pumpktoberfest #16 - horror in the heartland.

pumpktoberfest #16 - horror in the heartland.
film: halloween
beer: heartland brewery smiling pumpkin ale



for me, the scariest films have always been the ones whose plot make me think "damn, that could actually happen." i'm talking about films sans killer leprechauns or murderous dudes from other dimensions. of these realistic horror films, the pinnacle is john carpenter's 1978 classic, halloween. the film, which centers on a masked, escaped mental patient & non-snl dude named michael myers who terrorizes the midwestern town of haddonfield, IL on halloween night, was the first in what has since become an iconic ten film franchise. over time, the pale white michael myers mask has become synonymous with horror & carpenter's direction, which was occasionally first person & showed little to no gore but was still scary, has been copied by many directors.

the film stars a twenty-year old jamie lee curtis (in her first film role) as a babysitting teenager stalked by michael myers & donald pleasance as myers' doctor. on halloween night, myers escapes from a mental institution & returns to his childhood home to reunite with his baby sister (curtis) & murder people. with the doctor hot on his trail, myers slashes the heck out of haddonfield's horny teenagers & continues to do so until his doctor (who has been with him since myers was a child & has labeled him as "pure evil") shoots him six times in the chest, sending him over the side of a balcony. the kicker? when the doctor looks down over the side of the balcony to check on myers, he's gone. from there, the realistic aspect of halloween goes away, as myers returns for seven more films & two remakes (directed by rob zombie). regardless, the first film left me with significant, psychotically horrific chills.

my final pumpktoberfest beer is the heartland brewery smiling pumpkin ale. for years, i've been seeing heartland brewery's ads for the smiling pumpkin ale, with that slightly psychotic dude holding a pumpkin, but i never got around to trying it because it meant that i had to go to one of the city's heartland breweries, which are essentially tourist traps with good beer. case in point...tonight, i ventured into the city to finally try the smiling pumpkin ale. when i got there, i grabbed myself a seat at the bar & ordered up a pint of the smiling pumpkin ale. to the left of me was a guy whose costume was a shirt that read "mike hunt's diving school" & one of those lifeguard floatation devices on his back with the words "muff diver" written on it. he struck up a conversation with me & i learned what should have been obvious. he was from new jersey.

as for the smiling pumpkin ale, it's the only pumpktoberfest beer i've had from a tap & i'm not sure if that made much of a difference, but as far as pumpkin beers go, it's pretty damn good. in addition to the "honey roasted pumpkin," it's made with ginger, cloves, cinnamon & nutmeg, but those spices don't dominate the flavor or smell. the pumpkin flavor is definitely noticeable & it's a smooth beer that went down nicely despite the dude from jersey sitting next to me. while i'm 100% sure that i won't find myself back at heartland brewery any time soon, i'm happy that my final beer of the pumpktoberfest season ended up being a winner.

pumpktoberfest #15 - end of the road.

pumpktoberfest #15 - end of the road.
film: a nightmare on elm street 3: dream warriors
beer: post road pumpkin ale



as far as horror films go, wes craven has definitely solidified his spot as one of the top directors of all time, with an almost forty year resume that includes the hills have eyes, the serpent & the rainbow, shocker & the scream franchise. the most enduring of his films has been a nightmare on elm street, about freddy kreuger, a janitor who was killed by the citizens of springwood, OH & is now obsessed with getting revenge on them by killing their kids in their dreams. it's since become a cult classic, spawning seven more movies (only one of which craven both wrote & directed--1994's new nightmare), with a michael bay-directed remake of the original film set to come out in the spring of 2010. my favorite of the series & the only other one (other than new nightmare) that craven wrote the screenplay for is 1987's a nightmare on elm street 3: dream warriors.

it was the first nightmare on elm street film i saw & it features both the debut of a young patricia arquette & one of the best theme songs ever, "dream warriors," written by the 80s hair metal band dokken. arquette plays kristen parker, a girl who meets freddy early on in the film when he tries to slash her in her dreams with his iconic bladed glove. he doesn't kill her but when she awakens, she has cuts on her arms & her mother thinks she tried to commit suicide, so she sends her to a psych ward. when she arrives, she realizes that the other patients are the last remaining children of the mob that killed freddy & decides that she needs to protect them. freddy still manages to kill a bunch of them, usually with some wisecrack like "welcome to prime time, bitch" (when he kills a girl with a TV). as is par for the course with the films, he's defeated in the end but in the final scene, we learn that he's not actually dead. sequel!

the word on the street in brooklyn these days is that you should probably try brooklyn brewery's post road pumpkin ale before the pumpktoberfest season is over & you can no longer get one. living in brooklyn, i see this pumpkin beer pretty much everywhere i go. to be honest, since brooklyn brewery's beers are in coolers & bars all over the place, i'm starting to think of them as new york's version of sam adams. by that, i mean that while i enjoy their beers & i'd choose them over a budweiser any day of the week, i no longer think of them as anything special. in that tradition, i've sort of already grown tired of the pumpkin ale, but it's still pretty good.

