The '60s (1999)

Amazon.com
Tackling an entire decade--and a turbulent one at that--within a three-hour movie is a challenge, and while The '60s is frequently entertaining, it unfortunately is not completely up to the task. Following the lives of four young people, three from a white suburban family with parents out of The Wonder Years and one African American from the South, the characters are forced into one-dimensional clichés; they are their personas to the nth degree. Katie (Julia Stiles), the pretty young blond, is the lost hippie; Brian (Jerry O'Connell), the former high school football player, is the gung-ho-turned-disgruntled Vietnam solider; Michael (Josh Hamilton) exemplifies the political activist; and Emmet (Leonard Roberts), the only representative of the entire black movement of the '60s, plays first the pacifist who effects change through nonviolent means and then the Black Panther, and then he finally returns to his nonviolent ways. Yet, despite the trite characters and slow beginning, the movie picks up pace as each becomes involved in his or her own story. They become strangely compelling, to the point where you are sorry when the story switches to another character because you want to see more.

An eclectic shooting style--a mixture of archival footage, seamlessly spliced with shots of the miniseries in black and white, which then becomes color--effectively places the characters in the '60s context. You can believe that these folks were at the Democratic Convention in Chicago or the Watts riots or Woodstock. Yet, sometimes a break is needed: the film is unrelenting in presenting crisis after crisis with no respite, making one wonder if there were any quiet, simple, or nice moments in the entire decade. The sentimental soundtrack plays continuously, helping set the appropriate tone and the frenetic atmosphere of the movie. For those who lived through the '60s, this miniseries provides a nostalgic look back at the various movements and a general feel of the time, especially with the proliferation of film clips that aren't oft repeated (we've all seen the moon landing ad nauseam, but footage of Abbie Hoffman or Dylan playing the club scene in the East Village is refreshing). And for those born after this period, this miniseries makes the decade look like a frenzied, troubled mess that we can be grateful we had the good fortune to miss. --Jenny Brown

Shadow Dancing Guys - male GoGo Dancers as shadow Silhouettes. Live Dance footage. Totally unique and fun video scenes. Great for parties, clubs, niteclubs, bar video monitors, and background video projection for ambient video. Awesome male dancers mesmerize men and women with their Silhouette moves. Is it Live or memorex? Real or cartoon?

Woodstock - 3 Days of Peace & Music (The Director's Cut) (1970)

Description

Amazon.com essential video
The three-day Woodstock music festival in 1969 was the pivotal event of the 1960s peace movement, and this landmark concert film is the definitive record of that milestone of rock & roll history. It's more than a chronicle of the hippie movement, however; this is a film of genuine historical and social importance, capturing the spirit of America in transition, when the Vietnam War was at its peak and antiwar protest was fully expressed through the liberating music of the time. With a brilliant crew at his disposal (including a young editor named Martin Scorsese), director Michael Wadleigh worked with over 300 hours of footage to create his original 225-minute director's cut, which was cut by 40 minutes for the film's release in 1970. Eight previously edited segments were restored in 1994, and the original director's cut of Woodstock is now the version most commonly available on videotape and DVD.
The film deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Documentary, and it's still a stunning achievement. Abundant footage taken among the massive crowd ("half a million strong") expresses the human heart of the event, from skinny-dipping hippies to accidental overdoses, to unpredictable weather, midconcert childbirth, and the thoughtful (or just plain rambling) reflections of the festive participants. Then, of course, there is the music--a nonstop parade of rock & roll from the greatest performers of the period, including Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Canned Heat, The Who, Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Ten Years After, Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, and many more. Watching this ambitious film, as the saying goes, is the next best thing to being there--it's a time-travel journey to that once-in-a-lifetime event. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description:
3 days. 3-million people. And memories to last a lifetime.Year: 1970Director: Michael WadleighStarring: Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens, The Who, Crosby, Stills & Nash, much more.

