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Nightmare Nostalgia’s 5-Year Celebration Halloween Giveaway!

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Well, here we are nostalgic nuggets! Another year and another nostalgic Halloween giveaway is upon us, However, this one is a little special to me because NN is celebrating five years old on the giant interwebs!

This calls for some bony booty slappin’.

Back in 2014, a friend of mine pitched the idea of me writing for a horror website that was looking for writers, and it wasn’t a tiny website either. It had a rather well-established following and although that was a little intimidating; I said fuck it, why not? Who cares that I had ZERO experience writing a blog or for any website. I was knowledgeable, passionate and said fuck a lot. That’s pretty much all you need to write about horror movies, right? My first piece was of course, about the “Scary Stories To Tell In the Dark” books and the owner loved it so much he took me on as a regular writer, and later one of the three head editors for the site, which had grown from 300,000 followers when I joined, to over 4 million to when I departed.

Why leave a good thing, you may ask? Well, I had already dipped my toes into other horror websites, very well-known ones, written for a couple horror magazines, and staying where I was would just leave me stagnant and unfulfilled. I wasn’t freely able to express myself and rant about the things I wanted to scream and with the toxic environment that is the internet, I wanted to build an escape mechanism for people like me to walk down memory lane, and get those nostalgic fuzzies about the first time they walked the aisles of their Mom and Pop Video Store. Or perhaps the first time they ever watched THE FUNHOUSE. Or hell, that time you actually tried out some of Maurice’s pranks from LITTLE MONSTERS on your parents. These are the little things that we remember that make life a little less shitty, and the community we’ve built here together into an army of nostalgic nuggets makes my pet monster heart melt. So, in return, I’ve gathered up a pretty cool giveaway to readers that have followed me for a decade, and those just discovering this snake pit of utter nostalgic madness!

For a little context, I wanted to make this easy and just post a picture on Facebook, but the Zuck is cracking down on those types of posts and flagging them as spam. But honestly, this kinda works out, so I could write an essay on the gratitude that I have for all of you.

Anyway, let’s get to it! Here’s the haul that is a perfect nostalgic Halloween treat for some lucky person! Rules are posted at the bottom of the page!

First up is a Frankenstein mash-up of a 1993 McDonald’s Halloween Pail with a Carl’s JR handle from their line of Halloween buckets from the same year! It’s one-of-a-kind, and I can almost guarantee probably no one else has sitting in their bedroom right now.

A Jason Voorhees coffee mug since there’s a Friday the 13th in October and a plushy handpicked by me because nothing wakes you up faster than a Leatherface in your cup.

MONSTER CRUNCH! THE BREAKFAST BATTLE GAME featuring our Monster Cereal heroes! If you’re not into board games, the pieces included in the box itself are worth just staring at for hours.

Something old and something new! Next up, we have the Unofficial Horror Movie Coloring Book that is filled with AMAZING pages of drawn art from our favorite horror movies for you to color in! Also, is a copy of a Universal Monsters Frightening Facts Movie Book from 1992! If this doesn’t ring a bell, also how dare you, this is a quiz book essentially where you take the marker, choose a question and pick an answer, and color over it and see if you got it right! Plus it’s got some sick cut-outs of all the Universal Monsters!

And finally, some handpicked NN favorites from my own collection because it ain’t Halloween without some slasher movies! Blu-ray of HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH, a first pressing copy DVD of HALLOWEEN 666: THE CURSE OF MICHAEL MYERS, and the killer cut Blu-ray of 2009’s FRIDAY THE 13TH!

The Rules:

Obviously, I wanted to keep this open to as many people as possible so all you have to do to enter is to do one, or all of the following- if you do all four that means you get four entries!

  1. Comment on this blog post your favorite Halloween memory!
  2. Share this post on Facebook from the original post on NN’s facebook page! (must be public for me to see)
  3. Share the NN’s giveaway post on Instagram! Look for my post regarding the giveaway @nightmarenostalgia
  4. Tweet this out on Twitter. Or X. Or whatever the fuck it’s being called today.

Must be a US resident and the contest will run from Friday, October 13th, 2023 until Monday, October 16th. Good luck nuggets and thanks for sticking around to hear me rant about Halloween 4 500 times!

    Horror Nostalgia

    The ‘Child’s Play 2’ Trailer Was Out Of This World! 

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    Sometimes watching a good horror teaser can be as much fun as watching the actual movie. Trailers give us a sneak peek into the dark realm awaiting us once the theater lights dim and the movie starts to roll. I’ve always found them to be a lot of fun and whenever a horror trailer was released we all quickly learned to pay attention. Back then trailers didn’t spoil the movie by showing the whole damn thing. Instead only showed enough to give us a ravenous need to go see what they were advertising. Child’s Play 2 did this in spades!

    With the tagline ‘Sorry Jack, Chucky’s back’ our tickets were as good as already bought!

    REWIND THE CLOCK

    Child’s Play was a huge hit upon its release and scared the bejeezus out of us bratty little kids. We were at that tender age when playing with toys was a sacred pastime. Saturday mornings were entirely dedicated to brainwashing us into rushing out and buying the newest and best thing to fill the toy box.

