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Halloween, a celebration with roots in paganism, is almost here and, in most areas, the "trick or treaters" will be out in force with the emphasis on the treats. For the most part, the days of soaped windows, smashed pumpkins and toilet paper decorated trees seem to be long gone which is probably a good thing.
Back in the 1950s when I was trick or treating people didn't do much decorating for Halloween except for placing a lighted Jack-o-lantern in the living room window or at the top of the porch steps. Nowadays some of my neighbors decorate their yards and front porches with gigantic spider webs guarded by gigantic evil looking inflatable spiders. In some yards ghostly ghosts float through the tree limbs or hover over porch railings. These decorations are set off by strings of lights in appropriate colors of orange, and purple.
Back in my day communities didn't designate official trick or treat nights and while we did our trick or treating on Halloween some got out a few nights early and it wasn't unknown for some to appear at your door on Nov. 1 or "Beggars Night" as it was sometimes called. Likely, it was the early birds and beggars that led to "official" Trick or Treat nights.
The neighborhood where we did our trick and treating was peopled by older couples occupying stately Victorian homes, where we got nothing like the slickly packaged wide variety of candy available today but were often given home baked cookies in cellophane bags which were always good or popcorn balls which were good but very sticky. In fact, that neighborhood resembled the Smith's family's neighborhood in the 1944 movie "Meet Me in St. Louis" where youngest daughter Tootie Smith, played by Margaret O'Brien, tricked or treated with her friends.
Speaking of those movies that can help put us in the "spirit" of the celebration I have some recommendations for your viewing pleasure. I don't appreciate the newer scary movies because they rely far too much on shock value and overloading the screen with blood and gore. I favor the old movies like the 1931 Universal release "Dracula" starring Romanian actor Bela Lugosi that frightens through the use of light and shadow, and long intervals of silence. Film historians claim a Spanish language version done at night utilizing the same sets at Universal is even better although no prints are known to exist today. The 1922 German silent production of "Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror" was another retelling of the Dracula story renamed with certain story elements changed to avoid copyright infringement. It is truly spooky.
Another movie classic perfect for setting the Halloween mood is Universal's "Frankenstein" starring Boris Karloff or the later "Bride of Frankenstein" again with Karloff and with Elsa Lanchester as his bride, and yes that is her real hair. I know that the Hammer Studio productions of Dracula and Frankenstein movies starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing have many fans but I don't find them scary because of Hammer's use of flat lighting that eliminates most shadows and gives them the look of a 1930s Warner Bothers gangster film.
My all-time favorite scary movies are the work of Russian emigre Val Lewton who was head of the Horror Film unit at RKO in the 1940s. His films include "Cat People," "Curse of the Cat People," and "The Leopard Man" a movie containing a sequence of building terror as a small girl is stalked by what we are sure is a leopard but which is unseen except for indistinct shadows. My all-time favorite Lewton film and my all-time Halloween mood setter is Lewton's "I Walked with A Zombie," a retelling of the Jane Eyre story set on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean. No walking dead or zombie apocalypse here but an artful combination of light, shadow, and sound bringing terror to a peak.
But enough about scary Halloween movies.
I don't remember that store bought Halloween costumes were as big a thing back in the 1950s as they are now. You could buy costumes in department stores but they were poorly made out of materials I suspect would have gone up in flames without much provocation. Old sheets were cheaper and safer.
I have other memories of Halloween like the year, I think it was 1976, when I took our three children trick or treating in what became an ice storm and we returned home looking like Jack Frost and family. Then there was the year my eldest son and his friend were at a loss for costumes for trick or treating and ended up pulling garbage bags over their heads, fastening some available trash in their hats and going as garbage.
Have a great Halloween.
Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com