Happy Halloween, everybody! Since the ghoulish holiday falls on a Monday this year, we’re assuming many of you hit your Halloween parties over the weekend — and have had your fill of putting on a ridiculous costume and enjoying far too many adult beverages. So if, like us, you’re staying in for the night, we’d like to suggest a few cinematic All Hallows’ Eve celebrations that you might visit this evening instead. After the jump, join us for a look at a few movie Halloween parties we’d like to attend.
Leave it to Tina Fey, who penned the screenplay to this terrific 2004 high school comedy, to get right to the heart of the matter when it comes to Halloween costumes: “In the real world, Halloween is when kids dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one day a year when a girl can dress up like a total slut and no other girls can say anything else about it.” Poor Cady (Lindsay Lohan) doesn’t know this important factoid when she goes all out with her terrifying costume, and gets her heart broken at the big Halloween party. For everyone else though, it looks like a pretty fun shindig: drinking, dancing, and Rachel McAdams in a bunny costume.
Ignoring all the sinister stuff happening under the surface, let’s focus on the bash itself: good playlist, big but manageable turnout, and, apparently, an abundance of upstairs bedrooms to sneak away to with your new girlfriend. Sounds like the party spot to us!
Okay, so Halloween night doesn’t end so well for Daniel LaRusso — though it must be said, he sure could’ve just walked out of the bathroom without dousing Johnny Lawrence and leading directly to that beat-down outside of the Halloween dance. But before that little misstep, he’s having a pretty good night: he figures out how to go to the big dance without showing his face, and scores big points with major-league hottie Elisabeth Shue. If only he could’ve resisted that damned hose.
It should be noted that there is a bit of “Hollywood reality” happening in some of these scenes. Take, for example, the big Halloween party in Disney’s 1993 family comedy Hocus Pocus, in which the production design, costume quality, and professionalism of the band seem absolutely reasonable—if the town of Salem had a mammoth, Disney-sized budget at their disposal for the party at the town hall. Still, it’s a fun scene, and we’ll go to any party where Bette Midler does an impromptu number.
When it comes to planning a good Halloween party, remember the real estate rule: location, location, location. That’s where the junior high kids in Brad Silberling’s 1995 movie adaptation of Casper lucked out — they get to have their Halloween dance at the haunted Whipstaff Manor. Meanwhile, all of our dances were in smelly gyms and gross cafeterias. Lucky little bastards.
Another one to file under ingenious locales: the gang of horny high schoolers in Kevin Tenney’s 1988 horror hit decide to have their Halloween party in an abandoned mortuary. Can’t be that for ambiance! Though the body count is a little higher than we care for at our parties, there’s clearly good times to be had at this one: séances, sex, and plenty of impressive, vintage late-‘80s mullets.
Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
As with Night of the Demons, the big Halloween bash in the fifth chapter of the venerable horror saga is really only awesome in a very specifically 1980s way, and it doesn’t end well for most of the attendees. But let this be said: when your author saw Halloween 5, he was 14 years old, and would very much liked to have spent the holiday at any party “Tina” (Wendy Kaplan) was attending. I make no apologies. It’s an impressionable age.
It’s not really a Halloween party until Tim Curry breaks out the tambourine.
Wait, that’s not a Halloween party? But they’ve all got masks on… (Clip blurred but NSFW)