I love fall. And I REALLY love October, because I LOVE Halloween. I’ve got two boxes full of costumes and decorations that I’m constantly adding to, my pantry is full of everything pumpkin spice, and my DVD shelf is lined with 100 or so horror flicks. And the best thing about all this is: I am not alone.

Seattle has a ton of spooky goodness happening over the next few weeks, so I wanted to highlight just a few of them.

This Is Halloween! A Live Music, Cabaret, Burlesque and Film Spectacular
{10/26-10/31 | The Triple Door | $30 adv/$35 day of | 21+ | click here for show times}

Of all the Halloween things, a Tim Burton-themed burlesque show seems the Halloween-iest! And “a spectacular smorgasbord … inspired by “The Nightmare Before Christmas” sounds like a super-fun to spend an evening. Plus, it’s at the Triple Door. I LOVE THE TRIPLE DOOR.

Scarecrow Video presents the VCR That Dripped Blood
{10/27 | Grand Illusion Cinema | 9pm | $8 GA, $5 member}

A compilation of rare horror VHS footage culled from Scarecrow’s archives, featuring blood, special F/X, nudity (!!!), general mayhem … and Alice Cooper. Of course. I can’t even express how completely awesome this is gonna be, you guys.

Can’t Look Away: The Lure of Horror Film
{EMP Museum | part of the $20 admission price | Open daily 10am-5pm}

I could spend hours in this exhibit, because I love, love, love looking at all the awesome horror movie props, and listening to Eli Roth, Roger Corman, John Landis and more talk about their favorite horror films. They just swapped out some stuff and added a BtVS spell book and the scary flying metal ball from Phantasm 2—and the Scream booth is SO MUCH FUN. If you haven’t been yet, you need to go. And this month is the perfect time to do it.

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I’ve said it before: I know all this streaming/on demand business is convenient because you don’t have to get off your ass in order to pick a film to watch, but I am a child of the 80s and I still really love going to an actual video store, browsing the aisles, reading the backs of boxes, and leaving with a few choice (or you know, not so choice) picks.

On Saturday, Scarecrow Video is blowing up this year's Independent Video Store Day with the following awesomeness:

- A sweet VHS Art New Wave Show
- A Scarecrow on Seattle rental section
- Coffee & Chai samples from VHSpresso
- Limited Edition Scarecrow Tees & Tote Bags for sale
- 50% off used movies for sale (blu-rays, DVDs, VHS – even Laserdiscs) - Saturday & Sunday
- $3 off new blu-rays & DVDS
- 10 rentals for $35

And! You can enter to win prizes: 
- A Full Series pass to the 2013 Seattle International Film Festival
- A theater rental at Grand Illusion Cinema
- Cinema Screening passes for NWFF
- Screening passes to Landmark Theatres
- $25 gift cert + 4 movies passes to Central Cinema
- 5-disc set The Story of Film: An Odyssey 
- A Blu-ray & region-free DVD player
+ tons of cool giveaways JUST for walking in the door!!! !! !!! !

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{The American Scream screens at the Grand Illusion Cinema on Saturday, October 6 at 9pm and 11pm as part of their Curse of All Monsters Attack! Program this month}

The American Scream is one of those amazingly awesome documentaries full of people that make you cry because they are so damn passionate about what they’re doing.

And in this case, what they’re doing is setting up “Home Haunts”, which means running full-scale haunted houses every Halloween that they put together themselves, and pay for with their own money. (I swear, if we ever got trick-or-treaters at our house, and our yard was bigger than a walk-in closet, I’d be doing the same thing!)

Directed by Michael Paul Stephenson (who played the kid in Troll 2, and directed Best Worst Movie), this intensely personal doc follows three families in Fairhaven, MA who put on complicated haunted houses every year: Victor Bariteau, Manny Souza, and Matt & Rick Broudeur work all year long to make sure the neighborhood kids have a good time on All Hallows’ Eve.