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Message to Love - The Isle of Wight Festival DVD ~ Murray Lerner
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Review: Woodstock 1999? Huh?
Having been in Vietnam in1969 i did not have a chance to actually go to woodstock.I waited almost 30 years before i saw this documentary.This is the kind of experience that one has to open the mind and heart and close off all pre-concieved ideas,prejudices,religious and any and all other ideas and thoughts and just (to quote the hippies)go with your feelings.This was a once in a lifetime experience that will likely never be back again.360,000 young people(and some not quite so young)brought together for three days love,music,drugs and rock and roll.Even disallowing all the illecit drug use(the reference to the "bad acid"(not poisoned)just bad.One can watch this movie and maybe get just a small glimmer of what was occuring those three days.I finished movie and for a good week could not quit thinking about what i had seen and heard.Young girls and boys swimming in a lake naked,people getting rained on and instead of griping and complaining making a game of it! Feeding each other,both physically and spiritually and emotionally and no one getting hurt.My God! Where has this country gone wrong in the last 30 years?Maybe only people from my generation can truly understand what happened then.I am passing this movie around to friends and people at work ,some whom are my age and others much younger and they seem to really get into it(oops another hippie slang-sorry)Watch this movie-if only for your own peace of mind!(Yeah i borrowed part of that last sentence also) P E A C E

Review: Where are they now?
Buy this for Michael Shrieve's drum solo on Santana's "Soul Sacrifice", and for Ten Years After's "I'm Going Home (by helicopter)", with Alvin Lee on lead guitar and the crowd on percussion.

Review: Woodstock is Awesome
I am very satisfied with the quality of the DVD, I have been searching for my own copy of this DVD for months and have thouroughly enjoyed watching it(several times).

Review: The Next Best Thing to Being There
I wasn't born when Woodstock happened, but I always empathized with the 60s-- the hope and idealism, the noncommercialism, and the way that bands just jammed their hearts out. Just put the first Woodstock against the megacommercial, metalhead-violent Woodstock 1999, and you'll see what I mean. I was born 30 years too late, man!

This documentary almost makes you feel like you're there. You get not only the great jams, you get building the stage before, meanderings through the crowd for Yoga sessions, slip-n-slide through rainy mud, and playful skinny-dipping, even the cleanup after.

Santana was my personal favorite of the bands-- it's as if the gods speak through his guitar, even today. It's cool to see almost glam-punk Who in their prime. Janis Joplin is SO good belting her heart out-- maybe not as technically good as Joan Baez, but a lot more raw. Of course, Jimi shreds too.

I dig CSN, but their harmonic melodies sound better on album than live IMHO. Sly & the Family Stone was also musically disappointing-- bad transfer quality maybe-- but Sly's voice getting hundreds of thousands to shout "HIGHER!" is a peak moment.

This film is exhilirating if you dig the 60s sound and scene-- but also slightly depressing in a way, knowing that this precious moment is gone, and that I could never take part.

Review: Not a DVD...but still better than.
For some strange reason the film/VHS version is STILL better than the DVD version (sound and motion)...go figure...but buy the VHS version!

Positively 60's (1970)

Groovy, far out, dig it

I bought this CD years ago on a discount rack at a book store. It was a real find. Even now, it very regularly migrates out to my car for longer trips as well as deliverance after a day at work. The 60's were, to a large part, the golden age of pop and the birth of non-classical FM programming. This CD captures much of this era.

To my ear, the first CD is lososely centered on lighter songs like California Dreaming, Hurdy Gurdy Man and Bus Stop. There are some other really fine songs here - songs like For Your Love and The Weight. Also included are Midnight Cowboy's Everybody's Talking, Feeling Alright, and Time of the Season - all winners.

The second CD is in general more protest oriented, starting with Give Peace a Chance and ending with the incomparable Eve of Destruction. What CD of the 60's is complete without songs of protest? Also included are I Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag, Going up the Country, and What About Me. There are also some pure pop tunes here - Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In and In The Year 2525. There are also some of the best songs around for my money - the classic Gimme Some Lovin and the beautiful A Song For You.

Not all songs are personal favorites, but then what compilation can be? However, I hardly ever skip tracks, even in the car. This CD is a winner. In the words of Joni Mitchell, "Songs to aging children come. I am one."

It's all there, September 6, 2005
Reviewer: Dagfinn Fjelddalen "Resistor" (Oslo) - See all my reviews


From the very first track, the sixties are back, and it's like they never went away.

In addition to classics such as The Weight, Get Together, Eve of Destruction, Going up the country and so on, you are surprised by tunes you had probably forgotten or never even heard, like Age of Aquarius from Hair, White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and Lodi by Creedence Clearwater Revival. This is more about reinventing than reliving the sixties and a great reminder of what the Summer of love was really about. A very American sixties compilation, the title sums up the contents very well. This is highly recommended either if you were there at the time or you just wish you were.

Review: Makes me think of incense and tie-dye!
Having been a child in that era and just discovering rock music, this really brings back some memories from that part of my life.

