Time to Go – Boo!

Tuesday, October 14, 2025

Halloween is almost here again! Get ready for apple cider, too much candy, and the sound of decked-out trick-or-treaters making the annual pilgrimage to your front door in search of goodies. Hopefully, you will be sharing plenty of treats and not on the receiving end of tricks like getting your windows egged, yard trees TP’d, or your pumpkin kicked in, if you don’t answer your door and dispense the right kind of candy. LOL.

Halloween, or All Hallows’ Eve, is known as the evening before All Saints’ Day on November 1st. The name comes from the Old English word “hallows,” meaning holy or sanctified, referring to the saints honored on the following day. While it originated as a Christian vigil, it has evolved into a secular holiday with traditions like trick-or-treating and costumes, though many Christian groups still observe its religious roots.

Movies and television are historical drivers of our human fascination with things that go bump in the night and getting scared out of our wits. Your hair stands up on your neck in anticipation of Freddy Krueger gutting his next victim and sarcastically remarking, “What a rush!”. Did you know that Wes Craven, who created the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, as well as the Scream movies, is from Cleveland? Craven is a featured filmmaker in the new Hollywood on the Cuyahoga exhibit at the Western Reserve Historical Society

Another Clevelander with a spooky pedigree is Margaret Hamilton, aka the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz. Admit it; you probably had nightmares as a little kid about a green-faced Margaret ominously telling Dorothy, “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too!”

For whatever reason, NE Ohio attracts horror genre filmmakers to this area to shoot projects. Here is a list of some flicks that filmed here (in order from most recent to oldest):

Heavenly Wickedness – Currently in Post-Production
Shelby Oaks
Beneath the Light
No One Gets Out Alive
The Hunting
I See You (Featuring Academy Award Winner Helen Hunt)
Little Evil
The Bye Bye Man
The Charnel House
Fear Clinic
Fun Size
The Dead Matter
Lilith

If you are indeed a fan of the genre, the 48 Hour Film Horror Sci-Fi Project – Cleveland, produced by GCFC Associate Board Member Dustin Lee, features horror shorts written, filmed, and edited by locals within 48 hours. Premiere Screenings will take place on Wednesday, October 22, 2025, at The Capitol Theatre, with an Awards Ceremony & Costume Contest held Saturday, November 1st at Forest City Brewery.

Horror-themed stuff is not just the territory of movies. Television plays its part for sure. Growing up in Detroit, I remember regularly watching the Sir Graves Ghastly show that highlighted films, presumably from his private collection. I vividly recall his turn as the campy, but lovable vampire with the hilarious laugh, which still brings a smile to my face and a hearty laugh to this day. The actor who portrayed Sir Graves was Lawson J. Deming, who was born in, you guessed it, Cleveland. I dare you to watch this clip and not laugh your booty off!

What about horror films with a distinct Halloween theme? There is a list that is quite long to be sure. Some of which are so ridiculous that they will have you doubled up on the floor rolling in laughter. My now-grown-up kids to this day talk about me laughing out loud in the movie theater at scenes that weren’t supposed to be funny. Here is a list to an extensive offering of scary movie options if you are in search of something new or simply want to check off how many you will admit to having watched already. I want to hear from you if you have seen most of this list.

For my money, one of the best and scariest of them all is the original Halloween. The film that made Jamie Lee Curtis a star is an indie film made in 1978, set in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, that chronicles the bloody escapades of the masked knifer, Michael Myers. Our guy Mike is an escaped lunatic who murdered his sister years prior and returns to reap more havoc on the town’s unsuspecting victims every Halloween. Dude has fallen from windows, been shot, stabbed, and even burned in a basement, and simply…Will. Not. Die! The Halloween franchise must be at number 20 by now, with no end in sight! In any event, I am sure that if we are all being truthful, Michael scared the crap out of a lot of folks back in the day. Yours truly included! In fact, besides Michael Jackson and Michael Jordan, Michael Myers may well be the third most famous Michael that is known by his first name alone.

Give credit where credit is due: Halloween helped popularize the so-called horror subset of movies dubbed slasher films. While early psychological thrillers such as Peeping Tom (1960) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) helped jumpstart the phenomenon, slasher films peaked between 1978 and 1984 in an era referred to as the “Golden Age” of slasher films. Notable slasher excursions include Black Christmas (1974), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980), My Bloody Valentine (1981), Sleepaway Camp (1983), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Child’s Play (1988), Candyman (1992), Scream (1996), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Urban Legend (1998) and Terrifier (2016). Many slasher films released decades ago continue to attract cult followings. The slasher canon can be divided into three eras: the classical (1974–1993), the self-referential (1994–2000), and the neo slasher cycle (2000–2013), according to Wikipedia.

Pretty sure I have seen most of the films on this list, with Child’s Play, starring the killer doll Chucky, being one of the films I mentioned earlier that are so ridiculous that you’ll roar with laughter.

Halloween can be a fun time for young and old alike. Be safe, have fun, and use this as a time to engage with neighbors and spread good cheer. We have lost that sense of community we used to have when we were growing up and knew the names of many of the people living behind the doors of the homes we went knocking while gleefully yelling “Trick or Treat!” Hopefully, you don’t end up like Charlie Brown, who ended up with a bag full of rocks.

Well, time to turn on Michael.

Boo!

Lowell Perry
GCFC Chief Diversity Officer, VP Corporate & Community Engagement