Today in Halloween: Classroom decorations

hallow skull die-cut decor

This really takes me back.

Halloween and elementary school are inextricably linked for some of us. I’ve noted this before, but Halloween was in some ways the most exciting holiday of the school year because we got to wear our costumes to school.

A big part of the Halloween “mood” at school was the decor, which usually took the shape of cardboard cut-out characters and symbols of the season, suitable for pinning to bulletin boards or taping up on walls and doors.

hallow decor kit

These Beistle Halloween decorations – known as the Halloween Decorama from Beistle – are the most vivid in my mind. And they’ll continue to be familiar images for decades to come, apparently: My son tells me they were familiar to him from his elementary school years, which came a few decades after mine.

The skeleton and cat were hinged so they could be posed. And that flaming skull was freaky.

You can still buy these, by the way, from beistle.com and other online sources. And they still sell the old stuff at vintagebeistle.com.

Beistle, by the way, was founded in 1900 and calls itself “the oldest and largest manufacturer of decorations and party goods in the United States.” It’s based in Shippensburg, PA.

 

Today in Halloween: Haunted house shock shot

nightmares fear factory

There’s something about going through a haunted house. Like a good horror movie, it’s scary and fun and gives us a release.

It’s also pretty darn funny when you see pics of other people inside the place.

The past couple of years, photos of people looking incredibly scared from the Nightmares Fear Factory haunted house in Niagara Falls have been all over the Internet. I posted about them last year.

I’ve wondered what the people in the photos are looking at, though. I did a Google search and found what I think is the answer.

Spoiler alert if you’re planning on visiting, okay?

Apparently the thing frightening people in all the photos is … an illusion that makes it appear they’re going to be hit by a car.

Not a monster, zombie, even zombie baby (since many seem to be looking down). But realistic-looking car headlights.

So now you know.

I don’t think that diminishes the enjoyment we all feel in looking at these people being scared out of their minds, though, does it?

Here’s the attraction’s website.

Today in Halloween: Trick or treat for UNICEF

hallow unicef

A lot of us remember those orange boxes.

When I was a kid, I trick-or-treated at least a couple of times for UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund.

Begun in 1950, the practice of collecting spare change while you’re making your Halloween rounds – often in place of collecting candy, adding a further altruistic element to the event – has helped children around the world.

More than $188 million has been raised by trick-or-treaters to help provide food or clean water around the world. Donations also helped victims of Hurricane Katrina in the US.

Check out trickortreatforunicef.org.

‘Winter Solider’ teaser trailer is … awesome

cap and winter soldier

I think maybe interest in the new teaser trailer for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” broke iTunes today.

At any rate, the trailer didn’t play on the iTunes site for nearly an hour after its scheduled noon release.

It’s working now, however, but here are some highlights:

redford DC

Plenty of Robert Redford, looking great as the head of SHIELD. Yes, even above Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury.

cap worried

Cap (Chris Evans) looking worried, and rightly so.

cap nick fury

Cap and Nick Fury.

cap elevator

Cap’s got to watch his back.

helicarrier crashing

SHIELD’s helicarrier has its own problems.

the falcon

Cap’s got trusted allies, including Sam Wilson, AKA The Falcon.

black widow shooting

And Natasha, The Black Widow.

winter soldier vehicle

An old ally returns as The Winter Soldier.

cap winter soldier fight

Which leads to conflict with Cap.

winter soldier catching shield

And an ultimate showdown?

Here’s the trailer.

I can’t wait for April 4.

Today in Halloween: Comics as treats

marvel-halloween bagged 1987 comics

This never happened to me, although it would have been fine if it had.

In 1987 – which post-dated my trick-or-treating prime by a couple of decades, or at least a decade and a half – Marvel pitched bagged mini-comics as “the safe Halloween treat.”

This wasn’t at a particular  high point for stories about apples with razor blades or poisoned candy, but here’s an in-store sales pitch for the practice.

Did you ever get bagged comic books – or “mini comics,” whatever those were – when you were trick-or-treating?

 

‘Winter Soldier’ pic: Cap and Nick, hanging out

cap america winter soldier nick fury

With “Thor: The Dark World” coming Nov. 8, Marvel has us looking ahead to “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

Yeah, like that took a lot of work.

Here’s a pic of Chris Evans and Samuel L. Jackson as Steve Rogers and Nick Fury from the movie, which comes out in April.

A teaser trailer debuts tomorrow.

‘Agents of SHIELD’ improving, but what it could learn from ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘The Blacklist’

SHIELD girl in a flower dress

Okay, that was more like it.

Five weeks in. “Agents of SHIELD” feels a little more like it’s finding its way. And who knows, maybe the slow burn strategy of Joss Whedon and his showrunners has been planned this way all along.

But tonight’s episode, “The Girl in a Flower Dress,” took a couple of big steps toward making the show a must-see each week and, in the process, accomplished a couple of things: It (mostly) resolved the “is she or isn’t she a mole?” storyline about hacker Skye, and it furthered a series Big Bad in Centipede, the group that’s continuing the Extremis experiments – giving people superpowers, as in “Iron Man 3” and the “SHIELD” pilot, through dangerous chemicals.

