he dismissively says her name (Jean) gets me every time. If this was a B movie instead of a radio drama and it were playing somewhere at the Brattle that's when everyone would burst out laughing and it wouldn't be the all-too-common performative kind.

You know that episode of Frasier ("Ham Radio") where they recreate the vintage scary radio program and everyone goes off script? Well, this sounds like that, except it was an actual program. Whereas, I was hoping it'd be this dark stunner like the out-and-out classic that is "Ghost Hunt" from Suspense, which I've written about in the professional capacity and cited in this record as one of the three scariest episodes ever from that series. But no such luck.

At the beginning of 1968's Night of the Living Dead, we're at this cemetery that feels further removed from most. Where few people, if any others, will be that day. You don't expect signage here, and yet that's what we get a form of with the American flag we see early on as director George Romero's credit appears on the screen.

This is notable. The flag is backwards as well from our vantage point. It's a political picture. People typically don't regard it that way, much like they don't view the Beatles' "Blackbird" from this same year through a political lens. But Night of the Living Dead is about backwards, fucked up America. What's a more political horror film?

I've called to mind in recent days the cover of the VHS version of 1931's Dracula with Bela Lugosi. In a time when it’s often about the latest technological upgrade, we’d be wise to consider the joy that was to be had in making a trip to the video store in late October to secure such a prize or all the people who once watched this film on a tiny rabbit-eared TV.

Did they get less from it as a result? Of course not. We're fixated on technical specs (which are like these things we brag about for the sake of bragging, proving or attesting to this notion of some form of status about ourselves, like our upward social mobility because of the home theater equipment we possess, or cachet in the taste department, which is itself rarely not performative; people pretend to like and know about things far, far, far more than they like and know about things). Consumerism for its own sake has largely replaced the watching of a work, the reading of, the listening to.

Because let's say you were sitting there in 1971 and all you had available at the time was some dodgy, small TV set. You put it on late at night because you can't sleep, and Dracula comes on. Hot dog, right? Let's say that person loved watching that film. How much more do you think they'd love it in 4K resolution on their giant in-home screen, etc. etc. etc.?

I bet it wouldn't be more. When I saw that film for the first time, I was in its thrall (shades of Keats' knight in the forest). There is no way that could have been a more powerful experience if I had seen a superior print and it wasn't playing on Creature Double Feature on my grandmother's TV set from whenever.

An idea and a distinction worth keeping in mind. Why, really, are you watching? Why, really, are you listening? Why, really, are you reading? Is it because of the experience and the thing--the work--itself or is something else masquerading (for it is Halloween) as being about the thing/work itself?