I actually bought this as a gift for my son who somehow got really into 60's music (maybe my giving him my entire 60's/70's vinyl collection sparked his interest?). Anyway, we've both enjoyed this collection, and i highly recommend it to any old hippies as well as new-age hippies. Grrroovy!

Review: Back to the 60's when people spoke up

Album has many of the songs that I remember from this period. In these days when radio stations are corporately held and have political agendas, we don't hear the dissent that is out there.

It is great to hear songs from the time when individuals thought that they could make a real difference.

Review: I really missed out.
I'm your typical extremely attractive man with above average intelligent and exceptional slow pitch softball ability but boy did I miss out on the sixties. I picked up this CD while riding a carousel and this thing is totally cool. I heard it and said, Is that freedom rock? Well, turn it up man! I don't know what half these songs are about because I'm not whacked out of my mind but they sure are cool What the heck is a Hurdy Gurdy Man? I don't know, but it's got the flow of the DOC. I'm kind of a hippie because I drive a renault alliance so this music is something I'm completely down with. It's not Hasselhoff, but at this point of time, the world wasn't ready for Hasselhoff. It was ready for White Rabbits, incense and peppermints and Hurdy Gurdy Men. It was a cool time that I missed out on.

All about Halloween:

Halloween
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the night of October 31, usually by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting candy. It is celebrated in much of the Western world, though most commonly in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Canada and sometimes in Australia and New Zealand. Irish, Scots and other immigrants brought older versions of the tradition to North America in the 19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American pop culture in the late 20th century.

The form "Halloween" derives from Hallowe'en, an old contraction, still retained in Scotland, of "All Hallow's Eve," so called as it is the day before the Catholic All Saints holy day, which used to be called "All Hallows," derived from All Hallowed Souls. In Ireland, the name was Hallow Eve and this name is still used by some older people. Halloween was formerly also sometimes called All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by Christian missionaries (along with Christmas and Easter, two other traditional northern European pagan holidays) and given a Christian reinterpretation. Halloween is also known as the Day of the Dead, and it is a day of celebration for Wiccans and other modern pagan traditions, though the holiday has lost its religious connotations among the populace at large.

Halloween is also called Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the pookah, a mischievous spirit.

In the United Kingdom in particular, the pagan Celts celebrated the Day of the Dead on Halloween. The spirits supposedly rose from the dead and, in order to attract them, food was left on the doors. To scare off the evil spirits, the Celts wore masks. When the Romans invaded Britain, they embellished the tradition with their own, which is the celebration of the harvest and honoring the dead. These traditions were then passed on to the United States.

Halloween is sometimes associated with the occult. Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the "liminal" times of the year when the spirit world can make contact with the natural world and when magic is most potent (see, for example, Catalan mythology about witches).

Anoka, Minnesota, USA, the self-proclaimed "Halloween Capital of the World," celebrates with a large civic parade.

Contents [hide]
1 Symbols
2 Trick-or-treating
3 Games
4 Foods
5 Cultural history
5.1 Celtic observation of Samhain
5.2 Norse Elven Blót
5.3 Halloween customs
5.4 "Punkie Night"
5.5 "Mischief Night"
6 Religious viewpoints
7 See also
8 External links
9 Further reading

Symbols

Jack-o'-lanterns may be carved with a funny face.Halloween's theme is spooky or scary things particularly involving death, black magic, or mythical monsters. Commonly-associated Halloween characters include ghosts, witches, bats, black cats, owls, goblins, zombies and demons, as well as certain fictional figures like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster. Homes are often decorated with these symbols around Halloween.

Black and orange are the traditional colors of Halloween. There are also elements of the autumn season, such as pumpkins and scarecrows, reflected in symbols of Halloween.

The jack-o'-lantern, a carved vegetable lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. In Britain and Ireland, a turnip was and sometimes still is used, but immigrants to America quickly adopted the pumpkin because it is much larger and easier to carve. Many families that celebrate Halloween will carve a pumpkin into a scary or comical face and place it on the home's doorstep on Halloween night for fun. Traditionally, something like this was done in order to scare evil spirits away.

Trick-or-treating
The main event of Halloween is trick-or-treating, also known as guising in Scotland, in which children dress up in costume disguises and go door-to-door in their neighborhood, ringing the bell and yelling "trick or treat!" The occupants of the house (who might themselves dress in a scary costume) will then hand out small candies, miniature chocolate bars or other treats. Homes sometimes use sound effects and fog machines to help set a spooky mood. Other house decoration themes (that are less scary) are used to entertain younger visitors. Children can often accumulate many treats on Halloween night, filling up entire pillow cases or shopping bags.

