I promised to share some pictures from The Most Haunted Hotel in America today, but I’m sorry to say, I can’t. My computer has a power cord problem (at least I hope that’s all it is) so I can’t get to the pictures. (Sorry, Megan.)
I will share them as soon as I get a new power cord. In the mean time, I’m reblogging from Halloween 2008. If you’ve read it before, thanks! (That means we’ve been friends for at least four years. LOL! )
~10/31/2008 Again~
Isn’t Halloween a great holiday? There’s not a lot of planning that goes into it. Just a little candy buying and costume buying (or making) and carving a jack-o-lantern.
For me, though, the best part is the memories.
I remember scary dreams I had on Halloween night as well as the dream one of my sisters (sometimes known as #4) had about a witch cutting off her leg. I thought it was funny, but she was shaking all over when she told me about it. Guess it’s a good thing dreams are age specific. 😉
I remember special years when we trick or treated. Once I was a blind ghost–holes in the sheet kept shifting so I couldn’t see where I was going. Once I wore my dad’s older brother’s clown costume he’d worn when he was my age. Kind of fell apart as we made the rounds, but it was a beauty.
A really special memory is the year my folk moved into the house I grew up in. A crowd of people from our old town (20 miles away) came to give us a surprise house warming and all our old friends were there to t-o-t with us.
To be honest, my favorite part of Halloween has to be the movies. My favs are not the cut ‘em up and watch ‘em bleed kind. I like the good OLD ones like The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Jr.
TWM was made in 1941. (Makes you wonder if that was before the attack on Pearl Harbor, doesn’t it?)
When we were kids, my sister Debbie and I went to the movies most Saturday afternoons with our friend, Marsha Hagberg. Marsha was a little younger than me and a little older than Debbie, so she made a great friend for the two of us to hang with. We saw all the good old movies. Frankenstein–1931. The Mummy–1932. Several vampire movies that were all old and scary. And we thought everything was new!
Marsha watched most of them through her fingers or hiding her face completely while she whispered, “Tell me what’s happening! Tell me what’s happening!” Marsha usually sat in the middle, so I’m not sure what Debbie was doing. Either she was braver than Marsha or too afraid to talk loud enough for me to hear. (I seem to remember the two of us crowding into one theater seat a time or two, but I’m not sure which was more afraid. Her or me.)
Right now I’m hoping I can catch THIRTEEN GHOSTS, the original one made in 1960. There were wonderful actors in the movie. Martin Milner, Margaret Hamilton (The Wicked Witch of the West), Rosemary Decamp (from the Munster’s tv show)
For years I thought the picture was in 3D because of the glasses they gave us to wear, but today I found this:
- The movie was filmed in “Illusion-O” and a pair of special glasses where needed to see the ghosts. This resulted in a number of sources incorrectly stating that the film was originally shown in 3D. The “ghost viewers” contained a red filter and a blue filter but unlike 3D viewers, both eyes would look through the same color filter. One color would cause the ghostly images to intensify while the other color caused the images to fade.
I thought watching through the image fading color was a waste of my $$, so I braved it out. (I can’t say what Debbie and Marsha did.)
There are a ton of vampire movies I loved watching back then. I just wish I could remember the names of them in order to look them up. It’s funny they made so many vampires and so few wolf men, isn’t it?
Today you find more vampire romances to read, too, and very few werewolf.
(From Young Frankenstein) Werewolf?
Werewolf!
Where wolf? There. There wolf.
Why are you talking like that?
I dunno. I thought you wanted to. I’m easy.
Yeah. Funny scary movies rank up there, too. The (new) Mummy, Lost Boys and Young Frankenstein are on the top of my list in that department.
If you have a minute . . . I often wonder if anyone else had a movie childhood like mine. Did you catch any of these movies on the big screen? Which were your favorites?
~Today~
Happy Re-Ween! Hope you get tons of candy!
English: The Wicked Witch of The West, melting after being doused by Dorothy. From the first edition of The Wizard of Oz. Français : La méchante sorcière de l’ouest, en fusion après avoie été arrosée par Dorothy. Extrait de la première édition de Le Magicien d’Oz. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Related articles
- Universal Classic Monsters for Halloween Viewing (wired.com)
Share this:
Susan Spess Shay 
October 31, 2012 at 8:48 am
We went to the Criterion Theater here in town practically every Saturday afternoon. For our cheap admission — a quarter each, maybe fifty cents — we got cartoons, a black-and-white serial (I remember “Perils of Pauline” and one or two main features.
And on Saturday night for years, they ran old scary movies on one of the local stations. We usually had cousins over to spend the night, Mom let us stay up late, and we slept on the floor in the living room — once we finally managed to settle down enough to sleep. I loved the old mummy shows.
Off-topic, but the only time I ever saw Gone with the Wind was at the Criterion, with an intermission and everything. I never thought it would be as impressive on the small screen and never watched it again.
October 31, 2012 at 6:33 pm
Wasn’t it fun? I loved going to the movies on Saturday afternoons.
GWTW is a great movie, now matter where you watch it, but you’re right. It can’t be nearly as impressive as on the big screen.
But I love Scarlett, no matter what size she is. 😉
October 31, 2012 at 10:34 pm
The main thing I remember about the old vampire movies is that, no matter how old I got, I could NOT go to sleep afterwards unless I was wearing a cross. That lasted until the Dracula with Frank Langella. OMG! That man could have bitten any where he wanted!