For all of you who've been waiting and asking and begging and pleading and bleeding for it; the all new Count Pop Halloween adventure is here! Enjoy and then get out there and get yourselves some candy on this greatest of all holidays! I expect to hear full, detailed reports about all of your Halloween excursions whether you go Trick-or-Treating, go to costume parties, or sit on your ass and watch some of the finest horror movies money can buy! Spare no details!
On a final note, I have to say two things. 1) I'm extremely proud of what we did on I-Mockery this Halloween season. Two full months of nonstop updates. I honestly think this was the best Halloween ever on I-Mockery... no contest. Major kudos to my partners in crime: Dr. Boogie, Max Burbank and Protoclown. Also big thanks to Re for putting up with me during all this seasonal madness! And thanks to BoM and PoX for working on the surprise Halloween flash game with me! 2) Thanks to all of you who've been sending in such nice compliments about the articles and for participating in all the fun. Without you guys for an audience, we wouldn't be doing this. Ok, well, we would be because this is what we like to do to pass the time, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun!
I really hope you've all enjoyed I-Mockery's Halloween celebrations this year. I consider it a big turning point for the site and you can expect more and more new material on the site each week! For the rest of this week, I think we've all earned ourselves a break... and CANDY!
Wanna know another thing that makes Halloween unique? I actually look forward to getting my junk mail every day. When I go out to my mailbox, even if I'm not expecting any important letters or packages, I can almost always count on a pile of junk mail to be waiting for me. Well, during Halloween season, that junk mail is often stuff that's fun to look at... even if it's just for a minute or two. All the local costume shops must have the printers working some late graveyard shifts, because every single day I get a new flyer from them. Sure, they showcase most of the same costumes and other Halloween novelties, but it's still always fun to flip through the pages to see if there's something new. Granted, I've always liked Halloween ads and I even did a advertisement photo gallery feature about them last year. Today, however, came what is probably the best piece of Halloween junk mail I've received so far this season:
Little Caesars shows exactly how all businesses should completely embrace Halloween in their advertisements come October every year. They could've just shown Little Caesar dressed as Dracula, but no, they went all out by including pictures of the other classic Universal monsters on the wall too. Then to top it all off, they fill a coffin with pizzas. A COFFIN FILLED WITH PIZZAS. What more could you need in a Halloween advertisement?
I honestly think they're onto something with that image too. Wouldn't you all pay a little extra to the delivery guy if they delivered your pizza to you... IN A COFFIN? I know I would. Seriously, they should just make some coffin-shaped pizzas, put them in coffin-shaped cardboard boxes and they would be the PIZZA KINGS every year for Halloween. If they did that, I'd even forgive them for not carrying their "crazy crust" pizza anymore. For those of you who never had it, they used to offer all different kinds of so-call "crazy" pizza crusts - the best being poppy-seed. Well anyway, that's my story about Halloween junk mail. Pizza, pizza. Have you gotten any amusing Halloween advertisements this year?
So in other news, this is a huge week for I-Mockery. The last full week before Halloween and you know that means a lot of the big stuff we've been working extra hard on this season is coming up. You probably noticed that on Monday and Tuesday we had double-feature days... yep, TWO new pieces in one day. Don't be surprised if you see that happen a few more times before Halloween rolls around!
I've also put up two features, "The Greatest American Hero Costume" and "The Haunt Your Own House Kit" which include some videos. That's another thing I've been slowly working towards doing a lot more of on I-Mockery, so lemme know what ya think of 'em!
And last, but certainly not least... the biggest piece of the entire Halloween season is finally here: I-Mockery's 2007 "Select Your Destiny" Halloween Story! If you've been with the site over the years, you know that this is an annual tradition between myself and the other writers on the site. We spend months working together on a story, playing off of each other with what we write, and come the final week before Halloween, we unveil it for you to enjoy! This is easily the most fun we've had doing a story together and I'm sure it will show in the writing. It's also the largest one of these stories that we've ever done, so it should keep you busy for a while. Hope you enjoy the adventure!
I just wanted to chime in here real quick today. As a result of catching one of those "Hey, let's ruin your life for the next 48 hours!" flu-type things; I've been watching Bravo TV's "Even Scarier Moments" show which counts down what they consider to be the greatest, scariest scenes from horror movies. Have any of you seen this? All I can say is that it makes me want to put my fist through the TV set. The list is so far off it's not even funny and it just screams of some film studios paying off Bravo to make sure they include some of the horror movies from recent years in the top 20.
They actually rated "Hostel" as #1 on the list. Hostel. HOSTEL!?!? I'm sorry, but that movie was awful. It wasn't scary... it felt like roughly 70 minutes of some American college guys chasing tail in Slovakia, with a little "horror" thrown in at the end. I should note that I have no problem with nudity in horror movies... the two have always gone hand in hand. But come on, Hostel!? Release thy dick from thy grasp and get real for a minute. The movie honestly felt like something you'd see in Cinemax late at night rather than a bona fide horror flick. When a horror movie relies so heavily on the nudity, you know it just doesn't have a lot going for it.
