Time for one last Throwback Thursday photo for this Halloween season! My first three posts were hilarious photos from Halloweens long past: Halloween 1974-75, Halloween 1976-77, and Halloween, 1978-79. It's a great glimpse into a young boy's quest to finally find a "cool" trick-or-treat costume...
For the final installment, I'm going to jump ahead from the previous posts. I'm going to revisit Halloween, 1987 and a photo that I have never posted before!
In 1987, I was 14 years old. My partner-in-crime Jim and I were inseparable. We skated together. Listened to punk rock music together. And we loved all things horror! The 1980s was the golden age of horror films and were were both hooked! We managed to watch all of the Halloweens, Friday the 13ths, and Nightmare on Elm Streets that we could get our hands on. We even got to see a few underground flicks like Pieces, Motel Hell, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and An American Werewolf in London. The horror section at the local video store was a gold mine!!
Our bible was Fangoria Magazine. We would scour each issue, paying special attention to the groundbreaking practical effects in all of the stories. And then we'd order all the catalogs that we could from the mask and f/x companies that advertised in the back of the mag. It was pure magic.
And during the Halloween season, we began to experiment with our own practical makeup effects. A far cry from the days of the old plastic Ben Cooper costumes!
Every time I see this photo, I laugh. It's a perfect snapshot of the time, showing exactly what we were into back then.
Simple wound appliances with cheap fake blood and rough makeup. And check out my mullet! Jim was always a mask guy, and rocked this gory masterpiece. (PLEASE NOTE: if anyone knows what company created this one, we would LOVE to know. He has been wanting to get another copy of it in his collection!)
This photo was taken at my grandmother's house. She had the perfect neighborhood to really score the candy during a night of trick-or-treating. It was actually one of the last years we went out, although we then transitioned into hitting as many haunted houses as we could during the season. And with living in Northeast Ohio, there were a TON of haunted houses to visit.
I get super nostalgic when I see this, because it reminds me of that weird time when we were no longer kids, but not quite teenagers. But it always makes me feel really good because these two ghouls are now 31 years older and they still dress up and celebrate Halloween together, visiting haunted houses, running our yard haunts and keeping the spirit alive for the next generation.
Happy Halloween everyone!
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