..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

Much to the delight of costume designers, beer distributors and aspiring drag-queens everywhere, Halloween in recent years has grown from an amusing diversion for pre-teens and their doting parents into a financial windfall second only to Christmas. College students have made it as an occasion for rioting and other indulgent behavior, and it’s the rare suburban neighborhood that isn’t lit up like a jack-o’-lantern.

Evangelical Christians, like those introduced to blue-state America in Jesus Camp remain dismayed by the annual embracement of the Pagan ritual, and would love to legislate it out of existence. Only the most dogmatic fundamentalist of any religion, however, could honestly glean any real theological link between the shop-’til-you-drop, party-hardy Halloween of today -- an estimated $3.3 billion was spent last year on holiday-related activities -- and the ancient Celts’ bonfire-lit Hallowe’ens and Samhains of yesteryear.

Otherwise, Pastor Becky Fischer might have re-considered locating her boot camp for Pentecostal youth somewhere other than Devils Lake, N.D. Not even those who’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb can have it both ways. Acquiescing to Satan one day a year by wearing a George W. Bush mask to school is no more blasphemous than taking a dip in a lake named in his memory.

No, make-believe ghosts and goblins have as much to do with devil worship as marshmallow bunnies do with Easter and department-store Santas have to the birth of Jesus Christ. These talismans may have emerged from one long-ago festival or another, but, today, they symbolize little more than the new American tradition of spending more money than is necessary to amuse our children and ourselves.

If it weren’t for the subsequent date-specific celebrations of All Saints Day and All Souls Day, Congress already might have designated Halloween a three-day holiday, handing government workers yet another excuse not to come to work.

Aside from pumpkin growers and candy companies, however, few American companies benefit from Halloween than those Hollywood studios with vast libraries of movies about monsters, serial killers, possessed children, ghouls, irradiated lizards and other spawn of Satan. No other holiday, religious or otherwise, offers nearly as many opportunities for cinematic exploitation. And, 99 percent of all creature features are sold without an expiration date.

This year, too, Hollywood will scare up even more holiday-related revenues, thanks to the proximity of Friday the 13th to Halloween. One needn’t be superstitious or have earned a MBA to understand the power of these two brands. The sheer volume of horror films newly released into theaters and video stores each October -- along with the never-ending repackaging of classic titles already on DVD -- makes media speculation about a slump in DVD sales all the more absurd.

Here’s a sampling of this season’s spine-tinglers:

The vaults of Universal, MGM, Warner Bros. and Sony have yielded several wonderful boxed sets of vintage thrillers. The little-seen chillers in Warner Home Video’s Hollywood Legends of Horror Collection -- Mark of the Vampire, The Mask of Fu Manchu, Doctor X, The Return of Doctor X, Mad Love and The Devil-Doll -- feature several of the biggest stars and most talented directors working in the genre during the first Golden Age. Directors Todd Browning (Freaks, Dracula) and Karl Freund (The Mummy) are represented here, as are Lionel Barrymore, Peter Lorre, Humphrey Bogart, Bela Lugosi, Myrna Loy, Fay Wray and Boris Karloff. Commentary accompanies each of the colorfully named pictures.

The man who was Dr. Frankenstein’s monster also dominates Universal‘s The Boris Karloff Collection -- Night Key, Tower of London, The Climax, The Strange Door and The Black Castle -- and Sony’s Icons of Horror: Boris Karloff, which adds The Boogie Man Will Get You, The Black Room, The Man They Could Not Hang and Before I Hang. While made on the cheap, the latter titles retain a certain campy charm. Frankenstein: 75th Anniversary Editionmay not add much to what already is in circulation -- ditto Dracula: 75th Anniversary Edition -- but the packages look nice. New to DVD is the 1973 Frankenstein: The True Story, a not-bad made-for-TV adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel, starring Jane Seymour, Agnes Moorehead, Michael Sarrazin, James Mason and Leonard Whiting.

Another genre fixture, Lon Chaney Jr., spent much of the '40s starring in Universal's psycho-drama series, Inner Sanctum Mysteries. This escapist fare was adapted from a popular NBC radio of the same name (a "creaking door" was its signature opening), which itself was inspired by a series of novels. The titles here are Calling Dr. Death, Weird Woman, Dead Man's Eyes, The Frozen Ghost, Strange Confession and Pillow of Death.

Jumping ahead several decades, boxed sets The Exorcist: The Complete Anthology and The Complete Omen Collection are noteworthy primarily in that they include the most recent attempts to extend the franchises, alongside all the originals and sequels, previously shown featurettes and deleted scenes. John Moore's updating of the original 1976 The Omen offered a few thrills, but was faithful to the point of redundancy. The most interesting thing about The Exorcist anthology is the appearance of both versions of the ill-fated prequel: Paul Schrader's Dominion and Beginning, Renny Harlin's vivisection of that effort. While both have their merits, they exist mostly as sad monuments to boneheaded decision-making in Hollywood.

Exorcism enthusiasts, as well as serious students of obscure Eastern European cinema, will want to check out Jerzy Kawalerowicz' Mother Joan of the Angels, from Facets Video's terrific Polart collection. Like Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun and Kenneth Russell's nutso adaptation, The Devils, this little-seen black-and-white thriller was inspired by the documented possession of Ursuline nuns in Loudun, France, in 1634. Several priests, including one whose efforts were rewarded by being burned at the stake, were dispatched to rid the convent of evil spirits. The convent's Mother Superior might have inspired Linda Blair's performance, a decade later. Very cool stuff.

Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection, A Nightmare on Elm Street: Two-Disc Infinifilm Special Edition and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2: Gruesome Edition all fall under the general heading of Old Wine in New Bottles. The Chucky box contains the second and third incarnations of Child's Play, Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky, as well as commentaries and a clip of Jennifer Tilly on The Tonight Show. I'm not quite sure what Infinifilm is, but the latest Nightmare on Elm Street adds ROM content to new commentaries, featurettes and an alternative ending. The new Gruesome Edition of Tobe Hooper's slasher sequel also comes with lots of featurettes, commentaries and making-of material. It coincides with the theatrical release of the prequel, TTCM: The Beginning.

Shock Treatment: 25th Anniversary Edition allowed fans of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to return to Brad and Janet Majors' hometown, which, six years later, had been transformed into a giant TV station, just like Seahaven 17 years later in The Truman Show. Like Rocky Horror, Shock Treatment was a campy rock-musical, although the songs weren't nearly as memorable as those in its predecessor. Shock Treatment comes with several bonus features designed to warm the heart of both films' cult following. Stephen King devotees will appreciate the bundling of The Dead Zone: Special Collector's Edition Pet Sematary: Special Collector's Edition, Silver Bullet and Graveyard Shift, in The Stephen King Collection. Released in 1971, John Hancock's Let's Scare Jessica to Death contributed mightily to the growing vocabulary of the supernatural genre, adding such touches as an insane asylum, haunted house and zombies.

Similar ground is trod in The Ghost of Mae Nak, from Thailand, by way of Tartan's Asia Extreme series of thrillers and horror flicks. Inspired by a popular Thai legend, and set in modern Bangkok, it describes what befalls a young newlywed couple after they acquire an antique brooch and an old house. And, guess who shares the occupancy of the house … yup, the ghost of Mae Nak Phrakhanong, her own self. Also from Thailand and Tartan is Oxide Pang's more conventional crime thriller, One Take Only.

Halloween movies aren't always rated R or PG-13. The whole family can enjoy The Munsters: Two-Movie Fright Fest, The Addams Family: Volume One and the combo platter of theatrical features, The Addams Family and Addams Family Values. Younger viewers will savor the new bonus features on It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and new-to-DVD Trick or Treason, with Alvin & the Chipmunks. Other TV-to-DVD packages include the third and final season of the vampire-cop series Forever Knight, Tobe Hooper's Dance of the Dead, Takashi Miike's and Dario Argento's Jenifer, all from Showtime's creepy Masters of Horror series.

The Italian gore-meister, Argento, is further represented by Do You Like Hitchcock?, a nerds-in-danger thriller that can be seen both as a homage to Hitch and the early horror films of the German Expressionists. A far more subtle salute to Hitchcock can be found in Dominik Moll's offbeat Lemming. The something's-rotten-in-Denmark moment here occurs early, when a yuppie couple (Laurent Lucas, Charlotte Gainsbourg) discovers a deceased rodent of the title clogging the pipes in their new suburban Toulouse home. Charlotte Rampling adds a bizarre note to the proceedings as the psycho wife of the younger man's boss. Alternately amusing and suspenseful, Lemming opened the 2005 Cannes festival.

Also adding a bit of levity to the otherwise grim proceedings surrounding Halloween is Troma veteran Michael Gunn's Slither, which borrowed liberally from both the zombie and malevolent-space-alien genres. Its cleverness was rewarded by critics with comparisons to Shaun of the Dead. The aliens in Teenagers From Uranus arrive by way of the Internet's http://www.livedaybyday.com/ sketch-comedy website. The film's title says it all.

The mutants in X-Men: The Last Stand aren't all that horrific or spooky. They can, however, inspire terrific costumes for parties and trick-or-treating. If I were 10 years old, I'd seriously consider dressing up as Angel, whose majestic wingspan rivals that of Pegasus.B comes in several different versions, including a trilogy package and The Stan Lee Special Edition. The bonus features in the "special" package range from the usual array of commentaries and deleted scenes, to three alternate endings and an original mini-comic written by Lee.

Adapted from a popular Konami video game by French director Christophe Gans (Brotherhood of the Wolf ) and onetime Tarantino collaborator Roger Avary, Silent Hill tried mightily to advance the ghost-town sub-genre into the 21st Century. While it oozed atmosphere, it only managed to generate moderate success at the box-office. In it, the always dependable Radha Mitchell plays a mother who hopes to extinguish her daughter's night terrors by visiting the skeleton of a city that haunts her dreams, Silent Hill. No need to guess what happens next. Here's another Hollywood disappointment that, despite its faults, should do much better in DVD than it did in theaters.

Among the titles made specifically for video, or only accorded a perfunctory theatrical run are I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer, formerly known as The Hook; the cursed-town thriller, Population 436; the James Van Der Beek and Ivana Milicevic coma vehicle, The Plague; the haunted-barn story, The Roost; The Butterfly Effect 2, minus the original stars and budget; the Southern evil-prophesy tale, Voodoo Moon; the special "glow-in-the-dark edition" of the Stephen J. Cannell-produced, Left in Darkness; The Uninvited Guest (El Habitante Incierto) comes from Spain; and The Curse of El Charro, which sounds as if it should come from Mexico, but actually was made in southern California.

It would be difficult to beat the premise of Live Feed, which imagines what can happen to college kids when they find themselves trapped in a "porn house of horrors." It blurs the lines separating such sub-genres as students-in-jeopardy, cursed spring break, snuff, cannibalism and soft-core porn (in the un-rated version). There's even a film-within-a-film, Womb Service.

What will they think of next?

October 13, 2006

- Gary Dretzka

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