EASY-BAKE COVEN: GRAVEYARD BROWNIES By Punkin Nightshade

Hey, y'all, this here's Petronella Nightshade, but most everbody calls me Punkin, and today I am presentin the Easy-Bake Coven for our 31 Days Of Halloween. Today I was thinkin that brownies would be a nice treat for a Halloween party, and so this here is Graveyard Brownies, which uses a basic brownie recipe but has got a little bit of a Halloween feel to it. This is also a homemade brownie recipe, but of course some folks has not got time to do homemade as everythin nowadays is all fast-paced and whatnot, so I reckon this will work just as fine with your favorite brownie mix if you are pressed for time. Just be sure you follow the package directions.

What's In It:
12 Vienna Fingers Cookies (or other similarly shaped oval cookies)
5 eggs
2 sticks of softened unsalted butter
8 oz. unsweetened chocolate
3 1/2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 2/3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Optional: tubes of decorating frosting and gel, green cake frosting, crushed chocolate cookie crumbs

What You Got To Do:Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and grease up a 9x13-inch pan. Combine the chocolate and butter in a double boiler and heat it over simmerin water till it’s all melted. Take it off the heat and hold aside.

Beat your eggs and sugar together with an electric mixer at high speed for 10 minutes. Turn your speed down to low and add in the chocolate-butter mix and the vanilla, and blend it all together. Add the flour and salt and mix till everythin is all combined.

Pour the batter into the greased pan and bake it up for 30-35 minutes, or until the edges are dry but the center is still soft.

Now here’s what you need the cookies for: they are goin to be the gravestones. When you take the pan out of the oven, press the Vienna Fingers into the brownies so that they stand up like little gravestones. Space them out evenly, mind, so that when you cut the brownies up for servin, each piece will have one gravestone cookie. Let them cool for 20 minutes before you cut and serve them. If you are feelin artistic and such you can use tubes of decoratin frostin or gel to write R.I.P. on the cookies before stickin them in the brownies, or put some green frostin and chocolate cookie crumbs (for grave dirt) on top of the brownies to make them look more graveyardish.

So I am done here, and hope you all enjoy this recipe from the Easy-Bake Coven. Don’t forget to serve these with tall glasses of cold milk, and I shall see you all next time for the 31 Days Of Halloween cause I am goin to have me a Graveyard Brownie right now. Blessings be on all of you this Halloween!

Sincerely, Petronella "Punkin" Nightshade

THE HAUNTED MANSION: FORTY YEARS OF FRIGHT By Bethany Ruthven

Good evening, darlings, and thank you for reading. Welcome to The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween for 2009 (should you be just joining us) and welcome also to the first of our Haunted Mansion Mondays. This venerable institution is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, so today we shall enlighten you on the history of this fine old place.

When Walt Disney first began conceiving Disneyland, artist Harper Goff sketched an old haunted house on a hill overlooking Main Street as part of the concept drawing. Though this house never became part of the Disneyland that opened in 1955, a New-Orleans-themed area was planned shortly after its opening that contained a thieves' market, a pirate wax museum and a haunted house walkthrough. Imagineer Ken Anderson was assigned to work on the haunted house, and his first concept sketch of a distended antebellum mansion was met with praise by other Disney artists but panned by Walt himself, who did not like the idea of a run-down house within his clean and sparkling wonderworld. (As Walt said, "We'll take care of the outside and let the ghosts take care of the inside.")

The exterior of the Mansion was completed in 1963, but the Mansion would not open for another six years due to several story conflicts and Disney's heavy involvement in the 1963-64 New York World's Fair. With Disney's death in 1966, the Mansion underwent a massive redesign. Designers Marc Davis and Claude Coats were in constant disagreement over whether the Mansion should be scary or funny; in the end, designer X Atencio stepped in and combined both men's work to create a frightening and shadowy old house that nonetheless harbored a company of silly spooks and comical creeps within its aging walls. The walkthrough idea was abandoned when the Omnimover system used in Disney's Adventure Thru Inner Space ride at Tomorrowland was added to the Mansion and renamed the Doom Buggies. Built in such a way that the viewer can only see what is in front of him, and able to rotate a full 360 degrees, the Doom Buggies were a significant evolutionary stage for the Mansion.

On August 12, 1969, the Haunted Mansion was opened to the general public, bringing in record crowds. The attraction was so popular that when Disney expanded to build theme parks in Florida, Tokyo and Paris, the Haunted Mansion was included. It was an opening-day attraction in 1971 at the Magic Kingdom in Florida, and would become the Phantom Manor for Disneyland Paris. Clearly, this stately manse continues to hold much fascination for all its guests (one of which was a certain Mad Scientist of our acquaintance), and we MonsterGrrls are delighted to salute the Haunted Mansion. Cheers to all the Grim Grinning Ghosts within!

