Donald Westlake, who died New Year's Eve, at the age 0f 75, while vacationing in Mexico, was best known as a "crime writer", and in that capacity he won three Edgar Awards (including one for Best Screenplay for his adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Grifters, directed by Stephen Frears in 1990) and was honored by the Mystery Writers of America with the title of Grand Master. But such tributes barely hint at Westlake's stature as a supreme, all-around entertainer with a wide range within his chosen specialty. After publishing his first novel, The Mercenaries, in 1960, Westlake established such a steady rate of production that, in addition to the many books he published under his own name, he also adopted more than ten pseudonyms, partly to deflect criticism of him for overtaxing the marketplace. (He may have also had other, personal reasons, for sticking the name "John B. Allan" on the 1961 book Elizabeth Taylor: A Fascinating Story of America's Most Talented Actress and the World's Most Beautiful Woman and other pseudonyms on the pulp porn novels he wrote in the 1950s and 1960s, some of them in collaboration with Lawrence Block, which have titles such as Sin Sucker and Campus Tramp.) Westlake also matched certain pseuds up with recurring characters, for instance writing a string of mysteries about a character named Mitch Tobin under the name "Tucker Coe".

His best-known alter ego was Richard Stark, who, starting with 1962's The Hunter, wrote more than twenty taut, mean thrillers about Parker, a cooled-out, super-efficient sociopath of a professional thief. Under his own name, Westlake wrote, among other titles, the John Dortmunder series, detailing the often hilarious adventures of an intelligent, hard-working, frequently put-upon crook with a knack for gaudily designed heists that tended to run into equally gaudy complications. (The series began with 1972's The Hit Rock, which he said began as a Parker novel; he realized that he needed to concoct a new hero for it when the plot started turning funny on him.)

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This may be the scariest Halloween in recent memory.

Whatever happens in the election, it's going to be a nightmare for tens of millions of Americans. But until then, we’ve got a few days to dress like Joe the Plumber and Sarah Palin, drink pumpkin-flavored beer and relax with ghosts, vampires and zombies instead of all those scary talking heads on TV.

There was some debate here in the Screengrab Crypt regarding whether this was a list of the BEST horror films of all time or the SCARIEST (or if there’s a difference)...which naturally got us thinking about just what makes a film scary in the first place.

When my mother-in-law was a wee little French-Canadian, she went to a screening of Murders in the Rue Morgue where a theater employee in a gorilla suit popped out when the lights came up, sending the audience screaming into the streets of Nashua, New Hampshire...now THAT’S scary.

On the other hand, there are some horror movies that skip the gotcha! moments in favor of sheer dread, a creeping mood of hopeless, helpless paranoia that haunts your nights long after the adrenalin rush from the guy in the gorilla suit has faded. I remember squirming my way through all the maggots and vomited intestines of Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell as a teenager, but what scared me the most was the Italian film’s pervasive sense of inescapable doom...

...not that I have especially fond memories of the film. Just because it scared me didn’t mean I liked it, in the same way I’d rather read a 700-page grad school dissertation on the cultural significance of the torture porn craze than sit through Saw V.

Like comedy, it’s hard to nail down the secret of great horror, but we know it when it lurches up...RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!!!!

Just kidding. Enjoy the list, and Happy Halloween from your pals here at The Screengrab!

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As you may have heard unless you've just gotten back from an alternate dimension with no public relations industry, The Dark Knight opens this weekend, and even our resident skeptic Scott Von Doviak is hailing Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker as one of the pinnacles of big-screen malevolance.  Batman is the perfect illustration of the principle that a hero is only as good as his villains; the Clown Prince of Crime is the outstanding member of an unforgettable rogue's gallery that throws the lonely heroism of Bruce Wayne into sharp relief by illustrating the other facets of his personality and demonstrating how terrible he might have been had he not taken the path of righteousness.  Indeed, there are any number of genres, from true crime to film noir to serial thrillers to even Shakespearean tragedy, that prove that a story is only as strong as its most detestable character.  Crime, as the man once said, is only a left-handed form of human endeavor, and for every enigmatic nihilist like the Joker who simply wants to watch the world burn, there's a figure whose vileness and evil are the result of a good man gone just a little bit bad.  If your showing of The Dark Knight is sold out, here's five movies featuring some of our favorite big-screen villains to tide you over until you get to hear Ledger's deadly cackle for yourself.

THE STEPFATHER (1987)

These days, Terry O'Quinn is best known for his portrayal of John Locke, the mysteriously healed castaway from Lost  who can be both hero and villain as he attempts to forge a mystical connection with the island.  But 20 years ago, when the veteran stage actor first came to the attention of the moviegoing public, it was in this smart little thriller about a man so obsessed with having the perfect family that he was willing to kill to get it.  His face an affable blank, O'Quinn goes about his father-knows-best routine with barely a harsh word for anything, until something goes wrong.  That's when the devil inside him comes up, and he moves quickly from tearing up his tool room to butchering his whole family.  O'Quinn's tightly controlled performance here is what makes the movie, and his quiet intensity is what makes it so devastatingly effective when he temporarily forgets the careful fiction he's made of his life and asks, with genuine confusion, "Who am I here?" -- before remembering, and delivering the news to his new wife in an especially brutal way.

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As regular readers of this column know, we like to single out blog posts that bring a fresh perspective to these pictures we call motion; finely crafted, passionate posts that allow us all to see cinema through new eyes. But more than that, we love a good pissing contest.

This latest one began with another lamentation over the position of the modern film critic – otherwise known as the unemployment line. A piece called “Where Have All the Film Critics Gone?” from The Brooklyn Rail quoted several notable film bloggists, like Matt Zoller Seitz who said, “I think we’re fast approaching the point where criticism will become, for the most part, a devotion rather than a job.” And then there was Michael Atkinson, who wrote on his Zero For Conduct blog: ““[T]he existence of full-time staff film reviewers is a nutty aberration in the history of periodical publishing…I’d love to see every magazine employ an army of full-time culture reviewers, and pay them millions, but it doesn’t make very much sense, for the simple reason that it’s not truly a full-time job.”

That didn’t sit well with Glenn Kenny, who recently lost his own full-time job with Premiere.

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As soon as Jon Stewart bid us goodnight and told us to drive home safely, the powers that be in Hollywood breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, they could put all of this “quality filmmaking” nonsense behind them and open the crapgates for another load of sequels, remakes and high-concept star vehicles.

Leading the parade is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who will play an ordinary Joe who takes over the Tooth Fairy’s duties in, well, The Tooth Fairy. Yes, it’s basically The Santa Clause all over again, and appropriately enough, it will be directed by Michael Lembeck, who helmed the two Clause sequels. The concept might also ring a bell for those who have closely followed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career.

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