I’M SURE some you are now so inspired that you won’t finish this sentence before diving into party-planning mode. For those who learn by example, here are three great Halloween-party themes, along with tips for following the rules. Go ahead, steal them — anything to save you from yet another ghoulish party.

B-movie Halloween. Dress up your house in posters for terrifyingly bad movies, pictures of really terrible actors old and new (Melanie Griffith, Sylvester Stallone, Doris Day), and video boxes from obscure, ludicrously titled films. Costumes should be inspired by truly scary characters or awful performances from B-movies, like Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane or Juliette Lewis in The Other Sister.

Your food could incorporate movie titles. Try Erin Broccoli (broccoli with Velveeta, a trailer-park favorite) or Ziti in Pink (pasta with a creamy red sauce). Or serve something recognizable from the big screen, like the green Jell-O with raisins from Better Off Dead. Game-wise, this is a perfect opportunity to play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, which requires nothing but a recent and thorough video guidebook. Your video options are unlimited, of course, but I’d suggest finding the most outrageous films possible — Attack of the Killer Tomatoes or Reefer Madness, for example — because melodrama without sound is even funnier.

Dead Celebrities. Okay, this is not the most tasteful idea ever, but we like to think of it as a version of Mexico’s Day of the Dead for sarcastic people. Celebrity, in this case, means anyone famous — from politicians and athletes to religious icons, and, yes, even movie stars. The daring may even choose to factor cause-of-death into their costumes. A little cardboard and construction paper, and you’ve got tombstones for the famous dead — adorned with appropriate epitaphs, of course. (Abraham Lincoln: "The play wasn’t that bad.") A little black lace draped over the light fixtures, a few mums, and you’re all set to wake the living dead.

Set the food up like offerings to the dead: little shrines displaying a celebrity’s picture, with his or her favorite food spread out beneath. Gandhi’s plate would be empty, of course, but Elvis’s shrine might be decked with peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches, and the shrine to Mama Cass would be loaded down with anything you damn well please. For a game, you might do a variant on Taboo, which I’ll call "How’d I Die?" Playing on the VCR in the background: Marilyn Monroe or James Dean movies are natural choices, though Kurt Cobain videos are a grisly option, too.

A Simpsons Halloween. Why the Simpsons, after a dozen years on the air? That’s easy: because you don’t know a soul who has never seen the show. Better yet, the vast majority of people between the ages of 18 and 40 have watched so many Simpsons reruns that they can quote dialogue at will. (Want to get strangers talking? Ask them their favorite Simpsons episode.) With literally hundreds of episodes to choose from, you and your guests will have unlimited material. You can try to decorate in Simpsons style (the chicken-serving dish in the kitchen, etc.), but it would be easier to fill the house with Simpsons memorabilia, altered for Halloween: fangs on a Bart doll, a hangman’s Homer, those sorts of things.

For costumes, if you go with a main character, add a Halloween touch (Marge lends herself particularly well to the Bride of Frankenstein). But minor characters (Todd and Rod Flanders) and special guests (like the country singer who seduces Homer) open the field up pretty wide. All it takes is a pencil-thin moustache and a plastic reindeer and — voilà! — you’re John Waters in the Bart-learns-to-hunt episode. Your obvious choice for munchies is doughnuts, lots and lots of doughnuts, but beer (labeled duff, of course) and chili are good options, too. (Find a way to adorn fish sticks with three eyes and you’ll completely win over die-hard Simpsons fans.)

SURELY BY now you get the picture: the reason your party tanked last year was that you didn’t know any better. Now, you do. So go forth and party. And let someone else face no-show horror this Halloween.

David Valdes Greenwood lives for his annual "Halloween on Broadway" party. This year he’s going as the lead in Bat Boy: The Musical, which gives him an excuse to wear fangs and Lee press-on nails. If you’re not too frightened by any of this, he can be reached at valdesgreenwood@worldnet.att.net