September 14, 2004
Ah, the Halloween season. Never comes fast enough, always goes too quick - that's why X-E is kicking off its own Halloween celebration in mid September, while most of the world is still clamoring for one last beach afternoon and a final dip into the pool. Screw those sunny bastards -- we know where our attentions are truly deserved: ghosts, witches, candy shaped like ghosts and witches, and DRACULA.
To kick off this year's Halloween Countdown in a big way, I've dug deep and found something that probably means jack shit to all but six of you. I'm hoping I'm wrong. Seemingly for every year in the 80s and early 90s, WPIX -- percusor to the WB Network here in the tri-state -- would use the month of October to exploit the spirit of Halloween for all it was worth. With virtually no original programming of their own, WPIX relied on reruns, old movies and infomercials to fill up their time slots.
Normally I was only interested in the daily reruns of sitcoms ranging from Charles in Charge to Growing Pains, but during October, WPIX was pretty much all I watched. For all their faults, these people knew their shit when it came to Halloween. Aside from making sure their block of reruns ran through each and every Halloween-themed episode in the cans, they'd dust off a wonderful movie celebration year after year, giving it a title that still fills me with spooky delight this very minute:
Yes, SHOCKTOBER! A whole month of eerie horror movies for everyone who loved Halloween but lacked a social life, a bill I fit to the extreme. They'd unveil a horror movie every few nights during October, running the gamut from Freddy and Jason's greatest hits to less cherished but still awesome entries such as The Gate, Little Monsters and beyond. Seeing these kinds of flicks on network television was a treat - especially during a time before cable was such a given in most households. Still, there was something even better about watching 'em with that big, beautiful "Shocktober" banner flying by on every commercial break. Made ya felt like you were doing your part to get down with the season. Instead of being depressed when Saturday night rolled around and there were no spooky soirees to take part in, all of us couch potato losers could just grab a bag of fun-sized Krackel bars and watch Michael Myers knife the whores.
A Shocktober tune-in spot was created for each of the movies, but the best ad was the general Shocktober teaser, featuring a 40-second montage of horror icons, movie moments, screams, chills and hexes. I've included a download at the end of this terrifyingly tiny feature - just try to resist getting all amped up with Halloween madness after seeing it.
To me, plopping on the couch with a bunch of junk food and a scary flick is really what Halloween is all about. I mean, it's not the big event you remember from each Halloween you've been alive for - it's not the costume, the party, the trick-or-treating or pelting the neighborhood retard with an egg - but it's certainly one facet of Halloween that does more than its fair share to make the season what it is.
Thunderstorm, lights out, Halloween 2, Cheetos. What else could we need?
There was another great thing about the Shocktober movie marathon: network edits. You know the drill - networks aren't going to show much blood, gore or violence; they're not going to show terrible onscreen deaths, and you're not going to hear anyone shout four-letter words. In most cases, it takes a lot of the punch out of a horror movie, but sometimes, the edits are so haphazard and hysterical that the movie becomes a thousand times better. Example: if Freddy called one of his victims a "bitch," it'd be dubbed over with a much safer "brat." Seriously. You'd see Freddy Krueger foaming at the mouth, running around dark alleys with his bladed glove held outward, calling people brats. Jason really lucked out by not talking.
You don't need to be familiar with WPIX or Shocktober to get what I'm driving at. Halloween season isn't just about the big things. For the rest of the year, we're all gonna miss having that little extra incentive to do an Indian rain dance and plop Creepshow in the VCR.
Click here to download the WPIX Shocktober commercial! (1 MB, .WMV)
And check back here every day for more Halloween fun. We won't stop till it's November.
- Matt (9/14/04)
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