Five Great Halloween Movies for People Who Don’t Like Horror

As many of you know, over the course of the last couple of years I have spent a great deal of time working to further my knowledge of the horror genre, particularly in regards to its film presence here in America and across the globe. There are an incredible number of these films, particularly when you broaden the spectrum to include the majority of tense, monster-based Science Fiction films of the 1950 and 60s... And yet a large number of filmgoers can't stand this genre, and do their best to avoid scary movies, but then Halloween comes by and I get the familiar question, "What kinda horror movie won't scare the crap out of me?" And here I am today to oblige an answer.

If you are one of the multitude of people who don’t care at all for blood, gore, screaming, and monsters from another world, and yet you'd like to keep your movie-watching experiences to be season-appropriate, I suggest you take a look at the five films I've listed below. They each certainly count as members of the Horror genre, and yet they lack that visceral terror that renders some trembling with fear long after the final credits have rolled. That doesn't mean these are bad horror films, some of them are simply old, and others hold more of a comedic or adventurous tone. But to this day, these remain among the best the genre has to offer, and I couldn't recommend them enough.

1. The Curse of Frankenstein

With any film adaptation of the original Frankenstein story, the subtleties of the original novel tend to get nixed in favor of clear-cut good and evil. However, the lovely people at Hammer Films decided to take a much different path than their predecessors at Universal by making Baron Frankenstein himself the true villain of the film. Creepy with a touch of camp, with a great performance by Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin) as Baron Frankenstein and a young Christopher Lee decked out as Frankenstein’s monster himself!

This was quite the scandalous film at the time, but it’s doubtful this film out of the 1950s will send you shaking with fright. And yet the image of perfect villainy in Baron Frankenstein, and the creepy overtones in the film still leave a spooky Halloween movie you can enjoy this October.

Simple Joys

Some times its the simplest things that can brighten up one's day.

Re:re: So Uncomfortable

Sadly, as many things go in education, it is never as simple as "so don't".

The students in question are being stigmatized by their clothing being soiled everyday visibly, as well as the odor coming from them. It is affecting them socially, as other kids don't want to sit by them, work with them, or talk to them at lunch.

And no, I do not have the resources to get them new shirts. I can't afford it, the school can't afford it, and from what I got from the special education teacher, the parents definitely can't afford it. They don't have running water in their home, mom and dad don't work, dad can't read, mom is in and out of the hospital on a weekly basis, and all four of the boys receive almost every service offered by the school.

So maybe in suburban Milwaukee, the worst thing that can happen to you is a teacher labels you a "dirty kid" by discreetly talking to your parents, but in one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago it is far worse to have to wait days for your food stamps to arrive because you have nothing in your home to eat.

-Previously-
Re: So Uncomfortable
So Uncomfortable

Dreamcats

My love for tmblr has its limits. This is not one of them. 

DREAMCATS....

Listening to Sung Tongs...

New Mexico dreaming...

Amores Perros

Sartorialist or Catorialist?

via Catorialist, male on street, sporting a bronze ball choker

via Sartorialist, male on street, sporting a butterfly

Re: So Uncomfortable

Simple Answer: You don't. 

It seems that if the boys' hygiene aren't bothering the other students and aren't impairing them educationally or socially (as far as you can see), then why does matter if they have stained shirts? I know you probably have the resources to get them new shirts, but I'm not sure you want to be in charge of these kids weekly dirty laundry.  Any action short of that will result in the implication that the parents aren't keeping up their end in the battle of boyhood hygiene. And I think that prospect is what is seriously putting the chill in your bones. 

But if the boys are getting along fine (whether or not they're secretly embarrassed), then let them go along -- no need to add further insult to injury. 

The worst thing in the world for a kid is for your teacher to name you the dirty kid.

-Previously-
So Uncomfortable...

So Uncomfortable...

I need to have the most uncomfortable conversation that you can have with a parent today. How do you talk to a parent about the fact that they are sending their children to school dirty? I am not just talking about a body odor problem, that’s be easier to handle. These 4 brothers are coming to school in the same grossly stained clothing many days in a row. One of these boys is the student that I spend my entire day modifying work for, and it breaks my heart to see him coming to school in filthy clothing every day.

How do you talk to a parent about this??

Internal Matters for Posterity's Sake

So the wheels are turning again and something might just become of this strange little blog. BUT WHAT COULD IT POSSIBLY BE?!

For all of our faithful readers (which are basically just all of us who were already "on staff" so far), I think it is important to peel back the curtains and reveal what's been going on. If only for posterity's sake, so that we might come back to this post months from now and remember when we started to define ourselves. Or so we can trace the origins of the internal disagreements that ripped the blog asunder.

It seems that we've moved back to that special time of year when all of us have been thinking about how we really ought to run a blog together, only it seems that with our group of friends now spread evenly across the country (if evenly is the proper description for a handful of cities on the East Coast and in the Midwest), both Misters Noah J. and Quoctrung Bui have decided to get the ball rolling! How Scandalous!

ITS TIME

OH, Hi Guys...


So its about time to officially rechristen this mammoth boat. 
I was surprised that we managed to update this thing as many times as we have. But now that some of us are out of school, this shouldn't be a problem anymore! Wait...what are we doing here? Some people, like Timmy Wilgrims, believe that a successful blog has to have a precise thematic underpinning in order to be interesting to read. I was thinking about this on my bike ride home, and I wondered what could that theme be? Now that I'm not in school, I could really focus into a very specialized topic and be blog-famous, publish a cheap paperback, and go on tour! Suck it guys...writing is easy--especially in blogform. 


But the question remains, what could it be?

Modern music often strives to contain a narrative, the most popular story being one of love or love lost. However, cannot music explore each and every facet of the human experience, even those that cannot be explained through the telling of a tale? When considered beyond lyrics, music is perhaps the most intuitive medium; if film and visual art are an exploration of the external aspects of the self (with an inherent focus that is centered on the physical features, actions and dialogue of the characters), and the novel an internal medium (with an inherent focus that is centered on the thoughts or feelings of the characters), then music must be striving to reach something even more abstract: the ineffable subjectivity of the listener. While one can usually explain or be convinced of the merits of a certain genre of film or style of novel over another, one's taste in music is much more intimate and often inexplicable. While no piece of art evokes just one emotion, they usually fall into a certain range, whereas two people can listen to the same piece of music and have radically different reactions to it. The emotions evoked from a piece of music depend almost entirely on the subjective experience of the listener; if I love Johnny Cash and someone else doesn't, there is little I can say to make them see why and if I find a song uplifting and someone else finds it depressing, there is little either of us can do to close that gulf. But really, I think that is one of music's inherent strengths. Music is, perhaps, all emotion (to the point that trying to use words to describe it is as absurd as trying to use tap-dance to describe architecture), and it is also something that can affect us deeply and with enduring strength, which should be a key component to any definition of art.

Thus, here is a Top-Ten list of songs about prison. To be considered here, the song must actually deal with prison as an idea or an experience and not just have it in the title. I also strove for diverse range of musical styles and ways of interpreting the idea of prison. Also, the song needs to be good.