It’s that time of year. Candy fills the aisles of grocery stores, retail outlets are reaching that awkward phase when Halloween decorations lie next to Christmas items (they unleash them earlier and earlier each year) and, if you’re lucky to be some place where they actually have seasons, leaves are decorating the ground.
It’s also that time when Halloween stores move into every vacated department store on the block with their latest array of timely Oscar costumes based on your favorite movies from the last 10 months. There are the holdovers from years past, of course. Captain Jack Sparrow here, Superman there. And let’s not forget the ever-popular rubber Presidential likenesses. So what can we expect?
There will be plenty of “Dark Knight”-themed wear, each item more embarrassingly realized than the next. Iron Man will be popular with a lot of the tiny youngsters, as older kids might feel strange in a plastic faux-metallic robot get-up. They’ll stick with Napoleon Dynamite or another year of Borat before they subject themselves to that.
Whatever the costume, one thing is always pretty much guaranteed: the costumes are gonna suck. These things are mass-produced and don’t fly off the conveyor belt fast enough. Creativity is lacking, it’s all a painful mess. The only answer is good ole’ fashioned ingenuity…and we’re here to help.
Below you’ll find our list of the top 10 movie-related costumes of 2008, with an eye toward some brand of originality throughout (though the unavoidability of obvious picks creeps in here and there). Herewith is our guide to a memorable Halloween season:
10. Randy “The Ram” Johnson
For all the little tikes who worship (or worshiped) the ground Michael Hayes, Dallas Page, Shawn Michaels and the Ultimate Warrior walked on, don your best set of tights and break out the fake blood for a tour around the neighborhood as the lead character in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler.” For added “umph,” bring along a female friend, scantily clad as stripper/love interest Cassidy, or get some other kids to go in with you as nemesis wrestlers. Accessories that’ll sell it: metal chair for out-of-the-ring clobberin’, entrance music accompanying you from house to house (maybe bring a boombox for the occasion).