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{The Oranges opens in Seattle on Friday, October 5, and is screening at Sundance Cinemas Seattle}

The Oranges is one of those movies that I really WANTED to be good, because it has an incredible cast: there are strong performances from Hugh Laurie, Catherine Keener, Allison Janney, and Alia Shawkat – rounded out by some nice supporting roles from Oliver Platt, Adam Brody, and yes, even Leighton Meester. Unfortunately, there’s just not much for them to “perform”.

The character focus is all over the place, starting with some narration by Vanessa (Shawkat) Walling, who begins the movie by warning us of the evil contained within her former best friend and across-the-street neighbor, Nina Ostroff (Meester), who, since sophomore year of High School, has ignored Vanessa and over-shadowed her by succeeding at doing everything Vanessa wants to, but can't motivate herself to do. 

The Wallings (Laurie & Keener) and the Ostroffs (Janney & Platt) have always been best friends, apparently doing everything together, as you know, suburban couples with children the same age do. But when free-spirit/world-explorer Nina returns for Thanksgiving after a 5-year absence, everyone’s suburban paradise is shaken when David and Nina start having an affair.

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It's the fourth year of the Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival, and since y'all know I love me some horror and fantasy movies, y'all also know that I am beyond excited. 

This year the fest is screening 5 features and over 40 shorts that focus on action, animation, fantasty, horror, and science fiction. You can get an entire festival pass for only $60 and see EVERYTHING, or pick individual screenings for $10 a pop. Tickets and passes will be availalbe at both venues: The SIFF Film Center and SIFF Cinema Uptown, or you can grab 'em online here. 

Among the features I'm personally exicted about are The Human Race, which has sort of a Series 7: The Contenders vibe to it, but likely WAY bloodier, as it involves way more people (the trailer is pretty wicked), and The Big Black, about heaven/hell/angels/demons - I don't know. It just looks awesome! There are too many great-looking shorts to mention, but I encourage you to peruse the schedule and pick a package that speaks to you. 

{Maelstrom International Fantastic Film Festival | Oct. 5-7 | SIFF Film Center, SIFF Cinema Uptown | $60 full series pass, $10 individual screenings (and shorts packages)}

{Solomon Kane opens in Seattle on Friday, 9/28, and is screening at Sundance Cinemas Seattle}

Of course I’m going to volunteer to see a period piece (kind of) starring James “smoldering eyes” Purefoy as a swashbuckling, demon-fighting hero. Of. Course.

Based on a popular pulp character from Weird Tales magazine in the 20s, Solomon Kane is dude whose sole purpose is to wipe out the evil that is constantly trying to take over the world and ruin everybody’s good, pure time by eating people and causing general mayhem and destruction.

Solomon Kane is set up as his origin story, and is clearly meant to kickoff a series of Kane films. Unfortunately, during some marauding, Solomon pisses off a bunch of mirror demons and in the chaos, his soul is promised to the devil. Naturally, he gives up his life of violence for religion and peace—until he befriends an innocent family and f’s things up be bringing down some demon vengeance, resulting in death of their son and the kidnapping of their virginal daughter.

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What better way to kick off October than with a double feature of animated Burton-y goodness? Look, I know the guy has made some mistakes lately (I can't even talk to you about Dark Shadows … it's just. I ... macrame?!?!?! yeah), but he sure does know how to create some beautiful animated films that fill my former teenage Goth girl heart with much barely beating, deep black love.  

One of those animated masterpieces is The Nightmare Before Christmas, which I am admittedly a bit obsessed with. I don't trust anyone who doesn't smile at the antics of the confused Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington, and his misguided attempt to take over another holiday. 

The second, which I have been highly anticipating, is the animated remake of Burton's beloved 1984 live-action short Frankenweenie. I recently unearthed my prized Frankenweenie cutout from my video store days, and just looking at it and thinking about the awesomeness of the new film makes me all squee-happy, wild-eyed, and jumpy. With an official opening date of 10/5, that means this is a sneak peek! yayyyyyyyyyyyy! 

