News/Features | Fright night

Fright night
Tired of throwing ghoulishly bad Halloween parties? Follow these tips for a spooktacular bash.

BY DAVID VALDES GREENWOOD

Games people play
Activities for a hell-raising Halloween party
Personalities. If you have 10 guests or fewer, split into pairs; if you have more, split into several large teams. Each person secretly writes down the names of 10 famous personalities on scraps of paper and puts them into a container. In each round, one person draws from the container and gives clues to the other teammate(s), who must guess the name written on the paper. Only when the name is guessed can the team move on to the next name. The team has 30 seconds (or a minute — it’s up to you) to guess as many correctly as possible. This is done team by team until the last name has been guessed. The team with the most names wins.
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. One team names a living actor who can supposedly be connected to Kevin Bacon in six steps or fewer; the other team has to make the connection. For example, say the first team named Gary Oldman: he was in Dracula with Winona Ryder, who was in Little Women with Gabriel Byrne, who was in The Usual Suspects with Kevin Bacon. If the answering team can’t do it in six steps (including the movie featuring Kevin and the movie featuring the named actor), the challengers get a point — if they can complete the task, of course. If the answering players can do it, they win the point, unless the challenging team can come up with a shorter connection (fewer steps) in 20 seconds or less.
How’d I Die? The host writes out nametags, one per guest, each with the name of a dead celebrity. With each name, the host also adds a list of words that would be too easy as clues to identify that person and therefore may not be said. The guests are split into teams. Each guest takes a seat at the front of the room and the host holds up the dead-celebrity name that must be guessed, as well as the taboo words, so that only the teammates can see. The team has 30 seconds to shout clues about how the celebrity died until the guest guesses who he or she is supposed to be.
— DVG

THE EERIE SILENCE ... the shadows cast by flickering candles ... the withheld breath as you wait for someone to appear and save you from this nightmare ... the horror, the horror ...

Okay, so last year’s Halloween party sucked. You’re stuck in a rut: you still think all you need for a bitchin’ soirŽe is a keg and a pair of wax fangs. But if all people have to choose from is clubs with costume contests, late-night scary-movie screenings, Salem’s frenzied street party, and standing around shooting the shit over a punch bowl in your living room, hello — what do you expect?

The trick to getting people to come to your party (and actually stay, not just pop in on their way to the real deal) is to make your party so unique, so memorable, that they think they’d be missing out if they didn’t show. It isn’t that hard to dress up a party and make it stand out — you just have to make a list of what people expect (black cats, witch hats, cobwebs) and then either ditch those things or reinvent them. Why do you think Martha Stewart’s delicate papier m‰chŽ jack-o’-lanterns are worth the all time they take? Because she knows you haven’t seen them before, and she knows that novelty sells. That’s why she’s Martha Stewart, billionaire, and you’re you, person whose last party tanked. But you don’t need Martha’s time-consuming obsession with detail to kick party butt; you need a sense of humor, a dose of creativity, and a little bit of attitude. And since you’re reading the Phoenix, we’ll assume you’ve got all three.

THERE ARE five basic rules for throwing a killer Halloween party. Obey them like a cult follower and you’ll reclaim your enjoyment of October 31 for good.

1. Have a theme and stick to it. Before you howl that you’re not a theme-party kind of person, ask yourself why. You’re capable of matching your clothes and thinking about which pieces of furniture look good together, so why not make all the elements of your party mesh? The minute you settle on a theme, the wheels start turning: you’re already a step beyond SweeTart-filled plastic pumpkins. How you decorate, what you cook, how you and your guests dress — it all shoots off in wild new directions. Your friends, faced with four invitations, suddenly have a clear-cut choice: three yawn-inducing Halloweeny parties or one bash with a personality all its own.

2. Require costumes. (Be an inflexible bastard about this.) The kiss of death for a Halloween party is the lame-ass guy who shows up in jeans and a T-shirt and says he’s dressed as "a guy." Or the woman who comes in chic black and lingers on the fringe, purring that she doesn’t do costumes. Maybe nobody told them, but the whole point of Halloween is disguise; if you couldn’t get candy without a costume as a kid, you shouldn’t get beer and munchies without one as a grown-up. If you have friends who hate dressing up, tell them you respect that and will have them over next week; your party is a costume-only affair. People will howl, but they’ll do it, and you’ll be amazed by what even the loudest protesters come up with. Sticking to your guns will result in two things: your theme will be kept alive and, even better, people will have something to talk about. Costumes are an especially good icebreaker for strangers: "So, is that an ostrich on your head?" is a much better opener than "Yeah, I couldn’t think of anything, either."

3. Serve amusing — and edible — food. People expect you to feed them; free food is the subliminal meaning of the word "party." Inspired by a theme, you can do better than just throwing a bowl of chips on the table. Think of foods obviously related to the party’s motif or twist your old standbys to fit your theme by giving them punny names or adapting their presentation in some way. Devise a cocktail with a theme-worthy name or simply rename some existing cocktail for the evening. And do not, under any circumstances, make your guests bob for their food.

4. Have games for grown-ups. I know, how ’50s of me — but I’m not kidding. Plan one or two games over the course of the evening (see "Games People Play," page 7A) and you’ll be amazed at how it pumps up the volume. There’s a reason grown-up games like Personalities are all the rage among the Brad-and-Jennifer set in Malibu — they’re fun, they’re not pretentious, and at some point you have to outgrow doing shots till you puke. Personalities and Charades are the easiest to adapt to a theme, but any game can be tweaked if you’re really intent on wowing your friends.

5. Go multimedia. Now, I’m not talking about broadcasting your party on the Web. (Though you could, and wouldn’t that be impressive?) I’m talking about adding more texture to things by extending the party’s theme to your TV and computer monitors. There’s no need for them to go dark just because you’re throwing a party. Find a screen-saver that fits the theme, or log on to a Web page that has some amusing interactive component related to your party idea. (You might want to clear your, ahem, porn history before leaving your browser unattended.) For your TV, rent a video or two and run them in the background with the sound off. For the guests who just won’t leave, start a late-night movie; you can get clean-up done while they veg out before the last dregs of your freakin’ theme.

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Issue Date: October 25 - November 1, 2001