Horror On Halloween

Night of the Demons

WNUF Halloween Special

Howdy, my Halloweeners! We have finally arrived at All Hallow’s Eve, my favorite holiday on my favorite day of the week, Thursday! This entire month I have tried (and hopefully succeeded) in curating a diverse and expansive group of horror films to watch and analyze and appreciate. And though I’ve already begun planning next October’s line up of luridly creepy cinema, I know that it’s about time to wrap up this year’s spooky coverage. Since Halloween fell on a Thursday this year, I felt the need to explore some horror films that are set specifically on this special holiday, beyond John Carpenter’s Halloween—one of my fav classics. As a culture, we tend to associate spooky films with Autumn, and specifically with Halloween, and yet a good amount of horror films are not set during this time. Numerous horror films like Jaws, Sleepaway Camp, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and I Know What You Did Last Summer take place in the Summertime, and there are a plethora of horror films set in the Winter like The Thing, The Shining, Misery, and Black Christmas. I may discriminate against certain holidays (mostly Thanksgiving and July 4th), but I’m in the mood for horror any time of year. There is just something special and electric about watching horror films this time of year, though, especially on the very holiday that this season leads up to. So to celebrate Halloween, let’s dive into some horror films set on October 31st—when the veil between the living world and the dead one is thinnest, when odd, peculiar, and petrifying things occur, when the damn Christmas decor is already on sale. Up first is a bit of a sleeper hit turned cult-classic, that I’ve been hearing about for years, this is Kevin Tenney’s 1988 horror-comedy Night of the Demons. Let me begin by telling you a quick story. In 2009, a friend and myself were perusing the movie options at the Redbox—the Blockbuster of the early 2000s—when we stumbled upon a movie that had just come out called Night of the Demons. We were in middle school, and had yet to be granted access to R-rated movies, so you have to understand that we took our gory, sexy, explicit media truly wherever we could get it. We chose the 2009 version of Night of Demons, and were swiftly confronted with more titties, drug use, graphic sex, distasteful gore, and appallingly offensive language than we’d ever encountered in our young lives. Mind you, we’d just seen Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno, and that was far less scandalous to observe somehow. I don’t even think we made it to the hour mark of this 90-minute movie because even our rebellious preteen selves felt that we were not meant to see these things. Several years later, when I delved even deeper into my horror obsession, I learned of the original film that came before this 2009 remake, and I knew I’d probably have to check it out one of these days. But I’d become a bit of a horror snob already, and I wasn’t in a rush to see more anymore bloody tits and rancid dialogue. But on this hallowed evening, when my taste has evolved and settled into a sweet spot between pretentious and unprejudiced, I decided it was time to give the original, beloved Night of the Demons a try. I realized within three minutes of watching this film that it had the exact same premise as the remake, which really just makes more sense for 1988 than it did for 2009. Night of the Demons follows a group of teenagers who all decide to party at an abandoned, supposedly-haunted house on Halloween night, with the edgiest and most spooky of the crew—a girl named Angela—proposing that this clique hold a seance. You’ve got the creepy, over-sexed male faction of athletes and airheads, only concerned with getting drunk and more importantly, laid, made up of Hal Havins, Donnie Jeffcoat, Alvin Alexis, and Lance Fenton—who plays one of the rape-y football players in Heathers. Then you’ve got the female leads who occupy every kind of outdated feminine high school archetype, from innocent do-gooder Cathy Podewell, to cool girl Jill Terashita, to weird girl Amelia Kincade, to ultimate slut babe Linnea Quigley. Once the alcohol is secured and the abandoned house is decked out in lights and rock music, these hedonistic teens are ready for the night of their lives. But even before weird-girl Angela begins her seance, strange things start to occur at this house. Bizarre noises are heard throughout the halls, a mirror shatters, and Angela comes to the realization that this house isn’t just haunted, it’s possessed. One by one these not-so-innocent teens are targeted by the vengeful demons lurking in the corners and crevices of this old home, some becoming fully possessed, others just target practice for these freshly-awakened entities. Night of the Demons is about as scary as a campy, funny, 80s horror film can be, but the special effects were not just well-done, they were incredibly innovative. I didn’t expect too much from this film, not just because I’d seen the downright-pornographic remake, not just because the dudes in this film call each other names like, “Count dingleberry, the flaming asshole from Transylvania”, but because these movies were limited by their budgets and technology. But Night of the Demons was surprisingly clever, and perhaps even more fucked up than it was intended to be because its cast, particularly Linnea Quigley and Amelia Kincade, were so dedicated. There’s a famous scene where Suzanne (Quigley), now possessed, is trying to figure out how to put on makeup like a normal human girl, but instead just draws in lipstick all over her chest, eventually inserting the lipstick into her nipple somehow. It’s sensual and erotic and no-doubt memorable for horny boys everywhere, but it evolves into something really odd and monstrous and disturbing—where the demon Suzanne is desperate to be seen as a pretty girl before killing