Do return next week for our next installment of Haunted Mansion Mondays, and of course, we hope to see you tomorrow for The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween. Why, it's almost as if your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding...

Regards,
Bethany Ruthven

NEW GHASTLY ONES EP AVAILABLE OCTOBER 15 By Harriet Von Lupin

Hi there, and Happy Halloween! Welcome back to The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween for 2009! This is Harriet Von Lupin reporting with some news from our favorite haunted-house rockers The Ghastly Ones--they've got a new EP coming out on October 15th!

I had reported last year on these guys, and lately they've been real busy playing lots of shows and even rocking the Blast Off Festival in England last July, but now they're back from their graves and ready to rock! The new EP is called Gears 'N Ghoulfinks, and it's four brand new songs from the Ghastly Ones just in time for Halloween, and two of these songs are a preview of their new album coming out next year! Also, the EP will be available only on vinyl, so get those old turntables out and get 'em ready for your own listening party!

More information on this cool band can be found at their website here, and don't forget to pick up their previous albums Unearthed and Target: Draculon for your Halloween party music!

And that's all for that! See you tomorrow for more of The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween! OW-WOOOOOO!!!!

Harriet Von Lupin

HAPPY HAUNTS MATERIALIZE By Frankie Franken

Hello, everybody! Gosh, can you believe it's time for Halloween again? Welcome to The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween, and today I'm reporting on something special from one of our favorite places--the Walt Disney Haunted Mansion, which has turned 40 years old this year!

When Disneyland opened the Haunted Mansion in 1969, the event was commemorated by the release of a special album from Disneyland Records, The Story And Song From The Haunted Mansion. Featuring Thurl Ravenscroft as the Narrator, the album told the story of two teenagers, Mike (Ron Howard*) and Karen (Robie Lester) who become trapped in the Mansion and are conducted by the Ghost Host (Pete Renoudet) on a spooky tour of the house and grounds, meeting Madame Leota (Eleanor Audley, who also voices Leota in the Mansion itself) and viewing the wild graveyard party where all the happy haunts sing a rousing chorus of the Mansion's theme song, "Grim Grinning Ghosts." This album was intended as a promotion for the Mansion, but it became a cherished childhood memory for many attendees to Disneyland, and was eventually reissued in 1998 on cassette as A Spooky Night In Disney's Haunted Mansion.

Now the original Haunted Mansion album from 1969 has just been reissued in CD form! That's right, Disney has put out a brand-spanking new CD release of The Story And Song From The Haunted Mansion, and just in time for Halloween, too! This cool CD not only has the story booklet painted by Disney artist Colin Campbell (which was included with the original 1969 album), but a special enhanced feature of the CD showcases Campbell's original paintings, and even allows you to print the images from your computer to create your own ghostly gallery! And as a bonus track, the official Disneyland Park version of "Grim Grinning Ghosts" is included too! Wow, what a groovy Halloween treat for all Haunted Mansion fans both past and present!

To celebrate the Haunted Mansion's 40th Anniversary, The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween will showcase the Mansion in Haunted Mansion Mondays! Each Monday we'll do a special feature on this cool attraction, which is a must-see if you go to any Disney theme park. So be here each Monday for Haunted Mansion Mondays, and don't forget to grab yourself a copy of the new Haunted Mansion CD for Halloween!

We'll be back tomorrow with more of The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween, so see you then!

Sincerely,
Francesca "Frankie" Franken

POST-MORTEM: The Story And Song From The Haunted Mansion can be found at Amazon.com, purveyor of all fine things in this world or the Netherworld. To get your copy, click our title link above.

*Yes, that Ron Howard. --F.F.

EASY-BAKE COVEN: PUMPKIN DIP By Punkin Nightshade

Well, Happy Halloween, y'all, and welcome to the 2009 Edition of The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween! My name's Petronella Nightshade, what am called Punkin by my friends, and since you's all friends you shall know me so. Me and the other Grrls and Mr. John what's our Mad Doctor was all talkin about what we was goin to do for this year's 31 Days, and I allowed as how I thought we ought to do some cookin.

