Trick or Treat?
Apparently San Francisco mayor
Gavin Newsom, seen here trying on his new Halloween costume, didn't get the memo from his own office that the City of San Francisco had canceled all public Halloween celebrations in the city, including the traditional
Halloween in the Castro party. As announced Wednesday by San Francisco City officials, there will be "no official Halloween celebration anywhere in San Francisco in October" (including at the downtown
AT&T parking lot, which was rumored as a possible alternative party spot to the Castro). This decision is no doubt due to violence at previous Halloweens in the Castro -- notably last year when a shooting incident left nine people injured. Therefore, the normally celebratory Mayor Newsom, who just over the past few days named August "
Barry Bonds Month" and named Wednesday "
Virgin America Day" (as in the
Richard Branson airline), could easily have named October "
SF Halloween-Hater Month."
While I do not wish to see anyone hurt anywhere at any time, I think that this move by the city of SF is BULLSHIT and it reminds me of when you are a kid in school and some clown in the class would do something wrong and instead of punishing the perpetrator the teacher would, unfairly, punish the entire class. And just like in those school days, when the teacher's actions merely frustrated and aggravated the law-abiding majority, so too will this action by the city officials of SF merely frustrate the average Bay Area resident who wants to enjoy a San Francisco tradition -- Halloween in the Castro. It is also not unlike the move several years ago by the leaders of the city across the Bay, who voted to shut down Oakland's famed traditional
Festival at the Lake (Lake Merritt) due to many young black males "cruising" in their cars and incidents of violence in the surrounding neighborhoods (not even at the Lake). And did the Oakland police action curb violence in the East Bay city? Not at all
!
I have been obsessed with Halloween and the Halloween movies for as long as I can remember. This holiday and the original 1978 film will forever be intertwined together in my memory. John Carpenter is absolutely without a doubt a genius. He created the most successful independent film of all time with his original Halloween. This movies remains brilliant to this day and still manages to be scary. It really reinvented the horror movie and sort of set up the rules for the horror movies of the 80's. The second Halloween film was almost as good but the following sequels became worse as time went on. I saw every one and quickly realized the franchise was getting ridiculous with the last couple films. I remained loyal but it was really time for the series to be reinvented. They needed to go back and start all over again. But before the original even started. Similar things have been happening with other film franchises lately. Both the Batman and Superman movies had become ridiculous. Really only the first couple of both were
good. Both Batman and Superman were reinvented in the last couple years. It worked amazingly well with the Batman franchise and "Batman Begins." The film gave a completely new look to the series with a great new storyline. It kept what was good about the story and just built on that. This did not work so well for "Superman Returns." I am still waiting for the deluxe version of the entire Halloween series to be released on DVD like they did with Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday the 13th. There is a box available as an import but nothing yet domestically. 
Many horror films have also been remade in the last couple years. It seems to never work. These original films, The Omen, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Wax Museum, etc., hold such importance in our eyes as horror movie fans. We grew up with these films and have every detail about them memorized. It is a hard task for a director to go into such sacred ground and try and update and reinterpret these original films. Horror movies have never been the same lately. Never as good. Never as
scary as they once were. So when I heard that Halloween was getting remade this year, I was very excited but also very worried. I thought Rob Zombie was the perfect director to try and reinterpret this brilliant original film. But I was also worried for him and the response he would get from those crazy dedicated horror fans. The movie opened over labor day weekend as the most successful movie for that weekend ever. But of course many fans are really upset that Rob Zombie has ruined their Halloween. But I wonder how many of these people have actually seen the movie. I saw it on Monday and I was more than impressed. And it was scarier than anything I have seen in the theater in a long while.
