{"id":16580,"date":"2026-10-17T14:12:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T18:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/?p=16580"},"modified":"2026-10-17T14:12:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T18:12:06","slug":"halloween-countdown-day-17-make-it-magnificent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/?p=16580","title":{"rendered":"Halloween Countdown: Day 17 \u2013 Make it magnificent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/img\/261017\/1017.jpg\" width=\"590\" height=\"430\" title=\"Here comes the spider, man.\" class=\"alignnone size-full\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p>My love of Atom Age sci-fi horror &#8212; specifically, flicks where radiation makes shit turn BIG &#8212; comes from my late mother, who adored the stuff and would tune into Channel 56&#8217;s Creature Double Feature whenever those movies were aired.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Deadly Mantis<\/em> was her favorite, though she also have high marks to <em>The Amazing Colossal Man<\/em>, <em>Tarantula<\/em>, <em>It Came From Beneath the Sea<\/em>, and <em>Earth vs. The Spider<\/em>. I&#8217;m not sure why these movies caught her fancy, apart from being a somewhat geeky child of the 1950s who spent most of her early years living on military bases.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from that personal nostalgic connection, I love these movies because they are so square and formulaic with the same bunch of archetypes (often played by the same set of actors) going through the motions against some oversized creature until SCIENCE and\/or the U.S. military restores order&#8230;typically via some form of huge-ass explosion.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re the instant mac &#8216;n&#8217; cheese of cinematic genres &#8212; nothing to set the world on fire, but make for fine belly filler.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Recommended listening:<\/strong> Something else my mom dug.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2pF0H8-ktoA?si=mKG4evABVSDa2J-k\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My love of Atom Age sci-fi horror &#8212; specifically, flicks where radiation makes shit turn BIG &#8212; comes from my late mother, who adored the stuff and would tune into Channel 56&#8217;s Creature Double Feature whenever those movies were aired. The Deadly Mantis was her favorite, though she also have high marks to The Amazing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,9,668,15],"tags":[147,396,266,275,2884],"class_list":["post-16580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiography","category-culture","category-halloween-countdown","category-music","tag-movies","tag-my-favorite-things","tag-my-mom-is-dead","tag-nuclear-nightmares","tag-really-big-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16581,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16580\/revisions\/16581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/armagideon-time.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}