Editorials
11 Unforgettable Jack O’Lanterns in Movies!
Every October, people stop whatever it is they’re doing, just to make Jack O’Lanterns. Yes, ’tis the season to buy a perfectly decent gourd, stab it with a sharp object, crack it open, scoop out its intestines and make a disembodied head out of it. And while you’re at it, why not fill that head with fire? That’s a perfectly normal thing to do!
The history of Jack O’Lanterns goes back centuries, with early cultures making lanterns out of vegetables for many generations before – as it is popularly known – the Irish turned the carvings into Halloween traditions. Whether they’re used to ward off evil spirits or just to decorate the front yard, in the hundreds of years that followed, Jack O’Lanterns became one of the traditions most closely connected to the Halloween season, right up there with wearing scary costumes and pestering your neighbors for snack-sized bags of Skittles.
As such, Jack O’Lanterns frequently find their way into movies that are set at Halloween, or in films that otherwise capture the spirit of the season. Whether they’re made to be terrifying or adorable or just plain bizarre, you’re bound to have noticed some of these classic carved pumpkins in your favorite Halloween movies and theatrical releases.
Which one’s YOUR favorite?
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
Disney’s 70-year-old animated tale of terror still has the power to make kids cower. In this adaptation of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Bing Crosby narrates the tale of Ichabod Crane, a cowardly teacher who runs afoul of a decapitated spirit who carries a fiery Jack O’Lantern with him. Perhaps it’s his head, perhaps it’s just the best he can do, but either way when he throws that orange ball of hellfire at the screen, somebody always jumps. An iconic figure, and a brand new way to make pumpkins terrifying.
Trick or Treat (1952)
Speaking of Disney, back when animated shorts were theatrical releases, the studio came out with Trick or Treat, a delightful comic romp about Donald Duck playing tricks on his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie for Halloween. Unfortunately for Donald, Witch Hazel gets involved and uses her sorcery to make Donald’s night a living hell. The pumpkin in this classic short seems magical even before Hazel makes it float and sing and go “Boo!” right at the audience: how does a kid keep even a giant lit Jack O’Lantern balanced on his head like that? It’s a question that’s been puzzling kids for generations.
Halloween (1978)
John Carpenter’s original Halloween knows that Jack O’Lanterns are an absolutely essential component to any movie about the holiday. That’s why the whole opening credits are nothing but a slow zoom in on a Jack O’Lantern in the darkness. With Carpenter’s iconic, haunting score building tension in the background, the Jack O’Lantern grows from a whimsical holiday fixture to the symbol of something truly sinister. And the subtle knife image carved into the nose is just distinctive and eerie enough to stand out, even if you can’t quite figure out what it is.
Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1983)
The story of the franchise changed completely in Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and now instead of a slasher stalking a suburban neighborhood, a brand of popular masks are going to kill children all over the world as part of a mass human sacrifice. Those masks are of a skull, a witch and a Jack O’Lantern, and they’re all creepy in their classic simplicity. But it’s the Jack O’Lantern that gets the center stage as it fills a young boy’s heads with grotesque bugs and poisonous snakes!
Return to Oz (1985)
One of Disney’s several great forays into family-friendly horror, this vicious sequel to the classic Wizard of Oz stars Fairuza Balk as Dorothy Gale, who’s forced to undergo shock therapy because she thinks she went to Oz. The trauma sends her flying back to the magical realm but all of her old friends are missing, so she has to make new ones – like the aptly named Jack Pumpkinhead – to save them from a terrifying Nome King, and a princess with a hallway full of severed heads. Jack is a loyal companion, the film’s close equivalent to the Scarecrow, and he’s a remarkable practical creation, walking around like a giant marionette with a gigantic, barely balanced Jack O’Lantern for a cranium!
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated musical mostly takes place in Halloweentown, where all the ghouls and goblins congregate to make October 31 as horrible as they possibly can. So naturally, there are Jack O’Lanterns everywhere: in the sky, in the pumpkin patch and, most adorably of all, right on the nose of the ghost dog, Zero. The faithful friend of Jack Skellington uses his Jack O’Lantern sniffer to find bones (Jack’s) and, when a mysterious fog strikes just before Christmas, to guide the Santa-impersonator through the clouds!
Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
Dylan Baker plays a school principal trying to teach the importance of Halloween traditions to a young vandal who likes breaking Jack O’Lanterns. And since this is Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat, we know that the kid is going to learn the lesson the hard way. After poisoning his student with candy, he brings the head downstairs so he can have a wholesome, family carving session with his young son. Traditions… ya gotta love (and fear) ‘em.
Trick ‘r Treat (2007) (Again)
Dougherty’s Halloween classic is the only film to wind up on the list twice, because choosing just one great Jack O’Lantern scene from Trick ‘r Treat was impossible. The final segment finds Brian Cox waging war against a malevolent trick or treater, who’s outraged by the old man’s defiance of proper Halloween etiquette. As the life or death struggle heats up, the child’s mask disappears and we see not a little kid, but a Jack O’Lantern faced monster… the spirit of Halloween itself, Sam!
Tales of Halloween (2015)
Trick ‘r Treat may be slightly more famous, but the horror anthology Tales of Halloween – which also tells multiple scary stories, taking place in the same town, on the same Halloween night – is also quickly becoming a Halloween favorite. In the film’s climactic story, man-eating Jack O’Lanterns have sprouted up all over town, devouring the heads of human beings, while a police officer tries to solve the mystery of how the hell that could possibly happen. It’s such a simple, freaky idea that it’s hard to believe there hadn’t already been a movie about it before!
