Spooky Edition

"Screamityville: A Frightseeing Tour" - (Blu-ray from Borderline Media Group)

You won't see one single living soul in this new film, a nearly 90-minute tour of homes with their front yards done up for Halloween. And these are no ordinary Halloween houses; they are all over the top! And the cinematography is excellent in showing these displays featuring some general and some themed arrays with ghosts and ghouls, monsters and madmen and of course skeletons and Jack-o'-lanterns galore. Evil clowns offer "free hugs," witches lurk and cackle, severed heads and limbs abound and the Grim Reaper makes an appearance too. Some of the themed houses focus on ghosts, a cemetery, freak show and spooky forest. Eyeballs dangle out of skulls and there's a scene with a skeletal prisoner sitting in an electric chair; obviously he's already rode the lightening! Scary figures move and bounce up and down, zombies stagger and there's an (aww it's cute!) skeletal horse hooked up to an old fashioned hearse. All your favorite Halloween tropes are here, in spades. Some of these displays use lots of lighting, including lighted creature eyes but others keep the lighting minimal to add to the eeriness. There is no narration over the footage but there is a soundtrack featuring scary sounds and occasionally there's a "jump" moment when a loud thunderclap aligns with a close up of a particularly frightening scene. "Screamityville" will be great fun when you screen it at your Halloween party.

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