Phantasm

When ShellHawk was but a young'un, her one acceptable Halloween outlet was her Halloween parties. Mom severely restricted party attendance at first ("Only six people!" she ordered the first year.), but as I got into high school and my hormones demanded defiance of all authority figures, that number grew. By my senior year, the word had gotten out that ShellHawk's parents would let everyone watch slasher films on video, and the attendance on that party shot up to 70. I had a friend who would read people's fortunes on his Tarot card deck, and when my parents disappeared into their bedroom to watch t.v. and pray their furniture would survive the teenage onslaught, the tapes would slide into the VCR and the screams would start.

I ran into a friend from this time period. He was a fixture at these parties, and was mostly there for the movies. By the time I ran into him, he was in the entertainment industry in L.A., doing goodness knows what. He thanked me for turning him on to Phantasm, which remains to this day his favorite horror film.

You can get to the official website here.

I don't know about you, but the thing that freaked me out the most were those nasty little spheres, flying around and drilling into people's foreheads. Trivia according to IMDB: The walls of the Mausoleum were plywood and marble colored plastic contact paper. For those of us haunters who are budget-challenged this year, that little factoid gives hope.

Made in 1979 for $300k, it still scares me. It has spawned four movies so far. Not bad for a movie whose big bad guy says only, "Boy," in a menacing voice.