31 Days of Halloween 2012: The Halloween Tree

An appreciation by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Reading down the "31 Days of Halloween" project foisted upon readers of the Cleveland Movie Blog has indeed been an education, even for someone such as I, having considered myself a trashhound of longstanding. Truly, I've never heard of most of these movies, or at least heard nothing much good about them. Bob Ignizio - who walked out on BATTLESHIP, mind you - just gave much love to a movie called NUDE FOR SATAN. Yes, NUDE FOR SATAN. The most inappropriate combination of words ever put together, except maybe "Ingenuity Cleveland." Yet he liked it!

(For my part, I did at least see another 31 Days of Halloween recommendation, BLOODY PIT OF HORROR. It was for sale at a distant thrift store near where I had an interview for a job opportunity that might have turned my life around; I figured it would make a whack souvenir of the interview. I didn't get the job. So any negative opinion I might express here about the worth of BLOODY PIT OF HORROR is likely to be affected by despair, regret and resentment; maybe decades from now I'll evaluate more objectively.)

Dope Island: Everybody Loved Ray: The Best Bradbury Feature You Never Saw

By Charles Cassady, Jr.

Was I just not paying close attention, or were the media observances of Ray Bradbury’s death at 91 this June pretty subdued? Some old guy in California croaked; don’t worry, no Kardashians were harmed. That’s the kind of thinking I fear goes on in what newsrooms remain operational these days.

One of the most heartfelt tributes to the fantasy-oriented author-poet-playwright hailed from local novelist Les Roberts on his website www.lesroberts.com; I urge all to read it who know of Ray Bradbury as more than just someone whose stuff you had to ingest in school. For myself, I can only say that when I was a young lad a next-door neighbor girl, Rita, gave me a paperback of The Martian Chronicles as a Christmas gift. She was almost apologetic about it; she had no idea what I wanted and just grabbed the first book on the rack at the drugstore. Needless to say, the book (which was not a homework assignment) held me absolutely spellbound, and I’ve always been grateful to her.