Slumber Party Massacre was a big deal in my life. I can remember exactly when I watched it (at a slumber party!) and I can remember every scene and every death. Of course, at the time I knew nothing about its feminist activist writer Rita Mae Brown and her intention that the movie play as a parody of the slasher genre. I noticed nothing odd about the cheesy acting and lines like “Your tits are growing” and “Are you gonna eat the dead guy's pizza?”. The fact that the supposed eighteen years olds were played by thirty year olds was not a problem for me, since at that age, eighteen did seem really old and mature.

All I knew was that I was scared. And that I was hooked on horror movies.

It's a classic of its kind and plays like the ultimate slasher pic, most likely to the dismay of Brown. There are exposed breasts within the first few minutes, two people are killed right off the bat, one in a locker room chase scene that had me particularly bothered as a young girl. There's plenty of time spent on classic slasher movie shots and very little time spent on character development (unless you count the part where one girl got French kissed and didn't like it as character development). Best of all there is absolutely no delving into the bad guy's past to see how he became a monster.

Why is it lately that every filmmaker lately whether telling the story of Hannibal Lecter or The Grinch thinks we need to see someone's inner demons and sympathetic past to be scared of them? This film should prove the opposite. The audience knows right away who the killer is, nothing is known about him except he killed five people before and he only speaks towards the end in a really genuinely eerie feat of acting. Michael Villella, who appears in very little else, is worth noting as the phallic 24″ drill-wielding maniac.

The Slumber Party series includes two sequels, each one different in tone, but also worth renting, especially for the coming holiday. All are out of print currently, but can be bought used from Amazon.

There are so many obscure horror movie references, some of which I haven't even seen (Lady Frankenstein, The Last House on the Left, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS) in Living Dead Girl, the Rob Zombie hit from his first solo album Hellbilly Deluxe, that even Jim, who abhors the man as a filmmaker, has have to give him his due for shear passion and encyclopedic horror movie knowledge. Even the video, directed by Zombie and Joseph Kahn pays homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari; a further display of Zombie's movie madness.

I love this song with abandon, it's one of those that, no matter where or when, I turn up really loud and rock out to like the psychobilly I certainly am not.

You know that moment, the first time you notice someone familiar as more than just some guy, but as an attractive man? Whether it's a joke he makes or a new haircut, suddenly it's like there's a new person standing in front of you. Usually said person is too gentle, too unassuming to be overtly considered sexy.

With Lance Henriksen it was the opposite. He was too freaky and frightening to be a total hunk. Even if he did end up being a good replicant in Aliens, it's like I still held onto Ripley's mistrust and misgivings. Don't get me wrong, creepy men like Nick Cave and Brad Dourif would have a much easier time bedding me than Brad Pitt or Mario Lopez–a creepy man is no problem in my book. But with Henriksen it took two viewings of Near Dark (FYI: it's just as near great and flawed the second time) to see just how cool he is.

Like really cool. Cool, like you believe entirely that he was a southern civil war general who became a vampire and grew too tough and old for this earth.

I'm sure I won't gain much admiration for saying it and I apologize right now to my beloved Werner Herzog, but I felt flat asleep during Nosferatu. I caught enough to appreciate the beauty of Isabelle Adjani though, a brilliant casting choice that makes Francis Ford Coppola seem like brain dead by comparison to cast the tepid but totally cute (and don't get me wrong, the best of the thieving celebrities), Noni Ryder, when the seductive role really requires all that jazz that Adjani's got in spades.

A sultry pout, alabaster skin, a tempting neck, expressive eyes, a love life that has included Daniel Day Lewis… Adjani, who was catapulted to fame when Francois Truffaut cast her in The Story of Adele H., will also make you crush out in The Tenant, a great film the first time you watch it, a less impressive noble experiment the second.

Plus, this woman was born in 1955 and looks more seductive than most of young Hollywood. Maybe there were other reasons she was cast as an undead–is it possible for even someone French to look this good at 52?

This Rivington Street store is so much fun, you'll feel like a kid in a candy store or, if you're actually a kid reading this, you can take that literally. Here you'll find everything from high end chocolates, dried fruits, halvah, Big League Chew to gigantic Pez dispensers, there's something for every sweet tooth. I picked up some gummy fangs and eyeball gumballs for my halloween goodie bags.

