Halloween and the Telluride Horror Show

Game of Werewolves

What are you doing this Halloween? Are you going to celebrate All Hallow’s Eve? Will you toast the dead? Get spooked? Go out and get scary?

Telluride Horror Show

“Stay home, turn off the lights and watch a bunch of horror films,” says Ted Wilson, Director of the Telluride Horror Show, the latest festival to be added to the roster of our festival-rich town. Clearly being scared is a big thrill for people from all over the world as  testified by the number of horror festivals across the globe. Named one of “thirteen horror film festivals to die for” and “one of the twenty coolest film festivals in 2011” by MovieMaker Magazine, the Telluride Horror Show has already received great praise. It just took place here in our little mountain town for the third year in a row and dates have  already been set for next year (Note that the second weekend in October is the slot for future planning.)

Is our town scary? Well, come mid October when the trees are bare and dead leaves swirl around semi-deserted streets, yeah, it can seem a little eery. Add to that a full moon, brisk temperatures and a quaint little Victorian town dwarfed by imposing mountains, and you can easily feel a chill up your spine. In a town with such a colorful past ranging from the days of the Ute Indians to the mining boom of the late 1800s, you can bet there are a few ghosts floating around our back streets. It was, in fact, on a walk in Telluride’s Lone Tree Cemetery that Ted came up with the idea of creating a horror film festival in Telluride.

“I always loved films,” Ted says. “So a horror film festival seemed to make sense to me,” he continues.Ted then explained the how and why associated with people getting scared. “There’s often a big comedic element to a good horror film as well.”

“Oh, you mean like the World Wrestling Federation?” I asked. “That always seems so fake to me.” Somehow though I think that a real horror film albeit one with a bit of humor would still scare the bejesus out of me. The more Ted and I chatted, the more it seems people take pleasure in feeling like they’ve endured something. “Sort of like how us Tellurides feel after a long, cold winter,” I said. Ted just nodded.

With film titles such as “Portraits of a Zombie,” “Children of the Dark” and “Intruder,” I wonder if I’ll ever be able to attend any of Ted’s Telluride Horror Show. Although confidence was restored when he told me that they even have programs for kids at his festival. Maybe I can get a good taste of horror some day after all.

For this Halloween, however, I might just soft-pedal it and eat an extra handful of candy corn.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Mild-Mannered Ted and His Lovely Wife Lynn