Halloween is upon us, and in the Upper Valley that means that all eyes that aren’t watching over children in search of candy are on White River Junction.

And for good reason. As Halloween enthusiasts have come to expect, this year’s Gory Daze events, on Saturday, sound pretty great.

The evening starts at 5:30 with JAM’s Halloween-O-Thon, a collection of locally made short horror films, at JAM’s HQ in the former Newberry department store, next to Tuckerbox.

The Western Terrestrials, a band that emerged from the womb in costumes, will play a warm-up set at the Main Street Museum around 6:30.

The lineup for the parade starts at 7:45 in front of the museum, at 58 Bridge St., with the parade starting at 8. This will be perhaps the only horribles parade in America led by a klezmer band, Brass Balagan.

After the parade, the Rio Blanco Social Club throws its annual dance party, this year dubbed the Afforda-Ball. No inflation here. It costs just $10 to get in the door of the Briggs Opera House, and there will be a cash bar available to those with proper IDs. The B-52.0s, a B-52s tribute band, sound like the ideal entertainment for a costumed event.

The low barrier to entry might be the best part of these festivities. A host of sponsors make the event happen, but the attendees make the event.

As much fun as people get out of White River Junction’s festivities, Halloween is too big to contain, and the entertainment options are bigger than Halloween. For more, see below.

Organ music

Starting at 6:30 Friday evening at the Church of Christ at Dartmouth, organist Peter Krasinski will play improvised accompaniment to two silent films with Halloween themes. The first film is “The Haunted House,” a short film from 1921 starring the incomparable Buster Keaton, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” starring Lon Chaney, who was great in his own way, but no Buster Keaton, is the main event. Admission for either or both films, which are family-friendly, is free.

It’s ‘Frahnk-en-steen’

BarnArts is producing an appropriately Halloween-y spectacle, the stage musical version of “Young Frankenstein,” at Barnard Town Hall.

The show opens Friday night and runs through Nov. 3. For tickets ($25, $18 for students) and more information, go to barnarts.org.

Party like it’s 1699

An email tells me that Upper Valley Baroque is performing “some of the greatest celebratory music ever composed” in Randolph and Claremont this weekend. The fine print, though, includes neither Queen’s “We Are the Champions” nor “Celebration,” by the inestimable Kool and the Gang. Go figure.

Instead, under the direction of the equally inestimable Filippo Ciabatti, the Upper Valley Baroque orchestra will perform Vivaldi's “Gloria,” Marc-Antoine-Charpentier’s “Te Deum” and Georg Frideric Handel’s “Coronation Anthems.”

The same email warns that Charpentier’s “Te Deum” starts with the theme music from the EuroVision Song Contest, but lovers of Baroque music, written between 1600 and 1750, give or take, shouldn’t let that modern detail deter them. The orchestra plays on period-correct instruments.

For tickets ($25-$50) to the 3 p.m. Saturday performance at Randolph’s Chandler Center for the Arts or for the 3 p.m. Sunday performance at Claremont Opera House, go to uppervalleybaroque.org.

Vermont movies

Two films with origins in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom arrive on Upper Valley screens this week.

First, “Just Getting By,” a documentary about people living in poverty in Vermont, screens at 6 p.m. in Woodstock’s Town Hall Theatre. Shot in 2022 and ‘23 by director Bess O’Brien and cinematographer Patrick Kennedy, “Just Getting By” gives viewers an up-close look at how the state’s affordability crisis is affecting people least-equipped to handle it. Tickets are by donation at the door.

And at 2 p.m. on Sunday, “Lost Nation,” the new film by Jay Craven, O’Brien’s husband, will screen in the Loew Auditorium at Dartmouth College. The film tells a version of Vermont’s founding, weaving together the story of Ethan Allen’s role with the story of Lucy Terry Prince, an African American woman who with her husband created a homestead in Guilford, Vt. Craven will be on hand to talk about the film. Tickets ($9) are available through hop.dartmouth.edu or at 603-646-2422.

Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.