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Interviews

Interview: Dwight Little Looks Back on 35 Years of “HALLOWEEN 4: The RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS”

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A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing HALLOWEEN 4 director and Samhain aficionado, Dwight Little on all things horror, the new film NATTY KNOCKS, and duh, of course, HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS; and in case you’re new here, is one of my own personal Kryptonite films. Put that sucker on, and I’m pretty much dead to the world. With the 35th anniversary of the 1988 movie looming over us, I used this opportunity to gain a deeper insight of the film I rented over and over again at my local Mom-and-Pop video store and that has become not only a fan favorite over the years but a beautiful throwback to the nostalgia of Halloween in the 80s.

Which begged Dwight Little to ask me himself,

“Why do YOU think people love this movie so much, right, now?“

To which I gave the obvious answer of-

“Mr. Little, HALLOWEEN 4 is thee perfect seasonal Halloween film. It holds so many memories and nostalgia for us children of the 80s and embodies the look and feel of the holiday with an added bonus of Michael Myers slowly walking around chasing folks.”

Tell me I’m wrong…

DL:

“Those streets of Haddonfield, all the dead leaves, the old drug store, and the shallow fields, the movie on top of it being Michael Myers, just has that nice atmosphere of what it was like to go trick or treating.“

NN: And that opening is a banger as well!

DL: You know we put a LOT of energy into that, and I had asked the writer on set, ya know, how much do we actually KNOW about the origins of Halloween? I looked up some references on it and found out there’s some old Scottish agricultural tradition where the fields have gone bare and everyone has to do their last harvest to get ready for the Winter. And so there’s all this iconic imagery of scarecrows and pumpkin men, and looking back into the roots of it all, is how we came up with that title sequence that seems so beloved. I just didn’t want to do the pumpkin [intro sequence again] and wanted to try something else.

NN: With RETURN turning 35 this year, tell me some of your fondest memories of being on set, or something that sticks out to you looking back on making the film.

DL: “Well, I was such a goofy fan of Donald Pleasence. Growing up, ya know, this was the guy from THE GREAT ESCAPE, and he was a James Bond villain so in my eyes he was English Royality. So, to be able to work with Donald as a young director, it was such a thrill, To be honest, I was intimidated for about the first two hours on the first day of filming with him on set, but we fell into such an easy actor/director relationship and he never made me feel like he didn’t want to be “directed” and so I was able to really dig in with him and not be scared away by his star status and that was something I really enjoyed.”

“I also loved both the girls, Danielle Harries and Ellie Cornell. They found a chemistry on their own, I didn’t even have to do much, and Ellie is just naturally took care of Danielle, and seemed bonded right from the beginning, which gave a real heart to the movie.”

NN: Yeah, it’s a tragedy what they did to her in Part 5. To me personally, I think she’s the greatest final girl of the franchise!

DL: Well, I didn’t have anything to do with 5 and to be quite honest I haven’t even seen all of 5. I think it’s a shame and I think they should have kept her alive in the end. Ellie’s takedown of Myers, is one of the most ferocious Final Girl things ever. The way she drives the truck and the way handles herself is fierce. She was really terrific and such a believable actress. She never tried to overdo it, and she’s sexy without even trying to be.

NN: Yep. She feels really relatable to a lot of us female horror fans.

DL: Yeah, she’s not just a hottie. She’s a lot more than that.

NN: In the community, there has been rumors, that there’s a scene that was filmed that explains how Loomis and Myers survived that fire at the end of HALLOWEEN II. Is that true?

DL: “No that is not true, but here what is true. Alan McElroy, the writer, and I decided we needed to do all the heavy lifting explaining what happened in one elevator ride. So what happened was you see the attendants come into the mental facility and then the guard takes them down the hall and tells them the whole story on the elevator ride. By the time the doors open at the end of that elevator ride, basically we’ve done all the explaining we needed to do there. And then when you see Michael on the gurney, and the camera comes down, you can see that his hand is covered in burn scars and has been in a coma for ten years, face still wrapped… and that felt like we helped the audience make that turn from 2 to 4. By the time they put Michael in the ambulance, you’re not even questioning it.“

“HALLOWEEN 4 was a great experience for me and holds a lot of great memories.”

HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS has given us 35 years of sweet Halloween nostalgia, a goofy Myers mask blooper, and a final girl that comes correct in her stance against Myers. Upon the news of Miramax picking up the rights to Halloween in plans to make it a series, like the upcoming Friday the 13th: Crystal Lake show, I sincerely propose that this fan-favorite attempt to pick up from the events of after 4 and make an adult Jamie the killer in a clown costume. Myers can be dead and laid to rest for a while, I think. I would be at peace with that. Hell, maybe even make an episode where we finally get some justice for Ted Hollister! I would like to see it go that route OR pursue John Carpenter’s original plans and explore different Halloween urban legends throughout the series.