a potential lover. And let me just add that Hal Havins, one of the aforementioned annoying macho bros in this cast, refused to show his bare ass a for a very brief mooning scene earlier in the movie. But Linnea Quigley had the balls to not only show her full, naked body, but to show it in a deformed, disgusting manner that fellow horror femmes have clearly taken inspiration from. Not to be sexist, but there’s a reason why we always hear the term “Scream Queen” and not “Scream King”… The film just continues to descend into chaos, but thankfully we’re given one girl and one boy with their heads screwed on straight who we can actually root for, who act as the anchors of this overwhelming and audacious film. I liked this film more and more as it went on, and I absolutely loved the ending—which is where many films, not just horror, tend to fumble the ball. The writing was kooky, the effects were shockingly spooky, and overall I understand how Night of the Demons became an unexpected success, decades after the fact. The teen horror film is a tried-and-true corner of horror, and while many are beyond silly, it’s films like these that remind you why they’re so effective and memorable. When you’re younger, and you feel invincible and immortal, is the perfect time to be introduced to new fears—both existential and empirical. It’s funny, because both versions of Night of the Demons that I’ve seen are very strong examples of how horror is often a sexual education and awakening for many. This genre will often go to places that others will not, and explore whatever taboos they can to the fullest, most extreme extents. I say this not to lambast or glamorize, but to simply say that you really should give your preteens “the talk”, otherwise they may learn everything they need to know and not know from a cinematic demon orgy. But enough about this Halloween haunted movie, let’s get into our next Halloween haunt, a movie from 2013 called WNUF Halloween Special. Chris LaMartina’s WNUF Halloween Special is set in 1987, and follows a fake broadcast from a local news station who is doing their own little Halloween experiment. It’s an concept reminiscent of Orson Welles’ radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, the 1983 TV-movie Special Bulletin, and the BBC’s 1992 special Ghostwatch. This type of found footage horror is referred to as analog horror: where lo-fi graphics, archaic aesthetics, and cryptic messages carry out horrors that are made to look like they were recorded on a VHS tape, long ago. The film presents itself as an off-air recording of fictional television station WNUF's Halloween special that aired on October 31, 1987, and begins with two corny news anchors, dressed in goofy costumes. The local news setting, combined with some hyper-realistic old commercials makes this film feel all the more real, as whomever is controlling this VHS tape fast-forwards through commercials for car dealerships, pumpkin patches, smear campaigns for political candidates, and other fake ads that are nostalgic of this moment in time, but still occurs today, during the local nightly news. The news anchors, dressed as a vampire and a witch, tell each other corny jokes between news stories, and keep teasing that a Halloween special is about to air. Frank Stewart, a reporter, is about to go live into a supposedly-haunted house, where he and some paranormal investigators are going to hold a seance to try to contact the family who perished there. Before we are even taken inside this house, though, this film does an excellent job of immersing you into this world of yesteryear—where the local affiliates of newscasting would report on something as silly as a dentist warning about Halloween cavities, before jarringly cutting to a story about a child who was accidentally shot on this holiday the previous year. These kinds of televised whiplashes still occur on the local and national news, but back then it felt all the more bizarre, because while the anchors try to maintain a light and calm demeanor, what they’re reporting on is often gruesome. Eventually, through dumb local stories and inane commercials and unhelpful weather reports, we’re right alongside Frank Stewart as he and his crew enter this haunted house. Frank is quite chill and even skeptical at the beginning of this broadcast, dryly but curiously asking the paranormal investigators questions that they take extremely seriously. Soon, though, the vibe shifts, and Frank is anything but chill. This house is indeed haunted, and brutal, horrifying things start to occur—first slowly, then in very quick succession. I wasn’t sure how wild this film would be, and how far it would go to scare, and while I almost always feel like more could be done, the WNUF Halloween Special did a pretty decent job. Pretty soon, even the commercial breaks feel bleak and grim, with anti-drug ads and a suicide hotline and fear-mongering religious groups spreading Satanic panic get airtime right alongside the boring, run-of-the-mill ads. WNUF Halloween Special does a superb job of transporting you back into this time of VHS tapes and old toy commercials and oddly-familiar news anchors, and just when I thought the film was done with its scares, it had a few more spooks to pull before the VCR clicks and we see the old, blue screen. Director LaMartina knew that this film wouldn’t seem like a real broadcast to most viewers, but his main concern was just with entertaining, and writing “a love letter to VHS and public access TV.” I think this was accomplished, but I would’ve loved just a tad more oomph and fear here, because I’m greedy. I enjoyed both of tonight’s Halloween horror films even more than I thought I would, but I really must be going now. There’s a rager in a cabin in the woods I gotta get to, but I do hope you have a happy Halloween, dear reader. May your cup runneth over with candy, and may your nightmares only exist in your dreams. Ta ta for now! 🎃