Pumpkin Cinema by Nathaniel Tolle

Pumpkin Cinema is a Halloween lover's dream. If you're looking for the perfect film to celebrate your favorite holiday, all you need to do is open this book to any page and you're set. I'm going to say the same thing I always say, no one can convey the feeling of Fall and Halloween the way Ray Bradbury did, but Nathaniel Tolle comes very close in his introduction and I'm impressed. I almost forgot I was reading it on an 80+ degree day in July (I know, this post is going up in August). Nathaniel really gets the spirit of Halloween. I would love to go to a Halloween party he was throwing because I bet it would be the most fun, ever. And I'm saying this as a person with social anxiety who doesn't do parties or social gatherings.

The book is organized alphabetically, beginning with movies and ending with "fun-sized" films and  TV specials/episodes, as well as various top 5 lists. Included for each film are the title (of course), year of release, director, cast, length, rating, a brief synopsis and art for some features (including lobby cards, film stills, press kit photos, a TV GUIDE - where did he even get this??, postcards, promo photos and DVD covers). You're given all the information you need to make an informed decision on your creature feature for Halloween night.

Nathaniel Tolle followed some strict guidelines when he was writing this book, because there are so many creepy movies to choose from, somehow they needed to be narrowed down. These are the rules he followed:

1. It has to be fun to watch.
2. It cannot repeatedly present seasons, locations, and weather that contrast with autumn. (This explains why The Thing, one of the greatest horror films ever made, isn't included.)
3. It cannot have a running time of over two hours.
4. It cannot be mean spirited and cruel.
5. If it is not scary, then it has to be directly associated with Halloween.
6. If it is a sequel, it has to make sense to those who have never seen the original.
7. It must have a fairly quick pace. (Nosferatu and Dracula are excluded for being boring. Nathaniel doesn't use that word, but I am, even though, artistically, I appreciate Nosferatu. The story of Dracula, regardless of which version it is, has never been interesting to me. So I 100% agree with him here. People will fall asleep if you play either of these films.)

I've seen many of the movies included in Pumpkin Cinema and the ones I would personally recommend are Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Arsenic and Old Lace, Bride of Frankenstein, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Cabin in the Woods, Daffy Duck's Quackbusters, 1408, Frankenstein, The Halloween Tree, House on Haunted Hill, In the Mouth of Madness, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, The Midnight Hour, the Monster Squad, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Suspiria, Disney's Halloween Treat (I have this, as well as some other Halloween specials on this list, on an old VHS tape that my dad recorded forever ago) and Tom and Jerry's Halloween Special.

If I could add a few films to the book, they would be Horror Hotel, 13 Ghosts, The Fog (the original), The Wolf Man and Oculus (to be fair, that film was probably released after the book was published). And Waxwork! I think it's really interesting that he included Waxwork 2, but not the first film. It's one of the few things I disagree with Nathaniel Tolle on, but I hated the sequel. Waxwork is a fun movie though.

I appreciate the reference made to The Tingler in the plot summary of House on Haunted Hill, as well as discussing William Castle's knack for showmanship (his films were always an event and for House on Haunted Hill, he had a skeleton fly over the audience in the theater). Nathaniel Tolle really knows his film history and it shows with the random trivia he sprinkles throughout the book.

Unfortunately, I have to take this to a more negative place now because as much as I would love to gush about the book and gloss over this one thing, I really can't. I was extremely disappointed to see Clownhouse included in Pumpkin Cinema, given the director's (Victor Salva) past, but at least Nathaniel acknowledges it. I didn't know about it when I bought the DVD around 10 years ago (they actually stopped selling it for a while, I'm sad to see it back on Amazon now), I just knew it was a movie I used to watch when I was a kid and I liked it. But I was reading the message board on IMDB (remember when those still existed?) one day and I learned that Victor Salva was convicted  of sexual misconduct with the 12 year old star of Clownhouse. He videotaped the encounter. And he only spent 15 months in prison. So yeah, after I read that, I got rid of the DVD, as well as my copy of Jeepers Creepers. It's beyond me that Hollywood still allows this man to work. He wasn't just accused of these crimes, he was actually convicted. He plead guilty. He's a horrible, disgusting person. I really don't want this post to become about that man, but I sincerely advise people not to watch any of his films, especially Clownhouse. There are some scenes in that movie that become really disturbing once you know what Victor Salva did to that boy. I know people say to "separate the art from the artist" and as a fan of Lovecraft's work, I understand that concept, to a degree, but when the "art" is a representation of his very real crimes, that becomes impossible.

That aside, I really did enjoy Pumpkin Cinema. As someone who loves Halloween, this book made me really happy. And Nathaniel Tolle has amazing taste in Halloween movies. I also now have an entire list of movies I've never seen before that I want to watch this October. I hope one day he'll write another book with more recent films, and others that didn't make the cut this time around.