By Randolph E. Schmid
The Associated Press

In his later years, actor Boris Karloff - famed for his portrayals of movie monsters - referred to the approach of Halloween as "the busy season" because of the increase in personal appearances.

Frightening film parts such as Mr. Karloff's Mummy and Frankenstein have been part of moviemaking since the days of silent flicks.

Yet not until 1978 was Halloween chosen as the title of a feature film, reports David J. Skal in Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween.

Producer Irwin Yablans settled on the title for his baby sitter murder story and helped give birth to successful sequels and copies by the score.

"If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, then Halloween is one of the most excessively complimented films in history," Mr. Skal says.

The hype of movies is just the latest excess in the observation of Halloween, which gives rise annually to parties, parades, local festivals and, of course, the onslaught of wildly dressed youngsters going door to door extorting goodies with cries of "trick or treat!"

It hasn't always been so, Mr. Skal reports, with the tiny candy collectors largely a phenomenon of the past 100 years or so.

Mr. Skal makes the obligatory bow to the theory that Halloween derived from the pagan festival of Samhain, but notes that the Romans also had a Nov. 1 festival and that the Christian church established a season called Hallowtide with All Saints Day and All Souls Day on Nov. 1 and 2. Today, witches, ghosts, goblins and jack-o'-lanterns are the best-known symbols of the holiday.

Salem, Mass., remembered for its witch hunts in the 17th century, merits a long study by Mr. Skal, who notes how the modern observance has been heavily commercialized there, bringing in millions of dollars from tourism. Of the 20 women and men of Salem put to death for the crime of witchcraft, and of those who executed them, "none knew anything of Halloween," Mr. Skal writes.

"Calvinist Puritans had little use for the Feast of All Saints or the Feast of All Souls, celebrations redolent of Rome and its rejected decadence."

Mr. Skal concludes with a brief look at Halloween since the Sept. 11 attacks, with the more ghoulish aspects being played down in some communities while in at least one, a local haunted house was quickly converted to feature a crowd-pleasing scene in which Osama bin Laden was electrocuted.