How to Dress for Halloween

According to Stats Canada, Halloween has now become more popular with adults than with children.

It's not hard to figure out why. The main reason that October 31st no longer has the same thrill it once did for kids is - over-protective parents. They've sucked all the fun out of it. On that night, they no longer allow their kids to roam the streets to take candy from strangers, soap windows, tip over the occassional cop car or torch abandoned tenement buildings.

Now it's organized Halloween parties - where the candy count is guaranteed and the fun is limited. And how could it be otherwise - your parents are there. For all you youngsters out there, here's a good rule of thumb in judging a party. At any point in your life. Don't matter how old you are. Upon making your entrance, wait five minutes and look around the room. If you can still see your parents, you might as well ask for your party-bag right then and there, fake a stomach-ache and go home and watch TV. Believe me, you'll have a better time.

As usual, adults have appropriated this holiday for Themselves. It represents their first opportunity to play make-believe and dress-up since they put their bridal gowns and tuxedos in storage.

And not just any sort of dress-up but SEXY dress-up. French maids, nurses in high-heels, Horny Lil' Devils, Elvira, Wilma Flintstone and Betty Page.

Men also like to dress up sexy for Halloween parties. Sure you will see the occassional zombie, Darth Vader, Stephen Hawking and Spiderman - but those are usually guys who don't have girlfriends. But for other males, the choices are pretty limited. There's always James Bond, but that's kinda lame - anyone can rent a tux. There's Zorro or the Lone Ranger - chicks always go for that masked-stranger look. Or you could always transform yourself into Austin Powers or Frank N. Furter, depending on how much of a fool you want to make of yourself.

But if you want a Halloween-look where you can still come off slightly cool, you can't go wrong dressing up as a vampire. Hands down, there is no child of the night quite as sexy as a vampire. There's so much built-in eroticism in the whole vampire fantasy. All that business about sucking neck - or just sucking - and the life-giving flow of bodily fluids. All that submission. All that dominance. I get aroused just thinking about it. And got the hickies to prove it.

And then there's the wardrobe. One thing about vampires - they know how to dress. Long flowing capes and gowns. Black fingernails. Everything in black. Even the sock-garters. Just like those Goth kids you see in downtown Toronto now that I think of it.

But you needn't go with the stereotype. So here's some recommended viewing to inspire anyone who wants to look vampish without coming across as Christopher Lee or that other old guy with the Hungarian accent.

Submitted for your approval - 'The Hunger' and 'Vampyros Lesbos.' And these two films come recommended specifically for all the lady readers out there. These are vampire stories in which the women are in control, no mere victims. Sista's are doin' it for demselves.

As such, both are also examples of the total opposite of the traditional vampire movie. This ain't your grandparents' Count Vlad. In fact, 'The Hunger' sets the tone in its opening scene with 'Bela Lugosi's Dead,' by Bauhaus played in an underground New York nightclub.

These are Modern women. 'Now' women. Career gals who only use men for pleasure and food. These are Today's vampires. 'The Hunger', made in 1983 stars Catharine Deneuve, Susan Sarandon and rock-star David Bouwhee. And they are all blond and beautiful. Especially Bouwhee.

'Vampyros Lesbos' which is an obvious inspiration for 'The Hunger' (even though 'The Hunger' was adapted from the novel by Whitley Streiber back in the days when he made his living as a writer, not as a victim of alien abductions,) and was filmed a decade earlier by Eurotrash sexploitation auteur Jesus Franco and stars Soledad Miranda as the vampire.

It's also a basic retelling of Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' - except the main characters happen to be women. And lesbians.

I could go on and on about why 'Vampyros Lesbos' is both an art-house and cult-classic and how the director turned the vampire mythos on its head (vampires sunbathing in the nude on the beach, 'sleeping' during the daytime by floating naked in an outdoors pool atop an air-mattress,) and how 'Hunger' director Tony Scott did the same thing of reversing all the well-worn established vampire cliches in his film.

But I won't. Because I only watched these two movies for the 'va-va-voom, hubba-hubba' factor.

Put it this way - in 'The Hunger,' we have Catharine Deneuve topless. And a young Susan Sarandon topless. And both nude. And that way TOGETHER!

And in 'Vampyros Lesbos,' the vampires are like that ALL the time.