The Horror, the Horror: Food, film, and Halloween

Halloween is upon us, and we can’t have you scaring on an empty stomach. We put on a brave face to draw up a horrific, but filling, menu for the big evening. Please, don’t try the fish

Feature by Peter Simpson | 02 Oct 2014

Ah October, you spooky beast. A time of shedding trees, darkening evenings, and the ironic terrorising of children and the overly emotional. Halloween’s an odd ‘day,’ as it doesn’t really stand for anything other than to perpetuate a kind of fancy dress arms race.

Go to a gig, head to your local arthouse cinema or slump in your favourite boutique, slightly-crafty bar on 31 October and you won’t be able to move for grown men and women dressed as animals or zombie nurses. 

That said, we wouldn’t be doing our duty if we didn’t give you some foodie ammunition to get you through. Here’s our three-course Halloween menu, featuring three of the most horrific foods we’ve experienced, coupled with three of the creepiest food-related films we could find. You’ll scream, you’ll cry, and you won’t even have to wear a costume. Might need a bib, though...

STARTER
Shirako, paired with Theatre of Blood
The ideal starter should be a short, sharp shock – nothing too heavy, but a way to get your tastebuds ready for the rest of the meal. You don’t want to spoil your appetite, after all. Well, shirako certainly isn’t too heavy. It will certainly give your tastebuds a workout, but the appetite thing might be slightly more problematic. You see, shirako is a Japanese delicacy – cod sperm.

Our tipster reliably informs us that shirako is a short, floppy shock that no-one really recovers from. Accidentally ordered from a Japanese-language menu in a Kyoto restaurant, it sways around in the dish like a half-set jelly, and smells like, well, fish sperm. As for the taste, you don’t want to know. ‘Not good’ is the jist, and that was delivered through the frantic waving of arms and attempts to repress newly-rediscovered memories.

As for accompanying film Theatre of Blood (1973), its foodie moment comes in the midst of some slightly campy 70s horror. The scene in question sees Vincent Price and his hilarious moustache take revenge on a critic by feeding him a pie. The critic’s pet dogs are in the pie, which is where the horror comes in. It’s the ideal starter for a foodie-terror marathon, with enough material to get you ready for the rest of the evening without spoiling your appetite.

That’s us condoned dog-eating on the grounds that it doesn’t take up too much of your time and dismissed a Japanese delicacy, so let’s move things along.

MAIN COURSE
Surströmming, paired with Delicatessen 
For a main course you need something substantial, with real bite. Delicatessen (1991) scores on both counts, and it has a legit food angle as well as it’s largely about a man who eats people. It’s… perfect?

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Amelie fame, it centres on a French tower block owned by a corrupt landlord who also dabbles in the odd spot of murder and for-profit cannibalism. His tenants rise up in a variety of convoluted ways to nip his bizarre eating habits in the bud, thus providing a victory to downtrodden renters everywhere. It’s a comedy-horror-drama in which a dodgy landlord gets his comeuppance, and it features a foodie subplot, and it’s in French. Substantial, we’re sure you’ll agree.

Of course, size and heft isn’t everything, and sometimes a relatively slight dish can pack a serious punch. That’s certainly the case with Surströmming, although when we say ‘punch’ we mean ‘Oh no, it’s a chemical weapons attack disguised as dinner, send help.’

Surströmming is a traditional Swedish delicacy whose ingredients are simple – herring, a can, and time. Essentially, the fish goes in the can with just enough space to let it ferment, and then instead of getting rid of that space and putting the lid on, surströmming makers just shrug and stick the thing in a cupboard for a few months.

Over time those three initial ingredients are later joined by a few others – noxious gas, a horrendous smell, and the potential for a massive explosion. It’s banned by a host of major airlines in case it takes down a plane, it smells so bad that most people only eat it outside, and of the top Google results for the dish one was a story about a lost tin that had raised the roof of a building by two centimetres, and another told of a huge Swedish warehouse fire fuelled by exploding tins of this stuff. Those two incidents both took place in the space of eight months – how’s that for ‘substantial’?

DESSERT
Durian, paired with The Stuff
The end of a meal is a chance for an indulgence, something that’s a little bit interesting and probably not that good for you.

The Stuff (1985) is certainly indulgent – it’s a comedy-horror about a dessert with a mind of its own and a desire to kill. Basically, a huge underground pool of suspicious ice cream-like material is found in the ground. Rather than stop to consider whether eating this mystery food is really such a good idea, everyone just shrugs and starts chowing down before complaining when dead bodies start turning up everywhere. It’s schlocky nonsense of the highest order and there are plot holes you could drive a bus through, but it’s just the thing to take the edge off a gruelling evening of Halloween horror.

That said, dessert is also a time when things are starting to wind down, and you might just want everyone to leave. Well, break out the durian and get ready for the quickest round of goodbyes you’ve ever heard.

If you’ve been to Thailand, Malaysia or Singapore etc and found yourself sauntering through a market before catching a whiff of the new perfume ‘Eau de Death’ and suddenly needing to make a violent escape, you’ve smelled the durian. If you ever feel your nostrils burning in a greengrocer, it’s the durian.

It looks like a giant spiky kidney, or a real-life version of one of those shells from Mario Kart. The interior looks a lot like a cottage cheese model of a foetus. It’s banned from the Singapore subway – seriously, it gets its own mention on the signage on the MRT. ‘No smoking, no food, no flammable stuff, and no durians.’ It isn’t even classed as food!

It’s horrifying, bizarre, and yet strangely endearing. It’s a lot like Halloween itself – it makes no sense and you really wish it didn’t exist, but it’s here now so you may as well hold your nose and get used to it.

Phagomania is on paternity leave