[violinbabe86]

Sorry if this is posted somewhere else on this site but i searched for a few hours and couldn't find it. There are lots of threads requesting help on a specific theme and a few regarding the advantages/disadvantages of having a theme. I was hoping we could start a thread for all of the people (like me ) who need ideas for themes.

I'll start...here are a few themes i've seen commonly (in person or here in the forums):

- Pirates
- Graveyards
- Vampires
- Mad Scientist
- Egyptian/Mummy
- Western
- Zombies/Undead
- Some themed to specific movies: hills have eyes, SAW, Harry Potter, BeetleJuice, Psycho, Shining, Friday the 13th, etc.

Anyone have more ideas for general themes? It would be great to have one thread to refer to for general ideas Thanks!

 

[LV Scott T]

Hollywood/Classic Hollywood has been popular lately. Besides all of their wonderful "standards" (Dracula, Wolfman, Mummy, Frankenstein's Monster, etc), you also have the option of adding red carpet & stancions out front and making it a Hollywood Premier.

But wait, there's more. You can also try your hand at these:

 

[karenlyn]

My favorite Halloween themes are the ones that go outside the box a bit. Like, instead of plain "Classic Hollywood", something like "Massacre at the Oscars." But I like my Halloween themes gory! The more zombies the better.

-Karen

 

[HeatherEve1234]

We just did Old Hollywood and LOVED it,
This year is Wicked Wonderland

other ideas:

Old west "ghost town"
Seven Deadly Sins
Heaven & Hell/Saints & Sinners
Super Heroes & Villains
Fractured Fairy Tales and/or Nursery Rhymes
Funeral Party
Murder Mystery/Clue
Vampire Twists - i.e. True Blood/Fangtasia, 1800's, etc
Bloody Bayou/Haunted Swamp
Peter Pan/Neverland
Mazes/Optical Illusions
Phobias

 

[BevAnn]

I'll ask the same thing I've asked the past 2 years - any good ideas for a TEEN party theme?? LOL

I have boys, now 14 and 11, and all them and their friends want to do is throw/kick/hit any sports ball they can find! I swear, one year, I banned balls from the party and they picked apart my skeleton out of my graveyard and used it to play football, soccer and baseball with!!

So, finally last year, I had a Haunted Sports themed party. I had actual contests - free throws, soccer goals and football passing - with 3 prizes for best in each game. That went pretty good and kept them from killing each other....mostly.

This year I have no idea what to do!! I want something different, but keeping in mind how these boys are, I do not know. Now my oldest is where he wants to invite girls, but at a pool party last week, these guys STILL acted like idiots around the pool, while the girls sat to the side in chairs watching the boys. My husband was like, what is wrong with these boys, they are completely ignoring the girls! LOL and some of these girls are adorable!!

Anyway, this is the 5th year party and I want to really make it special. Year 3 we did the haunted hayride and my oldest called it lame. I'd like to do it again, but REALLY get scary this time. This darn teens see so much on tv, nothing scares them anymore!! (I even had one boy pulled off the trailer by a zombie and dragged into the woods!! he was in on it of course!!) I'd love to pick a theme like you guys are talking, but these boys dont give two nickles about themes, decorations, food - I go all out for usually no reason! LOL But I love it!

 

[HeatherEve1234]

A few more theme ideas:
Serial Killers or a specific cereal killer
Crime Scene/CSI
Mad Scientist
Famous Couples
Magic
Tudors - whether you love period costumes or the bloodiness of the regime, lopping off heads, and torrid romances
The Crusades
Cemetary
Merlin/King Arthur
Witches
Psychics/Fortune Tellers
Creepy Carnival
Mardi Gras
80's (or any decade with highly identifiable dress, music, etc.)
Or mix them together like that Bacardi commercial and have each room/area a different generation, people dress from different eras too

 

[barrearmynavy]

How about a "MASH" Party ? If you go to Barre Army Navy Store there are options from infants to adults including costumes, and Netting. The great thing is they can wear the clothing all year round!

 

[madammorrible]

Here are a few I have used or seen for my teens...

Twilight
Alice in Wonderland - Did it and it was Awesome!
Nightmare before Xmas
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Massacre
Horror Movie Tribute
CSI Neverland - Also a fun one....someone stole Tink's shadow.
Aladdin - Arabian Nights
High School Massacre - HSM meets I know what you did last summer.

 

[mrock12079]

Great Thread!!

While all of these ideas are very imaginative, i always feel that even if I have a theme, it should be kept in the realm of "classic" or creepy Halloween.

Just my opinion but Superheroes, Knights etc wouldn't feel like Halloween to me. New Orleans Voodoo, Vampire Masquerade, Zombie graveyard, Haunted house, Evil Carnival are more my cup of tea.

We book a hall every year and one time the hall's lighting and decor reminded us of the ballroom at the Overlook Hotel from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. We just rolled with that theme and it was easier than you might think. We dressed it up with a 20's theme but with cob webs everywhere. We made an old looking sign as you came in that said "The Overlook - where elegance shines - est. 1921" with a bloody axe sticking out of it. We had an undead bellhop and a ledger for guests to sign in. We also had a web covered typewriter and xeroxed tons of sheets that said "all work and no play make jack a dull boy" over and over in dozens of patterns and scattered them around.

