Halloween Media Recommendations

Hi everyone.

Here's some recommendations of stuff that I have some experience with as far as Halloween related media.  Or, at least stuff that might go good with Halloween.  

Full disclosure, I don't watch many movies or TV shows.  Most of the stuff I watch are stuff related to media franchises or people or stuff that I'm following or interested in.  Or, sometimes stuff that I've had exposure to when I was younger.

I'm betting that most of you know of stuff like the Charlie Brown or Garfield franchise Halloween cartoons, and most of the mainstream horror franchises.  A lot of this list also doesn't really deal with that.  Most of the items on this list probably aren't also what you automatically think of as far as horror related stuff, sans one or two things.

Now here's my list of items for stuff I'd recommend for Halloween-flavored media that I've been exposed to.

The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (2010 Nickelodeon TV movie)

I've mentioned that I watched this movie recently when Teen Nick aired it, and because it had Victoria Justice in it, I decided to give it a try.  And this was with me going in knowing that it was a kids/family movie, and hence would maybe feel similar to a Halloween episode of Victorious or Zoey 101 (this was filmed between the end of Zoey 101 and the start of Victorious, interestingly).  And considering what I've said, it was a decent movie.  Being a 32 year old man, I wasn't the target audience (also, the movie had been out since 2010, about 9 years ago), and it had a lot of trappings of Nickelodeon's TV shows that were also aimed at kids and young teens.  

Granted, that's not necessarily a bad thing.  If you like Victorious, you'll probably like The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, though the only relation that the two have is that Victoria Justice portrayed the lead character on both shows and lean towards being kids/teen/family sitcoms.  It's also not overly scary for young kids and there's very little objectionable content in it, too.  And IMO, it was good for what it was.  No masterpiece, but what Nickelodeon or Disney Channel stuff aimed at kids and teens is?  Don't take it too seriously and just have fun with it.

Eye Candy

If you want to see Victoria in something that's not a family friendly teen or kid's sitcom and demonstrate that she's got some dramatic acting chops (at least in my opinion), you'll also want to check this out.  Also, if you just want something creepier than The Boy Who Cried Werewolf and aren't afraid or turned off by PG-13 rated content, this also might be for you.

Basic plot: a young woman (portrayed by Victoria Justice) who's a talented computer hacker is stalked by a serial killer and uses her hacking skills and a somewhat uneasy alliance with the NYPD to track him down whilst also trying to track down her sister, who was abducted a couple of years earlier.  

The show is definitely more mature than The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, and is aimed at the older teens who wanted a more realistic thriller series.  And IMO, Eye Candy delivers.  It's pretty creepy, not in the least that such things have been known to happen in the online dating world.  And that adds another dimension to the story of Eye Candy, in that it's somewhat rooted in reality.  Like other shows made by MTV (both Nickelodeon and MTV are owned by Viacom), it's a bit cheesy and corny, and is no Emmy winner by any means.  

But then again, I have to admit that I do find a lot of modern TV shows and such to be crap, especially on MTV.  Only two real good things that IMO came from MTV over the years were Eye Candy and Beavis and Butt-head.

But that's not selling Eye Candy short, as it's fairly creepy, even if you've seen spoilers, you'll still want to see what happens in each episode and especially how things get resolved.  Also, it does show that you can't just pigeon hole all actors or actresses who featured on kids or teens show or family sitcoms as not being very good.  As with Victorious, Ms. Justice was almost every critic's favorite part of Eye Candy, and she's not just eye candy as an actress.

The Twilight Saga

Remember what I said earlier about not watching modern TV shows or movies that often?  Again, full disclosure, I didn't know much about Victorious or Eye Candy when they were brand new.  I did catch some episodes of Eye Candy when they were new, but just a few, and I only recently started watching reruns of Victorious on Teen Nick.  This isn't helped by the fact that though I've sort of followed her a bit since 2014-2015 time range, I only seriously crushed on Victoria Justice over the last year or so.  And I really wish I crushed on her back in 2015 or earlier seeing what she's done with acting and singing/songwriting back then, though she's still working on various TV and musical projects to the present day.

However, I did follow The Twilight Saga films when they were basically new, and when the novels were still popular.  Again, we're not exactly dealing with award winning content here, and we're dealing again with stuff marketed to teens.  And with all book to film adaptions (aside from Marvel Comics properties especially being really good ones who stick to source materials and rarely take liberties), stuff gets lost or altered in translation.

