Chances are you’ve already missed Halloween. No, not the carving of the pumpkins or the trick-or-treating, which I’ll feel less foolish doing when I bring my daughter. (I’m a sucker for wax teeth and bags of candy corn, and just give them up without complaint when this middle-aged goblin shows up at your door tonight.) I mean John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, the movie that redefined the celebration. So far as I can tell, its one and only broadcast, on no less an occasion than its 30th anniversary, is, or was, on commercial-ridden, censor-happy AMC, at 9:30am, a time when most serial killers are still in bed. I note that the inferior sequels are getting some airtime, while the real deal goes unnoticed. It’s not like Rob Zombie’s trailer-trash remake has stabbed it in the back by pushing it off the schedule—that’s not on, either. Imagine Christmas if TV programmers decided to give It’s a Wonderful Life a year off, or retire A Christmas Story. As someone who loves horror movies, I protest.

But my revolution will not be televised, so like the mom caught short on Oct. 31 who has to cut holes in her white sheet so Junior can dress up as a ghost, I improvise. I suspect it’s late in the game to be renting the DVD, and if it’s not on your shelf, you’ll have to move on. Going to a movie may not do the trick: Quarantine has burned itself out, a fifth Saw is about as enticing as a third High School Musical if you’re just not into the franchise, and The Haunting of Molly Hartley smells like the kind of blah teen terror destined to haunt video stores in an underwhelming “Unrated” edition by early next year. I can recommend Let the Right One In and Splinter, which are now playing—alas, their independent distributors have them in limited release only, and unless you live near where they are playing they may have missed their peak moment, to face the fate of vampires caught at dawn when their runs expand.

That would be a pity. Let me say that Let the Right One In, from Sweden, shouldn’t be mistaken for Halloween-dependent, so when it turns up in your neighborhood, pounce. I’d love it if it opened on the Fourth of July, and it would be a good choice for Valentine’s Day, as it is a love story, a most unsettling one. Based on a 2004 novel, it takes the creepiest idea from Interview with the Vampire—the notion of an undead child, a doll-like immortal with fearsome predatory urges—and runs with it. As George A. Romero’s set his classic Martin, another superior twist on bloodsucking, in a fading Pittsburgh, Let the Right One In (a title adapted from a Morrissey song) takes place in a snowbound, fraying-at-the-edges housing complex outside Stockholm, a perfectly anonymous place for the undead to tap fresh blood. Oskar (Kare Hedebrant), a smart but unformed twelve-year-old with a quiet thirst for revenge against his tormentors, is the ideal recruit for Eli (Lena Leandersson), the ghoul next door. (more…)