I guess my point is that if you take just a few important details from a movie or genre, and accentuate them, it will really make it stand out.

Keep up the good work!

 

[Magickbean]

We're doing "Dia de los Muertos" (Mexican Day of the Dead) for our theme this year, as I am infatuated with its imagery and culture and have wanted to throw a day of the dead party for 2 years now. I am so excited to be doing this theme, you have no idea! My guests are almost as excited as me!

For next year I am toying with the idea of a 1950's rockabilly/psychobilly themed party - with old B movies playing, rockabilly/psychobilly music, 50's costumes (horrorfied of course) and call it something like "Horror at the Hop"..

 

[Mandathewitch]

What we like to do is take a normal theme like Alice in Wonderland, or Pirates and totally twist it up. I think that's the key to having a party. Everyone coming KINDA knows what's going to be there, but until they show up they have no idea.

Our theme this year is pretty straightforward: Nightmare Before Halloween. A combination of Haunted Mansion and Nightmare Before Xmas.

Next year is going to be a serious Twist on the standard Pirate theme. I don't know if it's ever been done before, but until I know I'm gonna keep it a secret!

Last year was Wonderland Gone Mad. We had cut up Card Guards, Heads on Stakes, about 400 cards hanging from fishing line in our Mad Queen's Garden.....and a 12 ft catepillar. We had a couple of teenagers helping us set up, and they both thought that our theme was cool and they really wanted to attend the party (which we said no because they were 14 and 15 and it was an adult party).

For the Teens, I think it's also important to play cool music. checkout mashuptown.com for some cool Halloween Mashups of songs... they take the old standard songs like thriller and add in something top40ish to make new fun songs.... I found about 10 songs that I really liked and I only spent 30 minutes there! Most teens don't appreciate all the old skool halloween songs that us adults like....

 

[Elza]

I just had an idea for a new theme....
Warehouse 13 (TV show on SciFi channel) - Do up the house or garage with weird objects and label them with a description of their mysterious properties. (Any object is game here.)

I envision a garage with shelves and objects all around..spooked up with rats, bats and spiderwebs. I see one wall with a big murial that has the same view as the show where they are standing on the office balcony and looking over the railing into the warehouse where there are rows and rows of shelves with creepy items on them. Orange lights - work clamp lights with orange bulbs.

The guests could be famous people from history and they can bring their own magical property items like swords, axes, tiera's etc.

This could be a fun theme.

 

[JamieMT]

We like to do the "twisted themes" too. We did "Academy of the Undead Awards" one year, this year is a Haunted Hospital theme (The Scaryview Sanitarium). I love the idea of an evil carnival or twisted wonderland!

 

[Halloweinerdog Lover]

I want to do a swamp theme some year!

 

[Gerrard]

We like to do the "twisted themes" too. We did "Academy of the Undead Awards" one year, this year is a Haunted Hospital theme (The Scaryview Sanitarium). I love the idea of an evil carnival or twisted wonderland!

Tell me more, I want to do a Haunted Hospital Theme at my house so any ideas will be appreciated!

 

[Si-cotik]

What about a Doctor Who theme?
Ghost hunting

Thinking this year we are going to make an Evil Dead twist...using the military trucks to my advantage, having skeletons in the driver's, passengers seat, and a few sitting on the troop seats in back, bones littering the ground, maybe a few crushed tombstones to make it look like the dead has come back to kill...running over everything and everyone with the trucks. Hmm not sure how to do the lighting...

 

[S1n1sterTech]

If you ever do a Alice in Wonderland theme again do it up like American Mcgee's Alice, It dose not get more twiztid then that

 

[Creeping Death]

I'm going to do a haunted Casino theme this year. We're having casino games with a Haloween twist to them, like Killer Craps, Devils Blackjack, Dead Man's poker......... Also, doing the Wheel of Misfortune, which is a variation on "Tempt your Fate" but you get your fates by spinning a wheel instead of popping a baloon. For decorations I'm planning on Casino style decorations with blood splattered on them, and having some zombie props sitting at the poker table holding a hand of cards. Also instead of playing for real money, we're gonna pass out "blood money" to the guests when they arive and give a prize at the end of the night to the person with the most.

 

[Finn]

We're doing "Dia de los Muertos" (Mexican Day of the Dead) for our theme this year, as I am infatuated with its imagery and culture and have wanted to throw a day of the dead party for 2 years now. I am so excited to be doing this theme, you have no idea! My guests are almost as excited as me!

For next year I am toying with the idea of a 1950's rockabilly/psychobilly themed party - with old B movies playing, rockabilly/psychobilly music, 50's costumes (horrorfied of course) and call it something like "Horror at the Hop"..

I saw some Day of the Dead masks on Ebay last week.

 

[kym]

Wow..these are all great ideas.
I would really like to do a sleepy hollow theme someday. If anyone has done anything like that, I would love to see pictures.