I’m kind of crapping out at the end, but tonight when I had to decide between writing another movie post and handing out candy to (mostly) adorable and polite children, I chose to hand out candy and eat Dots on the porch. So as a cop-out, here are my absolute favorite menus that I came up with! These are the ones that really made me chuckle and pat myself on the back.

Hellraiser
Poltergeist
Nightmare On Elm Street
Friday the 13th
Gremlins
The Monster Squad
Carrie
Sleepaway Camp
Phantasm

I only missed a few days out of tiredness, and I actually ran out of time before I ran through my list of movies! My only regret for MoFo is that I let my google reader get away from me, so I didn’t leave nearly as many comments on other blogs as I would’ve liked. But that’s what I get for trying to read several hundred blogs.

The plot for Phantasm sounds so ridiculous when you describe it: flying spheres that drill into your brain? A creepy tall guy, who can make you see things that aren’t really there, snatches corpses so he can shrink them down and send them to his home planet to work as slaves? What?

Yes, the premise is pretty silly sounding, but the Phantasm series has several things going for it.

1. Angus Scrimm as the Tall Man. He is TERRIFYING just being him! He towers over everyone and always looks like he just sucked on twenty evil lemons.
2. The shrunken former dead people are creepy, shuffling about in their tiny brown robes like the Jawas in Star Wars.
3. Unlike most series where at least one actor wants nothing to do with the following movies, all of the cast members reprise their roles (except for the second one, where the studio made the director recast the role of Mike for a better-known actor). For me, that is really important because I usually can’t handle it when movies or tv shows try to pull a Darren. Don’t ever get me started on that Katee Sackhoff/Rose McGowan switch on Nip/Tuck.

The four movies are all kind of the same in that the main characters are Mike and Reggie, and they are trying to stop the Tall Man from doing what he’s doing, stealing corpses and killing people and being a creepy old bastard. So unlike other horror series, instead of a different group of people going through the same situation over and over again against the same antagonist, this is a whole story in four parts.

Fun fact: Angus Scrimm is 6’4″, but to look even taller for this role he wore suits that were too small and platform shoes.

While no one in this movie ever got famous, Angus Scrimm has had a decent career and Reggie Banister (who plays…Reggie) is a Scream King if there ever was one.

We’re going balls-out for this menu! Instead of three courses, you can just have plates of balls as far as the eye can see, and people can take whichever ones they want. One thing that would help you with this is if you had the Panda With Cookie zine, Ballin’ and Baggin’.

Savory balls: Mushroom Rice Balls, Carrot Oatmeal Balls, Swedish Meatballs, Cheeze Ball to be eaten with crackers.
Sweet Balls: Sweet like Hannah Truffles, Besan Laddoo, Buckeye Balls, Raw Pumpkin Donut Holes, Coconut Almond Rum Balls, Granola Balls, and Ice Cream Balls for Reggie, the ice cream man.

Have you noticed that i’ve posted 80′s movies almost exclusively? It all comes down to childhood nostalgia, these are the movies that were released when I was a kid, so they are the ones I like the best. Sometimes ‘good’ doesn’t enter into it for me, and Night of the Demons is definitely one of those movies. It’s not horrible, but unless you have a love of horror movies, you probably won’t want to see it. Also I really wanted to do a non-kid Halloween movie and i’m not up to covering 50 movies about Michael Meyers.

In the late 80′s, a ‘weird’ girl named Angela hosts a party at a Haunted house with her slutty friend Suzanne (played again by always-nude scream queen, Linnea Quigley). For whatever reason, less than ten people show up and no one thinks this is weird or sad. Of course, the house really IS haunted, by a demon, and it slowly possesses the party-goers, who then attack and infect their friends. Some of them appear demon-like right away (the fat guy ends up with a pig nose, of course), Suzanne performs a party trick with a tube of lipstick and does what she does best (hint, it’s not family friendly).

This movie spawned two sequels, neither of which i’ve watched in a long time so I can’t say how bad they might be, but (spoiler alert) the same actress reprises her role as Angela in both of them, so they are tied to the original film. There was also a remake a few years ago which while not bad and it changed the story enough to be unique from the original, is full of some really embarrassing acting from Shannon Elizabeth and Edward Furlong (I KNOW), and some of the fakest breasts i’ve ever seen. But the demons are way cooler looking, so at least it has that going for it.

Usually these movies are filled with no-names and if we’re lucky, someone who hasn’t hit it big yet (it’s fun to see their baby faces), but the woman who plays Angela is actually really interesting! Amelia Kinkade is the niece of Rue McClanahan, a former 80′s video dancing vixen, and now she makes her living as a pet psychic/whisperer/whatever you want to call it.

Entree: The obvious answer would be ‘anything pumpkin’, but when I saw these asparagus skeletons in puff pastry coffins (and the wonton ghosts), I couldn’t resist. I like that these are very adult, yet very Halloweenie.
Side: Another dish that falls under the ‘very adult food, very halloweenie feel’ are these quinoa stuffed pepperjacks!
After all of that grown up, healthy crap, wouldn’t you like some candy? Make your own vegan candy corn!