What's In Your Halloween Bucket?

The Halloween season will soon be over and the only seasonal goodies that I've written about so far are the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Werewolf Tracks and the annual Mountain Dew Voo Dew soda.  Instead of dragging this out into the Christmas season, I've decided to lump together all of the spooky things that I've had the opportunity to try over the past few weeks.

Glowberry
Prime (2024)

I'm not sure how to describe the flavor.  I've read reviews where it was described as tasting like green apple, berries, or Jolly Rancher candy.  I'm tempted to say that it tastes a little bit like honeydew, but I'm not sure how accurate that is either.  One thing I can tell you for sure is that it's very good and it doesn't taste like any other beverage I've ever had.

Pumpkin Spice Caramel Creams
Goetze's Candy Company (2024)
I love Goetze's Cow Tails and Caramel Creams, and I put any white girl to shame with my love of pumpkin spice, so the combination of the two is a match made in heaven.  These would have been better if the pumpkin flavor was turned up a bit, but they're still delicious!

Harvest Chews
Tootsie Roll (2024)
I'm not a big fan of chocolate Tootsie Rolls, but I tend to really like their other flavors and this seasonal mix is no exception.

 

There are four flavors in the Harvest Chews variety bag: Pumpkin Spice, Candy Corn, Caramel Apple, and Sweet Cinnamon.  If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the Caramel Apple ones, but they're all very good... even the Candy Corn one.

Kit Kat: Ghost Toast
Hershey (2024)
These were the Halloween candy that I was looking forward to trying the most this season.

They're getting pretty good at making Kit Kat bars taste like just about anything because these things taste exactly like buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon, and they're outstanding.  Out of all of the products in this list, this is the one that I think would be a hit if they were available all year long.

Kit Kat: Breaking Bones
Hershey (2024)
They've really got vanilla flavored candy down to a science at Hershey.

Breaking Bones have a very pleasant and creamy vanilla flavor that goes well with the crunchy texture of a Kit Kat bar.  This is the kind of candy that I'd want to have with my morning coffee.

Mini Friends
Kinder Chocolate (2024)
I didn't find these little chocolate vampires to be crispy at all, but they were good.  There wasn't really anything special about the flavor other than the fact that it was a good quality chocolate.  The seasonal attraction here is limited to the cute little vampire wrapper.  The chocolate inside looks less like a vampire and more like a Minion who has had its facial features sandblasted off.

Kit Kat Spooky Break
Nestle Canada (2024)
Our friend Carrie bought these to the drive-in during Monster Mash Weekend and I instantly fell in love with them!

 

Seriously, how could you not love these!  They come in five different shapes: Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster holding a trick-or-treat pumpkin, a witch behind a bubbling cauldron, The Mummy, and a spooky bat hanging upside down.  I didn't get a picture of the bat before all of them were gobbled up, but this is what the other four look like.

There is one thing about this candy that will cause folks to complain, and I can say this from personal experience.  I worked for a number of years for Nestle consumer services.  I began my time there handling inbound calls and emails before moving up to the social media team and eventually to the trainer of the Confections, Baking, and Ice Cream team.

We didn't handle this product, or any other Kit Kat branded products for that matter, because Kit Kat is licensed to Hershey for production and distribution in the United States.  However, in every other country in the world, including Canada where these were produced, Kit Kat is a Nestle product.  Although we didn't have this product stateside, we had something like it.

One of the first things you learn when you work in consumer services for a candy company is that people don't read the package.  One of the lesser known products in Nestle USA's Butterfinger portfolio was a giant candy bar called Butterfinger Pieces In Milk Chocolate.  It's not like a traditional Butterfinger bar.  It's more like a Nestle Crunch bar, but with little bits of the orange Butterfinger center mixed into the chocolate instead of crisped rice.  The overwhelming majority of the consumer contacts that we received on this product were complaints from consumers who were expecting a product with a traditional Butterfinger center.  These complaints ramped up around the holidays because a lot of the more widely distributed Butterfinger seasonal products, such as these Nest Eggs that were sold for Easter, were based on the Butterfinger Pieces In Milk Chocolate recipe.  You can kind of see why people would complain.  If you're just glancing at the bag and not reading the small blue print, it certainly looks like you're buying a Butterfinger, but although the product was pretty tasty, it didn't taste anything like a Butterfinger bar.

