A Frosty Halloween

Frosty Frights
Wendy's (2024)

A few weeks ago, Wendy's introduced a new line of spooky themed Kids Meal toys that remind me of the McDonald's Halloween McNugget Buddies from the 90's.

Frosty Frights are little Frosty toys that are dressed up for trick-or-treating.  There are six different characters: Frosty Bite (vampire), Franken Frosty (Frankenstein), Cold Spell (witch), Coolie Ghoulie (ghost), Brrr Beast (wolf man), and Junior, who I think is just supposed to be a kid, but I'm not sure.  

Each of the toys come in a standard color and a limited edition color variant that are going for ridiculous prices on the secondary market.  I'm not into chasing down a complete set, but I did pick up these four little guys from an eBay seller to put out as Halloween decorations.

Amok! Amok! Amok!

Witch Please: Hocus Pocus / Teen Witch
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
On Saturday night, the Mahoning hosted their annual family friendly Halloween event with a double feature of holiday classics from my childhood.

Show banner and poster designed by Andrew Kern

Show t-shirt designed by Tom Bifulco

Witch Please was about more than just the movies.  The gates opened at 4:00 pm for a spooky vendor market on the lawn under the big screen and around the concession building.  We picked up a couple of very nice Longaberger baskets from our friend and Mahoning projectionist Rob, and I managed to find this treasure at a very good price.

Warlords is an arcade game from 1980 that was ported to the Atari 2600 the following year.  It's a multi-player Pong style game in which each player takes control of a castle at one of the four corners of the screen.  The castle is represented in the game as a wall of bricks similar to what you'd find in a game like Breakout or Arkanoid.  Your king is protected inside this wall, and the character you control is a shield-shaped Pong paddle that can travel outside the perimeter of the wall.  When the game begins, a ball is released into the playing field.  The object is to use your shield to keep the ball from breaking the bricks of your castle, while at the same time hitting the ball toward your opponents castles.  The winner is the player who survives as the last person whose king hasn't been hit by the ball.  It's a very simple game, but it's a hell of a lot of fun and it still holds up over 40 years after its release.

The main vendor of the night was The Big Kid Store, which once again hosted an awesome scavenger hunt.  Everyone was welcome to play, but our group left this one to the kids because we were busy manning our cars to give out candy and rubber duckies for trunk-or-treat.

 

There was also a costume contest.  I was going to come dressed as a werewolf, but the costume is lost somewhere in the labyrinth of boxes that is my garage.  I have a costume specifically for this season, but that has to wait until next weekend because it's a two-person act and my partner-in-crime Ben was not able to make it out to the lot last night.

There was also a pumpkin carving contest and a Halloween Egg Hunt on the lawn about 20 minutes before the start of Hocus Pocus.  It wasn't really a hunt, but a mad dash to collect as many of the prize-filled eggs as possible on the count of three.  The kids all looked like they had a hell of a lot of fun... especially my friend Tom, who I think it's fair to say was the biggest kid in the hunt.  He signed up under the condition that I capture it on video, and the results are now my favorite piece of footage that I ever captured on the lot.  This tops Mr. Nasty singing church hymns to a group of largely inebriated folks at VHS Fest.  The boy that he is repeatedly egg-blocking throughout the hunt is his son, Jackson.

I didn't take any video of the costume contest this year, but it was a lot of fun with a lot of creative costumes from children and adults.  My favorites were the boy or girl who came dressed up as Ultraman complete with light-up eyes, and the girl who dressed as a Hollywood Video clerk.

 

There was a Speedy Gonzales cartoons screened on 35mm prior to each of the films in last night's double feature.  Both were brought to the lot by a collector of vintage 35mm cartoons who often shares his collection with the Mahoning.  We saw both of these last year when they were shown on Night Two of Universal Monster Mash, and we both enjoyed them every bit as much the second time around.

The one that played before Hocus Pocus was the 1958 Robert McKimson short Tortilla Flaps.  It's one of the few Speedy Gonzales cartoons that I can recall that don't feature Daffy Duck or Sylvester The Cat as the antagonist.  This one instead features a bird named Señor Vulturo, who only appears in two Loony Tunes shorts throughout its entire history.  The vulture swoops down on a community of mice who are having a Cinco de Mayo festival in the hopes of making some of them his dinner, but he is thwarted by the fastest mouse in all of Mexico and is turned into one of their carnival games by the end of the cartoon.