In Scotland, children or guisers are likely to recite "The sky is blue, the grass is green, may we have our Halloween" instead of "trick or treat!", they will then have to impress the members of the houses they visit with a song, trick, joke or dance in order to earn their treats.

Tricks play less of a role in modern Halloween, though the night before Halloween is often marked by pranks such as soaping windows, egging houses or stringing toilet paper through trees. Before indoor plumbing was so widespread, tipping over or displacing outhouses was a popular form of trick.

Typical Halloween costumes have traditionally been monsters such as vampires, ghosts, witches, and devils. The stereotypical Halloween costume is a sheet with eyeholes cut in it as a ghost costume. In 19th-century Scotland and Ireland the reason for wearing such fearsome (and non-fearsome) costumes was the belief that since the spirits that were abroad that night were essentially intent on doing harm, the best way to avoid this was to fool the spirits into believing that you were one of them. In recent years, it has become common for costumes to be based on themes other than traditional horror, such as dressing up as a character from a TV show or movie. In 2001, after the September 11 attacks, for example, costumes of firefighters, police officers, and United States military personnel became popular among children. In 2004, an estimated 2.15 million children in the United States were expected to dress up as Spider Man, the year's most popular costume. [1]

A program started by UNICEF involves the distribution of small boxes by schools to trick-or-treaters, in which they can collect small change from the houses they visit for donation to the charity.

A child usually "grows out of" trick-or-treating by his or her teenage years. Teenagers and adults instead often celebrate Halloween with costume parties or other social get-togethers.

Games
There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. The most common is bobbing for apples, in which apples float in a tub or a large basin of water; the participants must use their teeth to remove an apple from the basin. Another common game involves hanging up treacle or syrup-coated scones by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very sticky face.

Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of divination. In Púicíní (pronounced "pook-eeny"), a game played in Ireland, a blindfolded person is seated in front of a table on which are placed several saucers. The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then chooses one by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the person's life for the following year. A saucer containing earth means someone known to the player will die during the next year, a saucer containing water foretells travel, a coin means new wealth, a bean means poverty, etc. In 19th-century Ireland, young women placed slugs in saucers sprinkled with flour. The wriggling of the slugs and the patterns subsequently left behind on the saucers were believed to portray the faces of the women's future spouses.

In North America, unmarried women were frequently told that if they sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if they were destined to die before they married, a skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on greeting cards from the late nineteenth century.

Foods

Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest, candy apples (also known as toffee apples) are a common treat at Halloween. They are made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes then rolling them in nuts. At one time candy apples were a common treat given to children, but this practice rapidly waned after widespread rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor blades in the apples that they would pass out to children. The vast majority of the reported cases turned out to be hoaxes, and the few that were real caused only minor injuries, but many parents were under the assumption that the practice was common. At the peak of this hysteria, some hospitals were offering to x-ray children's Halloween haul at no cost in order to look for such items.

A Halloween custom which has survived unchanged to this day in Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays the purchase) of a barmbrack (Irish "báirín breac"). This is a light fruit cake into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love during the following year.

Other foods associated with the holiday:

candy corn
hot apple cider
roasted pumpkin seeds


Cultural history

Celtic observation of Samhain
In the Druidic religion of the ancient Celts, the new year began with the winter season of Samhain on November 1. Just as shorter days signified the start of the new year, sundown also meant the start of a new day; therefore the harvest festival began every year on the night of October 31. Druids in the British Isles would light fires and offer sacrifices of crops, animals and sometimes humans, and as they danced around the fires, the season of the sun would pass and the season of darkness would begin.

When the morning of November 1 arrived, the Druids would give an ember from their fires to each family who would then take it home to start a new cooking fire. These fires were intended to keep the homes warm and free from evil spirits such as "Sidhe" (pronounced "shee," most notable of which are the beán sidhe or banshees), because at this time of year it was believed that the invisible "gates" between this world and the spirit world were opened and free movement between both worlds was possible.

Bonfires played a large part in the festivities. Villagers cast the bones of the slaughtered cattle upon the flames; the word "bonfire" is thought to derive from these "bone fires." With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit their hearth from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village together. Hundreds of fires are still lit each year in Ireland on Halloween night.

Neopagans still celebrate the sabbat of Samhain on Halloween, as well as also taking part in secular Halloween activities.