That all being said, I loved and still really like the Twilight films.  The main cast did the best they could with what they were given as far as scripts go.  I know that Melissa Rosenberg is an acclaimed film and TV writer, but The Twilight Saga films aren't her best work and she was often criticized for taking too many liberties with the source material.  But the writing and such was far from the end of the World, and I've seen tons, tons worse (cough, cough, Slender Man--stay away from that pile of bovine excrement).  The films were good for what they were, and made the likes of Kristen Stewart, Rob Pattinson and Taylor Lautner millionaires many times over.  

It also saved Summit Entertainment from filing for bankruptcy.  And the previous controlling owners of Summit might not have sold controlling ownership and made more of profit when Lionsgate offered to buy majority ownership of Summit.  Face it, if not for The Twilight Saga, we possibly might not have John Wick.

Also, Twilight is a bit more "kid" friendly than the relatively creepy by comparison Eye Candy TV series mentioned and reviewed a bit above.  I wouldn't recommend it to very young kids because it does deal with mature themes and such.  But it's not ultra scary or creepy.

Bio-Booster Armor Guyver /The Guyver: Bio-Booster Armor(OVA series) and Guyver: The Bio-Boosted Armor (TV series)

OK, I know that some of you want something a bit more hardcore than Eye Candy or Twilight and much more so than The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.  And you'll probably find it here with this sci-fi action/adventure series.  

Based on a long running (though on long term hiatus) manga called Kyōshoku Sōkō Guyver
(literally in English Strength Boosting Armor Guyver, usually Romanized as Bio-Booster Armor Guyver) written and illustrated by manga artist Yoshiki Takaya, who was heavily involved in the production and writing of the OVA anime and the TV series anime, Guyver was one of the first manga/anime properties I was exposed to in my youth.  

Full disclosure again, I'm not a big manga/anime/comic book fan.  My older brother, however, is.  The Dragon Ball series, Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Deadpool, Avengers, The Punisher.  Those are just a few of the comic book and anime series that my brothers are actually into. I'm not, but Guyver is one that I'm into.

Basic plot: an organization run by alien beings operating under the cover of an international corporation bent on ruling the world, recovers three alien artifacts.  These artifacts get stolen and lost, one of which is found by a high schooler who accidentally merges with it, turning him into an unwilling armor-plated superhero.  Naturally with a manga that goes back to before I was born (Guyver was first released in February of 1985), much chaos ensues.

Guyver is probably the least mainstream item on this list, and probably the most violent.  Alien creatures getting slashed and blasted apart, eviscerated, and sometime flat out vaporized.  Granted, the violence in either Guyver series isn't very special by today's standards when it comes to anime or even live action films.  However, the first Guyver series was released in Japan from 1989-92, got released in North America in 1992-1994.  It sort of set the standard for blood and gore in anime at the time as well as a few others of the same era.  In some ways, Guyver  can maybe be compared to a cross between Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and Mortal Kombat.

Guyver also was one of the first anime or manga titles to get mainstream success in North America and part of Europe at the time.  So as far as the popularity of anime and manga outside of Japan, Guyver is one of the properties we can thank.

It should be noted that there's two series of Guyver anime. The OVA (original video animation, AKA, direct to video), which ran from 1989-1992 in Japan and was released in North America from 1992-1994 by US Renditions and 1996-2006 by Manga Entertainment.  The TV series was released in Japan from 2005-2006, and released in NA in 2006.

The basic story is the same, but there are big differences in presentation.  The OVA focused more on action, and each episode was 25-30 minutes long, and there were 12 episodes.  The TV series focused more on story telling with toned down violence, were about an hour (counting commercials) and there were 26 episodes.  So which you prefer is up to your tastes, if Guyver is to your taste, to begin with.

I do hope that I covered as many bases as I could with this list.  From kid/family friendly, to kinda creepy stuff aimed at teens, to less creepy, more light hearted teen stuff, to something along the lines of what a lot of us have come to expect from some of the more mainstream horror franchises, yet isn't very mainstream, at least outside of a dedicated audience.  

And also, these are just my personal recommendations.  You can take them or leave them, like them or loathe them, or not have an opinion on them.  This is just a list, after all.  

However, I do hope that if you read this that you'll at least be reasonably entertain and maybe learn something new.

Everyone have a good one :)