by Leah Larson
Sipos, Thomas M. Halloween Candy. Santa Monica, CA: 1st Books Library, 2001. 250 p.
In his introduction to Halloween Candy, author Thomas M. Sipos refers to it as a "Jack O'Lantern of a book" and "an anthology of horror fact and fiction." It certainly is a bag filled with a variety of candy, some tasty and some not quite so good. This anthology contains a screenplay, several short stories, an interview with Jonathan Frid of Dark Shadows fame, and numerous essays and articles on a variety of horror-related topics. I found the quality of the works to be as varied as the genres.
Although there is much to like in this book, I'll start out with what I didn't like. "Halloween Candy," the anthology's only screenplay, certainly does not represent Sipos's best work. Perhaps it is simply a matter of taste. I like horror to be subtle, and although I will suspend my disbelief to accept any number of supernatural occurrences, I do not like a plot that doesn't play out true to its premise. The basic idea of "Halloween Candy" has great promise: A group of horrid children are cruel to an old lady and, unfortunately for them, extend their cruelty to a beautiful and very real witch. The witch decides to pay the children back for their acts by cooking up some special candy that will cause each child to have a paralyzingly frightening nightmare.
So far, so good.
The scene where the witch mixes up the candy and interacts with her black cat is great fun. The children, still horrid, collect their special treats Halloween night, and proceed to slip into nightmareland soon after eating them. Now, this could be a great frame for brilliant horror a la Are You Afraid of the Dark? kicked up a few notches. However, the children's dreams are well outside the lives and interests of children. In each dream, the children are adults faced with adult situations. For example, in the first dream the child Arthur is a thirtysomething-year-old man with a co-worker who constantly shows him up--gets his promotions, his girl, his glory. Arthur hires a witch to help him get his revenge. With the help of the witch and her very bizarre, doll-eating spell, those who have wronged Arthur and even some who haven't are violently destroyed. Adult Arthur has no more fondness for witches than his younger self, and he in turn becomes a victim of her wrath. Young Arthur is scared into a catatonic paralytic state at the end of the dream. The dream works, at least on a very basic level, on its own. The problem is that, as my young experts tell me, it isn't the sort of dream that would terrify a child or that a child would even have. What might happen to a child's future adult self is far removed from the concerns of the child's present self. Real terror is what might happen the next day at school, not what might happen in the office in twenty years.
The second dream is my least favorite of the group. Although certainly a parody, I didn't find Sipos's version of a college classroom to be funny, much less scary. The caricature of the "feminist student" seemed particularly mean-spirited and dated. In all, the dreams might, with some revision, work as individual stories. Perhaps with a different frame, they could work together. However, Sipos states that Halloween Candy has won numerous awards, so maybe my dislike of this piece is solely based on individual taste. Read the work and decide for yourselves.
Fortunately, I stuck with Halloween Candy after my initial disappointment. The next piece, {They Came from Outer Space and Went Bump in the Night," is an entertaining look at haunted houses in Southern California--not houses that are supposedly haunted, but constructed theme park haunted houses. Readers can get an inside view of places such as The Chamber of Chills, which Sipos states is a joint venture of Universal Studios and Imagine Entertainment. Following this piece is a short story called "Spirit of '68," about a faux 60s radical grown into a rich businessman who meets up with a 60s idealist whom he had double-crossed. The idealist may be the spirit, but the true evil is found in the very alive businessman.
The next selection is my favorite of the anthology--an interview with Jonathan Frid, best known as Barnabas Collins the vampire in Dark Shadows, a gothic soap opera of the late 60s and early 70s. In the interview, conducted in 1986, Frid tells Sipos his theatrical history. He also discusses his time on Dark Shadows and Barnabas's afterlife at fan conventions. However, although Frid is best remembered as Barnabas, he is not stuck in the past. He prefers to talk to Sipos about what he has done post-Dark Shadows. Sipos is respectful but never fannishly fawning towards his subject. Rather he allows Frid to speak for himself.
Following the interview are two short pieces both centering on Sipos's use of the vampire as a metaphor for the horrors of 20th century Communism. Although the metaphor is certainly appropriate for the majority of Communist leaders, it is ironic to note that Marx also used the vampire as a metaphor--but as a metaphor for the evils of capitalism. In the second short piece of the group, "Communist Vampires," Sipos discusses his position as a politically conservative horror writer. Many of his views seem a bit dated--stuck in the Reagan-era world. 1
In the other non-fiction selections of the anthology, Sipos explores horror as a genre, concentrating on film as its medium. These selections: "But Is It Horror?: Defining and Demarcating the Genre," "Horror Goes Hollywood: A Call for Saturn Reform," "The Pragmatic Aesthetics of Low-Budget Horror Cinema," and "The Actor as Horror Villain," all certainly prove Sipos's extensive knowledge of horror films and the circumstances'--artistic, technical, and political--surrounding their production. In a final non-fiction selection, Sipos turns his attention to television. His topic is Kolchak: The Night Stalker, a 1970s precursor to The X-Files. Like Scully and Mulder, Kolchak pursues a variety of supernatural foes. In this discussion, it is obvious that Kolchak is Sipos's preferred show. I vaguely remember the show, but reading Sipos's article made me want to see it again.
The rest of the anthology includes several short stories. Of these, "Planets in Motion" and "Five Paranoiacs, All in a Row," are the most notable. "Five Paranoiacs, All in a Row" explores near-death experiences with a subtly creepy twist.
One good thing about anthologies is the variety. In this particular
anthology there is enough variety that there is sure to be something that
most readers will enjoy.
1Editor's tragicomic aside: Imagine what would happen if someone stuck in Reagan-era politics became powerful--let's say, for example, president of the United States. Why we'd be thrown headfirst into war and recession within a year. One shudders to think of such nightmarish possibility.