Five stakes through your heart: a handful of Halloween cocktails

The best way to put down a vampire is with a stake through the heart. What, you are probably asking, is the best way to put down a Halloween cocktail? What should you do if you see a Halloween cocktail lurching toward you down a lonely road on a cold, dark, moonless night? When, after you’ve run yourself to exhaustion and are leaning against a stone wall to catch your breath, you realize it’s the wall around the graveyard and scream… and the cocktail continues to draw inexorably nearer and nearer… What do you do? Experience shows that the most effective action is to grasp it firmly by its scrawny neck and toss it down before it can attack. And that, children (only if over 21), is the best way to handle an aggressive cocktail. Feel free to click the links below, or view the slideshow.

The first Halloween cocktail is one even your mother would enjoy, the Bob for Apples. What’s not to like about Rum, cinnamon, and apples? Think of Mom’s homemade apple pie with a kick (and with a spider garnish).

Although it sounds horrid, the Spider’s Venom cocktail actually verges on the sweet. The Spider Venom (a distant relative of the Piña Colada) should be drunk from a specially prepared cocktail glass as a charm to protect you from the venom.

It pays to keep an eye out for the Bloodshot cocktail when walking past the graveyard at night. Watch out, having been evicted from its own socket, this roguish cocktail’s roving eyeball may want to settle in one of yours.

If you should manage to escape the graveyard intact and alive (though just barely) and make it home, the best way to get your blood flowing again (but not too much, you don’t want to attract the wrong sort of undead) is with a Corpse Reviver. This beauty doesn’t look like a Halloween cocktail, but it’s sure to cure what ails you. The medley of flavors in this cocktail is very enjoyable, so give it a try at your Halloween soirée.

Last, and far from the least, is the Zombie, a cocktail that will knock you on your ass if you’re not careful or don’t show it the proper respect, a cocktail whose namesake must have had a Corpse Reviver poured into it, for there’s no other plausible explanation for its existence. Don’t be seduced into having several, or think you’ll have “just one more,” or you may end up a zombie yourself.