Us witches is privy to plenty arcane knowledge and whatnot, but one thing what makes any witch worth her broom is her cookin. And somethin I was noticin was that there's a whole lot of witchly folk out there what is showin folks how to do good eats real quick and simple, such as that Martha Stewart, who I swan is an Elder Witch in somebody's coven if ever I seen one, and that Paula Deen, who reminds me a lot of the witch what runs the pastry shop round WitchHazel Township. So with cookin bein a magic all its own and bein taught to folks again, I am doin the Easy-Bake Coven, which will show y'all some treats you can make for Halloween parties, coven meetins, friendly gatherins, and all kind of merry socializin.

First thing I'm showin is this Pumpkin Dip, what turns up at a lot of the Mad Doctor's Halloween parties. It's real quick to do and right good eatin with gingersnaps and apple slices as accomp'niment, and is one of them recipes what don't take no time to make but makes folks think you spent a whole lot of time on it.

What's In It:
2 8-ounce packages of cream cheese, softened
1 box of powdered sugar, sifted
1 can of pumpkin
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger (or 3 teaspoons apple pie spice)
1/2 teaspoon (or more) ground cloves
Dash of nutmeg
I teaspoon vanilla flavoring

What You Got To Do:Cream together the cream cheese and powdered sugar. (For them that don't know cookin, 'cream' means to blend it all up till it's real smooth and creamy.)
Stir in the pumpkin and all the flavorins, makin sure to stir them all in smooth. Then chill it in the icebox (or refrigerator) till it's time for your gatherin. You can serve this in a pretty bowl with your apple slices and gingersnaps arranged round it real fancy. Graham crackers is good with it too.

So I am done here, and blessings be on you and yours for this Halloween season. We'll be back tomorrow with more of The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween, and I shall be back soon with another recipe from the Easy-Bake Coven if I am not doin somethin else.

Sincerely,
Petronella "Punkin" Nightshade
POST-MORTEM: I am sayin thanks muchly to Mistress Sandi Wheatley, who shared this recipe with us for the 31 Days Of Halloween. Y'all enjoy! --P.N.

BETTER HAUNTS AND GHOUL-DENS: SHAWN AND LYNNE MITCHELL'S HOW TO HAUNT YOUR HOUSE

Welcome, foolish mortals, to The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween! We're glad to be back for 2009, and extremely proud to present our favorite new home decorating book as the first post for our 2009 Edition--How To Haunt Your House, written by Shawn and Lynne Mitchell.

The Mitchells are a husband-wife team of accomplished artists and home-haunting enthusiasts from Pensacola, Florida, who spend every Halloween turning the front yard of their home into The Mitchell Cemetery, which has become a popular Halloween attraction in Pensacola. The Mitchell Cemetery was featured in Fearnet.com's 2007 series Route 666: America's Scariest Haunted Houses, and won Best Yard Haunt for 2007 from the Haunt X Awards (an awards series for home haunters). Now the Mitchells have compiled their mad science into a self-published book entitled How To Haunt Your House, which was released this year. There are already mutterings of a second volume of how-to's planned for 2010.

Folks, this book is nothing less than a skeleton key to the Haunted Mansion. The beautiful photographs of the Mitchells' work, as well as their clear, concise step-by-step instructions for turning your own domicile into a Dream Spookhouse to be reckoned with, makes this terrorific tome a must-have for the Halloween decorator. It shows you how to construct tombstones, cemetery fences, and small details such as fence finials and so forth using simple items such as PVC pipe, styrofoam and hot glue. You can build such items as an endless mausoleum, a perpetually-drinking ghoul fountain, your own Pepper's-Ghost effect (still used in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion to this day), working prop candles from PVC pipe and hot glue, and any number of tombstones that look miles better than the cheap stuff at discount stores. The Mitchells also have a website, www.howtohauntyourhouse.com, where this book can be purchased. The site also contains pictures and videos of the Mitchells' nutty doings and lots of cool downloads (one of which is a fantastic pattern for a seance-board tabletop!) for your own experiments and spooky doings.

We just can't say enough good things about this book. If you have an itch to create your own spookhouse for Halloween but don't know where to begin, this book is the item to have as a starting point--simple, precise, and absolutely amazing. Get your copy now.

If you're in the Pensacola area on October 31, the Mitchell Cemetery will be open from dusk until 10:30 p.m. at 6701 Penton Street, Pensacola, Florida.

To see the Mitchells' very beautiful fine art, check out their main website at www.rabbitholeproductions.com.

IT'S THE GHOST WONDERFUL TIME OF THE YEAR...

Once again we announce our seasonal soiree of spooky statements for the 2009 Halloween season--The MonsterGrrls' 31 Days Of Halloween! That's right, folks, we're returning from the Monster Shop with even more daily news, reviews, essays and so forth for the Ghost Wonderful Time Of The Year, written by the Mad Doctor and the Grrls themselves!

