5 Halloween treats for home viewers - Military Movies - Military Times

5 Halloween treats for home viewers

Think of “Psycho,” “Night of the Living Dead,” the entire oeuvre (and ooze) of Jason and Freddy: It’s the time of year when all get plucked from the pumpkin patches of our imagination for round-the-clock cable airings and DVD parties with punch chasers.

Yet strictly speaking, none of these movies alludes directly to the annual celebration at hand as do such unlikely ringers as 1933’s “Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party” or even Roy Rogers’ 1946 “Song of Arizona,” which finds time for a late October fest despite a personal crisis involving sidekick Gabby Hayes. Even a 1992 David Byrne Halloween concert engendered “Between the Teeth,” once available on VHS and laser disc but never released on DVD.

Though the pool is surprisingly limited, home viewers who seek a literal Halloween experience need not settle for Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker in “Hocus Pocus,” a 1993 witchy-woman groaner that is about as much fun as finding a rock in your trick-or-treat bag. The following treats span nearly half a century:

Meet Me in St. Louis

(1944, Warner, $27)

Out of the classic Judy Garland/Vincente Minnelli musical came what is probably the screen’s most famed Halloween scene. Costumed kid sis Tootie (Margaret O’Brien), who aspires to be the “most horrible” in her neighborhood, is dared by peers to confront a neighbor who the kids think burns poisoned cats in his furnace and beats his wife with a red-hot poker. Parental advice offered to Tootie just before leaving the house: “When people answer their door, don’t throw too much flour.”

The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad

(1949, Disney, $20)

The first half of this two-part Disney movie adapts Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows.” But the second, set against a Halloween dance, finds Braham Bones relating the story of schoolteacher/romantic rival Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” (featuring, in more innocent times, a galloping scene to chill young children). The film’s “Hollow” half is narrated by Bing Crosby, and its promotional ad copy used “hear Bing sing The Headless Horseman” as a selling point.

Halloween

(1978, Anchor Bay, $15)

Director/co-writer John Carpenter’s franchise begins on Oct. 31, 1963, as Michael Myers, 6, brutally murders his teenage sister. Years later, Michael is back to terrorize the babysitter (Jamie Lee Curtis) and to launch a genre, the one that warns that having teenage sex inevitably leads to death by slasher. There have been so many sequels and remakes over the years that there was even a 2006 documentary (“Halloween: 25 Years of Terror”) to provide a scorecard.

Lady in White

(1988, Fox, $15)

Trapped for hours in a school cloak room over Halloween, a young boy (Lukas Haas) sees the ghost of a girl who was murdered years before. Set in 1962 against, of all things, a civil rights backdrop, writer/director Frank LaLoggia’s cult sleeper improves as it progresses up through a bravura finale. My now-grown-up older son said not long ago that this is the only movie that scared him as a child.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

(1993, Disney, $33; Blu-ray, $40)

As the title suggests, December (not October) is the focus. But hero Jack Skellington (rendered in stop-motion animation) is known as the king of Halloweentown. Already hoping to branch out and apply his creepy prowess to other holidays, he just happens to stumble into a place called, wouldn’t you know, Christmastown.

Missing in action

Available used on VHS, at least for Web surfers, is Michael Landon’s career-launching “I Was a Teenage Werewolf” (1957), whose protagonist’s scuffle at a Halloween party leads his doctor to make him the eventually hairy subject of cutting-edge “experiments.” Amazingly, there’s no DVD of this pop-cultural benchmark, though there are plenty of roaming teen wolves on the prowl every Friday night (not just Halloween) to fill the void.