Who-or What- is Today’s “Halloween Horror”?

I wanted to come up with a good "Halloween Horror of the Day", and decided to page through the fine book by film-maker John Landis- "Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares". It's an amazing book featuring the origins of many movie monsters, different incarnations of them, secrets of the special effects geniuses that bring them to life- truly one of my favorite books.The man who brought us "An American Werewolf in London",the "Twilight Zone" movie, and Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is a life-long horror film fan, and it really shows in this great collection of, as it's labelled, "cinematic nightmares" Just opening it at random- the first category I hit was "missing links"- with plenty of pictures, it brought to mind some films I hadn't thought of in years- like "Skullduggery", with Burt Reynolds discovering a tribe of ape-like creatures-and "Trog"- with Joan Crawford, in her last film, trying to tame a troglodyte! Flipping to another page, I found "Monsters on Four Wheels"- featuring "The Car"- a favorite Sven show that we added Svensurround to (live with it, people)- as well as "Maximum Overdrive" (love that truck with Marvel's Green Goblin face on the front!),"Christine" (the car we just saw in Volo),and "The Cars that Ate Paris" (not bad with a little Grey Poupon). I especially liked a three-page spread about the Devil- we've all heard that the Devil can appear in many guises, and that goes in films as well.Can you picture " My Favorite Martian" Ray Walston as the Devil? ("Damn Yankees")-or, how about Tim Curry as thye Lord of Drakness in "Legend"? Two very different faces, indeed- as is Harvey Keitel in Adam Sandler's "Little Nicky"!Even McHale himself, Ernest Borgnine, transformed into the Devil himself in 'The Devil's Rain" (featuring a yet to be famous John Travolta as a cult member who yells that someone is a "blasphemer"!) Pages of space monsters are in the book as well- the Metaluna mutants from "This Island Earth",the Martian menaces of "Invaders from Mars",the even more menacing Martians of "War of the Worlds", and even space babes (that's the heading!) like "Cat Women on the Moon" and "The Devil Girl from Mars"! There's a huge chapter called "nature's revenge"- with films like "The Birds", "Willard", "Empire of the Ants" ( does that mean that ants buy carpeting?), "Piranha","Jaws"-and "Night of the Lepus" (oh, those deadly bunny rabbits!) I'm getting distracted here, paging through this book- there's so much to see, and so many monster memories jogged! But, my whole point here is choosing a horror for today, so-it occured to me as I spotted one entry- since so many of these films scared the heck out of me as a child- why not go with some scary children? The lethal little ones I have in mind were in a movie whose commercial I saw on TV as a kid, and just the images in that short teaser for the film gave me chills. It's the children of "Village of the Damned"- the original 1960 version. After everyone in a village falls unconcious- and all awaken at the same time- months later, many women in the village give birth- on the same day- to white-blond haired,unusual-eyed children- who grow at an unusual rate-and all have a telepathic bond. They also have the power to make people do things they command, against the vitims' will- and the children's eyes glow when they use this awful power! As they use their powers to make adults kill themselves, one brave father must try to stop them- and shield his thoughts from the mind-reading menaces. The cold, emotionless expressions on the kids as their eyes begin to glow, signifying that someone else is about to die, scared me in my childhood-and has earned them the title of "Halloween Horror of the Day" (hey, I HAD to give them the title- I don't want them sending me on a suicide mission!) I better keep this book handy, in case I want to find another special horror one of these days...