You missed, sucker.

The Lost Boys (1987)

Bullseye!

Near Dark (1987)

The Babysitter Murders (aka Halloween)

The 1978 movie Halloween was conceived on Halloween night, 1977 by producer Irwin Yablans. Yablans concocted the idea while flying home from a film festival in Milan, Italy. By the time the airplane landed, he had the concept and the working title “The Babysitter Murders.” Yablans pitched the idea to young film director John Carpenter who went to work on it with then-girlfriend/writing partner Debra Hill. The story was plotted and the script was written in about two weeks (Carpenter wrote the male dialogue and Hill wrote the female dialogue for authenticity). The movie was shot in 22 days and Carpenter composed the score himself in just three days. Eventually, the original title “The Babysitter Murders” was changed to Halloween to capitalize on the holiday when the murders begin. The film was released on October 27, 1978, less than a year after Yablans conceived the idea.

Christopher Lee

In 1939, future Dracula star Christopher Lee attended the public execution of German serial killer Eugen Weidmann. Weidmann was the last criminal publicly executed in France. He was executed by guillotine.

Vlad’s Missing Corpse

It’s well known that Bram Stoker’s literary character Count Dracula is the namesake of Wallachian prince, Vlad Dracula. However, it’s unknown where Vlad’s body is buried.

Vlad was killed in an ambush in 1477 as his forces were travelling to do battle against the Ottomans. The Ottomans cut off his head and displayed it on a tall stake in Constantinople. His body was dismembered and dumped in a swamp. Monks reportedly found the body and buried him in a nearby monastery in Snagov. For centuries his remains were thought to be buried in the monastery, but a 1933 excavation revealed his tomb was filled with animal bones, not human bones. His head was reportedly buried in Karakoy after display. However, the head has never been found, either. Were the pieces separated on purpose? What happens if we put them back together?

Kensington Gore

Since the beginning of cinema, movies have incorporated fake blood to tell celluloid stories. Due to sanitary and ethical concerns, real blood could not be used and a replacement blood was devised. In the early days of black & white film, chocolate syrup was used (a favorite of Alfred Hitchcock was Bosco Chocolate Syrup). As Hollywood transitioned to color film, various make-up artists devised their own formulas that usually included a viscous liquid like corn syrup and red dye with some flour to give it thickness. A popular film version used during the 1960s and 1970s was manufactured by a retired pharmacist named John Tinegate and trademarked “Kensington Gore.” After his death, the name “Kensington Gore” has become a generic term for all theatrical blood.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Director Tobe Hooper originally intended to make The Texas Chainsaw Massacre PG rated by minimizing the violence, language, and excluding nudity altogether. The majority of the violence was done off screen and the movie is only mildly bloody despite its reputation. However, Hooper’s cutaways during the intense violence made the movie more disturbing than showing the acts, and the MPAA gave it an X rating. Hooper made several cuts and several submissions to the MPAA and when the reviewers finally gave it an R rating he gave up and took it.

Night of the Living Dead

George Romero’s 1968 cult hit Night of the Living Dead is in the public domain thanks to a terrible snafu. The distributor failed to add the required copyright notice to the theatrical print. The moniker appeared on the original version when the movie was titled Night of the Flesh Eaters, but when the titles were changed to Night of the Living Dead the copyright notice was forgotten. The film is free to watch and share and duplicate for sale.

Ghostbusters Theme

Ray Parker Jr. attributes his success at writing the Ghostbusters theme thanks to one particular scene in the movie. Director Ivan Reitman had insisted on using the word “Ghostbusters” in the movie’s opening credits song, but after a year of sifting through demo tapes from other artists, no one had nailed it down yet. When Parker was called in to submit a demo, he quickly realized the problem: you just can’t sing the word “Ghostbusters.” While watching a preview tape of the movie he saw the scene where the team yelled “Ghostbusters” in unison during a TV commercial and that was the inspiration he needed. He’d sing the lyrics and have background singers yell “Ghostbusters” during the chorus. Reitman loved the song and it went on to reach the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Top 100 chart where it remained for three consecutive weeks.