The first feature-length film of Witch Please was the 1993 Disney Halloween comedy Hocus Pocus.  I would have bet money that I had seen this at the Mahoning, but this was my first time seeing it at the drive-in and my first time seeing it on 35mm.  What had me confused was the fact that my local Regal Cinema screened it during Fall 2020 when they briefly re-opened the theater during the Covid-19 pandemic.

I think this is my favorite family-friendly Halloween flick.  It's a fun story with a lot of laughs, and undoubtedly my favorite performances from Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker.  It's become an annual tradition to watch it in October since I saw it for the first time when I was a teenager, and it never fails to bring a smile to my face every time that I see it.

The Speedy Gonzales cartoon that was screened prior to Teen Witch was the 1959 Friz Freleng short, Here Today, Gone Tamale.  This one features Sylvester the Cat, who has been hired by a cargo ship to protect all of its cheese from a group of very hungry mice.  Naturally, our hero is able to get past the despicable cat and bring plenty of cheese to his friends.  After Sylvester gets tired of suffering for his efforts to stop Speedy, he adopts an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mindset and begins dancing with the cheese-munching mice.

The second half of last night's double feature was the 1989 high school comedy Teen Witch.  I know that I had watched this once before, or had at least seen part of it, but I didn't remember if I enjoyed it or anything about the plot other than what is obvious from its poster and title.  Having now watched it on the big screen from beginning to end, and having watched quite a few 80's movies in my life, I am prepared to unequivocally state that Teen Witch is the single cheesiest movie to ever come out of the 1980's.  The cheerleader's locker room song, and Polly's "Top That" rap to the boy that she likes are reasons enough to give it that title, but those are just the gourmet servings of fromage that this film has to offer.

Teen Witch stars Robyn Lively (the love interest in The Karate Kid: Part III) as Louise Miller, an awkward young girl who is tutored in witchcraft by Zelda Rubinstein (the medium that helps bring Carol Anne back in Poltergeist).  The cast also includes Dick Sargent (the second Darrin Stephens from Bewitched) as Louise's father, and Joshua John Miller, who made his film debut as Tom Atkins son in Halloween III, as her younger brother.

The plot follows Louise, who learns witchcraft and uses spells to become popular in her school and to date the quarterback of the football team.  It follows every trope that you're imagining from that description, complete with the after-school special worthy moral at the end.  I know that sounds cheesy, but trust me, whatever amount of cheese you're imagining this to have is not nearly enough.  I'm talking Olympic swimming pool amounts of liquid nacho flowing from a cheap gas station dispenser the size of a dump truck.

You can stream Teen Witch for free on Tubi, Pluto, and The Roku Channel, and it's a hell of a lot of fun to watch if you can handle the Fremdschämen.  Just know what you're getting yourself into.  If you can work a drinking game into the experience somehow, all the better.

And that's a wrap on Witch Please!

You Can't Buy The Necessities Of Life With Cookies

Depp Dive: Edward Scissorhands / Ed Wood
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
We're closing in on the end of the season at the drive-in.  This is the second to last weekend of the year before we go into our Mahoning hibernation for the winter.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Show poster designed by Tom Bifulco

Last night's double feature could have been marketed in a number of ways.  It was two movies from the 90's that were directed by Tim Burton, and two movies whose main character is named Edward.  The direction they went is to highlight the fact that both movies star Johnny Depp.

The first movie of the night was the 1990 classic Edward Scissorhands.  We saw this at the Mahoning for the first time three years ago on the first night of The Weird World Of Tim Burton weekend.  I'm not going to be able to improve upon my thoughts on this movie from when I wrote about after seeing it then, so I'm going to be lazy and just copy and paste it again here.

I think that some of the magic of this movie has been forgotten or overlooked in the decades since it was released, but it truly is one of the most beautiful and engaging films of the 20th century.  It is a story of isolation and rejection, and how someone can never really feel like they belong among other people, despite the occasional burst of acceptance they might experience.

The story is set in a unique universe of a mid-century ticky-tacky community that exists in the shadow of a gothic mansion on the hill.  I've often heard it said that the movie is set in the 1950's or early 60's, but that isn't the case.  The story includes answering machines and references to taping something on VCR, and the vehicles driven in the community are primarily from the 70's and 80's, including the 1977 AMC Gremlin driven by Peg Boggs as she brings Edward home, the 1971 Chevy Van with flames painted on the sides that Kim and her boyfriend Jim ride around in, and a 1985 GMC Vandura that is driven by the news crew who attempts to interview Edward after his arrest.  These aren't the kind of decisions that a director like Tim Burton makes by accident.  They give the film a timeless quality that hints at several decades in the latter half of the 20th century, almost as if the older Kim Boggs is retelling the story in her dreams, where things from various time periods in her life mix together randomly into a surreal world.

