Halloween in the Big Easy
Now that Halloween is here, our beloved city will no doubt be even more spooky than usual, where life and death infamously like to mix—especially on screen.
For a place where people proudly dance at funerals, why not take a break from all the morbid revelry and enjoy some sacri-licious flicks that explore the various ways and means of cheating death? Here is a list of some subversive, spooktacular Halloween selections, shot locally over several decades, that might make you shiver with laughter and/or fear, depending on your mood.
Angel Heart
Mickey Rourke is at his seedy prime as gumshoe Harry Angel from '40s era New York in this supernatural noir horror. An old crooner's legacy is part of the superb soundtrack and the MacGuffin that sends him down to New Orleans, with Magazine Street done over in sepia tones. The seething humidity is practically palpable. Harry meets a diabolically suave Robert DeNiro—who eats an egg in the most menacing possible way—in the St. Alphonsus Church in the Lower Garden District, scurries through Jackson Square, and falls hard for earthy Lisa Bonet. Her character grew up on a former plantation in Thibodeaux and committedly participates in a Haitian Voodoo ceremony. Their intense sex scene happens in a haunted room on Royal Street that scandalized the censors, who initially slapped the film with an X rating. It even caused an outraged Bill Cosby to kick Bonet off his show, a decision that has aged even worse over time.
Happy Death Day
Filmed almost entirely on Loyola University's campus, with a nod to the sorority house around the corner, this horror/comedy surprise hit takes up the intriguing premise of "Scream meets Groundhog Day." Tree, played with spunky charm by Jessica Rothe, wakes up from birthday debauchery in a stranger's bed. After doing the walk of shame, she heads back to her sorority house around the corner to face a bitter roommate. Later that night, she ends up being murdered on campus by a black-clad villain in a dementedly smiling baby mask—which, apparently, warranted a copyright lawsuit from the Baby Cakes. When Tree perpetually wakes up in the same bed, all the events of the day repeat themselves, and she realizes something's up. No helpless "final girl" as with most traditional horror film tropes, our empowered heroine sleuths her way into figuring out who her murderer is, while wearing a Dumpstafunk shirt, and even enjoys a satisfying resolution.
Hell Baby
The screwy brain trust behind Reno 911! and The State—Thomas J Lennon and Robert Ben Garant—wrote, directed, and appeared in Hell Baby, a combination of horror and ribald farce that is more funny than scary. Naïve married newbies expecting twins, Rob Corddry from The Daily Show and Leslie Bibb from Popular, move into a dilapidated home—the Lower Garden District's Urbania House. Worse, one of the couple's cute little bundles of joy turns out to be a demon spawn. The great Keegan-Michael Key is the wacky neighbor, even sporting a WWOZ shirt, popping in through the window to explain why it's known as "The House of Blood." Fun cameos abound: Michael Ian Black as an ill-fated doctor, comedians Rob Heubel and Paul Scheer as nonchalant NOPD officers, and Kumail Nanjiani as a flustered cable guy. Lennon and Garant are chain smoking priests and the ineptest exorcists ever. The gang also loudly pigs out at Domilise's. If you're down for gratuitous nudity, gory slapstick, blowjob jokes with the undead, and a soupçon of gentrification satire, then this is the movie for you.
Interview with the Vampire
This list wouldn't be complete without this lush, century-hopping adaptation of the bestselling debut novel from Anne Rice, a grande dame of New Orleans literary history if ever there was one. Bravo to Tom Cruise playing against type as the sensually corrupt Lestat, tantalizing Brad Pitt's conflicted Louis with the diabolically intriguing concept that it's cool to gleefully live off sucking the blood of others. The erotic subtext is quite overt indeed as it plays out in elegantly decaying mansions including the Destrehan Plantation, or in Lafayette Cemetery. Louis wistfully takes in a celluloid sunrise at the old Thalia Theatre on Coliseum Street. The movie wasn't nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction for nothing. Decadent undead French aristocrats in elegant evening clothes discovering the amorality of immortality—sure sounds like Halloween in NOLA.
J.D.'s Revenge
Mixing blaxploitation with supernatural horror, this far-out, low budget '70s flick stars two actors who would go on to make names for themselves on both stage and screen. Glynn Thurman, perhaps best known as Mayor Royce in The Wire, stars as a haunted young man named Isaac suddenly possessed by the angry, cocky spirit of a '40s era gangster who died prematurely from a nasty run-in with a rival in a meat locker. Lou Gossett Jr., the first ever Black man to win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, is the shady reverend whose fate is entangled with Isaac's. Clearly shot on location in the Quarter, including a sleazy Bourbon Street strip club in all its funky, '70s glory, the movie also has a poignant scene on the St. Charles streetcar added for good measure. The film is splashy, trashy fun with groovy dance breaks and nubile babes aplenty. Yet, there is also a subtle critique of the corrosive effect that the genre's hypermasculine superfly tropes can have.