These Kit Kat Scary Breaks have the same thing going on.  Their taste and texture is absolutely nothing like a Kit Kat bar.  It has a little bit of a crisp to it, but if you were blindfolded and ate a few of these and I asked you to guess what kind of chocolate candy you were eating, I highly doubt that anyone would say Kit Kat.  If you live in Canada and you still have these in your local stores, try it for yourself and see.  I'd be willing to bet that you could give your subject a dozen guesses in a blind taste test and they wouldn't say Kit Kat.  They're still a very tasty product, and the designs are freaking adorable, but I'll bet that the folks who are working on the consumer services team for Nestle Canada have had more than a few complaints about these.

Catching Up On Regal Unlimited

I'll have more time to take advantage of the Regal Unlimited plan to see some new movies on the big screen for the next six months now that the drive-in has closed for the winter.  I've gone to see a few movies over late Summer and early Fall that I haven't mentioned yet on here, so this post is to catch up on some of those films and what I thought of them.

Afraid
Blumhouse Productions (2024)
Artificial intelligence is the latest trendy antagonist in horror and dystopian fiction, and it's already getting a little old.  Afraid started off strong, but it blew most of it's potential about a third of the way into the movie.  That's when it became clear that the filmmakers aren't going for a deep or thought-provoking examination of the ways in which AI can get out of control, but instead shooting a popcorn horror flick.  There's nothing wrong with that, but M3gan already did it and they did a better job of it.  Afraid isn't bad, but I'm betting that you'll forget that you had a few weeks after you watch it.

Saturday Night
Columbia Pictures (2024)

Biopics and movies that are "based on a true story" are generally not my favorite kind of films, especially when I have some level of familiarity with the subject.  Whereas a movie like Killers Of The Flower Moon will command my attention because they're telling a story that I've never heard before, I struggle to focus on a film that has little to no element of suspense.  Movies like Oppenheimer and Ed Wood are true works of art and I appreciate them both, but I know how the story ends, so I have to make a deliberate effort to keep my mind from wandering.

I'm far from an expert on the history of Saturday Night Live, but I know enough to understand that calling its cast "the not ready for prime-time players" was more than just a marketing gimmick.  I realized going into this film that NBC expected this show to fail, and it became a massive success that is still going strong to this day, so I thought that Saturday Night would be another one of those "based on a true story" films that I'm going to drift in and out of paying attention to.  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  The pacing of this film is absolutely brilliant.  It not only held my attention, but it gave such an intense feeling of being in a panic rush that I felt a little bit of panic myself at something as simple as running to McDonald's and back to the theater before the second movie that I saw that night.

This is an incredible movie.  Even if you have only the faintest interest in Saturday Night Live, I highly recommend it.  I can't say how much of this story is true and how much was manipulated for dramatic effect, but it's a hell of an experience to sit through.  

Terrifier 3
Bloody Disgusting (2024)
This was not only my first time seeing Art The Clown on the big screen, but the first time I sat through an entire movie in which he was one of the characters.  I'm aware of the existence of All Hallows Eve and Terrifier 1 and 2, but this was one of those things where seeing memes and references to the film online made me sick of these movies before I even had the opportunity to sit down and watch them.  I had a similar experience with the 2022 horror flick Pearl.  I had seen that end credit scene of Mia Goth smiling with a psychotic look in her eyes in so many memes and animated gifs in the months after that movie came out in theaters that I was annoyed at the very thought of it.  I finally sat down to watch it this year after all of the hype had died down, and even then I had a hard time pushing back the residual annoyance so that I could sit back and letting the film tell me a story.

I started to watch the first Terrifier movie on Tubi so that I had at least some understanding of this film before going to see it in theaters, but I was distracted by other things and I ended up seeing only about the first half hour.  I had considered skipping Terrifier 3 on the big screen altogether so that I didn't start with the fourth movie in the series, but my friend Donny convinced me that it wasn't the kind of film that I'd have to see all of the previous movies in the series to enjoy, so I gave it a shot.