Also, Punkin will report regularly in October with the Easy-Bake Coven, a series of darkly delightful recipes for various Halloween treats to serve at parties, gatherings, coven meetings, or just any old time this month! It all starts October 1st, so come on in... it's getting dark outside...

A FIELD GUIDE TO MONSTERS By John Rose

So a friend of mine and I took off for Jackson, as we needed to get out of the small town we live in for awhile. We made the rounds of our favorite shopping spots and visited Jason's Deli for a muffuletta, which for the uninitiated is a splendid Italian creation of ham, hard salami, provolone and olive salad dressing that has to be God's original design for the ham and cheese sandwich. (Some of it went home with us. For later.)

On our way out of Jackson we stopped in Ridgeland to visit the newly relocated Barnes & Noble, which has gone from its former nondescript shopping center location on County Line Road to being the crux of a huge, bold, and above all expensive neo-Renaissance Stepfordian complex, which all Sweet Potato Queens are sure to go gaga over, and probably have. But no amount of exquisitely constructed fake architecture can subvert the monster quest for long, and it was in B&N that we discovered A Field Guide To Monsters, written by Dave Elliott, C. J. Henderson and Rick Leider.

Purporting to be an expansion of a pamphlet originally written by Abraham Van Helsing, the Field Guide To Monsters is written and created in the style of a modern field guide, with useful proportional scales and classic photographs of each subject, an intelligence gauge (represented by brains) and full disclosure on all traits, abilities, weaknesses and so forth. Not content to just mention traditional or classic movie monsters (though all the favorites are here in various incarnations), the Guide includes a full complement of modern ones as well, including the Serial Five (Jason, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Leatherface and Hannibal Lecter), the Serial Wanna-Bes (Candyman, Pinhead, and Horace "Shocker" Pinker), Buffy's Vampires (Angel, Spike and The Master, who is unfortunately misrepresented by a photo of the Gentlemen from the episode "Hush"), separate entries for "Zombies" and "The Living Dead" (as it should be), the often-excluded entry for Dragons, and for some reason, Shrek. However, no Sweet Potato Queens are mentioned.

There is a lot of snarky humor in the Guide, which most of this book's reviewers on Amazon had a problem with, but I say that if you are in the midst of a pack of roving werewolves who are trying to tear you apart, it does you good to laugh. Also, the book is sturdily assembled, so if worse comes to worse you can smack them with it, which is a technique that also works well with Sweet Potato Queens.

A Field Guide To Monsters is available here at Barnes And Noble in its 2008 edition for the nice price of $7.98. The 2004 edition can be found at Amazon here. Buy a copy now, for the life you save may well be your own.

DISCLAIMER: No Sweet Potato Queens were harmed in the writing of this post.

Yet.

WHEN LOVE GOES HORRIBLY WRONG: A FEW DARK TREATS FOR VALENTINE'S DAY By Bethany Ruthven

Good evening, darlings, and thank you for reading. Someone once asked me if it is possible for vampires to love; the answer is yes, often to our detriment. We unlive for so long (vampire hunters, crazed priests, and foolhardy heroic souls notwithstanding) that we often lose those we love to simple mortality, or because they resent our rather flawed eternal youth. Such is the reason I have refused to sire anyone; a vampire's immortality is not worth the price. That being said, I do believe very strongly in love, and understand its necessity in the world.

Valentine's Day, however, is entirely another story. I would sooner give an over-the-top Arbor Day celebration than waste one moment on this truly miserable and wretched holiday, which serves not only to line the coffers of candy makers, greeting card sellers and flower merchants but also tears love from its lofty pedestal and reduces it to a miserable, crippled, blind animal crawling on all fours. Worse yet, it strips the spontaneity and joy of love away and places would-be and longstanding lovers in horrid thrall to one another, viciously pressuring them to make everything just exactly right, or else all is lost. But Valentine's Day reserves a special hell for those who are alone, forcing them to experience the cruelty and misery of watching those happy couples in celebration, look in vain for their own significant other, and feel the twist in the heart at finding no one there.

As you can see, I feel very strongly about this.

However, much of the traditional wretchedness of this annoying season has been dulled somewhat by the movement in recent years of like-minded friends (i.e. Valentine's Day Scrooges such as myself) gathering to celebrate their own friendship for the day, and if you are inclined to watch a movie, I present here a number of cinematic pleasures for Valentine's Day, with our own special monstrous flavor. (As it were.)