Norse Elven Blót
In the old Norse religion and its modern revival, Ásatrú, the day now known as Halloween was a blót which involved sacrifices to the elves and the blessing of food.

A poem from around 1020, the Austrfaravísur ('Eastern-journey verses') of Sigvatr Þorðarson, mentions that, as a Christian, he was refused board in a heathen household, in Sweden, because an álfablót ("elves' sacrifice") being conducted there. However, we have no further reliable information as to what an álfablót involved, but like other blóts it probably included the offering of foods, and later Scandinavian folklore retained a tradition of sacrificing treats to the elves. From the time of year (close to the autumnal equinox) and the elves' association with fertility and the ancestors, we might assume that it had to do with the ancestor cult and the life force of the family.

Halloween customs
Observance of Halloween faded in the South of England from the 17th century onwards, being replaced by the commemoration of the Gunpowder Plot on November 5. However it remained popular in Scotland, Ireland and the North of England. It is only in the last decade that it has become popular in the South of England again, although in an entirely Americanized version.

The custom survives most accurately in Ireland, where the last Monday of October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following week for mid-term, commonly called the Halloween Break. As a result Ireland is the only country where children never have school on Halloween and are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and time-honored fashion.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have evolved from the European custom called souling, similar to the wassailing customs associated with Yule. On November 2, All Souls' Day, beggars would walk from village to village begging for "soul cakes" - square pieces of bread with currants. Christians would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's passage to heaven. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits at the Samhain. See Puck (mythology).

In Celtic parts of western Brittany. Samhain is still heralded by the baking of kornigou. Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in the Otherworld.

"Punkie Night"
"Punkie Night" is observed on the last Thursday in October in the village of Hinton St. George in the county of Somerset in England. On this night, children carry lanterns made from hollowed-out mangel-wurzels (a kind of beet; in modern days, pumpkins are used) with faces carved into them. They bring these around the village, collecting money and singing the punkie song. Punkie is derived from pumpkin or punk, meaning tinder.

Though the custom is only attested over the last century, and the mangel-wurzel itself was introduced into English agriculture in the late 18th century, "Punkie Night" appears to be much older even than the fable that now accounts for it. The story goes that the wives of Hinton St. George went looking for their wayward husbands at the fair held nearby at Chiselborough, the last Thursday in October, but first hollowed out mangel wurzels in order to make lanterns to light their way. The drunken husbands saw the eerie lights, thought they were "goolies" (the restless spirits of children who had died before they were baptized), and fled in terror. Children carry the punkies now. The event has spread since about 1960 to the neighboring village of Chiselborough.

Sources: on-line report from the Western Gazette and a National Geographic radio segment. Chiselborough Fair is memorialized by Fair Place in the village. The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868) reported that there was "a fair for horses and cattle on the last Thursday in October."

"Mischief Night"
The night before Halloween, known in some areas as "Mischief Night" or "Devil's Night," is often associated with destructive activities performed by adolescents. Some of the acts range from minor vandalism to theft, or even violence. Many youths involved in mischief night would be considered too old for traditional trick-or-treating. The most common wrong-doing is trashing people's houses, lawns, and trees within property with tons of toilet paper.

A dialect survey begun in 1999 by Harvard University indicates that there are a number of terms for this particular day of the year, but that the vast majority (70.38%) have no special word for it.

Religious viewpoints
The majority of Christians ascribe no doctrinal significance to Halloween, treating it as a purely secular entity devoted to celebrating imaginary spooks and handing out candy. The secular celebration of Halloween may loom larger in contemporary imagination than does All Saints' Day.

The mingling of Christian and pagan traditions in the early centuries following the founding of the Christian Church have left many modern Christians uncertain of how they should react towards this holiday. Some fundamentalist Christian groups consider Halloween a Pagan holiday and may refer to it as "the most evil day of the year," refusing to allow their children to participate. Among these groups it is believed to have developed Satanic influences. In some areas, complaints from these fundamentalist Christians that the schools were endorsing a Pagan religion have led the schools to stop distributing UNICEF boxes.

Other Christians, however, continue to connect this holiday with All Saints Day. Some modern Christian churches commonly offer a "fall festival" or harvest-themed alternative to Halloween celebrations. Still other Christians hold the view that the holiday is not Satanic in origin or practice and that it holds no threat to the spiritual lives of children - being taught about death and mortality actually being a valuable life lesson.