The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018)
Eli Roth’s adaptation of John Bellair’s classic fantasy novel, about a young orphan who moves in with a warlock, is a respectable kids film with memorable performances by Jack Black and Cate Blanchett, who plays their bewitching neighbor. It’s a solid adaptation but the highlight is easily the scene where, as all hell is breaking loose, the whole patch of pumpkins comes to life and starts vomiting pumpkin guts all over everybody. How many films boast a scene where Cate Blanchett headbutts a Jack O’Lantern and exclaims “I hate pumpkins!”? Only this one, folks. Only this one.
Halloween (2018)
How do you evoke the classic opening of John Carpenter’s Halloween 40 years later? You set back the clock, apparently. The opening credits for David Gordon Green’s Halloween begin with a rotting mound of pumpkin flesh, and then the footage reverses, and we watch the corpse of an iconic symbol for horror get resurrected in front of our very eyes. It’s an unsettling, but thoroughly fitting reintroduction to the classic franchise.
It’s been 75 years since The Thing From Another World first warned us to “watch the skies”, and filmgoers have done just that by showing up to multiple instances of extraterrestrial contact on the big screen. This makes sense, as a recent CBS news poll estimated that 63% of Americans believe in intelligent life on other planets, and the ongoing disclosure movement aims to raise that number with each passing day.
With Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day leaving many genre fans hungry for more alien footage (preferably of the spooky variety), today I’d like to share a list recommending six underrated alien invasion thrillers for your viewing pleasure. After all, regardless of whether or not you believe that we’re alone in the universe, it can be fun to dream about the worst-case scenario if our cosmic neighbors ever decide to visit.
For the purposes of this list, we’ll be focusing on lesser-known invasion stories rather than the popular extraterrestrials of franchises like Alien and Close Encounters of the Third (or even Fourth) Kind. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own alien favorites if you think we missed a particularly thrilling movie.
While it won’t be featured in this article, I’d highly recommend checking out Dean Alioto’s UFO Abduction/The McPherson Tape if you’re up for some ufology-inspired found footage thrills.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
6. The Arrival (1996)
Not to be confused with Denis Villeneuve’s Academy Award-winning Amy Adams vehicle about learning to communicate peacefully with extraterrestrial life, David Twohy’s The Arrival is a much more straightforward (but no less entertaining) genre romp where Charlie Sheen faces a global conspiracy involving hostile alien invaders.
It’s not exactly up there with Close Encounters or even Independence Day, but Twohy’s conspiratorial thriller plays out like an exceptionally fun episode of The X-Files that I’d recommend to sci-fi/horror fans who don’t mind a little bit of wonky CGI and 90s excess alongside their alien thrills.
5. Extraterrestrial (2014)
The Vicious Brothers made a name for themselves with the success of 2011’s Grave Encounters, but that was far from the Canadian duo’s only collaboration. And while it’s not exactly a fan favorite, I always point out 2014’s Extraterrestrial as one of their most underrated projects simply because I agree with the filmmakers’ opinion that there aren’t enough ‘cool alien abduction movies’ out there.
Admittedly, the majority of the picture functions like a run-of-the-mill creature feature with paper-thin characters and familiar horror tropes, but I’d argue that the cosmically-terrifying final act elevates the experience to new and memorable heights. The movie also boasts great performances by both Michael Ironside and Emily Perkins – a combination that more than makes up for the occasionally janky CGI.
4. Alien Raiders (2008)
Director Ben Rock has gone on record lamenting how his John-Carpenter-inspired creature feature was forcefully renamed from Supermarket to the painfully obvious Alien Raiders (a change which likely resulted in many potential viewers skipping out on the experience), but the new title doesn’t change the fact that this single-location thriller is something of a hidden gem.
Taking place entirely within a supermarket, Alien Raiders tells the story of an ensemble of customers and employees who are taken hostage by a group of armed men looking for something far more dangerous than an easy payout. I won’t get into details in order to avoid spoiling the experience, but I’d highly recommend this criminally underseen flick to fans of John Carpenter and the Resident Evil games.
3. Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
You’d think that a Ridley-Scott-produced retelling of one of the most infamous real-life UFO sightings of all time would have a bigger following, but I rarely see Justin Barber’s Found Footage period piece brought up during discussions about extraterrestrial-focused horror movies.
This is a huge shame, as Phoenix Forgotten is just as spooky as it is convincing, with this well-researched dive into the Phoenix Lights incident benefiting from surprisingly believable special effects as well as an appropriately horrific finale.
2. Communion (1989)
I wouldn’t blame you for disregarding Whitley Strieber’s controversial book about his alleged close encounter as sensationalist slop, but I’d argue that Phillipe Mora’s 1989 adaptation of these events is much better than the source material. After all, the movie works as a standalone piece of speculative fiction while also benefiting from an incredible performance by the one and only Christopher Walken!
Mora’s take on Communion may not be particularly scary, but the film is still an unforgettable character study regardless of whether or not the abduction really happened. Not only that, but the flick also paved the way for plenty of future sci-fi stories where the extraterrestrial invaders aren’t as evil as they initially appear.
1. Altered (2006)
Originally envisioned as a Sam Raimi-style horror-comedy titled Probed, Eduardo Sánchez (of The Blair Witch Project fame) eventually realized that it would be much more interesting to turn the film into a serious exploration of the emotional aftermath of a traumatic abduction incident.
That’s how we got Altered, a clever inversion of the standard abduction narrative that follows a group of troubled friends as they capture and experiment on an alien in order to enact revenge for their own abduction years prior.
You must be logged in to post a comment.