Everyone, Do the Necronomicon!!

Happy Halloween!!

A couple of years ago, Vancouver hosted not one, but TWO productions of Evil Dead: The Musical, a singing, dancing and lurching live stage adaptation of the 1981 Sam Raimi cult film that starred the young and energetic Bruce Campbell. (As a side note, I'm kind of excited to see IMDB has a new film production listed for next year.) The stage show is a lot of fun, sporting catchy tunes like "Look Who's Evil Now" and "All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons" and, of course, the audience in the "Splash Zone" could expect to wear home their share of strawberry-flavoured "blood" splatter. 

I saw both productions and I bought shirts at both productions but I BELIEVE I bought this shirt at the touring company production of the show at the Vogue Theatre. 

 

I appreciate shirts that use more than the traditional canvas

The mythology behind the first Evil Dead movie was that the crew had a budget of $1000 and a week to shoot the show. They supposedly spent $600 on beer and pizza the first weekend they were on location and created the rest of the highly camp horror movie with whatever the cast and crew could innovate for the remainder of the money in the time left. Years later, Raimi and Campbell teamed up (with a more substantial budget and possibly less beer and pizza) for Evil Dead 2 wherein Campbell's character, Ash, from the first film inexplicably decides to take his new girlfriend to the same cabin where his friends had been brutally slaughtered the last time. As the definition of insanity could have predicted, the exact same plot deploys except that this time with better special effects and Ash ends up catapulted into the demon realm... cut to Army of Darkness and a Blue Light Special.

Halloween is Jeff's favourite "holiday". In years past, he and his friends would put together a charity fund-raising haunted house. Since losing access to an actual house to decorate, that activity has waned. Last year, he literally made small children flee from our door crying. You EARN your candy when you come to our door. I've always had mixed feelings about Halloween myself. As a younger child, we lived where neighbours were far enough away that they were best visited by car and then, when I was older and living in Saskatoon, there were only a few costumes that fit comfortably over a snowsuit or believably under a winter coat. The year in high school when our social circle went Halloween "caroling" for Food Bank items was probably my best Samhain celebration to date. 

Anyone out there have a Halloween tradition they want to share?   

So whether you do the Time Warp or the Necronomicon (<<skip to 2:40 in the video) or just enjoy waving your boom stick at passer-bys, have a safe and awesomely spooky All Hallow's Eve!