Pop Vault - Spooky Season (Part 1)

Celebrating Halloween Season

I’ll be providing updates on Spooky Season 2025, doing quick reviews of my movie watchalong, which may introduce some recommendations for films you may be interested in. I’ll also provide any gaming updates if anything feels like it fits the season.

---

Movie Watch

House on Haunted Hill - 1959 - Traditional Watch

Rating: 4.5 / 5

This is a movie I’ve started and ended my Halloween movie watch with since 2021. I used to start things off with Freaks, a film you will see in the future, but after a decade, I wanted to switch things up. Vincent Price has become an icon of horror films, and just in general, a fascinating person to research. He also happens to have one the best voices in all of Hollywood history. Price’s family owned a candy company and created taffy. He decided to pursue acting and became obsessed with more horror and paranormal stories. Price was even an envoy to Hollywood for President Eisenhower (despite being surprised at his selection due to him being a proud Democrat). While Price would go on to be remembered for numerous films (and his narration in Michael Jackson’s Thriller song), it’s this film that first comes to mind for me.

Price plays Frederick Loren, an eccentric millionaire (in 1959 that was a big deal), who invites five people to join him and his wife in a supposedly haunted house. The movie from there plays with tension, teasing Loren’s potentially dark motivations, and tries its best to scare its audience. A thing to remember with this film is that it’s a William Castle film, who liked to set his movies in theaters that would interact with the audience to make them feel like a part of the film. So, some of the scares were made with this in mind, and today feel like aged scares that are more funny than scary. Still, the real winner of the movie is the characters and their chemistry.

Vincent Price’s Loren has a witty back and forth with his wife, and it quickly becomes apparent how much they hate each other. The pilot, Lance, is always a joy to make fun of because it’s so obvious he’s thirsty for the women at the party and wants to look like a hero. There’s also a newspaper columnist, a psychiatrist who wants to disprove ghosts, and the owner of the house, who’s a complete drunk but claims to have seen all the ghosts. The main character to focus on though is Nora Manning, a young woman who’s the sole provider for her family and is the victim of many scares. Despite the plot holes, aged effects, and fast pacing, the characters are what make the film so good. By the end of the movie, there’s a twist that makes the story come full circle. Even though this is definitely a flawed film, I can’t help but love it, and it’s a film I’m going to be watching into my final years.

Alligator - 1980 - First Time Watch?

Rating - 4 / 5

My brother claims we’ve seen this movie before, but I have zero memory of it, so I’m going to count it as a first time watch. I put this on to watch a creature feature, and I ended up pleasantly surprised. The human story focuses on a cop looking to make up for a mistake he made earlier in his career. They introduce some other characters that fill out the film, and I really liked them. The humans aren’t just a kill count; they’re fleshed out better than you would expect for a movie like this. The star, of course, is the alligator, who is just absolutely huge and an unstoppable threat throughout the movie.

The effects in the film don’t age well, but it’s a pretty gory film. If you are squeamish about blood, you may want to skip this one, though. However, as I said, the effects of the body parts look fake. The gator itself is a legitimate threat, but it’s also sort of just there. The shark in Jaws did a good job balancing between monster and character, and the gator here is more monster than character, which could be because they wanted to show it as much as possible. It wraps up in what I felt was a disappointing finale. I think the way they took down the gator was less dramatic and didn’t fit for a creature feature. Still, I had a lot of fun watching this one and put it on a list of good creature features.

Grizzly - 1976 - First Time Watch

Rating - 3 / 5

We got another creature feature, but unlike Alligator, this one is fun for other reasons. Grizzly is very much a product of its time. It’s one of those movies where you immediately notice the time period, as it’s very 1970s. The movie is your standard creature feature, with a main group of humans that's fleshed out enough. However, outside of that, the film follows a formulaic format, primarily showing a bunch of kills. Unlike Alligator and most animal attack films, they don’t give an excuse for the bear attacking so many people, so they’re just straight up lying to the audience about how bears act. The acting, outside of the main group, is as bad as it gets, and some of these people have reactions that immediately make you laugh out loud. There’s also a specific scene that had me dying of laughter when a hunter encounters the bear and immediately drops his gun, realizing he was not built for this. Finally, the bear itself has attacks that feel more bigfoot than a bear, with scenes where it grabs the victim’s mouth and drags it into the bushes, which also got some laughs.

However, despite all this, I wouldn’t say this is a bad movie. It suffers from bad effects, bad directing, and it’s obviously low budget. In the end, though, this is an okay creature feature that you can enjoy with a group of friends. I never felt regret that I put it on, I just had more laughs than tension.

The Haunted Mansion - 2003 - First Time Watch

Rating - 3.5 / 5

I've heard of this movie and do remember the marketing for it as a teenager, but I've never seen it. I have seen the 2023 film, which I really liked. While it is seen as a classic among "zellenials", it also has really bad critical reviews, so I didn't have high hopes jumping into this one. I have seen the 2023 film, which I really liked. Eddie Murphy is the star here, as he plays a real estate agent, obsessed dad, checking out a house whose owner called for his wife. When they get there, the house is a creepy, massive mansion and paranormal chaos ensues. There are a couple of easter eggs from the infamous ride the movie is based on, and there are appearances from its characters, such as Madame Leota (played by the always good to see Jennifer Tilly).

I came away seeing this film as flawed. It has comedic moments that don't always hit, and you can tell they tone down a lot of the humor for the kids watching. I also felt the supporting cast of actors seemed to barely try, although you could tell Eddie Murphy was acting his ass off (despite his revelation in a future interview that he didn't think the movie came out well). That being said, I felt the reviews were way too harsh. I generally liked this as a family film, and I see why the kids who grew up with it came to see it as a part of their childhood. Not a perfect movie, but I didn't mind watching it.

Son of Frankenstein - 1939 - Traditional Watch

Rating - 5 / 5

One of my favorite movies for the season, and a damn good film just in general, is Son of Frankenstein. This is the third movie in the classic monster series, as the doctor's son arrives at his estate, met by angry locals and a surviving Ygor (played by the brilliant Bela Lugosi). The movie is more about a man losing control, as he becomes wrapped up in the shadow of his father, and I think that deserves a lot more of a look than just pointing at the monster. The camera work alone is great, especially the scene that first shows the monster approaching the younger Frankenstein. Also, not that it's a shock for the time period, but the dialogue is well written.

This is a really fun film to watch with fans of the Halloween season or classic movies, as it feels like it encapsulates the era of these Universal monster films perfectly. The plot is solid, the characters are memorable, the acting is underrated, and the entire movie ends leaving you feeling good. Something tells me this won't be the last Frankenstein film I'll be watching.

---

Gaming

When it comes to gaming, I’m still hoping Nintendo drops Luigi’s Mansion on the Nintendo Switch 2 GameCube NSO service, as I think it would be a perfect game to play during the season. Until then, I have Hollow Knight: Silksong, which does have an atmosphere similar to spooky season at times. Hollow Knight had a bit of a spooky season vibe to it as well. We will see what else pops up.

---