You guys, I am an addict, and my drug is Tim Burton stop-motion animation. 

Anyway! For only $15, you can seat yourself at SIFF Cinema Uptown on Tuesday, October 2, and see these two features back-to-back in 3D -- with a special appearance by award-winning animation producer Allison Abbate (who has worked on all of Burton's animated films). I'm in. How 'bout you? 

{Tim Burton 3 Animated Double Feature | SIFF Cinema Uptown | October 2, showtime 6:30pm | No late seating | $15 GA, $10 for SIFF Members }

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{The Seattle premiere of An Encounter with Simone Weil is at The Northwest Film Forum Monday, 9/24, and it screens through Thursday, 9/27. The Thursday showing includes a special introduciton by The Stranger editor Chrisopher Frizelle.} 

Totally intense philosopher, political agent, and spiritual worker Simone Weil was sort of the Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins, and Dave Bazan of the 20th century revolutionary world. Born in 1909 and raised in a standard French bourgeois home, she was obsessed with the plight of the suffering, and the mechanics of oppression. All over the world, on every level of human existence. The way that a lot of artists and musicians are, or want to be seen as if they are. But when it comes to revolution, her drive was actualized in her own habitual writing, union organizing, mystical visions, and eventual death in 1943.

Some might think of it all as a neuotic waste, but a lot of others (including cultural maven Susan Sontag) found deep inspiration from even its most pathological extremes. 

Weil's tornado of doubt-infused living is solemnly and seriously documented by historical and activist filmmaker Julia Haslett in An Encounter with Simone Weil, who approaches the material with the ferocious focus required.

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"Bill W." was a synthesizer. A human synthesizer, that is, someone who took an analogue expression and somehow craftily made something needed out of it for the world in a pinch. Something that was there before, but not easily accessible without a lot of training or experience on the part of the person who wanted in. He put together ideas about how we need so desperately to talk to each other, to earnestly fellowship in equality, to have secret societies where he can be utterly humble and deeply admit our weakness.

Like his fellow 20th century replicant of addiction-prophecy, "Wild Bill" Burroughs, their raspy, patrician voices start off in bomb-bursts of declaration ("laying it all outh there, no matter what you think of me") then likewise trail off into momentary flickers between naked universal connection and alien observation. As if they're both astronauts floating in a glass bowl spaceship above time, growing sadder and sadder at humanity (their own and in general) by the minute. They both made many mistakes, they both owned up to most. But the ideas they put together -- these are inside everything you are, make, and do now. Bill W., however, dove from the limelight, and would never have endorsed anything resembling celebrity. He also deeply changed a large chunk of humanity, more than just expressing ideas about it. 

William S. Burroughs has nothing to do with this documentary about the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, don't be deluded. But this is about the past, and the future, and seems like science fiction, which Burroughs wrote. What's even more astonishing is that the Bill we're actually talking about created a utopia, which serves citizens kindly to this day -- not a bitter-land of ancient impulses repeated into madness and murder. Bill W. is about William G. Wilson, who put together a movement in post-Depression era American based on the mathematics and manipulations he learned whilst a stockbroker before the big crash of '29, and oh yeah, his tragically driven desire to get well. 

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{Rec 3: Genesis screens at the Grand Illusion Cinema 9/13 at 9pm, and again 9/14 at 11pm}

Sometimes when filmmakers continue their horror film franchises, it doesn’t work out so well (I’m looking at you, Paranormal Activity). But while [Rec] 3: Genesis is admittedly the campiest film in Director Paco Plaza’s zombie trilogy, it’s still a nice follow-up to his previous creations, and he manages to keep changing it up enough that it doesn't feel tired. 

Also, I love camp—especially when it involves a bride running around with a chainsaw.

Yup, Genesis takes place at a wedding reception, with an unsuspecting uncle nursing a dog bite that eventually turns him feral and starts a chain reaction of guests biting guests, with massive blood splatters, screaming, and lots of torn dresses and ripped tuxedo jackets.

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