First up is a pair of traditional favorites recommended by my Grrl-friend and colleague Frankie Franken, The Bride Of Frankenstein from Universal Pictures and Hammer Studios' Frankenstein Created Woman. While neither are love stories per se, TBOF does look into the theme of the Creature's longing for acceptance and a friend. Of course, love is fickle, as the eventually created Bride spurns the Creature, leading to her own destruction at the hands of same. (Sometimes love hurts.) Frankenstein Created Woman is another chapter from Hammer's Dr. Frankenstein cycle, in which the good doctor (Peter Cushing) revives a disfigured woman named Christine (Susan Denberg) and transfers the soul of her wrongfully murdered lover Hans (Robert Morris) into her body. The resuscistated Christine/Hans, of course, immediately takes revenge on their murderers. I can also recommend 1985's The Bride, which eschews James Whale's ham-handed notions of sexual satire for a more satisfying ending to the legend of the Bride, as Eva (Jennifer Beals) and the Creature (Clancy Brown) reunite in the climax.

Of course, young love is all the rage on Valentine's Day, and one movie that stands out in this respect is Carrie, based on the best-selling novel by Stephen King. Tormented daily by unpleasant classmates and her own religiously zealous mother, Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) finally wreaks a terrible revenge on her entire school after her discovery of telekinetic abilities, but not before discovering kindness and love from a remorseful Sue Snell (Amy Irving) who sets up her boyfriend Tommy Ross (William Katt) to take Carrie to the prom. Despite Carrie's being elected prom queen, her telekinetic abilities are set in motion by the vengeful and spoiled Chris Hargensen (Nancy Allen), who has plotted a terrible prank involving a bucket of pig's blood. The resulting (and quite wasteful, to my eyes) denouement sets off an unparalleled wave of destruction for everyone who has ever hurt Carrie. This watershed of the horror genre, while very much a product of its time, has many universal themes of acceptance, redemption, vengeance, and longing for same. Carrie was remade in 2002, starring Angela Bettis in the title role; either is worth watching but the 2002 version follows King's novel much more closely than it's predecessor.

For those who require something geared to the holiday, I have 1981's My Bloody Valentine and 2001's Valentine. The Monster Shop can properly recommend neither as both are slasher films, but MBV is regarded as a cult classic and an example of Hollywood's attempts after the success of Halloween and Friday The 13th to create a number of holiday-themed horror films. MBV is the story of a mining town called Valentine Bluffs, whose claim to horror fame is its legend of Harry Warden, a miner who was trapped in a shaft collapse and went mad, exacting a bloody Valentine's Day revenge on his guilty crew foremen and threatening a return to Valentine Bluffs if the holiday was ever celebrated again. Naturally, several years later some kids decide it's time to hold a Valentine's day dance, and, well, you can guess the rest. Despite it being a summarily convoluted and thoroughly unscary movie, we in the Monster Shop hold a certain soft spot in our hearts for Valentine, which stars David Boreanaz of Angel and Bones fame and is the story of a young middle-school outcast who is beaten and humiliated at a Valentine's Day dance and plots revenge on the five girls who rejected him. Though the resulting film plays out much like Slasher Flick 90210, this is the only horror film we have found whose masked killer gets a massive nosebleed right before committing murder.

Finally, we present one absolutely fabulous movie: May, starring Angela Bettis in the title role and directed by Lucky McKee. May is the story of a poorly socialized young lady with a lazy eye whose attempts to create relationships within her life go terribly awry, further confusing and demoralizing her to the point that her misgivings explode into full-blown psychosis. Within each of those relationships, she has been attracted to some physical feature about the person, so when she goes off the deep end, May thus begins to collect the body parts she admires from the various people she has sought friendship from in hopes of creating the perfect friend... and McKee and Bettis have subsequently created the perfect Valentine's Day horror movie. Wrong in all the right ways, May deserves to be included within our soiree of savagery.

So there we are. And if I have offended anyone with my remarks about this holiday, please be advised that although it is never my intention to offend the general public, where Valentine's Day is concerned I really don't care if I have. Do enjoy these tastes of horror dark-chocolate on this day, and remember that love comes in many forms not requiring a small naked winged child with a quiver of arrows. (Honestly, those ancient Greeks were clever souls, but once in a while anyone can throw a wobbler.)

Regards,
Bethany Ruthven

Review Of A CHRISTMAS STORY By John Rose

It's the 25th! Today we wish all of our readers a most happy and Merry Christmas, and our final post for The MonsterGrrls' 25 Days Of Christmas is a review of the popular holiday film A Christmas Story, based on the Jean Shepard novel In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. Director Bob Clark was inspired by radio personality Shephard's stories of growing up in northwest Indiana, and was allowed to make the film after the success of the first two Porky's films.

Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), a boy growing up in 1940's Indiana, is obsessed with receiving one thing, and only one thing, for Christmas, "an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range-model air rifle." A large part of the film is devoted to the various ways and means of alerting his parents (Darren McGavin and Melinda Dillon) to this fact, despite constant admonitions of "you'll shoot your eye out" from his mother, his teacher (Tedde Moore), who writes this on an essay about the air rifle just below Ralphie's grade of C+, and the Higbee's department store Santa (Jeff Gillen) who is Ralphie's final avenue of hope for his wish. Meanwhile, Ralphie and younger brother Randy (Ian Petrella) and his friends Flick (Scott Schwartz) and Schwartz (R.D. Robb) must deal with the usual trials of childhood, including the classic triple dog dare between Flick and Schwartz over whether or not a person's tongue will stick to a frozen flagpole, and neighborhood bullies Scott Farkas (Zack Ward) and Grover Dill (Yano Anaya) who finally receive a brutal beating at the hands of Ralphie after a particularly rough day on the road to BB glory. There are also the Old Man's daily battles with the house's recalcitrant furnace and the neighbors' bothersome hound dogs, Ralphie's unfortunate use of the dreaded F-dash-dash-dash word and the receiving of the Old Man's Major Award (the infamous Leg Lamp, which the Old Man loves and the Mother loathes). All of these vignettes together add up to a mad Christmas punch of Norman Rockwell and Mad Magazine that is now regarded as nothing less than a perennial of the holiday season. The film has now been immortalized as a holiday perennial, and is often aired in 24-hour marathons on the TBS station, beginning on Christmas Eve.

Much of the film's perfection is derived from its mixture of holiday sentimentality and good-natured satire that manages to stay mature without sliding into gross humor. Billingsley, Dillon and McGavin (who is, and perhaps will always be, The Old Man for all time) shine in their roles, and their supporting cast brings a sense of realism to the holiday madness that occurs throughout the movie. If you watch one Christmas film during the season, it should be this one.

We hope that you all enjoyed The MonsterGrrls' 25 Days Of Christmas as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you, and all of us here in the Monster Shop wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Stick around, because there's no telling what we'll do next...

The world is full of beautiful things
Butterfly wings, fairytale kings
And each new day undoubtedly brings
Still more beautiful things...
--Bobby Darin, "Beautiful Things"

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL
FROM THE MONSTERGRRLS

Petronella "Punkin" Nightshade
Francesca "Frankie" Franken
Bethany Ruthven
Harriet Von Lupin

ACROSS FIVE CAROLS: Five Staves On Charles Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL By Bethany Ruthven

Good evening, darlings, and thank you for reading. It is Christmas Eve, and as I write this I am in my chambers at Castle Ruthven with a splendid and delicious bottle of Lithuanian Greengrocer 1865, type AB-negative. (A lovely year, too.) Christmas Eve, for me, is the best time of Christmas, full of anticipation. The bunting is down, most of the various fetes and parties are done, and we are only twenty-four hours away from beginning the walk to the New Year. On Christmas Eve my thoughts often turn to what is perhaps my favorite Christmas story, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Dickens first published his "Ghost Story For Christmas" on December 19, 1843. The 'little Christmas book' was instantly successful, selling over 6000 copies in just one week. This wonderful tale of the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his redemption has endured through the ages to become a true classic of Christmas, and in its time was judged by his contemporaries as crucial to redefining the role of the Christmas season and its traditions. A Christmas Carol has been adapted countless times for nearly every performing medium imaginable, and tonight, as we pass the hours to Christmas Day, I shall share with you our five favorite adaptations.

Stave 1: Patrick Stewart's Christmas Carol
Stewart, known by all Star Trek fans everywhere as the unflappable Captain Jean-Luc Picard, has performed a one-man stage production of A Christmas Carol since 1991. In this 1994 Hallmark Entertainment production, which neither skimps on nor romanticizes the squalor of the Victorian period, Stewart turns in a delightful performance as Ebenezer Scrooge, with Richard E. Grant appearing as a particularly beleaguered Bob Cratchit and Joel Grey as a kindly but firm-handed Ghost of Christmas Past. The ghost-story aspects of Dickens' tale are played to maximum effect, and the film's production values are unusually high for a television adaptation, similar to Masterpiece Theatre. This film has become a holiday perennial in the Monster Shop; we must see this every Christmas. Watch for appearances by Trevor Peacock and Liz Smith, both alumni of Dawn French's acclaimed Vicar Of Dibley series.

