THIS IS HALLOWEEN 2020

It’s that special spooky time of year again, guys and ghouls! One thing that hasn’t changed this year is that I’m still updating my Halloween playlist, as is my yearly tradition. I’ve had a lot more time to spend on discovering new spooky favorites this year.

Have we been watching any of the same things this spooky season? I divided my playlist into categories, and you’ll find the complete list of all my fall favorites at the end of the page.

Part I: Rediscoveries

The most important rediscovery of the year is actually not a rediscovery for me at all. I’ve been a big Twilight advocate for most of my life (and, believe me, in film school, there weren’t many), but what makes the Twilight movies fall in the “rediscovery” category this year is that I’ve never once considered them to be Halloween movies. Sure, there’s vampires, which you’d think would automatically put it in the spooky season category, but I’ve always thought that if we were going to insist on pairing it with a holiday, then, if anything, it would be a Valentine’s Day.

At least, that’s what I thought until this year. The newest Twilight novel came out in August, the much-anticipated Midnight Sun, and spurred a whole new phase of Twilight-mania in our house. I reread all the books, which I have fond memories of carting around to my middle school and high school classes, and rewatched all the movies over the summer. Sometimes, you revisit an old series and find you don’t have much in common anymore. But with Twilight? Yeah, that was not the case.

So, being the Twilight fan that I am, I decided that I would count it as a Halloween movie. After all, the entire first movie is a spooky blue tone. That’s dreary enough to be counted for spooky season for me. And the rest of the movies? Well, they have vampires and werewolves, don’t they? That’s good enough for me.

There’s also two other major film classics I realized I haven’t included on my playlist yet.

First, there’s Psycho (1960). It’s my favorite Alfred Hitchcock movie and this year, I was working on a painting of the famous Psycho house when I realized it had been overlooked on my playlist. Time to fix that!

And, second, I always think of Frank Capra movies near Christmas time when it’s time to enjoy It’s A Wonderful Life, but did you know that Capra also has a wonderful Halloween movie, too? I always enjoy Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) this time of year. Not only is it set on Halloween, but it’s chock full of graveyards, monsters, serial killings, and insanity. And yet… t it’s also a hilarious, heart-warming adventure.

There are also two more “recent” movies that I wanted to add. And by “recent”, I’m talking about the last twenty years.

Of the two, oldest goes first. It only now occurred to me that one of my favorite movie musicals could be a Halloween movie: The Phantom of the Opera (2004). The Universal horror classic of the same name, made in 1925, regularly gets listed among great Halloween monster movies, but the 2004 musical film? Not so much. But why shouldn’t it be? It’s got all the great qualities to make it a Halloween movie: ghosts, murder, haunted opera houses. You know, that sort of thing. And plus, who can resist a rock opera score like that? That’s the kind of haunting I like best on Halloween.

And second, I recently rewatched Warm Bodies (2013). It was on my mind since the world has seemed more and more like a zombie wasteland recently, so I grabbed the DVD to watch this zombie romance for the first time in several years. I know this movie was released around Valentine’s Day in 2013 because I remember thinking it was an interesting twist on the two genres that usually come out in February: teen romances and horror bloodbaths. The makers of Warm Bodies put both of those together. It was only going to watch half of it, but I found it so engrossing – and the soundtrack so perfect – that I had to watch it all at once. I love it.

Part II: Discoveries

I have a whole slew of spooky new discoveries this year. Here’s a quick overview of all the newbies I’ll be talking about:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) (the movie)

Descendants

Fright Night

Tower of Terror

Vampirina

Disney’s Z.O.M.B.I.E.S.

With DisneyPlus rolling out earlier this year, it was my first Halloween with the streaming service. Recently, I’ve been interested in how musicals are written for younger audiences, which is how I discovered Disney Channel’s original movies, Z.O.M.B.I.E.S. (2018) and Z.O.M.B.I.E.S. 2 (2020). I immediately fell in love with the production design. The costumes and makeup are basically flawless. How do you make a zombie stylish and fun? Check out these movies. They also made me want to dye my hair green (don’t worry, I wouldn’t, but it’s a fun thought). And on top of the production design, there’s all those fun songs and High School Musical vibes. And there’s monsters. It’s like these were made for me. I love the first movie most, but I won’t deny that the second movie has a lot of songs and elements I love, too.

Once I’d watched Z.O.M.B.I.E.S., I was curious about how Disney Channel had gotten to that level of TV musical accomplishment while I was looking the other way. It felt like there was a big gap between my knowledge of the meager beginnings of High School Musical in 2006 and what I’d just seen in Z.O.M.B.I.E.S.

To fill in the gap, I checked out Disney Channel’s other popular TV musical franchise that came between them: Descendants. There’s three of these movies: Descendants (2015), Descendants 2 (2017) and Descendants 3 (2019), and I found them interesting in the same way I enjoyed watching Disney reinvent itself in Once Upon a Time. Plus, for any Disney fan, they’re fun to analyze for all those secret insider Easter eggs, like all the references to the Disney classics we know so well. I think these movies are growing on me, and are also designed beautifully. The hair and costumes are incredible.