The Phantom of the Opera

In 1925, Universal Pictures released the silent horror classic The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney. Within a few years, theaters began installing speakers and sound movies became the rage. The studio reshot some scenes in sound, dubbed the dialogue, added sound effects, and rereleased the film as a talkie in 1930. Unfortunately, only one of five sound reels survives, putting this classic on the lost films list.

“Do you have to open graves to find girls to fall in love with?”

The Mummy (1932)

The Mystical Owl

The owl is a universal symbol of Halloween, and appropriately so. Throughout history and across civilizations that had no contact with each other, the owl commonly represented magic, death, sickness, and misfortune.

In ancient Rome, the sound of a hooting owl foretold an imminent death or disaster. A dead owl could be nailed to the door of a house to avert this bad omen. The Romans also believed witches could transform into owls and suck the blood from babies.

Many American Indian tribes thousands of miles apart had common beliefs that owls carried the souls of the dead to the underworld, or that the soul itself was reincarnated as an owl.

Australian Aborigines believed that owls are the sacred spirits of women. The Inuits of Greenland view them as a symbol of guidance and help.

Today the mysticism has faded and the owl generally represents wisdom.

However, despite our modern, scientific understanding of owls, there is still something unearthly about these nocturnal creatures that are invisible by day. Like ghosts, goblins, vampires, and werewolves, owls only exist at night. But the thing that makes the owl’s legend endure is that these specters are real!

Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman, Candyman.

Bug Wranglers

“Let me tell you about maggots if you're ever shooting a scene with maggots: they just lie there. And in order to get them to be lively you squeeze lemon on them and they all go crazy and they move. And the way you get the worms to [move]? You know it now... lemon.”

Joel Schumacher on directing The Lost Boys

The Shining

The title of Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining was inspired by the line “We all shine on” in the John Lennon song “Instant Karma.”

The Lady is a Vamp

Although our favorite form of “vampire” (the blood sucking kind) has been around as folk legend for hundreds of years (it first appeared in print as “vampyre” in a 1732 news report about vampire epidemics in eastern Europe), the term gained a new meaning in the early 1900s, becoming a slang description of young women who would seduce and manipulate men. The first known use of the term “vamp” came in the 1915 movie A Fool There Was. It also appeared in music of the period, including Gus Kahn’s 1917 hit “Baby Vampire,” with lyrics describing vamps as “tempters” and “home destroyers.”

Bats Are Good

Malaria is a disease caused by a parasite called a plasmodium. It originated in Africa during Neolithic times and spread throughout the world through human migration. It’s believed that malaria was introduced to the Americas in 1541 by Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto, but it wasn’t till 1882 that Dr. Zaphney Orto proved that malaria was spread by mosquitoes. With limited treatment options (one of the only options available at the time was quinine, which was made from ground bark from the cinchona tree and had been used since the early 1600s), it seemed logical that the best way to eradicate malaria was to eliminate the carriers. Knowing that the Mexican Free-Tail Bat eats mosquitoes, some Texas communities began building bat colonies to combat the disease. The results were mixed, as it was later discovered that eliminating standing water had a bigger impact controlling mosquito populations. The disease was eradicated from the U.S. in the 1950s through the use of DDT. Most cases in the U.S. today are brought into the country by international travelers.

Kolchak: The Night Stalker

Veteran stuntman Mickey Gilbert portrayed two of Kolchak’s unearthly nemesis in the Night Stalker series. He played “Jack” in the series’ first episode, The Ripper. Later in the series, he portrayed Nanautzin, The Mummy in Legacy of Terror.

Some of Gilbert’s notable jobs included stunt doubling for Robert Redford in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Lee Majors in The Fall Guy, and Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles.

