Happy Halloween from the ZRC!
We hope your Halloween is one filled with tricks and treats! Thanks to Scott, one of our readers who sent in this awesome pictures of a Dawn of the Dead pumpkin he created.
We hope your Halloween is one filled with tricks and treats! Thanks to Scott, one of our readers who sent in this awesome pictures of a Dawn of the Dead pumpkin he created.
This week – a very special edition of Halloween Candy Reviews…
Click here to find out what made Erik almost throw up!
When I was a boy one of my favorite things to do was make my own haunted houses in the attic. My friends and brothers would help build elaborate props and we would figure out ways to scare the pants off our parents. (Unfortunately they were the only ones who ever saw our masterpieces.)
The spook house continues to allure me and I’m always surprised that an entire industry exists to make animatronic vampires, ghouls, and zombies for use in Haunted Houses. These props are usually ultra-corny and so noisy no one would ever mistake them for the real thing, yet they hold an odd charm. So here are some of the best, worst, and strangest I’ve seen:
The Buzz Saw: Great in theory, but in practice it’s kind of silly. First of all, the body is already cut in half before the saw starts. Obviously in a haunted house it would need to be performed over and over again, but if that’s the case perhaps a scene where someone is cut in half is a bit ambitious.
Stone Master Gargoyle: There is a local party supply shop that has one of these so I’ve gotten the opportunity to see it several times in action. It’s mildly impressive, but not exactly frightening. Here’s why: this prop costs over $8000. So naturally it is used as a show-off piece when it would be better served as a background prop.
Cool Jerk: Mommy please don’t let the obviously rubber man touch me.
Death Chamber: This is actually pretty scary – if you watch the video for it there is a little jump at the end that would probably make me crap my pants.
Haunted Vanity: Personally, I prefer the haunted curio cabinet.
Here’s something I’ve never done before on this site – revealed my favorite zombie movies. These are the zombie films I keep coming back to over and over again.
It’s Undead Monday where we bring you an article from ZRC’s short history that you may have missed the first time around. This week’s undead post lets us show off our Zombie Reporter from Monster by Mail one more time:
When I was a kid I was obsessed with Freddy Kruger. A Nightmare on Elm Street was released I was only 5 years old so although I knew who Freddy Kruger was I never got the chance to see him until now.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a story of a group of teenagers who are chased by a psycho who is killing them in their dreams. As the deaths start killing off her friends, Nancy becomes increasingly anxious and stays awake for days on end to avoid dreaming. Finally she develops a plan to take Freddy out of the dream world so that he can be captured.
This movie plays with the idea of how nightmares can feel so real and employs various techniques to make the viewer feel like they are in a dream world where things don’t always make sense. At times this works and it is scary, but other times in the movie it just comes across as corny. I didn’t find it terribly frightening but Erin said it was one of the scariest movies she’s ever seen. However I rarely remember my dreams whereas she frequently experiences nightmares. Your own experience may also determine how scary this movie is.
Overall I felt it was an OK movie, but if I was younger I think it might have had more of an impact on me. Erin loved the journey it took her on and how it played into the nightmares she already experienced.
It’s FX FRIDAY, where we bring you a brand new how-to video every week throughout October. In this episode, Jef Porkins shows us how to use liquid latex and toilet paper to create rotting zombie skin.
It’s time again for Halloween Candy Reviews! The contenders:
Our beverage selection for the evening was Jones’ Soda Buried Pomegrante It had a nice rosy color. Erin says “I thought it was a pretty muted taste but still very sweet, as are all the jones sodas.” The flavor was nice though. It’s mildly fruity and if it had less of a sugary-sweet taste it would probably be quite good. Easily the best Halloween drink we’ve tasted so far
Our next candy is from a line made for Target stores and has the whimsical title of Floating Body Parts in Edible Liquid Goo If looks were everything, this product gets an A+. The body parts are gummy and nicely detailed. The detail is so great that the foot is a fleshy color and turns to red when you reach the ankle where it was “cut” off. Unfortunately it was absolutely vomit inducing. The “liquid goo” is essentially corn syrup with a small amount of flavoring and food coloring. The gummies are tough to chew through and tasteless. However, if I was a child I would love it. It’s exactly the kind of thing I would have loved as a kid. As an adult, I threw up a little in my mouth.
SweetTarts Spooky Jelly Beans are holiday-bending treats that take that sweet and sour flavor and apply it to jelly beans. They were ok. There are only two flavors and they are barely distinguishable from each other so it gets old quickly. Erin said, “I feel like it could have been executed better – not really tart enough to live up to the name.” I guess if you don’t like them you can always give them away at Easter and no one’s the wiser.
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday and I suspect that is the same story for many of our readers. For reasons that may be unexplainable, we’ve always been drawn to the dark and the macabre. But over the last few years I’ve started to notice that Halloween is slowly eroding away, which is why I came up with this list of 4 Halloween traditions that need to stop now.
How about the rest of you? What things about Halloween have been bothering you?
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