Since I’m also interested in TV animation, that lead me to the Disney Junior animated series Vampirina, which reminds me of my favorite Halloween movie, The Little Vampire. I was interested in Brown Bag Films, the company who works on the Vampirina series, so DisneyPlus has given me access to check out the concept and movement animators at Brown Bag are using. I wish I’d had a show like Vampirina when I was little because I still relate to that morbid-but-benign lifestyle quite a bit.

Disney has been a big part of this Halloween. I also watched the 1997 Tower of Terror, a movie which seemed essential since I adore that ride at Disney World. Strangely, it wasn’t on DisneyPlus yet, so I rented the DVD from Netflix. It was an enjoyable showcase for my favorite ride.

As you all know, I love the first three seasons of the Buffy TV show and almost all of the spin-off series Angel, so I added the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie to my Netflix DVD queue a few years ago. No one – and I mean no one – I know, whether Buffy fan or not, has really enjoyed this movie, but it is sort of like a rite of passage if you like the TV show. I gave it a chance - after all, I’m sometimes pleasantly surprised by a movie everyone else is calling bad – but, unfortunately, after watching this one, I have to agree: not a fan of this one. It’s amazing how much better the TV series is right from the start. After watching this, I felt like my brain had melted.

Someone this year mentioned that The Lost Boys (1987), which I love to watch this time of year, was always being compared to Fright Night (1985). I finally rented it, despite it’s scary poster, and found that most of it was absolutely hilarious. I was especially fond of Evil Ed as played by Stephen Geoffreys, whose manic energy reminds me of Mickey Rooney. I also loved the story of a boy who needs his favorite hero from TV to help kill a vampire who lives next door. I loved this one so much that I ordered the DVD just to have for when I want to rewatch it every year.

Part III: The TV Classics

Since I was participating in Inktober on Instagram this year (@ellerylesueur), I would work on my illustrations with the classic The Addams Family episodes playing in the background. It regularly makes me laugh and I love the chance to revisit it whenever I can.

My other TV classics remain part of my playlist, including the four episodes of The Monkees that could be considered spooky-themed. I also love to vouch for the Halloween episode of Pushing Daisies, which is delightfully morbid and sweet to rewatch every year.

I still think that Teen Nick has some of the most fun Halloween content from more recent TV. The Halloween episodes of Spongebob have truly become classics in our house.

Part IV: The Movies

This year was so full of new discoveries that it was hard to make time for my usual movies, though I managed to get in quite a few. The Addams Family movies have been on Freeform constantly. I did get a chance to laugh my way through What We Do In the Shadows earlier this month and that movie always flies by. I revisisted The Lost Boys while I was working on an Inktober illustration of the head vampire, David, as played by Kiefer Sutherland, and I just love that movie’s style and comedy. Of course, like always, you can find me watching The Little Vampire on Halloween night, just like I do every year. It really makes it feel like Halloween.

So how are you spending your Halloween this year? Not only does it fall on a Saturday night, but it’s also a full moon. I hope it’s full of spooktacular fun. Let me know if you’re watching any of the same things as me this Halloween!

x

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Halloween 2019 Playlist

TV Shows

Pushing Daisies

- S1 E5, "Girth"

The Monkees

S1 E2, "Monkee See, Monkee Die"

S1 E18, “I Was a Teenage Monster”

S2 E18, “The Monstrous Monkee Mash”

+ bonus: S2 E11, "A Coffin Too Frequent"

The Addams Family

- S1 E7 "Halloween with the Addams Family"

The Munsters

- S1 E1, "Munster Masquerade"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

- S2, E6 "Halloween"

+ all of season 2 if you can handle it

Stranger Things

- S2 E1, "Chapter 1: MADMAX"

- S2 E2, "Chapter 2: Trick or Treat, Freak"

iCarly

- S1 E7, "iScream on Halloween"

- S3 E8, "iBelieve in Bigfoot"

- S6 E4, "iHalfoween"

Spongebob Squarepants

- S1 E13a, "Scaredy Pants"

- S1 E11b, "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost"

- S2 E24b, "Imitation Krabs"

- S2 E34b, "Frankendoodle"

TV Movies

- Z.O.M.B.I.E.S. (2018)

- Z.O.M.B.I.E.S. 2 (2020)

- Descendants (2015)

- Descendants 2 (2017)

- Descendants 3 (2019)

Classic Movies

- Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

- Psycho (1960)

Movies

- The Addams Family (1991)

- Addams Family Values (1993)

- Fright Night (1985)

- The Lost Boys (1987)

- What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

- Twilight (2008)

- Phantom of the Opera (2004)

- Edward Scissorhands (1990)

- Sleepy Hollow (1999)

- Warm Bodies (2013)

- E.T. (1982)

- The Little Vampire (2000)

+ bonus: The Little Vampire (2017)