 

If you haven't seen it before, it's currently available to stream on Hulu.  I highly recommend it.

 

During the intermission between the two films, they screened a 1968 Woody Woodpecker cartoon called One Horse Town.  This cartoon was part of Jeff's 35mm collection of animated shorts, and we've gotten to see it a few times on the big screen at the Mahoning since we've started coming here.  It's a fun cartoon and always brings a smile to my face.

The second half of the double feature was the 1994 biopic, Ed Wood.  This is a movie that I haven't watched from start to finish since I was a teenager when its VHS tape was still on the new release wall at video rental stores.

I'm not an especially big fan of biopics or movies that are "based on a true story".  I find that these films either stray from the truth so much that it becomes a distraction, or they stick to the truth so closely that the finished product, while informative, isn't all that fun to watch.  I am, however, a big fan of Ed Wood as a person and as a writer/director.  His movies were terrible and he knew it, but they're also a lot of fun.  If you can't watch Plan 9 From Outer Space without laughing your ass off, frankly I feel bad for you, and I say that without an ounce of meanness or sarcasm intended behind those words.  I also find him fascinating as a human being.  He was a filmmaker, a WWII veteran, an unapologetic crossdresser, and his life in the decades after the events of this film are tragic to the point that a sequel to Ed Wood the film might be even better than the original.

My feelings on this film are kind of complicated.  The performances are excellent, particularly Johnny Depp as Ed Wood and Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi.  The black-and-white cinematography is brilliant, and the people that the film is based on are fascinating.  However, despite all of the positive things it has going for it, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't find the movie to be a little boring the first time that I saw it.  I gave it three stars on Letterbox based on my memories of having watched the film in the mid 90's, and with all of the praise it gets, I was almost expecting that seeing it at the Mahoning would inspire me to revise that rating.  It's happened plenty of times before.  Sometimes I look back on my initial screening of a movie and see that I was too young to fully appreciate it the first time.  Sometimes, the distraction-free atmosphere of seeing it on 35mm at the drive-in helps me to lose myself in the story and see it from a different perspective.

After the credits rolled last night, I found myself in the same mindset that I was at 15 years old when I first saw it.  It's a good movie, but not a great movie.  I like it, but at the same time I found it to be slightly boring, and I believe that my lack of connection to this film on a deeper level is more of a problem with me than the film itself.  I want to like Ed Wood more than I do, but ranking it any higher than the three stars would be faking it to fit in, and that's something that I don't think the real Ed Wood would not have wanted anybody to do.

A Night At The Starlight Hotel

Eaten Alive
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Man, this year really has flown by.  Last night's screening at the Mahoning was the final Thursday Thread-Up night of the 2024 season.  Next Thursday is the final Patreon screening, and drive-in will be closed for the winter after the following weekend has ended.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Eaten Alive premiered in theaters 48 years ago today on October 18th, 1976.  It was Tobe Hooper's follow-up to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre which was released two years earlier.

This movie wasn't really my cup of tea.  It's about a man named Judd (Neville Brand) who assaults every woman he sees and feed everyone who visits his hotel to the crocodile until he gets his comeuppance in a manner that I'm sure you can guess.  It sounds like a halfway decent premise to a cheesy horror flick, but it never really came together for me.  The highlight performance was a young Robert Englund as Buck, but even that lacked depth.  I wouldn't say that this is a terrible film, but the whole thing felt flat and disjointed... like a sketch comedy show, but with acts of violence in place of jokes.  I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see it on 35mm, but this one is going to be a one-time screening for me.

Purple Whoppers and Pineapple Frosties

The Addams Family: Wednesday's Whopper
Burger King (2024)

This year's spooky offering from Burger King is centered on The Addams Family.

There are four things on the seasonal menu: the Wednesday’s Whopper, which is a traditional Whopper on a purple bun with black sesame seeds, Gomez's Churro Fries served with a chocolate dipping sauce, Morticia's Kooky Chocolate Shake, which is soft serve chocolate ice cream blended with chocolate cake batter fudge and topped with black and purple cookie pieces, and Thing's Rings, which are pretty much just the same old onion rings that they always have, but served in a little cardboard caddy that has a picture of Thing.

I wasn't really craving anything sweet when I stopped at Burger King, but I did want to try that Purple Whopper.

