Uncle Al's Halloween Hoedown Part One- In Which I Confess My Love Of Straw Fedoras and Flying Balls

Up until Halloween I want to try and watch one episode of a horror TV series and one movie as often as I can and then share my feelings about what I have seen. It could be fun and besides it's cheaper than therapy.

We begin with the gold standard of horror telemovies- 1972's THE NIGHT STALKER. Don't let the 'Made For TV' thing turn you off kids- this is better than some of the movies out in the theaters now. THE NIGHT STALKER stars Darren McGavin as a Las Vegas crime reporter that blunders onto the case of what could be a real live vampire prowling the streets. I first saw this when I was 5 years old, my Grandma Vi was a big one for letting me watch age-inappropriate material on purpose as opposed to my parents letting me watch age-inappropriate material by accident.

Really- they thought the drive in sign advertising a showing of FLESH GORDON was a misprint.

And they wonder how I got the way I am.

But that's not what we are here to talk about, we're here to talk about how awesome THE NIGHT STALKER is. The directing and music are terrific, the entire cast is engaging- especially that Carol Lynley RAWR! Richard Matheson’s script is clever, scary, funny and surprisingly hard boiled. The soundtrack is iconic- just play a few seconds and most horror fans will recognize it. But none of that is really what makes this film the classic it is.

Darren McGavin is what makes this film, his performance is the perfect, we meet a Carl Kolchak that is bitter, intrepid, smug and as forever walking the line between brave and foolhardy.

As the story progresses we are never bored as we see detective work, verbal sparring of the highest order and the occasional glimpse of Darren McGavin shirtless! (I will never in a million years be as manly.)While there is a fantastic knock down drag out battle between the Vampire and the Las Vegas police we don't get a good look at the monster's face until the ending. And what an ending! I rank it right up there with the ending of 'HORROR OF DRACULA' as one of my top monster kid memories

I can't say enough good things about this one. You should see it if you haven't. If you have seen it you should see it again.

And now PHANTASM – my favorite horror film.

That's right, I said it and if loving a bittersweet coming of age story where the local slackers and an ice cream man face off against a trans-gendered mortician from beyond reality with an undocumented midget zombie labor scheme that has random references to Frank Herbert's novel DUNE is wrong than I don't want to be right.

PHANTASM was released in 1979 but I didn't see it until much later. Odd I know but there was something about the commercials for that movie that made me a little nervous about it. You know the ones where the kid is on his bed and the midget zombies start clawing at him. It is too bad really because one of the girls in my 8^th grade English class asked me if I wanted to go see it with her and I chickened out because, well because I was kind of afraid of girls when I was in 8th grade. In later years I would just be afraid of everyone.

Once the age of the VCR came along and I became old enough to rent R rated flicks, and then worked up the nerve to rent R rated flicks from the judgmental looking woman at the local video store I finally saw the movie and was just blown away by it. Maybe because I was finally ready for it- after all by the time I was 18 I had devoted myself to the works of HP Lovecraft, Clive Barker and Stephen King and I was ready for a wild story that wasn't quite a slasher film, wasn't quite a monster movie and wasn't quite an Afterschool Special with nudity.

(Which would have been the greatest Afterschool Special EVER!)

The cast is all top notch, Jody, Mike and Reggie all seem like real people that you wouldn't mind hanging out with. Of course these days 12 year old Mike would have been scooped up by social services because he had a guardian that let him drive, gave him access to firearms, alchohol and left him in the charge of hot chicks for hours at a time.

The world has a changed folks.

And no review of PHANTASM would be complete without a shout out to Angus Scrimm's portrayal of the villainous Tall Man. He is quite simply one of my favorite horror movie baddies ever, right up there with the Universal Mummy and Hammer's Dr. Frankenstein. I showed my college girlfriend three horror films- HELLRAISER, DEAD RINGERS, and PHANTASM. The first two grossed her out and made her squirm in her seat- the Tall Man gave her nightmares and God Bless him for it. The Tall Man is menacing, powerful, unkillable, and has command of an army of killer dwarves and silver spheres. Also the Tall Man apparently enjoys spending his free time morphed into the body of a woman, hanging around in bars and picking up guys.

I don't think Jigsaw is ever gonna top that.

So there you have it, my favorite horror film. I watch it every year for my birthday. Sometimes I watch the film and I am a little appalled at how much it has influences my fiction.

Sometimes I'm just appalled by my fiction.

I recommend both movies as essential Halloween viewing.