one of the first things that i noticed when i opened it was that, unlike most pumpkin beers, it doesn't have an overwhelming spice smell to it. in fact, when i took my first sip, i was surprised at how little spice there actually is in it. i tasted a little bit of nutmeg, but the spices really just sit back & let the beer speak for itself. in addition, there are apparently hundreds of pounds of pumpkins in every batch, but i guess it must be a seriously big batch because while you can taste the pumpkin, there's really only a hint of it. since the spices & the pumpkin are so tame, it has a relatively smooth taste. so yeah, it's tasty but it's nothing to dream about. that's ok though, because as we've learned from the nightmare on elm street films, dreaming will get you killed.

tomorrow! my #1 horror film in the entire universe & our final pumpkin beer of the pumpktoberfest season! don't miss it!

pumpktoberfest #14 - finally.

pumpktoberfest #14 - finally.
film: final destination
beer: shipyard smashed pumpkin



i friggin love final destination. i'm indifferent towards final destination 2, final destination 3 & the final destination, but the first film in the series was just plain awesome. the film opens with this superstitious high school kid named alex getting ready for a class trip to paris. the next day, he gets to the airport & boards the plane, but while waiting for the plane to take off, he has a premonition of the plane exploding & freaks out. in the process, he, a teacher & a handful of students are removed from the plane & it takes off without them. when the plane actually does explode in midair, the horror begins, as those left behind discover that they've cheated death & death will stop at nothing to fulfill his plans. oh death. you're such a little scamp. their final destination...death. ridiculously convoluted death.

first, one of the students "accidentally" strangles himself in the bathroom & people think it's a suicide but alex is all "nuh uh. it's death trying to carry out his master plan." everyone else is all "nuh uh. you're crazy" but then another one of them gets hit by a bus & people start believing his annoying ramblings. he eventually figures out that death is killing people in the order they would've died on the plane, but despite his findings & everyone's efforts to thwart death, those left behind keep dying in more & more intricate "freak accidents."

my favorite's the one with the teacher. she's killed when she puts on a john denver record, boils some water on the gas stove & pours herself a mug of it but then throws the boiling water on the floor when she notices that it's a mug from the high school. she instead decides to get some vodka from the freezer & pours it into the same mug. the quick change in temperature cracks the side of it, but she doesn't notice & carries it all the way across the room, leaving it on top of the computer. the vodka drips inside & shorts out the computer, which starts smoking. when she goes to check it out, it explodes, shooting a shard of glass into her neck. as she flails about the house with blood gushing from her neck, the computer continues to spark, starting a fire that follows the trail of vodka back to the kitchen & blows up the stove, igniting her entire house. SO convoluted.

finally finally finally. thirteen pumpkin beers into the pumpktoberfest season, the shipyard smashed pumpkin has finally come along & proved that somebody other than southern tier can make an outstanding pumpkin beer. i've had myself 2.1 of these over the last month. i say "2.1" because last week, i totally spilled almost all of the third one all over creation, aka my apartment. it was just an awful, awful turn to the evening & i'm still coming across occasional sticky reminders of the event. the smashed pumpkin is the second shipyard beer of the pumpktoberfest season, but it's leaps & bounds above the first beer i sampled this month, the shipyard pumpkinhead. i mean, that one was aight, but this one is a high-class beer...& at $8-$10, it's well worth paying as much as you'd pay for a stupid bottle of wine.

watch me gush now...for starters, the presentation is tres swanky, from the gold foil over the cap to the quality of the paper on the label. when i first cracked it open, i gave it a good whiff & man, does it smell absolutely delish. it's spiced with nutmeg & i think there's some cinnamon & probably some other junk in there too. the pumpkin flavor's quite prominent & not in some lame ass pumpkin pie way either. overall, the taste is surprisingly smooth considering the alcohol content. that's the other bonus. it's 9.0% alcohol & comes in a big 22 oz bottle. that's largely why i was so disappointed at spilling almost a whole bottle's worth last week. i was so about to get drunk on a thursday & fate was all "nuh uh. you lose." regardless, i give the smashed pumpkin seven thumbs up!

tomorrow! my #2 horror film & another pumpkin beer! til then!

pumpktoberfest #13 - so board.

pumpktoberfest #13 - so board.
film: witchboard
beer: st. ambroise pumpkin ale



as a thirteen year-old boy, when i first laid eyes on tawny kitaen in whitesnake's 1987 video for "here i go again," i was hooked. she had big rocker hair & rolled around on the hoods of cars to the sounds of metal guitars & wore a white see-thru dress. you could totally see her underpants! at that age, she was totally my kind of chick. i didn't see her performance in bachelor party until some time in the 90s, but in 1986, she'd starred in a movie called witchboard, which i came across soon after first seeing the whitesnake video. cable tv was sort of a new thing in our house & my dad had started taping movies off of showtime. when he wasn't paying attention, i'd scan through them. that's when i came across witchboard. i fell in love with it & it TOTALLY had nothing to do with the fact that there's a scene in it that represented the first time i ever saw a specific part of the female anatomy...courtesy of tawny kitaen.