    I mean these were the days when grown-ass men and women broke out into literal fistfights while in line at K-Mart over Cabbage Patch Kids of all things. Toys were a red hot topic and even our parents were getting in on the insanity. 

    So, gliding a razor’s edge across our societal vein, a little movie about a doll named Chucky (a cleaver resemblance to the famous My Buddy doll was not coincidental) hit theaters with ferocity, and if the idea of a killer doll wasn’t already a subconscious fear malignantly growing in the back of our cultural mind once Child’s Play released it was a full-blown phobia. 

    No, Chucky was not the first killer doll to darken our minds. Stuart Gordon’s malicious Dolls had already come out and scared people silly. Not to mention years prior little Talky Tina scared people out of their skin thanks to the Twilight Zone.

    But all the chills these guys introduced to the cultural zeitgeist Chucky took to a whole new level. And his infamy lives on today proving what a demonic powerhouse of a monster the little guy has always been.

    The idea of a killer doll was amped up on some serious coke thanks to Child’s Play so to introduce its inevitable sequel the marketing team put together one of my absolute favorite little horror trailers of all time. Those psychopathic bastards took a Jack-in-the-Box, something that plays on the fears of a lot of people already, and then showed it being crushed beneath Chucky’s feet. The killer doll was back and was carving out a bloody franchise for himself. He wasn’t playing around this time.

    Today Chucky is as recognizable as his bigger brothers like Jason, Freddy, and Leatherface, and has left a landslide of creative carnage across his macabre legacy. Chucky is celebrated for his wit, humor, and that pure love for murder that drives him. He’s become a husband, a father, and overall terrible influence and downright satanic pain in the ass to all who encounter him.

    Naturally, we love him for it. It’s also worth noting Spirit Halloween is selling the Jack featured in the trailer. That’s the impact Child’s Play 2 had on us. What a time to be alive!

    Relive the thrills of seeing Child's Play 2 in this beloved teaser from the past

    There’s no better time than the spooky Halloween season to relive the thrills and chills invested in this psychopathic little guy. So turn down the lights and cuddle up close to the ghoul of your dreams because the fun is about to begin!

    Horror Nostalgia

    {WATCH} Give Yourself a Halloween Treat and Revisit Freddy’s Nightmares Halloween Special!

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    Ahh. Freddy’s Nightmares– the Nightmare on Elm Street primetime series that starred Robert Englund in all his primetime bitch glory as Freddy. Who, in total Crypt Keeper fashion, hosted a show focused on the residents of Springwood and their wacky as hell nightmares. I want to believe most 80s’ kids remember the short-lived, basic cable phenomenon where Krueger had risen to God-like heights of popularity. However, if you don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about, here’s a refresher:

    Freddy isn’t really a part of the stories but merely serves as your horror host; a trend that had become ever so popular in this era. But yes, for most of the series, Freddy served only as the introduction with the exception of the Tobe Hooper directed pilot episode that dives into Krueger’s backstory. And of course, that amazingly cheesy intro!

    Now let’s dive into season one, episode four entitled “Freddy’s Tricks and Treats”, which actually plays out like a true Nightmare on Elm Street installment with Freddy as the main character; IN A HALLOWEEN EPISODE NO LESS. Worth noting, before we dunk our balls in the murky waters’ of the boiler room, is the numerous horror movie homages throughout this glorious episode. Some dip dons a Jason hockey mask for Halloween night. There’s a very familiar-looking pumpkin mask and a scene with said Halloween prop that screams out Season of the Witch with the main character clawing at her face while wearing it. And finally, while I admit I may be looking too deep into Easter Eggs here, Freddy carving BOO onto the forehead of a stiff at the morgue is completely reminiscent of Joey’s comatose state in Dream Warriors.

    Premiering on October 29th, 1988, “Freddy’s Tricks and Treats” stars a pre-Law and Order Mariska Hargitay who plays a young medical student named Marsha. Little Miss Marsha is a bookworm who dismisses the spirit of Halloween by opting to study and dissect corpses rather than party-hardy. I mean, that does sound like a pretty awesome way to spend Halloween night, so if you’re asking me I would say she’s having all the fun here.

    Anyway, Marsha is feeling distracted from her studies at a college house Halloween shin-dig, so she heads to her school to spruce up on some good old-fashioned human dissection. But not before she hears the story of Springwood’s ultimate nightmare, Freddy, from the school security guard. Which opens the red and green striped Pandora box and unleashing Freddy and hell on poor Marsha. Freddy torments the young med student with visions of the death of her kind-of-a-bitch Grandmother, for which she feels responsible, driving her into complete madness. Freddy is known to be pretty good at mind-fucking his targets into submission, so yeah she loses her shit, and it’s a good time to watch.

    Oh yes, there is also a VCR that records nightmares. I feel like this kooky, yet fascinating premise needs a damn movie of its own. And yep, you guessed it, Freddy has a lot of fun with this little wrench thrown in.

    Well, with that being said, let’s get to it! Happy Halloween Nostalgic Nuggets!