Economy Candy has been family run and owned in the Lower East Side since 1937 and its sweet treats have filled tons of halloween sacks in those years. It's a New York institution and everyone who lives here should stop by at least once, particularly if you have a soft spot for candy and/or nostalgia. This means you, Mike Stermer.

Unlike last year, where they oversold so many tickets that people waited for hours and hours to get in, this year (at least, if you get there at around 8 like we did) you won't have to fear the long lines. Whether or not you have to fear what's inside depends on who you ask; while one member of our team was physically trembling, most teenage boyfriends from New Jersey (who make up most the audience) scoffed when we asked them if it was scary as they exited the building.

It starts with a foul mouthed dead nun, which was more off-putting than terrifying but, unlike a few of the other young actresses further in, I give her credit for staying in character and going all out with her filthy talk. Shortly after that encounter we were hustled into a pitch dark corridor, a good sign, since the same gimmick when employed upstate at the Forest of Fear was possibly the scariest thing I've ever been put through. Other parts that really stood out were the room full of body bags and a lurking monster; a dining room with a real non prosthetic gigantic cannibal (think the gluttony scene from Seven) who sics his pet human on you; and a high anxiety building room with two bloody chainsaw wielding mad men who wait just long enough to freak you out.

There are a few attempts at scares that just fall flat, sometimes to the point that you want to pretend to be scared just to avoid hurting the bloody actress' feelings; and I don't know why they let the autopsy victim do his own routine “Blah, blah blah, hedge funds?!”

Sure, it's cheesy in many ways, but that's what I liked about it so much. Unlike the heady Nightmare house downtown (which was more interesting than scream inducing), this is a traditional classic: guys and girls in makeup, jumping out of the dark, yelling at you and (usually) scaring you pretty good. It's timeless and, for the thirty bucks you spend, the high production values shows. You can disagree if you like, pointing out all the plastic dummies, but I've been to quite a few horror houses in my time and the Citadel Mall certainly never had the attention to detail of moving books on the shelves and misting blood.

The Mutter Museum collection begins tamely enough with old medical journals; blood letting apparatuses; a sampling of Ben Franklin's medical inventions and some amazing etchings illustrating the gory, exaggerated details of the then-perceived-as “barbaric” act of body mutilation doctors researching anatomy preformed in the name of science–these etchings were made as a deterrent to criminals, whose corpses often ended up on the dissection table.

As you continue on though, things get creepier and grosser and, eventually, everyone reaches their breaking point. A pre teen girl lost it with the gout wax foot in a jar but her parents wouldn't let her leave. Jim got pretty disturbed with the wax faces displaying various skin diseases, like a missing nose from syphilis. My personal heeby jeeby exhibit was the real, not wax, face that had been sliced off the head and preserved

There's just something so uncomfortable about your own body decaying around you and something so disquieting about the body once it's no longer a person and no spot is more apropos to pondering these feelings than the Mutter Museum.

My favorite part of the museum (which is housed in a lovely old building with many of the displays kept in an exquisite library that feels like the kind of place Sherlock Holmes would visit) is the wall full of skulls, each marked in pen and ink with the victim's name and manner of death. Many were Romanian soldiers who had killed themselves in the 1800s, one was an eighteen year old girl hung for the murder of her children. It's an awe inspiring site and, again, it inspires a moment of unsettling contemplation.

The Mutter is part of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which was founded in 1787. The museum began when Thomas Dent M?tter, retired Professor of Surgery, donated his personal collection in 1856.

Before there was a Harry Potter there was Mildred Hubble, the gawky, unpopular worst witch at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches. Instead of always battling pure evil and saving the world, she more often has to battle catty rich witches and spends a lot of time in an awesome cake shop that I daydream about like a lonely preteen.

Most of you might be more familiar with the Fairuza Balk, Diana Rigg, Tim Curry movie version that preceded the television series and got a lot of air time in our youth. Based on the Jill Murphy collection of books, The Worst Witch is charming and fun in all formats. I've enjoyed hours (there are four full seasons worth) of the 1998 series starring Georgina Sherrington and I just found out that the series continued into 2006 with The New Worst Witch (which I have not seen yet) which follows Mildred's equally hapless cousin.

Not a single one was left at the end of my party which is why I never got my own photo of them.