Peter Pan's eternal youth makes him an ideal source of inspiration for Halloween revellers everywhere. But for those who don't want to do something quite so generic, or those looking for a cute matching costume to wear with a friend, consider going as Peter Pan's shadow instead.
TikkiDo has a great tutorial on how to make this costume for yourself, but I suggest adding one thing as an accessory (especially if it's part of a matching costume) -a bar of soap so Peter can try to reconnect you to his body if he can ever catch you in the first place.
Since 2009, James Creighton of Stevenage, UK has decorated his house for Halloween. He’s very serious about the work and uses it to raise funds for a charity. This year, he re-created a scene from classic horror movie The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, complete with disemboweled corpses that you can view here.
It was, perhaps, a bit much. Police informed him that they had received a complaint that it was too horrifying for neighborhood children. The officers asked Mr. Creighton to put a black tarp around his fence to block the line of sight of children passing by. He’s annoyed:
"I was shocked - more to the point that the parent couldn't come to the door themselves and speak to me personally, but had to get the police involved and waste their time.
"Police have asked me to put black tarpaulin along the fence so the kids can't see it, but why should I do that? It ruins the whole rest of the display for everyone else.
"All the other kids love it. It is just this one who doesn't like it.
"It is a bit gruesome, it's a bit gory, but that is Halloween, it is meant to be fun and scary. It is all for a good cause."
I can understand his frustration, but perhaps Mr. Creighton should take the complaint as a mark of pride. It’s not easy to create a Halloween display that terrifying.
Ahhh, Shaun of the Dead, the ultimate rom-zom-com. I could watch this over and over and never get bored. If you haven't seen it, and you a) like zombie movies and b) have a dark sense of humor, you must immediately go rent it. For those of you that have, enjoy the trivia!
• Lots of the actors and crew originally worked on Spaced, a British comedy starring Simon Pegg (Shaun). The carryover includes director Edgar Wright, Pete Serafinowicz (Pete), Nick Frost (Ed) and Jessica Hynes (Yvonne). There are cameos by a lot of other Spaced regulars as well.
• The idea for the movie actually came from Spaced. In one episode, Simon Pegg's character plays Resident Evil for 24 hours straight, then starts hallucinating that zombies have taken over the world. • Look closely at all of the extras in the opening credits scene and the scene that shows Shaun walking to work. Nearly all of them will show up later in zombie-form.
• When Shaun is at the convenience store, pay attention to the guy wearing a suit that stands in line behind him. He'll show up a little bit later as a zombie missing an arm. In real life, the actor is an amputee and had to wear a prosthetic arm for the convenience store scene.
• The smart-aleck kid that mouths off to Shaun at the appliance store is Rafe Spall, Timothy Spall's son. You know Timothy from his roles as Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter and the Beadle in Sweeney Todd (among other things). Rafe also shows up in Hot Fuzz, another Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg collaboration.
• Simon Pegg likes to sneak his family members into his movies, and Shaun is no exception. You'll find his mom in the background of the appliance store and his sister outside of the Winchester pub. She's in the window when Shaun goes down to check the fuse box and realizes that he was followed by the zombies.
• Obviously George Romero movies were a huge influence, but Edgar Wright cites Invasion of the Body Snatchers as another inspiration.
• Throughout the movie are clever references to horror movie veterans. When Shaun is trying to make a last-minute dinner reservation at Fulci's, that's reference to Italian director Lucio Fulci. At the appliance store, Shaun says that the manager and Ash have called in, referencing Ash from The Evil Dead. And the appliance store itself, Foree Appliances, is a reference to Ken Foree, the lead actor in the original Dawn of the Dead. Mary, the supermarket checkout girl zombie, works at Landis Supermarket - a reference to John Landis, director of Thriller and An American Werewolf in London.
• I remember being delighted when I heard Ed tell Shaun's mom, "We're coming to get you Barbara!" It's an homage to Night of the Living Dead. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg talked to George Romero after the premiere and he loved the movie, so they excitedly asked if he liked the Night reference. Turned out he hadn't gotten it, but was delighted when they told him about it. He later repaid the favor by letting Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg be zombie extras in the remake of Land of the Dead.
