Halloween 2013

Well, it's Halloween 2013, and I've been sick with the fucking cold and flu and haven't been much in a mood to do anything.  Flu season has started and of course somebody at work was coughing and hacking and couldn't cover their mouths and stuff, or somebody had a sick kid at home and thought they would share it with everybody at work.  Today is Richard's last day at work, he's retiring.  Haven't been there long enough to figure out Richard, but he seems to more of a cranky old grouch than I am. Here's hoping he won't be such a crabb when he's hits the door the final time.

The flu season sucks, any time of year you get it.  This time out the usual, the worst GD sore throat, feels like I have barbed wired in my throat.  Not a lot of coughing and I thought I was making progress till I ended up with the fucking chills last night and decided to stay home once again since nobody else will do that when they're sick.  Weather doesn't help either, although we have been staying dry, the last couple days have been a windy and drizzly mess. Nothing like having leaves cover your brand new car in the process, even though I have a car cover on it.

Halloween is Vincent Price movie month and I've managed to bring out the old VHS tapes and play them in the VCR which I haven't used in years.  And the damn player would not eject the damn thing out at the beginning.  But anyway, anything Vincent does for Edgar Allen Poe is always worth watching, The Tingler is camp but campy fun but I think I enjoy House On Haunted Hill much more.  The Dr Phibes stuff is uneven, The Conqueror Worm may have been Vincent Price as the most hated villain and least enjoyable.  House Of Wax benefited from great production an much use of Warner Brothers dollars, and Theater Of Blood the 1973 UA Goth/horro has Diana Rigg (Emma Peel) and the future Mrs Vincent Brown Coral Browne as a puffy critic that she gets hers.  It's been mentioned that Vincent Price thinks this was the best movie he was in but for myself, the ending left me a bit cold. Pit And Pendulum is a 1961 classic.  Nevertheless, when Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff or Basil Rathbone shows up in the Roger Corman productions of The Raven, Comedy Of Terrors and Tales Of Terror, I can watch them forever.  But have to admit that the final scene of Tales which Price's character melts all over Rathbone pretty much left me and my brother running for cover and hiding under the covers when it was shown on Creature Feature and we lived out in an old drafty farmhouse outside Nevada (IA) in the late 60s.

For scary movies, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee when teamed up could deliver on some hard hitting stuff.  Dr Terror's House Of Horrors was another scary movie, something to the effect of Tales Of Terror, five men up on board on a train, meet Dr Terror and in a series of Tarot cards predicts the end for all of them.  Recall seeing this on TV years ago and finding the VHS.  Cushing and Lee also team up for The Skull, which a collector picks up the Marquis De Sade's skull and gets processed by it.    Watch it with the lights off and even though the effects are a bit dated, it will freak you out.  William Castle's 13 Ghosts (the original Black and white, not the subpar remake) is another Halloween goth horror funtime, in a way, mimics House On Haunted Hill, where the conniving cheating wife gets her, Martin Milner's character  gets his in the end as he tries his best to get rid of the occupants who managed to inherited the house.  Margaret Hamilton, the bad wicked witch of the west in Wizard Of Oz, plays a snooty housekeeper in 13 Ghosts.  So I guess since I'm sick, I'll be watching movies most of the day then.