Something Wicked This Way Comes...

I have a couple posts in the works, but since last night, I've been thinking about a post about a little tradition my daughter and I have for Halloween: The All Night Scary Movie Festival.

It's not a terribly original post idea, and it seems that Wordnerd got there first, sort of, but so be it. And besides, I'm going to be talking about the movies and not the things that scare me. So, chill.

My daughter moved back to San Diego to live with me when she was fourteen. She and her mother had stopped getting along (okay, she'd gotten sick of her mother's shit, if you want the truth). If a fourteen year old girl wants to leave her entire circle of friends and move to another state, it has to be Important-with-a-capital-I. What sold me on the idea...not that I wasn't immediately thrilled that she'd asked to come live with me...was that her friends all thought she should move, too.

So, when she got here, I did my level best to make sure there were things for us to do together that could become father-daughter traditions...things she'd look back on fondly twenty years from now. The problem with teenagers is that they're changing faster than anybody wants them to. Faster, even, than they want to, themselves. I remember how I felt when the things I loved as a boy were suddenly off-limits as I got older. It sucked.

When my daughter came to me in October that year and said she wanted to go Trick-or-Treating with her girlfriend, I didn't want to just say, "No, you're too old for that."

I offered an alternative: An all-night scary movie festival.

She's a bigger movie-buff than I am, so she enthusiastically embraced the idea.

That first year, we watched, "The Others", "The Shining" (with Jack Nicholson), and "Signs". We had "Poltergeist", and the original "Carrie" waiting in the wings, but we both faded around 1 am.

Last year, she suggested that we do it again, and she chose, "The Village", "The Sixth Sense", and a couple others we didn't get around to watching because we...well...we both faded around 1 am. "Carrie" remains in cellophane.

This year, I've commandeered the list. I considered "It" and "The Stand", because Halloween just isn't, without Stephen King. But this year, the list was almost predestined...my daughter is busily reviewing movies released in 1925 as part of a tribute to her high school's 80th anniversary, so we'll begin with the original "Phantom of the Opera" with Lon Chaney, Sr. (Interesting side note: when I asked the otherwise very knowledgeable Suncoast Video Guy if they had a copy of "the original Phantom", he said, "Did you check new releases?" Uh, no, this one starred Lon Chaney. "Who?" The Man of a Thousand Faces? He stared at me, blankly. "When was it released?" 1925, I said. "Hmm," said he, "sooo, I'm guessing it's not a musical.")

Because my daughter scoffed at "Aliens vs. Predator", we'll also be watching "Alien" (the director's cut from 2003), "Carrie" (at last), and both versions of "House of Wax" (though I am convinced that the Vincent Price version will be creepier, I plan to thoroughly enjoy Paris Hilton's demise in the more recent version.)

It should be a good night.