The only thing I really knew about Terrifier 3 going into the theater is that it was extremely gory, and it certainly lived up to that hype.  However, it wasn't the least bit terrifying.  In fact, I'm not even sure I'd classify this as a horror movie.

I'm not opposed to gore when it tells a good story, like Saw and Hostel, but the story in Terrifier 3 was so nonsensical that the violence just came across as lazy comedy.  I've heard this film described as a live action Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, and whoever said that absolutely hit the nail on the head.  This movie is gore porn.  It's mildly amusing to see once, but that's the best complement that I'm going to pay it.

The scene at the end of the film was so completely ridiculous that I almost laughed out loud in the theater.  They put such little effort into storytelling that I don't mind spoiling it.  Ok, so the main protagonist is faced with a Sofie's Choice.  She can either kill Art The Clown with a sword, or she can save her little cousin who is barely hanging on from falling into a pit to hell.  She chooses to save her cousin... ok, fine.  She runs to the edge of this hole in the ground and reaches down, but her cousin's arm is just a centimeter away from being close enough to pull her up.  Now, picture this scene.  They are in a room surrounded by window curtains that go from the floor to the ceiling.  They're not subtle.  They're huge, and they're obvious, and there are several of them within arms reach of the protagonist.  She knows she has to throw something down to her cousin to help pull her up, so what does she choose to throw down to her?  The f*cking sword!  She throws the handle of the sword down for her cousin to grab onto while she wraps her bare hands around the blade and attempts to pull her up while cutting her hands to ribbons.  Naturally, this doesn't work, and the cousin falls into hell while the stupidest final girl in horror history looks on in shock and horror.

I'm going to check out the rest of the movies in the Terrifier series one of these days, but after seeing this movie, it got bumped to the back of my watch list... right after the Sharknado sequels.

Your Monster
Vertical (2024)
This past Monday was a Mystery Movie Monday screening at Regal, and the surprise movie was a romcom horror flick called Your Monster.  I hadn't heard anything at all about this film, but it has absolutely won me over.

Your Monster reminded me a lot of another Mystery Movie Monday flick that I saw earlier this year called Lisa Frankenstein, but not in a way that made me feel like one movie ripped off the other.  They have a similar tone, and the two films would make an excellent double feature.  If I had to pick a favorite between the two, I think I'd give the edge to Your Monster.  The story has a strong message, and it left me wondering if the monster really exists, or if it's a part of her psyche that is protecting her and helping to keep her strong.

Smile 2
Paramount Pictures (2024)
This has the potential to be the next great horror franchise.  The first Smile movie had one of the most creative and effective marketing campaigns that I've seen for any horror film that was released in my lifetime.  It delivered on the big screen with a horror masterpiece that was genuinely scary from start to finish. 

The story here is about a demon that travels like a virus.  It spreads from one host to another when the virus is finished with the previous host and takes control of its body, forcing it to commit suicide in a gruesome manner in front of an eyewitness.  Seeing this act opens up the witness to allow the demon to infect their mind and to take on the witness as their new host.  The demon then feeds off of their host's fear by terrorizing them with hallucinations that are targeted to the victim's deepest fears and insecurities.  After it has fed as much as it can off of this new host, it seeks another witness and the cycle begins again.

The previous movie was the story of a psychologist whose patient passed the demon onto her.  The demon has gone through various hosts between the first and second film, and the sequel tells the story of the demon infecting a world famous pop singer with a troubled past.  The pop star in question is played by actress Naomi Scott, who does a phenomenal job in the role.  The character's fashion choices are also exactly what I would gravitate towards if I were a woman.  I guessed how the movie was going to end at around the halfway point, but that didn't hurt the experience at all because everything about the way the story was told was brilliant.  The cinematography was stunning.  The performances were all excellent.  This is a worthy continuation of a modern horror classic, and the plot device allows for this story to go on in such a wide variety of settings that it could continue for many years.  I'm looking forward to seeing where the filmmakers go from here.