When Myths Are Real

Crater Lake in Oregon was created 7,700 years ago when a volcanic eruption created a caldera that swallowed Mount Mazama. The crater filled with rain water and melted snow over a 700-year period creating a lake 1,949 ft. deep. This event was witnessed by the Klamath tribe of North America and its oral history was passed down for 7,000 years. Their story details “red-hot rocks as large as the hills” flying through the sky, a tide of glowing waves that consumed the forest in fire, and the collapse of Mount Mazama as it sank into the earth. Scientists today can confirm this account using geologic evidence. What makes the story so amazing is that myths are only accurate up to about 600 to 700 years before the truth becomes lost. Yet, these details remained unchanged for 7,000 years, passed from generation to generation by word of mouth by a civilization that had no written language. If the Klamath’s oral account of Crater Lake’s birth is true after 7,000 years, how many other myths and legends that we attribute to the superstitious, primitive, and uneducated civilizations of the past could be true as well?

The Shivers

HALLOWEEN and shudders seem to go together; then how about this game for goose-prickles? It is one Mr. Mystery Man used to play while still seated around the Halloween supper table in the proper dim, shadowy light and with all hands well underneath the overhanging witch and black cat decorated tablecloth. We christened it “The Shivers.”

We played it by passing carefully “preprepared-to-make-one-shiver” articles from hand to hand, without seeing what they were. It is surprising how “creepy” things entirely innocent to the sight can be to the touch. Whoever squeals or drops what he gets hold of pays a fine.

The things to pass are brought on covered tray to Mr. or Mrs. Mystery Man at the head of table and handed from her right hand to her neighbor's left and then right and so on around the table. As it returns to the left hand of the one at the head of the table she drops it and takes up the next article.

Anything woolly, fluffy, slippery, cold or wabbly will feel “spooky” to the unseeing receiver. A limp bean bag, a fluff of cotton-wool, the feathery end of a bric-a-brac duster, a lucky rabbit's foot, a bit of fur, a string of cold glass beads, an angora mitten loosely stuffed and, above all, a kid glove firmly stuffed with wet sea sand and kept on ice till needed are some things with which successfully to play “The Shivers.”

Let the Mystery Man or Woman at the head of the table wear a long cloak and mask and let every one guess for a prize the names of the objects passed, each one making a written list when the last “shiver” has gone around the table.

New-York Tribune, October 26, 1919

Director’s Choice

Tim Burton decided to shoot Ed Wood in black and white after viewing Martin Landau's screen test on color film. Landau's makeup (as Bela Lugosi) didn't quite look right till Burton adjusted the color levels on the screening monitor and viewed the footage in black and white. Once he saw the results he knew that's how the film would be shot.

Vampiric Lyrics

Lyricist Jim Steinman originally wrote the song “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for Meat Loaf, but the two had a falling out before it was recorded and Bonnie Tyler sang it instead. The song became a classic in time, but it had a much different meaning when Steinman first wrote it. The original version was a song about vampires titled “Vampires in Love” inspired by the 1922 movie Nosferatu. But while the title and other lines were changed, some references and entire passages survived that referred to the nocturnal creatures, including “Once upon a time, there was light in my life/But now there's only love in the dark,” along with “And if you only hold me tight/We'll be holding on forever – forever's gonna start tonight.” What would the song sound like if it had been recorded with the original vampiric lyrics? Never fear! Steinman included the original version in his 1997 musical, Dance of the Vampires, which can be found on YouTube.

RULE #2

DOUBLE TAP

Wednesday Addams got her name from an 1800s nursery rhyme:

“Wednesday’s Child is full of woe… “

Was It In Her Blood?

Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery won an Emmy Award for portraying Lizzie Borden in the 1975 made-for-TV movie The Legend of Lizzie Borden. Director Paul Wendkoss noted that, “Elizabeth became Lizzie Borden during the making of the film.” Montgomery was a distant relative (sixth cousin once removed) of the real Lizzie Borden.