2024-10-17 07:13:54Halloween Haunts: What Ben Cooper Taught Me About Life
By Den Shewman
The things that made me:
- The famous Shock Theater package of Universal Studios monster movies, licensed cheap to local TV stations.
- Aurora’s monster kits, especially the glow-in-the-dark versions, and their wonderfully dark (and horribly short-lived) Dr. Deadly’s Monster Scene snap-together kits, featuring the Doctor, the Pain Parlor, and the Saber-tooth Rabbit (we won’t mention the Victim, who got the PTA all riled up).
- The Comics Code Authority, the loosening of which in the early 1970s released a slew of monsters into mainstream comics in all their four-colored g(l)ory. Even better, Warren Magazines’ Creepy and Eerie, still going strong, with those beautiful Frank Frazetta covers and all that wonderful black-and-white horror, courtesy of Jim Warren, the Hugh Hefner of comics.
But really, I blame Jack Pierce. My earliest movie memory is hiding behind my dad’s recliner, watching 1941’s
The Wolf Man on TV between my fingers covering my eyes as I clutched my favorite pillow. Lon Chaney, Jr. scurrying through the black-and-white fog, coming in for an extreme close-up to show off Pierce’s amazing creature design.
Thus, another monster kid was born.
Growing up in the ’70s was very Ray Bradbury-esque, comic book spinner racks and flashlight tag before bed. Halloween, of which I always considered Ray the patron saint, was the oddball of holidays, not the financial behemoth it has become today. Except for
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and UNICEF boxes, there weren’t a lot of spooky options. Your local five-and-dime, as my Grandpa called them, would have plastic pumpkins, some cheap face paint kits, and those hanging paper decorations you opened vertically to create three-dimensional figures.
As for costumes, those with money shelled out the big bucks for full Don Post pull-it-over-your-head masks, or you made yourself up with those face paints.
For the rest of us, it was Ben Cooper.
You remember the Ben Cooper costumes, don’t you? Vacuum-formed plastic masks pressed up against their boxes’ windows, minor nightmares screaming to escape. The metal tips of the mask’s elastic anxious to dig into your flesh. And a flimsy body costume that I’m pretty sure inspired Dan Aykroyd’s famous
Saturday Night Live sketch about a sleazy salesman’s Halloween costumes, such as “Johnny the Human Torch!”, a bag of oily rags and a lighter.
LINK:
https://www.tiktok.com/@huggyattack/video/7346699603519032618
Ben Coopers were “just add kid” costumes that required no artistry or bank account. You put on the thin plastic mask (whose edges seemed to have been sharpened right before it left the factory), slipped into the bodysuit or cape, and you and your pillowcase went out into the night in hopes of something good to eat.
They were the best of times (full-sized candy bars!), they were the worst of times (not at all), they were the only costumes we knew.
Many years later, looking back on those Halloweens with not a small bit of nostalgia, I realized that Ben Cooper had taught me some great life lessons. I just didn’t know it at the time.
Heroes don’t always look like heroes.
Ben Cooper might have had the licenses, but what they didn’t have was the most talented designers. Those masks minimally resembled the characters on the packages, generations away from what the real comic and film versions looked like.
Sometimes it feels like you’re hanging by a thread, but that thread can be very strong.
That piece of elastic that kept the mask attached to your head? Cheap, thin, and lasted for years. (Of course, it was only used one day a year; Ben might have been a genius there.) I’ve hung by a thread many times in life, yet through hope, friends, and a little luck, my thread held. Just like the one on Ben’s masks.
Smiles can be plastic.
Something Ben Cooper masks have in common with some people I have known.
Just because you look like a lot of other people doesn’t mean you’re not unique.
During the Ben Cooper heyday, you’d see dozens of doppelgängers of monsters and superheroes wandering the streets of any neighborhood. We might have thought we all looked alike, but we were wrong: we were shorter and taller and thinner and fatter, with blue/green/brown eyes and blonde/brown/black/red hair. The masks accentuated our personalities, not replaced them. And your neighbors could always recognize you. You might be the fifth Frankenstein/Batman/Cinderella at Mrs. Sundry’s house, but she’s still going to give you of her home-baked cookies.
Eyes on the prize, even when you can’t see very well.
In a Ben Cooper mask, peripheral vision was nonexistent. You could barely see ahead of you, and crossing the street was a Darwinian lesson in situational awareness. If you wanted to go somewhere, you had to lock onto your target and plow straight ahead. A great lesson about aiming for your goal and ignoring the chatter around you.
Keep the important things close / Anything can be a weapon.
If you don’t have a death grip on that pillowcase, some older kid might grab it from you. Also, pillowcases half-full of candy make great bludgeons against potential older-kid candy thieves.
That’s my list, what’s yours?
I’ll end with an anecdote, another Halloween gift I realized later than I wished.
When I was twelve, for a few years we lived in Worthington Hills, a new suburb of Columbus, Ohio. The first Halloween there, I learned the conventional wisdom about that big white mansion on a particular corner: avoid it. The old lady who lived there was a witch who hated kids and hated Halloween. So avoid it I did.
A few Halloweens later, as my costumed friends and I were walking past that mansion, talking about the witch, we felt like the story didn’t make sense. None of us had met her—hell, we didn’t know anyone who ever had met her—but the lights on the house were blazing bright. The universal Halloween sign for “Come in, we have candy.”
We decided to buck conventional wisdom. We rang the bell.
The old lady who answered didn’t have any candy—she had cider donuts, laid out on silver platters. And apple cider, warming in silver urns, served in China cups. In the biggest house I’d ever been in, the biggest foyer I’d ever seen. Clad in a formal black dress and fine jewelry, the “witch” looked like she was giving a dinner party.
Because it was several hours into Halloween, and the donuts lay untouched.
Because conventional wisdom.
She was a nice old woman—old in that old-fashioned way where 65 meant
elderly. She was very surprised, and very delighted, to see us. Said she laid out food every year, but nobody came. She didn’t know why.
My friends and I talked with her for a while, much longer than we ever intended. Trepidation about eating at the witch’s house quickly left us: the food was delicious, and the old lady wasn’t mean, just lonely. (Whether through conversation or instinct, I got the feeling her husband had died a few years ago.)
Looking back, my heart still breaks for her. For her situation. For conventional wisdom.
Eventually we headed out. Us kids thought we were overstaying our welcome, but I think the old lady would have been happy if we’d stayed longer. I think she would’ve loved that.
But we said goodbye and off we went, to the next house, the next street. Talking about how the rumors were so very wrong, and how sad we felt for this lady.
I never went back to that house—we moved away before the next Halloween—and my trick-or-treating friends don’t remember the story. But I hope somewhere inside their brains is a dusty picture of an old lady’s smile as she saw us enjoying her food and conversation. Or her at the door, waving as we left, wishing us a happy Halloween.
Happy All Hallow’s! Remember, witches are made, not born.
PS: As I typed this, I remembered a comment made by my fourth-grade teacher: “Den is a good student, but at recess he always hangs out with the kids who don’t have any friends.” When Mom asked me about this, I said, “But aren’t those the kids who need friends the most?” Maybe ringing the witch’s doorbell was just an extension of that.
BIO
Den Shewman is the former editor-in-chief of DISH Network, IGN Movies, and
Creative Screenwriting Magazine, among others, and has interviewed hundreds of writers and directors over the last two decades. He’s written everything from the first article on the Academy Museum to government proposals for a prison phone company. He and his two kittens reside in Los Angeles, and all support the Oxford comma.