• The character of David is played by Dylan Moran; you might also know him as Gordon from Run Fatboy Run. Shaun was the first thing I had ever seen him in, so to see him as the scraggly, strange, seemingly-on-something Gordon was completely bizarre to me. Turns out, it's really the other way around. Moran is known for playing characters like Gordon; David was completely out of the norm for him.
• The Winchester scenes were shot at the Duke of Albany pub in New Cross. The pub is now being demolished to make room for flats.
• When Shaun and Ed come home trashed from the Winchester and wake up a very angry Pete, the record they're listening to is Street Sounds Electro. According to Edgar Wright, this is an essential record for anyone who knows their electro - and Shaun would. Check out the posters in the background of that scene: there's a poster that refers to Shaun "Smiley" Riley, which tells us Shaun's last name and also his background: he used to be a DJ, which explains his obsession with techno. This was all explained in a scene that got cut from the movie.
• The guy who plays Pete, Pete Serafinowicz, is the voice of Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. • Edgar Wright has used a few personal elements from his own life in the film. His mom calls him Pickle, which is why Shaun's mom calls him Pickle. And Shaun eats Cornetto as a hangover cure, because that's what Edgar Wright eats after imbibing a few too many the night before.
In fact, Shaun is considered part one of what fans call "The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy." In Shaun, red Cornettos are consumed for blood. In the second part, Hot Fuzz, blue Cornettos are consumed to represent the boys in blue.
The third is called The World's End and is so far scheduled to be out in 2010. Wright and Pegg has confirmed that the third one is green (mint), but as to what that means... who knows.
There's a ton of trivia for this movie - you can listen to film commentary from pretty much all of the main characters, but they didn't all record it at the same time, so you have to watch the movie a million times to catch them all. And I'm totally fine with that; I just haven't quite gotten around to it yet. So if you know some trivia I don't, feel free to share it in the comments. And let me know what movie you'd like to read about! I did Alex's favorite for the first post and my favorite for the second, I think next time it's time to move on to your picks.
Do you carve your jack-o-lantern the same way every year, the same way you learned as a child? This year should be the year you step it up a bit. You've seen those cool-looking art pumpkins on the internet, but maybe you never thought you could do something like that yourself. Sure you can! All you need is some tips to get you started! Dave Hax shares the techniques you'll need to make the neighbors stop and tell you how much they like your carvings.
My family has gotten into the habit of letting Daddy carve the pumpkins because he believes everything should be done with power tools. -Thanks, Dave!
The comma truly is the game-changer of the punctuation world.
Glove and Boots presents some good advice for monsters on how to survive those horrible humans they encounter in movies. The logic they employ comes from some alternate universe, but like in the movies, it's so crazy it just might work! The video ends with a lovely musical selection performed by Frankenstein's monster and his friend. -via Tastefully Offensive
Whether you were just being lazy, didn't have plans until last minute or were just too busy to get a costume ahead of time, Inventor Spot's list of 15 easy last minute costumes can really help you put something together, many of them requiring nothing more than stuff you probably have around the house already. I'm a pretty big fan of this cactus costume, that requires nothing more than straws and a green sweat suit, but the umbrella bat is a pretty impressive costume for being made of things as simple as a broken umbrella and a black hoodie. Some are even more simple, requiring just balloons or sugar.
Atlas Obscura continues their 31 Days of Halloween series with a scary story from Louisiana history.
In 1831, Madame Delphine LaLaurie and her third husband Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie bought a fine house in downtown New Orleans. Madame LaLaurie made a lovely home and entertained the city's elite inside. But she developed as reputation for being abusive to her slaves when people noticed how skinny they were. She once had to forfeit nine of them for a cruelty charge. But New Orleans society had no idea how cruel she was until the fire.