Either way, we’ll always have Halloween 4 and me, personally, the fact that Dwight Little did tell me I probably know more about that movie than he does. I know it’s Halloween and all, but Christmas came a little early for me this year.

Grab your Nightmare Makeup Kit, if you know a guy named Wade, tell him to fuck off and rewatch Return for its 35th anniversary this year.

Kathleen Kinmont is calling you, now.

News

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!

    Wrestling Memories

    The Insane 1985 WWF Halloween Party And Land Of 1000 Dances!

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    Sweet Goddess I love retro wrestling. In the 80s’, Saturday Night’s Main Event was THEE late-night television special to watch on the weekend. In 1985, the then called WWF (WWE) blew up all over mainstream and Hulkamania was indeed running wild all over our faces. From Saturday morning cartoons, live events, and the first ever Wrestlemania, there was no stopping the WWF train. When they threw in Saturday Night’s Main Event as a deal with SNL’s producers as a replacement for the NBC show reruns, ratings skyrocketed and it became a more regular airing for the network. While the shows were inconstant with an airing schedule in their premiere year, there was ONE particular episode that sated on my mind for years to come- and that was of course, the WWF HALLOWEEN PARTY that featured the infamous LAND OF 1000 DANCES!

    The third ever Saturday Night’s Main Event was taped on October 31st, 1985 and aired on November 2nd with an insane Halloween party interjecting in-between matches; one being a Kung-Fu match between Ricky Steamboat and Mr. Fuji that is as entertaining as that sounds.  The Halloween party hosed by a pumpkin donning Mean Gene turned into a competition of course between the faces and heels with the “good guys” being captained by Lou Albano (dressed as Julius Caesar) and his teammates Tito Santana (as Zorro), Hulk Hogan (as Hercules), Hillbilly Jim, Uncle Elmer, and Cousin Junior (as the Three Musketeers. Heenan (dressed as Davey Crockett but constantly mistaken for a weasel heh) was joined by Randy Savage with Miss Elizabeth (as Tarzan and Jane), The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff (as Batman and Robin), and King Kong Bundy (as Abraham Lincoln). The “games” consisted of bobbing for pumpkins, a pumpkin toss, and a hilarious pie-eating contest (seen below) that ends up in a food fight because why wouldn’t it!? The weasel, I mean, Davey Crockett Heenan easily beats Junior in the pumpkin bobbing (with that mouth is anyone surprised?) and Albano gluttonously defeats Bundy in the pie-eating segment- leaving the score 1-1 and all the Halloween Heavyweight Champion of games to be settled in the “pumpkin toss”.

    r d

    I don’t know why the hell it’s called a pumpkin toss when the game consists of having teams of wrestlers pass a pumpkin underneath their chin. You know that game you do at middle school parties in a weird attempt to get close to the opposite sex? Well instead of that, you get a bunch of giant wrestlers in costumes trying to do it. It’s every bit as awkward as it sounds and I love every second of it. Anyway, the game ends when Elizabeth fumbles the gourd and Randy Savage scolds her in such a way you’d thought the woman killed Jesus or something.

    While the Halloween party is ensuing in hilarity, we get to visit Roddy Piper in his “rented American home” and see how the rowdy one spends the spooky holiday with Vince McMahon there to interview and give us play by play deets. Like out of a Halloween urban legend joke, Piper wraps up bricks to make them look like giant chocolates, and bowling balls disguised as giant candy apples because hey, according to him the Scottish like to celebrate “the trick” in Trick or Treat. Trick or Treaters arrive, one dressed as the Hulkster so of course this pisses Roddy off. In typical Hot Rod behavior, Piper demeans them and tricks them into giving him their candy in exchange for his asinine-sized fake candy. It’s a total prick moment that showcases why we love to hate the guy and then karma rears it’s ugly head when the kids’ actually slipped him hot peppers disguised as candy. PRICELESS.

    Finally, we end with The Land of 100 Dances that was a promotion tie-in for the Rock ‘N” Wrestling connection with MTV. With Meatloaf on the drums and Cyndi Lauper singing back-up, this superstar-filled wrestling WTF has become legendary and no better way to introduce this now nostalgic nugget of WWE history than during their Halloween special?! The thing that kills me is Mr. Wonderful kissing his fuckin’ biceps for the entire duration of the music video along with Piper sticking a Goonies movie promotion in there; as I’m sure you recall, the WWF and Cyndi Lauper did a massive promo for that film with the “Good Enough” video. Also another reason why Roddy is the goddamn GOAT. Fuck I miss that guy.

    Anyways, here’s visual proof that this wasn’t some sort of fever dream we all had 36 years ago and a friendly reminder that “Hogan’s such a YOYO.”