Stave 2: A Christmas Carol: The Musical
We were a bit skeptical of a musical version of A Christmas Carol at first, and equally skeptical of the rather warm and genial Kelsey Grammer as Scrooge, but this version surprised us. Hallmark Entertainment produced this television film in 2004, based on a 1994 Madison Square Garden stage musical. Grammer's performance as Scrooge does come across as more grumpy than bitter and anguished, but again, the production values are very high, and we find the music pleasant. There seems to be little downtime between the songs. This musical also features a scene in which Scrooge's father is sent away to debtors' prison, a scene inspired by the life of Dickens himself.

Stave 3: Scrooged
This 1988 comedy film featuring Bill Murray is noted for its many star roles and cameos, its satire of the media and its Carol-within-a-Carol storyline of a heartless and cruel TV executive who is assigned the task of producing a live TV all-star version of the Dickens tale, and finds his life inexplicably mirroring the story. Produced by Richard Donner and adapted from Dickens by Mitch Glazer and black-comedy master Michael O'Donoghue, this film is unusually faithful to the Dickens tale, modernized though it may be. Many dark moments and images abound in this film, and according to those in the know, O'Donoghue had a much darker vision in mind than what ultimately went to theatres.

Stave 4: Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol
Quincy Magoo, the popular UPA cartoon character voiced by Jim Backus, appears as Ebenezer Scrooge in this much-lauded animated musical from 1962. Despite being aimed at children and rather shortened to fit an hour-long time slot, much of the dialogue is directly quoted from Dickens with little to no simplification. It also contains a rich and excellent musical score and songs by Walter Scharf, Jule Styne and Bob Merrill.

Stave 5: The Stingiest Man In Town
Rankin-Bass Studios makes up for its poor rendering of Dickens' The Cricket On The Hearth with this fine 1978 adaptation of the Carol, featuring Walter Matthau and Broadway legend Robert Morse in vocal talents for old and young Scrooge, and Tom Bosley as ubitiquous narrator B.A.H. Humbug. The animation style is somewhat similar to the style that would appear in their productions of Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Return Of The King, and the story is relatively faithful to Dickens' original work. This special is now available on the Classic Christmas Favorites DVD set, which is available at Amazon.com (as are the other films shown here).

So in these last hours of the Eve, I take this opportunity to wish all of our readers a most pleasant and wonderful Merry Christmas from myself, the other MonsterGrrls (Frankie, Punkin and Harriet) and our Mad Doctor. I have delighted in being a part of this holiday soiree, and hope your New Year is prosperous and peaceful. Do keep Christmas in your heart, as Scrooge came to do, and God bless us every one.

Our final post for The MonsterGrrls' 25 Days Of Christmas is up tomorrow. I shall see you then, and once more, Merry Christmas to all.

Warmest regards for the season,
Bethany Ruthven

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS: THE FILM By John Rose

Merry Grinchmas to all! For our final segment of Grinchwatch for this Christmas season, we're going to take a look at the 2000 film Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas, starring Jim Carrey and directed by Ron Howard. This movie was the first-ever Dr. Seuss tale to be made into a live-action film.

Drawing directly from the original story and Seuss' canon (down to the Who world being microscopic and contained deep inside a snowflake), this movie is fleshed out to include some of the Grinch's own backstory. Whoville has begun its usual outrageous and extravagant Christmas celebration, but Cindy Lou Who (Taylor Momsen) is confused by all the excess and feels that the true meaning of Christmas has been lost. Meanwhile, the jealous and angry Grinch (Jim Carrey), a social outcast who lives next to the city dump at the top of Mount Crumpit, is visiting Whoville in disguise and attempting sabotage among the Whos. Through a series of circumstances, these two encounter each other, and the Grinch uncharacteristically saves Cindy Lou from being squashed in the mail-sorting machine at the Who post office. At that point, the film takes off.

Receiving little information from her parents about the Grinch, and deciding that perhaps he is not as bad as rumor has it, Cindy Lou begins to canvas the town, and discovers from various Whos (including Jeffrey Tambor's scheming Mayor Maywho and Christine Baranski's befuddled Martha May Whovier) that the Grinch was indeed a Who at one point, adopted by a kindly couple of maiden aunts. Teased at school for his odd appearance and green fur, Grinch, upon discovering that Martha May likes him, uses his developing engineering skills and builds her a Christmas angel for a present. Attempting to fit in, he tries to shave himself and does such a terrible job that even the teacher cannot help laughing, leading to a destructive tantrum that destroys the classroom and his present and sends Grinch running away to the top of Mount Crumpit, where he has been living ever since.

