Halloween arrives at Expo!

Happy Halloween from Expo!! With Halloween comes candy, costumes, the New York City Halloween parade and lots of scary movies.

We also asked members of the ExpoTV staff what some of their all time favorite scary movies are:

Sarah:
Suspiria: The first 20 minutes are terrifying but also disgustingly pretty at the
same time.

The Descent: If you are claustrophobic I’d highly recommend staying away from this one.
Jaws: I first saw this movie when I was nine. The severed leg floating in the water towards the beginning basically ruined swimming in the ocean for me…forever.

Daphne:
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. It’s apparently a TV movie, but I didn’t know the difference. I was 8 when I saw it and I had to sleep with the lights on until I was 11 (they don’t like the light, you know, so they won’t come out if you keep the lights on…). I still have nightmares of little voices whispering “Sa-llleeee. Saaaa-llleeee.”

Eugene:
Terminator. I saw it when I was 11 and it freaked me out.

Margaret:
The movies that scared me the most were never about monsters or some product of a freak experiment, it was about how realistic or possible the subject of the movie was. So with that, the movie that scared me most when I was young was ‘The Birds’. My mom actually read me the short story on which it was based, long before I saw the movie and it really freaked me out. Some unseen force of nature making animals do strange thing is not so uncommon, even some human behavior is attributed to the positioning of the moon and we’ve all seen crazy pigeons and seagulls out on the streets…they are just one step from an organized attack!

Brian:
My favorite scary movie of all time is Halloween (the original). I believe Michael Myers is one of the greatest and scariest characters ever created. He is just a regular guy wearing a white mask and trying to terrorize his own family - what’s freakier than that? Also, the Halloween music by John Carpenter does not get any creepier. I usually don’t get scared while watching movies - but every time I watch Halloween, I still occasionally need to hide my head behind the pillow.

John:
The Thriller Music video. I always had to leave the room when the werewolf came in.

Jess:
Favorite Scary movie: Seven And favorite Halloween Movie: Karate Kid. Come on, the costumes are priceless. Childhood movie that I was scared of but shouldn’t have been: Alice and Wonderland scared me as a kid, not sure why.

Yevgeny:
Scream, Identity, Vertigo, and Killer Clowns from Outer Space. Seriously.
Oh, and Aliens, when the little head comes out of the Alien’s mouth.

Sascha
Audition – And to think, before I saw this movie, I thought piano wire was used to make music.
The Exorcist – Saw this when I was in middle school, and at some point I “accidentally” spilled a glass of water on the couch so I had an excuse to leave the room to get paper towels.
Hitchcock – Psycho, Rear Window, etc. “”There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.”
Psycho was the first film in history to show a toilet being flushed. Fact.
Jack Frost. A serial killer is being transported to high-security prison and runs into a truck carrying toxic chemicals, causing him to mutate into a killer snowman. It’s that kind of movie. (NOT the Michael Keaton family movie, although the two snowmen look eerily similar)
Mystery Science Theater 3000 – Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders. Starring Ernest Borgnine.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit – When the toon gets dumped in the vat of acid. And when Christopher Lloyd gets run over by the steamroller and then gets up again, I ran out of the theater screaming and went to watch the second half of the Carebears movie.

Froso
IT - I had to keep an eye on the drain in the shower for my whole 6th grade year after watching that.

Jorge:
A movie I’ve never been able to see is “The Exorcist”.
The first time I saw the first 15 minutes of it I was 11 years old and did so by secretly sneaking into my parent’s bedroom in the middle of the day, because they didn’t want me to see it.
I stopped the movie and had really scary nightmares for at least a week.
To this day, I can’t see it.

Bill:
I’ll go with Happy Birthday to Me, which was a campy 70s slasher movie.
We had just gotten cable (1st family on the street!) and my parents never bothered with the parental key (it was a real key that went into the box and turned off all of the pay channels) and so I’d watch anything I could rated R when they were out. Combine being home basically alone with being just a little too young to know what was coming and I got what I deserved.

Kip

The scariest movie I ever saw was a documentary called Prisoners of the Brain, about mental illness. Like non fiction. It totally messed me up for like a week. I thought I had all kinds of tumors and lesions.
I also remember when I was a kid the Blob (1988 version) scared the hell out of me. That had me going for a while too. I was afraid to take showers or go near a sink or drain of any kind. …it was bad. I was terrified. I would get in the shower and just know that the blob was going to come out of the drain hole and dissolve my skin and bones.

-Froso

Add comment October 31st, 2008

How is the Economy impacting your shopping habits?

Forget ghosts and goblins, the scariest thing going on this Halloween week is the economy. Everywhere you turn, there is a reminder that we are currently facing a possible world wide recession. It affects everything from your grocery shopping to your social life.

Over at Expo we wanted to know how the economy was impacting your shopping habits? Members of the Expo community gave some great suggestions on how to cut costs and how they have changed their spending habits.

Expo member, Mayelimeyeli describes how her shopping habits have changed due to the recession by now including coupon clipping and bargain hunting:

Here are some great ideas to help cut costs on grocery shopping:
1. Buy produce in season. Check the food section in your newspaper to find the best buys for the week, based on fresh produce in season.
2. Use sales and coupons. Planning meals around what’s on sale can lower your grocery bills.
3. Brown-bag it. Making lunch and taking it with you is a great money-saver and an excellent use of leftovers for meals at work, school, or wherever your destination.
4. Think frozen, canned, or dried. Less Expensive and equally nutritious.
5. Save on protein foods. When possible, substitute inexpensive, vegetarian sources such as beans, eggs, tofu, and legumes for more expensive meat, fish, or poultry.
6. Before you toss perishable food into your grocery cart, think about exactly how you’ll use it.
7. Go generic. Consider buying store brands instead of pricier national brands.
8. Buy prepackaged only if you need it. Unless you have a coupon or the item is on sale, buying prepackaged, sliced, or washed products comes with a higher price tag.
9. Plant a garden. For benefits that go beyond cost savings, plant your own produce.
10.Don’t forget that Black Friday should have many great deals this year with the current state of retail sales.

Do you have any other ideas to share?

- Froso

Add comment October 27th, 2008