Yup... it's purple.

I don't mean to come off as sarcastic here.  It's pretty cool, but couldn't they have spiced it up with something that makes it taste a little different... maybe a special sauce or peppers or something?

Pineapple Under The Sea Frosty
Wendy's (2024)
Burger King does get credit for at least making their promotional burger look different.  Wendy's is collaborating with Nickelodeon for the 25th anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants and offering their customers a Krabby Patty.  Whether you're familiar with the cartoon or not, you might think that this is a crabcake burger, or maybe a cheeseburger made with Old Bay seasoning or something, but... nope.  It's just the same double cheeseburger that they always have.  Way to put in a little effort, folks.

At least they came up with a good dessert item for this promotion, which was the only reason why I stopped here in the first place.  The Pineapple Under The Sea Frosty is very good, and a heck of a lot better than the regular Chocolate Frosty that they always have.

The Bell Ringer

Garbage Pail Kids x MLB

Topps (2023)
The 2024 season didn't work out quite like I hoped it would, but I'm still thankful to have this dude on the team.  Happy birthday to The Bell Ringer, Bryce Harper.

It'll Change Your Life

The Substance
Working Title Films (2024)

This movie has been highly recommended to me by several people on the lot over the past few weeks.  My local Regal isn't showing it, but thankfully the RC Theater in Wilkes-Barre is, and it was definitely worth the drive.

The Substance is not a movie that I'd recommend to everyone, but there's a certain subset of people who are going to absolutely love it and I am a part of that subset.  The first half of the film presents a fascinating concept that had me pleading out loud with Demi Moore's character to make better choices (it's alright... I was the only person in the theater).  It then evolves into a body horror that makes David Cronenberg seem almost tame in comparison.

I'm not a fan of the term "elevated horror", but this is a film that goes beyond shock and entertainment.  It has a message and it's a message that's worth hearing if you have the stomach for it.

I Have To Return Some Videotapes

American Psycho
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Last night, the Mahoning kicked off their new Modern Marvels series.  The fact that American Psycho is nearly a quarter century old and is being considered modern should give you an idea of what this film series is all about.  With each passing year, we get further away from the release dates of films that we might not consider all that old.  Every movie will be considered retro eventually, and the Modern Marvels series feels like a way to capture that moment when a movie crosses over into retro film territory.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

I haven't watched American Psycho since I brought it home as a rental from the new release wall at Hollywood Video.  It didn't leave much of an impression on me the first time, and if I'm being completely honest, it didn't really click with me last night either.  It's not that I didn't enjoy watching it.  The performances are all great and the soundtrack is incredible, but while I found the story to be engaging, it didn't connect with me in any real way, and I can't say that this second screening inspired me to think of this movie as a modern classic.  I think it's a pretty good satire of 80's yuppie culture; an above average film, but not something I'd call outstanding or thought-provoking.

Incidentally, I'm in the camp of folks who believe that Patrick Bateman is imagining most of the events that take place in this film and that he's never actually killed anyone.  The way that he looks at his gun when a few shots somehow manage to blow up three police cars, and the ATM asking him to feed it a stray cat are dead giveaways.  He's crazy, but it's all in his head.  It's the only explanation in which this story makes any sense at all.

The Night He Came Home To Lehighton

Halloween-A-Thon II
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA

Poster design by Justin Miller
Last year, the Mahoning Drive-In Theater hosted Halloween-A-Thon in which the first seven Halloween films were screened over three days.  I thought at the time that this was going to be a one-time deal, but with so many horror films set in and around the spooky holiday, it turned out to be just the first in what has become an annual event.

Show banner designed by Andrew Kern

Like the previous event, Halloween-A-Thon II leans pretty heavily on its namesake franchise, but the lineup has added Night Of The Demons and Trick 'R Treat into the mix.  Although the banner states that the latter was a digital presentation, we actually got to see it projected from what is possibly the only 35mm print of the film in existence.

The snack bar was all decked out for Halloween.  If you didn't make it out to the lot this weekend, I'm pretty sure that they'll keep them up throughout the rest of the season.

 

Mama Beth brought back The Haddonfield Horseshoe as the special concession food of the weekend.  It's an open-face cheeseburger served on garlic toast with a topping of french fries, nacho cheese, and a dash of hot sauce.  You'll want to grab a fork and some extra napkins for this one, but it's definitely worth the effort.