Costume
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The term costume can refer to wardrobe and dress in general, or to the distinctive style of dress of a particular people, class, or period. It can also refer to the artistic arrangement of accessories in a picture, statue, poem, or play, appropriate to the time, place, or other circumstances represented or described, or to a particular style of clothing worn to portray the wearer as a character or type of character other than their regular persona at a social event such as a fancy dress party or in an artistic theatrical performance.

Theatrical costumes, in combination with other aspects, serve to portray performers' age, gender role, profession, social class, personality, and suchlike. Sometimes theatrical costumes literally mimic what the costume designer thinks the character would wear if the character actually existed. On the other hand, often stylized theatrical costumes can exaggerate some aspect of a character.

National costume or regional costume can express local (or exiled) identity and emphasise uniqueness.

The wearing of costumes has become an important part of Mardi Gras and Halloween celebrations, and (to a lesser extent) people may also wear costumes in conjunction with other holiday celebrations, such as Christmas and Easter. Mardi Gras costumes are usually jesters and other fantasy characters, while Halloween costumes traditionally take the form of supernatural creatures such as ghosts, vampires, and angels. Christmas and Easter costumes typically portray mythical holiday characters, such as Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, and costumes may serve to portray various other character themes during secular holidays, such as an Uncle Sam costume worn on the 4th of July for example.

Some people wear costumes for erotic purposes. Most people consider this harmless fun, but some regard this behavior as a form of fetishism. Some say it is both.

Get Your Halloween Party Started!

To plan your Halloween celebration you’ll want the very best selection to choose from! LTM Party is your ultimate Halloween super store! We have over 8,000 professional Halloween costumes, Halloween decorations, accessories, special effects and Halloween props specially selected for the ultimate in Halloween parties.

Funny Comical Costumes
Want a funny look for Halloween? We have super hilarious costumes for men, women, and children and couples. Whether you want to be a dim witted "Got Deer Hunter" or try a little cross dressing just for laughs, you'll find it here. We carry tons of wigs, funny props, accessories, jokes and gags. We have all the right Halloween stuff to keep your friends laughing.

Sexy Adult Costumes
If you’ve been wanting to explore your more naughty side we have plenty of super sexy costumes for women from naughty nurses to sassy cheerleaders. We are sure you’ll agree that our sexy adult costumes are quite a treat! You'll definitely win the prize for best costume this year with our huge arrange of adult costumes that are ready for delivery. We have adult fairy costumes, adult renaissance costumes, naughty nurse costumes, and sexy witch costumes. Looking for a great adult costume? LTM has them.

Political Masks and Costumes
Why not have a little fun with politics? We have all of your favorite politician masks like: George Bush, John Kerry, Bill Clinton or even Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Halloween Accessories & Props
We have accessories galore to complete your perfect Halloween look We have anything from funky teeth that would scare the heck out of your dentist, ultraviolet makeup, special facial scar and prosthetics, stage blood, go-go boots, wigs, angel wings, sickles, swords, pitch forks, moustaches, wigs... you name it and we have it!

Halloween Traditions - Where did it all start?
Why do we dress up in Halloween costumes, bob for apples, carve pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, and tell ghost stories on this night?

Our traditions of Halloween can generally be traced to the time of the Celtic civilization and their annual celebration following harvest time. The Celts were a group of people that lived in the area near the British Isles around 400 B.C.

Each year the Celts would hold a celebration at the end of harvest. The festival was held near the end of October which they called “Samhain” which literally means “summer’s end”. Samhain marks one of the two major “doorways” of the Celtic year. October 31, lies exactly between the Autumn equinox and the winter solstice. It is theorized that these ancient people with their reliance on astrology thought this was a very potent time for magic and communion with spirits. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. In later years it is thought that the tradition of wearing costumes, evolved as people would disguise themselves from the spirits in order to keep from being possessed.

Why do we trick-or-treat?
Trick or treating actually is an American tradition, but it may have had it's origins also with the ancient Irish. During their annual harvest festival they would leave food at altars and doorsteps as a way of saying thank you to the Gods and to appease spirits. Candles were lit and left in windows to help guide ancestors and loved ones home. Apples were buried along roadsides for spirits who had no descendants to provide for them. There are other theories as well, but nevertheless this does provide some insight as to why we trick-or-treat today.

So there you go, that's how the Halloween tradition began! Keep the Halloween tradition going with LTM Party Halloween costumes, for adults, children, teens, and Halloween decorations for the perfect Halloween party.