Halloween horrors

How’d you do for Halloween? Me, I scored two Snickers by mid-day, which wasn’t a bad start, and then the lady at the bank gave me some Twix. Maybe she saw the starved state of my checking account. Anyway, from now until the New Year I’ll be indulging the festive spirit.

Festivity isn’t always popular, though. The holidays bring out the grouches, too, so in order to cast a broad tent I’m going to dig up some Halloween grievances. If you’re looking to get into a brooding funk before Thanksgiving my efforts will kick start the process. You can thank me later.

We’ll start with a statistic from a trade association. No matter how jaded you are about ladrones in the Commonwealth and elsewhere, this will wash away any residual faith you had in humanity. The item comes from the National Confectioners Association. It reports that 70 percent of parents admit to pilfering some Halloween candy from their children.

Good heavens, is nothing sacred anymore? Do we need any further evidence of the failed state of the modern family? If your own parents might bogart your Milk Duds, then the notion of filial piety has become, well, a dud.

The discerning reader will note that the reported figure, as high as it is, merely tallies the admitted thieves. There are surely more light-fingered-ladrones who are not even confessing to their confectionary crimes. They walk among us.

If the home front looks discouraging then how about the cultural front?

Funny you should ask. This happens to bring us to the next item. It came via a phone call from North Carolina.

For the run-up to Halloween, the caller told me a TV station was playing a movie called The Rocky Horror Picture Show. That wasn’t news. A lot of places have done that, including Saipan. What was news is that the movie has been remade, and it’s the remake that was playing.

That’s something of a cultural earthquake in my circles.

Looking at the full half of the glass here, I’ll note that imitation is the mother of invention, or, uh, something like that. But today I’m looking at the empty half of things.

As for the empty half, The Rocky Horror Picture Show strikes me as an inimitable proposition. But I’m a biased party. I can’t separate the film from its social context. This 1975 movie, which was based on a play, was a cult classic when I was in high school. It played at midnight. That was an ideal situation for teenage dating, since it gave us a legitimate reason to pick up our dates at 11pm. That was such an odd time that nobody really knew how to set the return parameters.

As a result, my parents’ generation remembers, if dimly, seeing teenagers straggle back into the house at 6:30am, squint-eyed, disheveled, and coyly trying to reach their bedrooms without having to answer too many questions.

My parents were usually easy on me, but I did have to field a query from my stepfather one morning. He was an ex-Marine officer from Texas and a ‘Nam vet. Jamming my hands in my pockets, looking at the floor and mumbling “I dunno” was not an option for me.

My stepfather wanted to know about this movie. It was keeping my pals and I out all night. That wasn’t a problem. But it was also provoking worried 4am phone calls from our dates’ parents. That was a problem. I acknowledged the point. After all, you have to be patient with parents. They face a lot of peer pressure.

So I explained the movie. I said The Rocky Horror Picture Show was a creative and kitschy low-budget musical that was a parody of old-school science fiction movies. The plot centered around a newly-engaged couple who suffer a car breakdown on a dark and stormy night. They seek refuge in a spooky old house. The master of the house is a mad scientist. But he’s not just any mad scientist; he’s a very naughty mad scientist. And so we are presented with the dramatic tension of the innocent couple being subjected to the corrupting influence of the naughty scientist and his cohorts. That’s the movie. It has a lot of songs that are fun to sing along to, and fans of the movie have created various little routines so they can play along with the plot and dialog.

My explanation passed muster. Everything was OK. My pals and our dates kept this routine for two years, after which we moved to college and didn’t have to answer to anyone for anything.

Anyway, I haven’t seen the remake of the movie. Maybe it’s a great remake. But much of the appeal of the original was in just that, its originality. So, what now? I think I’ll just jam my hands in my pockets and say, “I dunno.”

Such are the thoughts that Halloween brought. They’re messing with my teenage years, and I just noticed that somebody stole my Twix. Maybe I’m not feeling so festive after all.