{"id":28943,"date":"2016-04-26T23:00:22","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T23:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/?page_id=28943"},"modified":"2016-04-26T23:00:22","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T23:00:22","slug":"the-pop-of-king-the-fright-stuff","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/king-family\/columns-king-uit-entertainment-weekly\/the-pop-of-king-the-fright-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pop of King: The Fright Stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"kingcolumn\"<\/a>Gosh. Zowie. It\u2019s almost Halloween again. Somebody peel me off the ceiling.
\nIf you sense a certain lack of enthusiasm, you get an A for perceptiveness and win this week\u2019s first prize, a free ticket to see Venom (second prize: two tickets to see Venom). Halloween has been my least favorite holiday ever since the mid-\u201880s, when trick-or-treaters started showing up at my house in battalions, many dressed as Pennywise the Clown. That was when I realized I\u2019d been elected America\u2019s Guru of Grue without even running for the position. Ever since, my family and I have taken to spending the last day of October elsewhere. Far, far elsewhere. Birmingham, Ala., is good; Birming-ham, England\u2014where Halloween is little more than the name of a John Carpenter movie\u2014is even bet-ter. Still, I have no objection to you having the scariest Halloween possible. To that end, I offer the following suggestions to put you in a morbid mood and a frightened frame of mind:
\nPUTRID POP There\u2019s no shortage of grim pop music, but let us push aside such chestnuts as \u201c(Don\u2019t Fear) the Reaper\u201d and \u201cThriller\u201d in favor of the real sicko stuff. There\u2019s \u201cHey Man, Nice Shot\u201d by Filter (inspired by a politician\u2019s tasteful decision to commit suicide on live television), \u201cDays of Graduation\u201d by Drive-By Truckers (a car-wreck tune that makes \u201cLast Kiss\u201d seem like Mother Goose), the Pine Valley Cosmonauts\u2019 version of \u201cGary Gilmore\u2019s Eyes\u201d (a transplant operation goes horribly wrong), and my favorite (and a brief top 20 hit in the \u201870s), \u201cTimothy,\u201d the Buoys\u2019 rock ode to canni-balism.
\nTERROR TELEVISION There\u2019s all sorts of stuff on TV this year that\u2019s supposed to scare the yell out of us; you practically have to kick it out of your way. I\u2019ve watched most of the new ones and found them all disappointing, save for Invasion, executive-produced by former teenybop fave Shaun (\u201cHey Deanie\u201d) Cassidy. Threshold was the biggest disappointment; I\u2019ll give it another two or three weeks to shape up, but all that techno-speak in the first couple of episodes just wore me out. Invasion at least had some of that creepy, paranoid 1950s feel (think Invasion of the Body Snatchers\u2014the Kevin
\nMcCarthy version), but I really saw nothing in any of these shows that could match up to the divinely satisfying opening shots of Lost\u2019s second season: the strangeness of that out-of-date computer gear and the extreme close-up of the record needle coming down on an old Mama Cass album. Lost and Invasion back-to-back on ABC should be all the TV ramp-up to Halloween you need.
\nDREADFUL DVDS Something old and something new, okay? The oldie is The Changeling, starring the late George C. Scott as a composer and pianist who loses his wife and child in a horrific accident, moves to another city… then buys a haunted house. Not a good move for George, and the results for anyone watching are terrifying. This is one of those timeless movies (like Robert Wise\u2019s The Haunting) that don\u2019t seem to age; the bogeyman is still alive and well inside, just waiting to grab you.
\nThe new one is the Japanese import Infection, set in a mostly deserted hospital where a team of overworked doctors and nurses try to cover up a botched emergency procedure and set a terrible chain of events in motion. Like many recent Japanese horror movies, Infection isn\u2019t exactly coherent, but that\u2019s actually a plus. By the time the movie approaches its gruesome, body-melting climax, it feels more like a nightmare than something being staged from a script. An American version of Infec-tion will probably be just as disappointing as those of The Ring and The Grudge (American film produc-ers are anxious to make sure you understand it all makes sense), so I\u2019d rent or buy this one now.
\nMALEVOLENT MOVIES Oh, this is depressing. Not as bad as getting a razor in your candy apple, maybe, but too much like getting pebbles instead of chocolates in the little foil Hershey\u2019s Kisses bag. No Freddy this year; no Jason; no Michael Myers. The horror heavyweights are taking Halloween 2005 off, and what do we have to look forward to? A remake of The Fog (which didn\u2019t need to be remade) and the first of what will probably be many additions to the Saw saga. I\u2019ll go see Saw II and probably you will see Saw II too (say it fast, I dare you), but I predict we\u2019ll hate ourselves on the morning of All Saints\u2019 Day. If you want to see something authentically scary this Halloween, I\u2019d suggest either Flight-plan or A History of Violence.
\nOne other suggestion while I\u2019m at it. Mother Nature played two of the biggest tricks of all this year, and she didn\u2019t wait until Halloween. One was called Katrina, the other Rita. People have been incredibly generous with cash donations in the wake of these storms, but one thing the Red Cross never gets enough of is\u2014heh-heh-heh\u2014blood. If you\u2019d like to give a treat instead of playing a trick this Hal-loween, why not find your nearest Red Cross blood bank and roll up your sleeve? Maybe I\u2019ll see you there, because I always try to give a pint on that day as a way of remembering that blood has been pretty good to me. I just don\u2019t look when they stick the needle in, because I\u2019m a little squeamish about the sight of that red stuff. Especially my own.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gosh. Zowie. It\u2019s almost Halloween again. Somebody peel me off the ceiling. If you sense a certain lack of enthusiasm, you get an A for perceptiveness and win this week\u2019s first prize, a free ticket to see Venom (second prize:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":4585,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-28943","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28955,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/28943\/revisions\/28955"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stephenking.nl\/skfnieuw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}