I don’t really have time to do anything elaborate or nearly so on Halloween. The circumstances of the country, the world, and myself have conspired to make it difficult to do everything I want to do on time. This is too bad because it is, in a weird and contradictory way, one of my favorite holidays. It’s also about my favorite time of year. I share that with Ray Bradbury, a great sci-fi writer of the past who is now apparently mostly forgotten except among aficianados.

I will give a brief account of Halloween. You can find this on the Wikipedia(I used it as my source)but I did know something about it and can add, perhaps a little background.

This is an old holiday. Some, I believe, have traced it to ancient Greece but details are hazy. Certainly, the Greeks’ inheritors and eventual conquerors, the Romans played a small role. But the real historicity seems to have come from the Celts who lived, it seems, in places over much of Europe–and perhaps some outside it–in ancient times. They eventually settled mostly in what are now Ireland, Great Britain and the northern part of France where their descendants became Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Bretons. One of their celebrations of the change of the year(Nov 1 on our calendar) was the genesis of this holiday.

Eventually the church got involved and changed Halloween by adding some things and subtracting others. I am not going to go into All Saints Day and All Souls Day now, but there is a connection. Perhaps I’ll deal with these later.

As for celebrating this year, better check out what’s on TV and at your local theatre. But I do have to comments on two of my favorite films. One of them you may know about because I did a “Ghosts of Movies Past” on it a little over a year ago. This is “The Uninvited” and if you can find it in your local library or on TV I strongly suggest you watch it. And you might want to read my review of it from last year–it’s right there, Oct 9, 2022. As I explained in that entry, this is my favorite supernatural film and I recommend it to anyone with the slightest interest in suspenseful, supernatural films.

I also want to mention “The Cat People,” which I completely forgot about last year. I guess I’ll stick with my statement then that “The Haunting” would be my second favorite supernatural film, but this one would give it close competition–perhaps it’s a two-way tie for second. “The Cat People” was made in 1942. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur, a French director, though most of the credit is usually given to Val Lewton, the producer. Lewton was indeed responsible for several good scary films about this time, and indeed launched Hollywood into the idea of doing fairly low-budget but tense thrillers, and he does deserve credit for that. But it appears that Tourneur was the guy on the set who actually made the movie(he almost got fired early on and fortunately for film history he kept the job).

The story concerns, Irena, a young Serbian-immigrant to the US who lives and works in NYC and meets Oliver, an engineer. They fall in love and marry, but there is a fly in the ointment. According to a Serbian legend some of their ancestors were devil-worshippers and some of them became “cat people,” worshippers of evil. Women of this descent are likely, if sexually, aroused, to turn into panthers with possibly violent results. Yes, it likely would have been a good idea for Irena to have told him about this before the wedding took place. The whole idea would ruin a wedding night, right? However, the trigger for her concerns seems to be that at the wedding dinner a cat-like woman, apparently Serbian, accosts her and refers to her as “sister.” This idea apparently implants itself in her mind then and simply will no go away.

In any event the story plays out against this romantic-sexual tension and the possible terror of having someone near you turn into a black panther. Not surprisingly, Oliver becomes interested in his friend and coworker Jane, who is suitably non-feline. As the characters try to unwind this issue with the help of a baffled psychiatrist, the atmosphere of tension and menace grows smoothly and rapidly.. There are several really frightening scenes in it, including one near an indoor swimming pool where Jane is about to immerse herself when she hears–well, guess what she hears in the hall outside. This is one of the most suspenseful scenes I have ever witnessed.

By the way, Tourneur and writer DeWitt Bodeen, did a nice job of balancing the necessity of getting across the heroine’s sexual hangup without violating the Hays Code. They manage to make clear what the issue is without actually saying anything that would have pushed the code guys into fits.

Obviously, I am not going to tell you what happens later in the film. But watch it, and “The Uninvited,” and if you have any liking at all for subtle and clever scary stuff(as opposed to 250 pound psychos running around committing random mayhem)I think your attention will be well rewarded. Happy Halloween.