HAWK TALK – Hawktober

I find that a lot of the best X-Men stories seem to be horror stories. Not scary, per se, but at least unsettling. The Brood Saga, Mutant Massacre, Inferno, X-Tinction Agenda and, of course, Demon Bear. If you took away the powers these would be terrifying stories because the villains are essentially monsters (even those in human shapes).

So my most infamous costume was when I was 6 and super into X-Men, I decided I wanted to get my Halloween costume early, so I got one early September (because, young Devin was on brand and liked to get things done ASAP). Problem was…I grew quite a bit between then and Halloween, so it was some very tight spandex on my 6 year old frame. My family came to call it “the obscene Wolverine.”

As far as future costumes, one of my favorites as a kid was when I was 10, I took a chef costume and then a bunch of plastic bugs and rats and attached them and covered my outfit fake blood and became a Gross Gourmet (very spoopy). As an adult on my own, I’m proudest of a homemade The Monarch costume, but couples’ costume I definitely gotta give to when my then boyfriend, now husband and I went as Elmer Fudd as Siegfried and Bugs Bunny as Brunhild.

As far as fall traditions, it’s gotten weird since moving to LA ten years ago. For some stupid reason, while LA summers are mildish (i.e. ranging from high 70s to 80s), LA falls are viciously hot (we just finished up a weeklong heatwave in the 90s, sometimes it’ll crack 100 for a week), so it’s hard to embrace the cozy. Some years, my friends and I travel to Julian (up in the mountains, so cooler, and pretty much an old mining town that’s all about apples, cider, pie, and donuts), enjoy nights that dip into the 40s, watch Hocus Pocus and Tree House of Horrors, and generally eat for a weekend, but alas not this year.

I will confess I’m DEFINITELY more of a Christmas guy (especially now since that’s when it actually starts cooling down), so perhaps my favorite fall tradition is letting Christmas encroach more and more every year (the tree is going up some point Halloween weekend this year).

Also, Jay and my husband share a birthday AND both turned thirteen on Friday the 13th (although he’s 5 years younger).

I find I’m sort of ambivalent to Hallowe’en. The part of the world I’m from and at the time i was a kid, Hallowe’en wasn’t a very big deal, normally because it was either bucketing rain and/or freezing cold.

We might carve turnip lanterns (Never pumpkins, which weren’t a big thing over here until some soul-less Hallowe’en marketing SOB decided it would be) which as as much fun as it sounds because those suckers were rock hard right the way through. You’d bob for apples perhaps, but that might be about it.

Some people went “Guising” (not “Trick or Treating”, at least not until American pop culture made it a thing at some point in the 90’s I think) where you had to do a party piece (like sing or recite a poem) to get a treat, but not many kids did (I know I didn’t), and certainly no adults (Hallowe’en was purely a children’s event).

God, I feel like an old fogey now. I might shout at you to get off my lawn… if I had one.

Hallowe’en movies I might go for would include Fright Night (the original, because Roddy McDowell and all the gay subtext you could hope for in the fate of “Evil” Ed. Then there’s “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon” a documentary about an aspiring “slasher” wanting to achieve prominence in a field where his idols Jason and Michael and Chucky have gone before. A bit meta for some tastes, but Leslie is thoroughly engaging as wannabe masked psychopaths go, and it’s REALLY funny too) and perhaps “Hellbent” a 2004 slasher about a group of gay friends being stalked on Hallowe’en night, and which actually makes you care about the characters before they meet their fate.

Henry Selick’s (with some assistance from the Burton chap) “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “The Corpse Bride” would also be high on the list.

I think the Vincent Price movie one Jay might have been looking for but didn’t mention was “Theatre of Blood”, featuring Price at his most gloriously hammy as a dreadful Shakespearean actor killing the critics who had panned him, in suitably Shakespearean style, and accompanied by the late, great Diana Rigg as his daughter. (Though delightful though it is, I don’t think his was the creepiest episode they had on the Muppet Show, look up Marisa Berenson singing “You’re Always Welcome at Our House” sometime, it’s genuinely disturbing!)

Vincent Price was one of those people, the more you learn about him the more remarkable he was. He was an actor, raconteur, gourmet chef and respected art collector. IIRC Christopher Lee said something along the lines of the only thing that frustrated him about being friends with Vincent was that he always knew MORE than you did, and he was never smug or superior about it, it was just what being Vincent involved. You recommened a book to Vincent, it turns out he’s not only read it, he’s writing the foreword for the next edition. You recommend a new poet, he can already quote them perfectly, you see an art exhibition, turns out he helped curate it and so on…

I can think of a few scary themed X-Men stories, there’s NEw Mutants 64’s the “Night of the no-longer-living Doug”, of infamous memory, and the story in New X-Men #7-9 about the ghost of a student who died in the “Riot at Xaviers” arc who haunts the school.