Sam's Candy Corn Drink was the special beverage for the weekend.  It's very sweet, but the Halloween candy flavor was a perfect accompaniment to the night.

There were a lot of folks in costume on the lot over the weekend, including Cy as Sam from Trick 'R Treat, Tom and Jen in Silver Shamrock masks, and Louie as Michael Myers.

Night One - Friday, October 11

Halloween III: Season Of The Witch / Night Of The Demons / Trick 'r Treat

The first movie of Friday night was the third movie of the Halloween franchise and the one that people tend to either love or hate, Halloween III: Season Of The Witch.  This is the one that has nothing to do with Michael Myers.  The movie does technically include the character for a couple of seconds, but it's on a television screen in which the first Halloween film is playing.

With the exception of the original film, Halloween III is my favorite movie in the series and the one that I was looking forward to seeing the most this weekend.  This was my second time seeing it at the Mahoning since it was screened at last year's Halloween-A-Thon, but because the films were played in chronological order, Halloween III ended up being the third movie on Friday night.  I wake up for work at 5:00 am on Friday morning, so I usually end up dozing off during the final film of a Friday night triple feature, and that's exactly what happened to me last year.  I was very glad to have a second chance to see it on 35mm on the big screen while I was still fresh and awake enough to fully appreciate the experience.

 

The second movie of the night is another film that I'm thankful for having a second opportunity to see at the Mahoning, but for a completely different reason.  Night Of The Demons was the first movie that was played on Saturday night of Joe Bob's Drive-In Jamboree back in the summer of 2021.  It was a hell of a lot of fun seeing it that night, but the presentation was handled like an episode of The Last Drive-In, with the movie being interrupted every 15-20 minutes by Joe Bob Briggs, Darcy, and their guests.

As much as I enjoyed the Joe Bob treatment of the film, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see this cheesy horror classic uninterrupted on 35mm on the Mahoning screen.

The second intermission featured a 35mm screening of the 1961 Tom & Jerry cartoon Switchin' Kitten.  It's about a mad scientist who switches a dog and cat brain, and the confusion that this causes Tom when he finds an orange cat that wants no part in chasing Jerry.  I don't remember ever seeing this one at the drive-in before this weekend.

The last film of Friday night was the 2007 movie Trick 'R Treat.  We saw it at the Mahoning once before two years ago when it was screened from the digital projection booth as the first half of a double feature with the 1986 film Trick Or Treat.  This time around, they were able to borrow the only 35mm print of Trick 'R Treat that is known to exist.  The movie was screened at various film festivals for a few years after it was first screened in 2007.  Warner Bros purchased it in 2009 and they released it direct-to-DVD, so it never had a theatrical run.  I can't be sure, but there's a pretty good chance that this weekend's screening is the only time that this film has ever been shown on 35mm at a drive-in.

This movie really didn't land with me the first time that I saw it, but I really enjoyed it this time.  I went in completely cold for that first screening and didn't realize that it was an anthology film, so I think that I got myself frustrated trying to keep up with things while my brain tried to frame this as something other than an anthology.  This time around, the confusion about its structure wasn't an issue and I had a hell of a good time watching it.

Night Two - Saturday, October 12

Halloween / Halloween II / Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers

Saturday night kicked off with Halloween and Halloween II.  I'm grouping them together here for two reasons.  First, watching these two movies back to back feel very much like you're watching a single three hour long film.  The sequel picks up right where the first film leaves off, so it's just a continuation of the story of "the night he came home".  Secondly, I've already written about both of these movies several times, and I'm frankly not sure what else I could say.  This story is a horror masterpiece.  This was my third time seeing each of them at the Mahoning, and I'll come back to see it as many times as they decide to screen it.  Judging by the attendance, I am not alone in that feeling.

The third movie of Saturday night was Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.  This movie was screened on the second night of Halloween-A-Thon last year along with parts 5 and 6, but we missed it because we blew a tire coming home the night before, and by the time we got everything sorted out, we were pretty tired and didn't want to leave the house.  In hindsight, I wish we would have gone anyway, but it was the right decision at the time.

Halloween 4 continues the story of Michael Myers, but it takes place in 1988, which is ten years after the night that is depicted in the first two films.  It's the start of the Jamie Lloyd arc in the franchise, and while there's no debate that it's a pretty big step down from the first three films, it's still a hell of a lot of fun.  There was a secret feature on each night as well.  It won't take a lot of hard work to figure out what they were, but I'm not going to write about them here other than to say that I enjoyed both of them.

And that's a wrap on Halloween-A-Thon II.