The monsters are all gruesome and gory, and everything, everything is an allegory for grief.

The second, which described Detroit’s violent drug-trade scene in gory detail, would later propel Cooper into the orbit of Hollywood and serve as the basis of his “Harlem trilogy.”

She spent seven months in New Mexico making “American Primeval,” a gory western set in the treacherous Utah Territory in 1857.

A beard trimmer leaps into jugulars, a VCR shoots tapes like a cannon, and the carnage of consumer goods is nasty, gory and cruel, with a darkly comic mean streak that recalls Joe Dante’s “Gremlins.”

From jack-o'-lanterns glowing on porches to costumes ranging from the whimsical to the gory, Halloween is a time of playful scares, childhood memories and, of course, candy.