Cindy Lou decides that bringing the Grinch back to Whoville and involving him in the Whobilation may help her own misgivings about the holiday, and undertakes a brave quest to meet the Grinch and elect him as Holiday Cheermeister. Mayor Maywho, feeling threatened by the Grinch, deviously gives him "the gift of a Christmas Shave," which results in another tantrum and more destruction. As the Whos rebuild their Whobilation, the canonical story is set in motion as the Grinch gets his Wonderful, Awful Idea and begins his plot to steal Christmas.

Seuss' tale of the Grinch has always had a theme of redemption to it, and the added backstory in this film throws this theme into sharp focus. The excesses of the film's sets, costumes and special effects (as well as the excesses of Jim Carrey, who eschews Boris Karloff's original reading for one of his usual manic performances, which becomes tempered somewhat by his scenes with Momsen) almost ensure that this film will have none of the charm of Chuck Jones' original cartoon, or of Seuss's original story. But director Ron Howard and the cast (which also includes Anthony Hopkins as narrator, Howard's brother Clint as Maywho's toady Whobris, and master clown Bill Irwin and comedienne Molly Shannon as Cindy Lou's parents) treat Seuss's story with love, grace and deep respect for its source, creating an original production of a well-known holiday classic without stealing its thunder and acknowledging Seuss as its undisputed master. We in the Monster Shop do recommend this film for the holidays, but only if you also show the original Chuck Jones cartoon and/or read the original Seuss book.

And so we end our Grinchwatch for this season. There's just two days left to Christmas, so hang with us for tomorrow's Ghoul-tide news on The MonsterGrrls' 25 Days Of Christmas!

Review Of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS By John Rose

Jingle jingle to all, and today for our 25 Days Of Christmas celebration we're looking at Charles Schulz's A Charlie Brown Christmas. Like Rudolph, Frosty and the Grinch, Christmas with the Peanuts gang is something we look forward to during the holiday season, and a recent brand-new DVD release from Warner Bros has just arrived, with remastering and extra features.

Originally airing in 1965, Charles Schulz and producer Bill Mendelez (who also voices Snoopy for this production) brought the idea for an animated Peanuts special to CBS with sponsoring from the Coca-Cola company. Created on a shoestring budget, this production was originally considered a bust by CBS network execs, due to the use of untrained child actors (Kathy Steinberg, who voiced Sally, was too young at the time to read her lines and had to be cued line by line during the soundtrack recording), Vince Guaraldi's now-classic jazz soundtrack and Linus's reading of the Gospel Of Luke in the pre-climax. Both Schulz and Melendez valiantly fought for their vision, and the resulting critical and commercial success of the show proved the network execs wrong and created a holiday classic. Also, Linus' telling of the Nativity drew whopping critical praise and turned out to be the highlight of the 1965 holiday season.

The story has Charlie Brown unhappy and uncertain (as usual) about the coming of Christmas. Put off by the commercialism he sees around him (such as Snoopy's participation in a house decorating contest and his sister Sally's desire for "tens and twenties" for Christmas), he turns to Lucy for advice. She asks him to direct the school Christmas play, but he cannot get control of the other kids, who are more interested in a modern version of Christmas than the simplicity and traditionalism Charlie wants. When Charlie chooses a small but very real baby tree for the play over a lot full of fake aluminum Christmas trees, he is castigated by everyone except Linus, who answers his anguished question of "what is Christmas all about" by a quiet center-stage recitation of the Nativity story. Touching on themes of overcommercialization of Christmas, as well as reminding viewers of the real Christmas story, A Charlie Brown Christmas has carried on to become a perennial of the season, and also won Emmy and Peabody Awards.

The new DVD includes remastering and special features including the special It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown and an all-new featurette on the making of the original special. Like its predecessor It's The Great Pumkpin, Charlie Brown, some free music downloads from iTunes are also included. But whether you prefer the special features or not, this is a must-have for anyone assembling a collection of holiday DVDs, and should be at the top of everyone's list. We in the Monster Shop cannot stress enough the importance of seeing this tale, whether through broadcast, ownership, or even a rental. God bless and keep Charlie Schulz in our hearts, and Merry Christmas to all our readers of The MonsterGrrls' 25 Days Of Christmas!

POST-MORTEM: Click the DVD cover picture above for an ordering link from Amazon, and click here to read more about this fantastic Christmas special from a column at PopMatters by Brian Heater.