Well, What Do We Have Here... Vampire Killers

Fright Night
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Another incredible season at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater came to a close last night with an 80's horror classic.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Actor William Ragsdale, who stars in the film as Charley Brewster, and Stephen Geoffreys, who plays his friend and eventual vampire "Evil" Ed Thompson were in attendance to meet fans, take pictures, and sign autographs.  Andrew had his copy of notorious box office bomb Mannequin Two: On The Move signed by Mr. Ragsdale, and I wish I was in line behind him to see his reaction.

Exhumed Films brought a trailer reel of classic vampire films that was shown before the feature.  The trailers included Near Dark, which is one of my all time favorite vampire flicks, as well as Bram Stoker's Dracula, Curse Of The Vampires, Night Of Dark Shadows, Blacula, Dracula's Dog, and a movie that I have never heard of that has moved to the top of my list of things to watch this winter, Dracula Blows His Cool.

 

Fright Night is an interesting horror flick in which a high school senior named Charley (William Ragsdale) who is convinced that his new next door neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire who is responsible for the death of several women who have gone missing in the community.  He's right, but his obsession annoys his girlfriend played by Amanda Bearse, who is best known for her decade long run as the Bundy's next door neighbor Marcy in Married With Children, and his best friend, "Evil" Ed played by Stephen Geoffreys.

Charley tries and fails to get the police to intervene.  When that doesn't work, his next step is to reach out to a local tv horror host named Peter Vincent, played by legendary actor Roddy McDowall.  Charley's logic is that the television star claims to be a vampire hunter on his program, so surely he must be an actual vampire hunter who would come to his neighborhood to kill a man for him.

This movie is pure 80's cheese with a plot that's so ridiculous that at no point during its runtime are you tempted to take it seriously.  Most of the movie plays out like something that I would have expected to see as a made for tv Halloween special on network television, but with a mild sprinkling of boobs, gore, and language shoehorned in to give it enough edge to get an R rating and hopefully draw in a teenage and young adult audience.  The end result is a fun movie that I wouldn't necessarilly call a "must-see", but if you're having a marathon of cheesy horror flicks from the 1980's, Fright Night should absolutely be in the lineup.

And that's a wrap on the 2024 season at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.

We have been experiencing drought conditions in Northeast Pennsylvania throughout the second half of October.  As a result, there is a burn ban in Carbon County, which means that the end of the season bonfire had to be cancelled.  The end of the season bonfire is a tradition at the Mahoning, and it would have been especially welcome on a night where my car was showing 34 degrees when we pulled off of the lot.  It was a bit of an anticlimactic way to end the season, but that in no way diminishes what was an incredible year at the drive-in.  Jeff's passing earlier this year was devastating, but the crew found a way to carry on and deliver an incredible season.  The future looks bright for the drive-in, and I'm already counting the days to the 2025 season.

I Was Lounging At The Drive-In Late One Night...

Universal Monster Mash VIII
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The Universal Monster Mash weekend is one of my favorite annual events at the drive-in.  First of all, I love classic horror movies.  More importantly, our entire front row group loves them too, so this is one of the few events that bring us all together on the lot at the same time.  This year's event is especially significant for me because the screening of Calling Dr. Death on Friday night marked my 500th movie at the Mahoning Drive In Theater.

My friend Tom gave me this awesome drawing to commemorate the occasion, and he and his wife Jen brought a Stock's pound cake up from Philadelphia to share with our group.  They, and their son Jackson, are one of the coolest families I've ever met and I'm proud to call them our friends.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

We've had odd temperatures in Northeast PA recently.  It seems like we're getting highs in the 70's during the week, but it has been getting frigid over the weekends, especially when the sun went down.  Thankfully it didn't rain all weekend and there was only a minimal amount of wind, so we layered up and used our new battery-powered electric blankets to stay warm enough to sit outside for the movies.

The red and black thing that you can see hanging off of the string on my hoodie in the picture of my wife and I is this awesome little stuffed Dracula that Jackson gave to me as a present for my 500th movie at the Mahoning.  He's a good dude, and infinitely more mature than I was at his age.  Hell, he's probably more mature than I am in my mid 40's.

 

There was a costume contest on both nights of Universal Monster Mash.  Ben and I decided after the August 18th screening of The Blues Brothers that we were on a mission from god to show up in October as Dan Aykroyd (Ben) and John Belushi (me) from the film.  He forgot his white shirt and I forgot to shave, but I think we did alright.