in the film, she plays a woman who becomes terrorized & eventually possessed by a ouija board because she keeps using it alone. obviously, the spirit terrorizing & possessing her (this dude named "malfeitor") is evil, so people start dying in hilarious 80s horror ways. there's a sweet impaling, a dude who gets crushed when something falls on him, all that good stuff. if you head over to youtube, there's a short montage of scenes from the film, perfect for some quick guffaws. overall though, it's a pretty spooky film. to this day i'm not so cool with using ouija boards. based on my recent dating record, i'm just as frightened of the other things i saw in the movie as well.

lucky spooky 13! our thirteenth beer of the pumpktoberfest season is the st. ambroise pumpkin ale, from our good friends north of the border in montreal. i found it late one eve/early one morn at a bodega about some twenty blocks down fifth ave from my apartment. on my evening rides home, i've been hopping off the train quite often & treating myself to the healthy/gourmet wonders they have there, from local macro vegetarian dumplings to fresh fruit to amy's teriyaki wraps to vosges chocolate bars. they also have a pretty good beer selection & on one of my pumpkin beer excursions, i came across this one completely out of the blue. with every other beer i've tried this pumpktoberfest season, i'd read about it online & was keeping an eye out for them. with this one, i was all "a canadian pumpkin beer? well i've never!"

it's actually not that bad. it's a light, smooth, orange-colored ale with a prominent cinnamon taste & smell and a light pumpkin flavor. for some reason, even though i've been beaten over the head with a number of pumpkin beer spice explosions for most of the month, i enjoyed the wealth of cinnamon in the flavor. the bottle smells like a scented candle! i give it a sept point trois! tres bien! & with that, only three more beers to go!...& my top three horror films! it's going to be a pumpktoberfestastic finish to the month! stay tuned!

pumpktoberfest #12 - legendary horr-raw.

pumpktoberfest #12 - legendary horr-raw.
film: the blair witch project
beer: elysian night owl pumpkin ale



after college, even though i'd never been camping, i wrote an unrealized masterpiece screenplay about a group of friends on a weekend camping trip. the title--"into the woods." i had dreams of making the film while on an actual camping trip with the cast & crew. we'd spend a few weekends in the woods, bond & make a film all guerilla style. a year later, i read about a film called the blair witch project. from what i gathered, it was a film made up of found footage by three filmmakers who went into the woods of maryland to film a documentary about a local legend--the blair witch. they never returned. i was intrigued, so i went to the film's website (a great early example of online film marketing) & read up on the backstory behind the film & legend. from what i could tell, shit was real.

with all the website folklore i'd absorbed floating around in my head, i caught the film at a packed kendall sq cinema on the second night it was out. when i left the theatre, i was in complete shock, walking the streets of cambridge like a zombie, feeling like i'd just seen three people's final days but saying to myself, "that wasn't real...right?" even though it wasn't, i immediately put my plans for "into the woods" on hold. i'm very susceptible to believable ghost stories. i had a high school friend who told me that on multiple occasions he'd seen his grandfather wandering the halls of his house in the suit he was buried in. now every time i think of that guy, that's the first thing that comes to mind & i still get the occasional chills from it.

as for blair witch, i went back & watched it today & while i now know that it's not real, watching those people lose their minds in the woods still made me extremely uneasy. the film does a great job of creating a believable reality. a sequel about three boston filmmakers investigating the maryland disappearances came out the following year. i never saw it, but as legend has it, it sucked. now, ten years after the original release, they're working on a new one. since folks will already know that it's not real, i don't see how a new one can be as effective as the original, but i wish them luck...milk that cow.

every pumpktoberfest season, a frightening creature from the underworld roams the streets of seattle's capitol hill looking for prey. as legend has it, back in 2003, a group of five university students were out one evening, walking down pike & celebrating pumpktoberfest when from out of the night sky an enormous bird, the elysian night owl, swooped down, mauling four of them before letting out a deafening hoot & flying off, leaving the fifth to tell the tale. since then, he's returned every year to feast on the blood of the hip capitol hill citizens. in an attempt to appease the satanic strigiform, seattle's elysian brewery developed their seasonal elysian night owl pumpkin ale.

according to the label, each barrel of it is brewed with seven pounds of pumpkin & pumpkin seeds. i'm not sure how big the barrel is, but it sounds like a lot of pumpkin regardless. it's definitely present in the flavor & color. in addition, it's conditioned with a ton of spices (nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, ginger & allspice). they really dominate the flavor, with the cinnamon standing out the most. it was almost too much, but there was just enough pumpkin flavor to balance out the spices. i'd heard a lot of raves about the beer beforehand, so i was sort of expecting something amazing, but to be honest, while i thought it was well done...it wasn't anything legendary.