Halloween (1978) - Newspaper Ad [Oakland Tribune - November 15, 1978]

On October 25th my Facebook feed was peppered with posts celebrating the fact that John Carpenter's Halloween opened in theaters and drive-ins for the very first time on October 25, 1978. Because, more than likely, that is the earliest date that is listed on its IMDB page.

While this might be true, the number of theaters it played in was quite small. I was surprised to learn that Halloween never had a wide theatrical release. That it never played in more than 200 theaters at any given time. It would open in a market, play for a week or two, then move on to the next.

Which explains how and why Halloween first opened at a theater or drive-in near me on November 15, 1978. NOVEMBER!?! The celebration of Halloween would already have been a distant memory to 11-year-old me. My heart would be focused on Thanksgiving and, even better, Christmas.

So it should come as no surprise that I have no memory of this release, at all.

Halloween would first ping my blossoming horror geek radar when this issue of Newsweek arrived in the family mail.

Newsweek - June 18, 1979

This is where, buried amongst the coverage of the looming releases of Alien, Prophecy, and Dawn of the Dead, that I learned that a movie called Halloween existed. I am pretty sure that Phantasm, The Brood, and maybe even The Dark were also mentioned in the cover article.

Although the positive word of mouth of audiences, and the acclaim of critics, was beginning to grow around Halloween, the article's coverage was pretty basic. It stated that Halloween, a scary sleeper hit, would be getting another release in the fall and offered a single image from the film. That of a sheeted figure standing in a doorway. But it was enough to get me interested and excited about seeing this movie called Halloween.

7 Doors of Death [The Beyond (1981)] / Superstition (1982) - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - November 14, 1985]

How on earth did I miss out on catching this banger of a "Cursed House" double feature? 

If I had gone to see this, then I would have been able to have seen at least one Lucio Fulci movie on the big screen. Granted, this would have been in a somewhat edited version, but still.  It would have been a Lucio Fulci movie, on the big screen. Come on.

Superstition is also a whole lot of fun and well worth checking out.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - November 11, 1984]

I was living overseas, in Hong Kong, when A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in the United States in November of 1984. So I have zero memories of it as a theatrical release or viewing experience. Never saw the poster hanging in a lobby, nor did I see any TV spots for it. Because I was not there. So it goes.

It was not until Fangoria's 43rd issue arrived in the mail and I read a letter in The Postal Zone that praised a film called A Nightmare on Elm Street for creating an ultimate boogeyman that I became aware of its existence. What was this movie with a villain the letter writer deemed capable of scaring Jason Voorhees himself?

This praise both intrigued me and made me anxious to see this "ultimate boogeyman" film. Which I was able to in, I believe, the Thanksgiving weekend of 1985. When I rented the movie on home video. It not only managed to scare the shit out of me, but it also kept me awake that night. As I was afraid to fall asleep.

Something that would not happen again until, 25 years later, an opening night viewing of Paranormal Activity rendered me too scared to sleep. Good times.

The Stand by Stephen King - Newspaper Ad [San Francisco Examiner - November 5, 1978]

Having just read and reviewed a book about the 1918 influenza epic, why not share this newspaper ad hyping the release of Stephen King's End Times epic The Stand?

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, there was a lot of chatter and jokes about Captain Trips and such. There were even chain letter tweets sharing and spreading, back when there were tweets worth sharing and spreading, the eighth chapter of the novel, which charted the explosive spread of the super flu.

Further back in time, however, I struggled to get through the totality of The Stand. I could make it as far as the end of the plague, but would start to lose patience with the seeming meandering pace of this behemoth novel. Then again, I was all of eleven or twelve at that time and had the attention span of a gnat. So it goes.

I also remember being super disappointed to learn that the Star Wars invoking cover art, featuring a sword-wielding Luke Skywalker type fighting a scythe-wielding crow creature of some kind, did not happen in the book.

Although props should be given for that art, which does a great job of invoking the epic fantasy vibe of the work more so than the epic horror expectations this potential (and future constant) reader had in the early months of 1979.

Further props for it invoking both the grim reaper, via the scythe, and the plague, via that beaked countenance. I love it.