Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

To continue the recent theme of possession movies, today I'd like to talk about a movie in the same sub genre that far exceeded my expectations:   Late Night With The Devil. I didn't know a whole lot about this movie going into it. All I really need to know about a movie to want to watch it is that it's Halloween-themed. That's literally all it takes. Throw in a vintage vibe and I'm all in. Late Night With The Devil is presented in the style of a lost broadcast of a popular 70s late-night talk show known as Night Owls, hosted by a man named Jack Delroy. The beginning of the movie gives us a little rundown of Jack's career, his constant rivalry with Johnny Carson, his controversial involvement in a "gentlemen's club" known as The Grove, with questionable intentions, and eventually the tragic death of his wife, an actress named Madeleine Piper. Jack's career takes a hit while he grieves for Madeleine, but he decides that Halloween night, 1977, wi...

I recently watched last year's attempted legacy sequel/semi-reboot of the Exorcist franchise, The Exorcist: Believer.  I don't think I heard a single positive thing about this movie when it was released. The hate for it was truly inescapable within the horror community. I didn't watch it expecting a cinematic masterpiece. It was more of a "It's free, may as well see what everyone's bitching about" type of watch. I wasn't expecting to like it. In fact, I was expecting to, most likely, laugh at it. (That said, I never choose to see or not see a movie based on reviews, anyway.)  However, while it certainly is far from the most amazing and brilliant thing I've ever watched, I have to say, I failed to see exactly what was so wrong with it.  To give a quick synopsis, The Exorcist: Believer is the story of a young girl named Angela, raised by a single father after an earthquake in Haiti killed her pregnant mother. There's a whole opening sequence that...

 In 2018, I thought I was dying. It wasn't a health scare, at least not a physical one.  I was losing myself. 2018 was a truly transitional time for me. At the time, I was living with my parents, along with my boyfriend at the time, who I'd been with for over a decade. They say you never know what the next day is going to bring, and April 2018 was proof of that.  Around the middle of the month, I made the decision to end my relationship, for several reasons, one being complicated feelings I had for someone else. I was in the process of figuring all of that out, when, not more than a week later, my father abruptly decided it was time to retire, put the house up for sale,  and move to Florida.  I don't do well with change on a good day. But dealing with all of this at once was rough. I was facing a breakup, a possible new relationship, and suddenly potential homelessness, all at once. (If you know me at all, you'll understand that moving to Florida was never a con...

Every year, it amazes me more and more how Halfoween has caught on.  I mention every year, either here or on Instagram or both, how I started calculating the halfway point to Halloween when I was fourteen. It was something I did to make the wait feel less eternal, to know that we were getting somewhere. I had no one to really talk to about it, at the time, but knowing when we were halfway there was a comfort to my always-yearning-for-Halloween soul. Years later, I finally heard the term "Halfoween", thanks to an ad for the tv series iCarly. I googled the term, and found that most people who celebrated (which at the time were mainly bars trying to draw a crowd), considered Halfoween to fall on May 1st.  From that moment on, I did what I could to celebrate it. Even took off work on that day for many years, when my schedule was more flexible, to do whatever I could to make it feel like somewhat of a second Halloween. Movie marathons, photoshoots, cemetery walks...it was strange,...

Before I start this review, I feel like I should preface this by saying, if there was some sort of target audience for this season, I'm well aware that it wasn't me. A desperation for pregnancy and motherhood is not something I will ever understand or relate to, and I, in general, am grossed out by pregnancy and everything that comes with it, so this season was turning my stomach before it even got into anything overtly horrific. Also, like much of the fandom, I was unimpressed with the majority of the casting. However, Kim Kardashian's Siobhan wound up being my favorite character, solely because she had some great lines. But anyway. Delicate is the story of Anna Victoria Alcott, an actress teetering toward washed up, who desperately craves motherhood. She seeks out the help of New York's greatest fertility doctor, Dr. Hill (notably portrayed by Denis O'Hare, who I would watch read the phone book, but I really don't have much to say about his performance in this...

This past week, as I've watched the Easter displays in stores disappear, I've felt the heaviness of the end of a holiday, more than I usually do. I don't do much to celebrate Easter anymore...to me it's more of a children's holiday, celebration-wise, what with the egg hunts and Easter Bunny lore and all, but I do feel a great deal of nostalgia when I think about it. This past season was eye-opening for me when it comes to the impression Easter made on me as a child, realizing how many memories I have attached to it, though I doubt it could ever be a favorite holiday ever again, at least in the traditional sense. Was I sad to see it end after the wave of nostalgia it brought me? Of course. But that also doesn't mean that I can't still think about those things now. It's long been established that living life by a calendar is absolutely beneath me.  I've realized, now, though, watching the displays get taken down and torn apart and built back into somet...

  It's hard, sometimes, not to feel like a costumed clown, out in a world that you feel no real connection to, except for during that one specific time.  I wonder, sometimes, am I the fool? Or is it everyone else? Do I sit behind a billowing black veil, unable to see past the shadows, or is it that no one else really sees me, or even the potential within themselves to be more than they are? Sometimes it feels like a cruel joke, to fit in for a season and then be cast out once again.  But how, I must ask, can it be foolish to simply live your own truth? To do what makes you happy, regardless of how others perceive you?  Perhaps I will sit behind this veil forever then, or at least until my time comes again. I don't think it's foolish, at all.