Night One - Friday, October 25

Dracula / The Wolf Man / Calling Dr Death

There was a screening of a 35mm print of the 1995 Mickey Mouse cartoon Runaway Brain prior to the first feature-length film on Friday night.  They played this animated short a few times at shows that we've been in attendance for over the years.  It's always a welcome sight, especially for a family friendly horror flick.  If you haven't seen it before, it's definitely worth seeking out.  It's a horror comedy short that's a bit out of character for Mickey and Minnie in which a mad scientist swaps Mickey's brain with a monster that he has created in his laboratory.  The artwork and the humor here is a lot closer to what you'll see on Looney Tunes than a classic Disney cartoon.

 

The first movie of Friday night was the granddaddy of all Universal Studios monster films; the 1931 film Dracula.  We saw this on the big screen at the Mahoning for the first time during Universal Monster Mash on September 17th, 2021.  It absolutely blew me away the first time that I saw it, and it had exactly the same effect on me this past weekend.  This movie premiered 93 years ago.  Ninety-three years!  That's six years before my grandfather was born, and it still draws a paying crowd and holds their attention today.  How many other things from the early 1930's can affect people this strongly in 2024.

For as historic of a film as Dracula is, the next movie to hit the big screen was a treasure that was first viewed by an audience on March 18th, 1910 - the 16 minute Edison Studios silent horror adaptation of Frankenstein.  This movie premiered 21 years before Dracula.  Hell, it premiered four years before the MLB debut of Babe Ruth and the start of the first World War.

This was thought to be a lost film for many years before it became public knowledge in the 1970's that a deteriorated copy had been discovered by a film collector in Wisconsin.  The film was restored and released again to the public in 2010 and has been studied by film students and fans ever since.  The version we got to see was tinted and scored by J. Searle Dawley and is available on the Internet Archive if you're interested in seeing it.  It's a fascinating piece of film history that sticks a lot closer to the source material than any other version of the Frankenstein story that I've ever seen on screen before.

The second Universal Studios monster film that was screened from a 35mm print on Friday night was the 1941 gothic horror that our friend Carrie was looking forward to seeing the most over the weekend; The Wolf Man.  The cast is a who's who of horror legends, including Lon Chaney Jr, Claude Rains, and Bela Lugosi.  This was my first time seeing it, and it was incredible!

If you count Frankenstein (1910) as a movie, then The Wolf Man would be my 500th movie that I've gotten to see at the Mahoning.  Part of me wants to count it because it was considered a feature-length film at the time it was released, but it's only 16 minutes long.  I haven't counted any of the animated shorts or other things that fall short of being a feature-length film like Trailer Trauma II, but this one feels different to me.  I guess it seems kind of silly to spend as much time as I have thinking about this, but I'm nothing if not a list-maker, and I want to make sure the list is accurate.  I think I'm ultimately going to go ahead and include Frankenstein (1910) on the list.  Whether I include it on the list or not, my 500th movie was during Night One of Monster Mash VIII, so I guess it doesn't throw off the count too much either way.

The second intermission of Friday night included the screening of a 35mm print of the 1946 Tom & Jerry short Trap Happy.  This is the first time I've ever gotten to see this cartoon play at the Mahoning.  It features Tom & Jerry co-creator and Hanna Barbara co-founder William Hanna as the voice of Tom and the legendary June Foray as the voice of Jerry.  In this cartoon, Tom gets fed up with chasing Jerry, so he hired an exterminator to do the job for him.  The exterminator turns out to be a different cat, and it isn't long before this new cat begins to get fed up with his fellow feline.

 

The last movie of Friday night was the 1943 Lon Chaney Jr murder mystery Calling Dr Death.  I had never heard of this flick before this weekend.  It was a bit of a change of pace from the Universal monster films, but it's a very enjoyable film that reminded me quite a bit of the old Alfred Hitchcock Presents show that I used to watch on Nick At Nite when I was a kid.