It also established some other nifty ideas, including the fact that “SHIELD” has a list of superpowered people it’s keeping tabs on. This has been a matter-of-fact part of the Marvel movies and needed to be re-established here.

What still needs to be resolved right away: Coulson’s secret. If there’s one more reference to how the unwitting Coulson (the wonderfully deadpan Clark Gregg) has changed since Loki impaled him in “The Avengers,” I’ll cry.

Coulson thinks he died for a few seconds. Higher-ups including Maria Hill know something else is the truth … and think Coulson must never know.

I think everyone suspects that Coulson is a Life Model Decoy – as mentioned in “The Avengers” – or a clone or something. But please, please don’t save the explanation for the end of the season. Coulson needs to find out sooner rather than later, maybe in a November or February sweeps week episode. And then he needs to get pissed, taking it out on Nick Fury – Samuel Jackson’s already appeared in the series, so there’s no reason he can’t come back – and everyone else who deceived him. Knowing how buttoned-down Coulson is, that “taking it out” might consist of an icy glare and a brisk walking away. But do it soon.

That way, expectations will be defied and the next story arc – how Coulson comes back to lead the team – can begin.

Okay, now here’s what I intended to touch on before I saw tonight’s episode: A few things “Agents of SHIELD” could learn from its counterparts on other networks, “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Blacklist:”

Turn up the charisma. Yes, Clark Gregg is no James Spader, who’s chewing the scenery and loving it on “The Blacklist.” But “SHIELD” needs some flamboyance.

Turn up the crazy. “Sleepy Hollow” is getting points for the relish with which it embraces its storyline. “SHIELD” shouldn’t imitate it, but it needs more of the kind of moments that will make fans and casual viewers alike chuckle.

Show why these people are together. A seven-year-must-prevent-the-end-times-like-in-“Sleepy Hollow” plot device isn’t necessary. But there’s got to be more of a reason holding these people together than just the “we’re all in the SHIELD helicarrier break room at the same time” vibe that sometimes seems to be the case.

Give us more surprises. In the first episode of “The Blacklist,” the frustrated FBI agent stabs sneaky fugitive Red Reddington (James Spader) in the neck with a fountain pen. Yikes! It was quick and unexpected and totally justified. Give us more of that kind of “hey did you see that?” moment. (They even had Reddington make a joke about it in a later episode.)

Give us some Marvel comics names. Remember before the series began, people were speculating on which characters would be introduced? Luke Cage? Moon Knight? Who would have thought that “Arrow” would be introducing established DC Comics characters every week and Marvel, the king of synergy, would be running a series of wannabes past us every week?

Give us the goods, “Agents of SHIELD.”

Cap’s back: ‘Winter Soldier’ teaser poster

captain-america-the-winter-soldier-poster

So this is cool.

The teaser poster for “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” was released today.

And we’re told a new teaser trailer comes out in a couple of days.

The poster confirms some things we had already heard:

“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is mostly (or entirely) set in the present day.

It’s mostly set in Washington DC.

It’s a political thriller in some respects (that follows, considering the setting).

SHIELD is heavily involved, and it looks like Cap is about to jump out of a SHIELD aircraft and the helicarrier is visible.

The movie’s to be released April 4.

Today in Halloween: ‘Phantom of the Opera’ live

dennis james

One of the coolest live theater experiences I ever had was one October evening in the 1980s when I experienced a unique way of seeing Lon Chaney’s classic 1925 silent film “The Phantom of the Opera” – with a live organ performance.

Dennis James, at the time the resident organist for the Ohio Theatre in Columbus, Ohio, came to Muncie with a Halloween-season show he had been doing for a while: A live organ performance with the Chaney film.

dennis james halloween

I’ll never forget standing onstage before the show – by virtue of covering the event for the newspaper, I had a little access – and seeing James, a showman, walking out of the dark wings at Emens Auditorium.

Actually, my friends and I heard James first: His footsteps echoed across the stage. When we could finally see him in the still relative darkness of the stage, he was wearing a tuxedo, top hat … and Chaney Phantom mask.

Phantom_of_the_Opera_organ

James, whom I had interviewed by phone before he came to town, is a friendly guy with extensive knowledge of not only music but the Chaney film.

He performed, on the theater organ, the historic score to Chaney’s film, Watching James perform added immensely to the experience, which to this day remains one of my favorite Halloween-era memories.

Today in Halloween: Frankenstein fluorescent ad

GTE frankenstein flourescents 1970 ad

I was a big magazine reader when I was a kid. Between the magazines that were delivered to my house, the magazines in the school library and the magazines at the pediatrician’s office, I looked at a lot of magazines.

I can’t swear that this was a Halloween-season ad, but it sure seemed like it: An ad for GTE fluorescent light bulbs that made use of a Universal-style Frankenstein monster.

I remember the ad so vividly. And thanks to the Internet, I can now determine that it appeared in magazines in 1970.

Lookin’ good, Frank.