Anyway, during the show, they have lots of guests (many of whom work/worked in horror movies) giving their two cents about the movies featured on the list. Eli Roth (creator of Hostel), however, seemed to be there to comment on almost every single one. Now, I don't think Eli is a bad guy. He seems like a genuine horror movie fan and I'm sure he's an ok guy in real life; but with him being on the show so much and his movie being in the #1 spot on the list, it just makes you wonder if he (or the studio he works for) had a lot of pull with Bravo in regards to what movies made the top 20. After all, they do have a sequel coming out.
When I see mediocre-at-best horror movies like "Saw" or "Hostel" ranking higher than the likes of "Dead Alive," "Phantasm," "The Thing," "The Shining" and a number of Hitchcock classics... I have no doubts that Bravo's "Even Scarier Moments" list is full of shit. Then again, I suppose this should come as no surprise considering this is the channel that brought us fantastic shows such as "Being Bobby Brown". The only thing "Even Scarier" about their list is to think that some people out there would actually agree with it. Hell, I'm sure some of you who are reading this absolutely love movies like Saw and Hostel and consider me to be a madman for speaking out against them. That's fine, to each his own. I just think some people, namely the younger audiences who perhaps haven't had a chance to see any horror films other than what's come out in the past 5 years, don't know what they're missing.
On a related note; I love flipping through all the channels on TV and seeing horror movies/shows playing on most of them throughout the day. Why can't TV be like that all year round?
Survey: If you could re-write the show and make your own list, what horror movie moments would be in your final top 10 and why?
I was sorting through some old files tonight and I stumbled on this image I had saved a while ago. Does anybody remember these Topps cards?
I'm not sure what series they were from, but if I had known about them when I was younger, I guarantee you everybody would've gotten these on a) Halloween and b) Valentine's Day. Whatever they are, I definitely need to get my hands on a full set of these.
Also, my big photo gallery from the trip to Knott's Berry/Scary Farm's 2006 Haunt is now online. Take a look and lemme know whatcha think!
Another survey: Describe your best and worst Halloweens ever. What was so good about them? What was so awful? Let's hear all the juicy details.
I realized the other day that something I don't talk about enough on here is pinball. Sure, I've gone on an on about video games both old and new, but what about pinball? Pinball is like the adopted son; the parents love him 'n all, just not as much as their real offspring, the video game. Well, with Halloween right around the corner, I got to thinking about pinball because some of my favorite machines have been horror-themed. Two games in particular have always been favorites of mine...
"Freddy: A Nightmare on Elm Street" is easily one of my favorite horror-themed pinball machine designs. There's just so much going on in it that it's impossible not to love. On top of it all, Freddy talks shit to you with his usually array of cheesy one-liners while you play. What more could you ask for?
I'll admit, I was never really good at this particular pinball game - probably because there were so many flashy distractions on the playfield that it was hard to keep track of where you hit the ball. The game itself is great though, featuring both "awake" and "nightmare" modes. During the nightmare modes, you'd have to keep track of multiple balls while you tried knocking them into the boiler room. Some of the best features included an animated Freddy head (which glowed while it chomped) and a Freddy glove flipper that you could actually use to flip the ball off the ramp. Unfortunately, I haven't seen this pinball machine in an arcade in a looooong time.
"The Addams Family" pin ball machine, while not nearly as flashy as the Freddy one, is easily my all-time favorite pinball game. I don't know how, but they somehow made this machine have the perfect balance of cool features without too many distractions so you can have some long games. Don't get me wrong, it's still quite a challenge; just not to the extent that it's impossible to last a few minutes on one quarter. It's not a surprise that this machine is in the top 10 of most people's "greatest pinball machines ever" lists.
Without a doubt, my favorite thing about this machine was... well... Thing! Thing would actually hide inside a red box and if your ball got close enough to it, he would pop out and steal it. One of my rules for playing the game was that I couldn't stop until I saw Thing steal the ball at least once. Other highlights included the electric chair, the train wreck and the ball getting stuck between 5 bumpers and going absolutely friggin' berserk! I also gotta say the soundtrack and sound effects with this machine were top notch - really loud speakers which helped bring you deeper into the kooky world of the Addams Family. While it's not as hard to find one of these machines as the Freddy one, they do seem to be vanishing from more and more arcades. So if your nearby arcade happens to have the machine, make sure you get in a few games before it's too late!
Some other notable horror pinball machines are the "Twilight Zone," "Elvira and the Party Monsters" (which, I swear I'm not making this up, actually had those little plastic finger puppet monster party favors as features IN the game), "Monster Bash" (hands down, one of the most colorful Pinball machines you'll ever see) and the "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (which had a badass hologram of the creature in the center of the playfield).
Speaking of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and other monsters, I just put up my huge tribute to The Monster Squad - one of my favorite 80's flicks. Check it out and let me know what ya think! Also, for some insane reason, it's not out on DVD - but just like with Gymkata, I'm hoping we can help change that. At the end of my article, you'll find the contact info for Sony/Tri-Star so you can send them a letter and tell them to release it! Please take the time to send them a letter so maybe everybody can one day see Horace kick Wolfman straight in the nards!
Survey: So what are some your favorite pinball machines? And no, you don't have to only list horror-themed ones, although you should because it's October and the monsters living in your closet will be really pissed at you if you don't.