Night Two - Saturday, October 26

Frankenstein / Bride Of Frankenstein / Night Monster

Saturday night on the big screen kicked off with a 35mm screening of a 1943 Tom & Jerry short called The Lonesome Mouse.  This is the first time that I've seen this cartoon at all, and to say that it would be considered problematic in 2024 would be an understatement.  In fact, it was controversial when it was first released with the Mammy character prompting protests from the NAACP in the 40's.  For what it's worth, this print was loaned to the Mahoning by a friend of the drive-in who is an African American, so there was no ignorance or ill intentions behind the selection of this cartoon.  It's a part of animation history that reveals an uncomfortable truth about this country, and the fact that we cringe when we see stereotypes like this is a sign that we're moving in the right direction.

Another interesting aspect of this short is the fact that it involves extensive spoken dialogue between Tom and Jerry.  I don't think I'd ever seen a Tom & Jerry cartoon in which the cat and mouse have as many speaking lines as this.  Both characters were voiced by William Hanna, who took heed of the NAACP protests and retired the Mammy character for good as a result.

The plot of the cartoon is that Jerry manages to succeed in getting Tom kicked out of the house, but he soon finds that he has become lonely without the cat chasing him around.  The cat and mouse work together to trick Mammy into believing that Tom is keeping the house free from mice so that he can come back to live in the house.

 

The first film on Saturday night was the 1931 Boris Karloff classic, Frankenstein.  We saw this at the Mahoning for the first time two years ago at Monster Mash VI.  I'm glad that they screened it again because the experience back in 2022 was spoiled by a group of jerks at the end of the front row near the exit who were so loud and obnoxious that you could hear them over the movie.  This time around, we were settled into our spot in the front row surrounded by our friends and a respectful audience who sat back and enjoyed the movie with us.  The only time I heard anyone in the crowd get loud was someone who shouted "weeeee" at the scene when Frankenstein's monster throws the little girl into the lake, and that was pretty damn funny!

During the first intermission, Rob screened another 35mm animated short that was new to the big screen at the Mahoning.  It was a 1966 Paramount cartoon called The Defiant Giant starring a character named Honey Halfwitch that I have never heard of before this very moment.  The little witch starred in 13 cartoons from 1965 to 1967 and was voiced by Lamb Chop creator and puppeteer Shari Lewis.

In this cartoon, Honey helps George The Giant overcome the bullying of an even larger giant.  George was voiced by Bob McFadden, who would go on to voice Snarf and other characters that appeared in ThunderCats, SilverHawks, and many other cartoons throughout the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

The second film of Saturday night is my favorite of all of the Universal monster films, the 1935 classic Bride Of Frankenstein.  Seeing this projected from 35mm on the Cinemascope screen at the Mahoning is one of the highlights of the season for me.  I especially love Uma O'Connor absolutely hamming it up for every second that she's on the screen at the start of the film.  She plays a housekeeper named Minnie who discovers that Frankenstein's Monster is not dead.  No one takes her seriously, so she pretty much says "to hell with them" and allows the events of the movie to unfold; freakin legend!

They screened a surreal 1982 Georges Schwizgebel animated short called Le Ravissement de Frank N. Stein between the second and third feature length films of Saturday night.  I wish I had been paying closer attention to it when it was on screen.  It had gotten pretty cold on Saturday night, so I was packing up our chairs and other things in the car during the second intermission so that we could watch the third movie from the warmth of the car, so I was distracted while I was watching this.  It feels like an old first-person shooter PC game, like Wolfenstein 3-D.  According to IMBD, the cartoon puts you in the shoes of the Frankenstein Monster, and you see through the monster's eyes as he wakes up in the laboratory and moves from room to room.  I'm going to have to watch this again soon to get the full effect.  What I did see looked pretty cool.

 

The last movie of Universal Monster Mash VIII was the 1942 supernatural murder mystery Night Monster.  Like it's Friday night counterpart, Calling Dr Death, this movie felt like an extra long episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  I don't mean that as a negative in any way.  It's a suspense-filled flick about a triple amputee who is at the center of a series of unexplained murders, and a movie that I'd recommend to any fan of mystery, suspense, or horror.

And that's a wrap on Monster Mash VIII.  I'm writing this recap on Tuesday, so the drive-in has already closed for the winter, but I've got one more night to go.