Driven to suicide by LaLaurie's abuse, the 70-year-old cook (who was emaciated, despite being chained to the stove) set fire to the mansion on April 10, 1834. As the flames spread, a crowd gathered to assist LaLaurie and her guests escape the blaze. As LaLaurie rushed about salvaging her coats and jewels and possessions from the fire, the crowd began to wonder, why weren't her servants helping her? LaLaurie shrugged these questions off. As smoke consumed the upper levels, moans and screaming became audible from the street, and a group of over a dozen men formed to help the slaves, who'd clearly been locked away. Delphine staunchly refused to give the men the keys, and so they found their way through the burning home to the attic door, kicking it in to free the trapped servants. There is no way they could have anticipated what lay behind the door.
Just in time for Halloween comes this festive undead treat. Inspired by The Walking Dead, master geek chef Chris-Rachael Oseland made zombie eyeballs that look and taste freshly plucked. She boiled eggs in water, food coloring, Chinese five spice mix and soy sauce. Then she cracked the eggs lightly and boiled them some more. Don’t hold back with the food coloring:
You want this egg to look like it fell from a walking corpse’s eye socket, not like it should be hidden in a fluffy green lawn alongside some Easter Peeps.
Chris-Rachael then pierced the widest part of the egg and added food coloring directly inside for the lifeless pupil. Then she bore a hole in the narrow end and stuffed in Pad Thai noodles to serve as optic nerves.
@JohnCFarrier I get mine fresh from the Farmer's Market. "Farmers Market" being my nickname for the barn where we keep the undead.
In January, 1977, actor Vincent Price appeared on The Muppet Show. Though he was most famous for his B-movie horror roles, Price was a classically trained and highly accomplished stage actor.
In this scene, Kermit interviews Price about the actor’s craft. Price has vampiric fangs. How?
Price explains that after years of concentrated effort and skill development, a master thespian can grow fangs at will. Kermit, as you can see, learns quickly.
Science teacher Bob Pflugfelder, known as "Science Bob," appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to demonstrate some fun scientific concepts. Here, he sets up a Rube Goldberg-type pyrotechnic display to show what a laser can do, culminating in the chemical lighting of a jack-o-lantern. Sweet! This is the third of three videos of his appearance; see the rest at Tastefully Offensive.
Looking to do something different this Halloween? If so, you might want to grab some pumpkins and try your hand at some of the great pumpkin-based sports rounded up by Inventor Spot. Of course, you'll have to have a pretty giant pumpkin to try racing in a pumpkin paddling contest, so if you're not a seriously skilled pumpkin farmer or someone with enough money to buy a pumpkin large enough to boat in, that option's pretty much out, but the other five are ones pretty much anyone can do.
Personally, I'd like to try my hand at pumpkin bowling, mostly because I love bowling and am terrible at it, so pumpkin bowling would give me a great excuse at inevitably failing miserably.
Disney's latest Mickey Mouse Short has a Halloween theme. Mickey's car overheats on a dark and spooky road, and all I can think about is why would putting the loose radiator cap back on help when the coolant is gone? And who needs a wrench to tighten a cap? Then he's pursued by some scary ghoul that might look like Goofy if it were alive. That's where the fun begins! -via Everlasting Blort
Lucy and her bottle of Vitameatavegamin were spotted in Seattle in 2009. Then she was spotted with Ethel in their chocolate factory uniforms. There's also Marilyn Monroe, Dorothy Dandridge, Audrey Hepburn, and a whole bunch of fictional characters as well in Buzzfeed's roundup of 15 Halloween Costumes Inspired By The 1950s.
Today's featured costume is from Neatoramanaut Nalini Asha.
Last year I fulfilled what was one of my life goals: I fashioned a medusa head-piece for Halloween. She's one of my favorite characters/icons/women and I love representations of her... so for this I used clear plastic tubing with thick wide inside, wrapped in iridescent cloth and tipped with snake heads made out of clay painted with nail polish. The whole thing weighs a ton and I had a bruise on my scalp for days from the strain that the combs inside put on my braided hair underneath, but it was totally worth it!
She got one thing wrong, though. Medusa was supposed to be very ugly, and this costume is anything but ugly!
(Photo: 
