Box art from the NES release of 'Friday the 13th'

It all happened so suddenly. I was in a second-hand store and stumbled upon a used laserdisc of Tom Savini's 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead. Next thing I knew, I was being sucked down a spiral of classic horror that was impossible to escape. A few weird nights watching countless teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them die later, and I'm digging through an old box looking for my next fix, only to end up face to face with what's considered to be one of the worst NES titles ever, Friday the 13th. I didn't want this, and I didn't ask for it. But neither did those poor, horny teens at Camp Crystal Lake.

Friday the 13th on the NES has long been my whale. I first owned it in the early 1990s, but like many (most?) players, I could barely make it even halfway through the game. At some point in my history I must've locked it away, completely satisfied with never touching it again, but still wanting to have the cartridge around for nostalgia's sake. Or as a reminder of mountains that would never be climbed.

Or perhaps the universe simply knew that my time would eventually come, many years later, and when I least expected it.

A slow, creeping sensation came over me. Like a nubile archery instructor that just snuck into Bunk 8 with four light beers, I knew I was getting fucked. I had to kill 8bit Jason Voorhees. Looking down at the cartridge in my hands, with its borderline psychedelic portrait of Jason, murderin' axe at the ready, I knew I couldn't put it off any longer. Jason would die. His stupid purple suit would be stained red by my hand.

But only after hours of dying after refusing to look at a guide. Frustration level: Can't Escape from Invincible Murderer Armed with Machete and Mike Tyson-Level Footwork.

The gentle children will be massacred if you suck. And you will suck.

Anyone who has picked up a controller to play Friday the 13th probably threw it right back down after a minute or two of dodging zombies, birds, and wolves while navigating the confusing twisting paths of Camp Crystal Lake. The game was too hard, too obtuse, and, at its worst, didn't make sense. Your first order of business (after surviving) is to visit the many cabins located around camp to look for clues, weapons, and check in on the gentle children who will be massacred with ease if you suck. And you will suck.

I attempted to make it through the days by experimenting with different combinations of the six counselors that you can choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Since you don't have lives like a traditional NES game at the time, you have to think in portals—er, I mean counselors. Since their stats aren't revealed to you, it leads to some interesting (awful) trial and error when you try to move them around in some semblance of a strategic fashion, dodging the plethora of enemies this game throws at you. Of course, Jason would appear at random, finish me off, then I would start over. The strangely entrancing soundtrack simultaneously taunted me and kept me going.

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Related: Watch VICE's new film, 'Unicorns'

Imagine the movies actually being full of killer birds, zombies, wolves, and Jason. It would actually be kind of hilarious. Throw Hitchcock's The Birds into a Vitamix™ with Cujo and Night of the Living Dead, pour the sauce over a fine Voorhees hoagie, and you have this game. The odds are stacked against you when you stand up to Jason, but dodging zombies and birds trying to peck your eyes out while you're trying to row? Why is this happening, and what does the brochure for this camp look like?

Eventually, after what I will admit was a pathetic few hours wandering through the woods with a mark on my back that can only be worn by a sexually satisfied teen, things started to make sense. In fact, Friday the 13th began to shine.

Brutal difficulty? Yes. Intricate gameplay? Actually, yeah. After gearing up my counselors with the various weapons found on the trail and starting fires in the cabins with the lighter I found on a zombie (not the torch), I was beginning to feel more confident. I even genuinely started to like Friday the 13th.

No.

In fact, I think Friday the 13th would be widely embraced if it were released today. There's a roaming boss. There's an optional, hidden boss that you don't even have to kill (Jason's mother) who drops a rare weapon and a powerful piece of gear (the sweater, if you fight her on day two). The strategy in placing your various counselors around the camp and making your way to them to pass off weapons and battle Jason is genius, and there's a fucking day/night cycle. I repeat with italics: a fucking day/night cycle. In 1989.

So I played on. And still, I died.

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The more I played Friday the 13th, the more I realized that it's pretty much the great grandfather of Demon's Souls. The rhythm-based gameplay will eventually click for the physical half of the game, while the forward thinking you need to pull off properly surviving days one to three and killing Jason is surprisingly cerebral for a licensed NES title from the late 80s.

And damn it, Jason's teal mask and purple suit were starting to grow on me.

So my frustration would slowly melt away into satisfaction. With each play through I experimented with new weapons and counselors, knocking Jason down, but not keeping him out. I was still getting butchered, but now I kinda liked it. I had developed a game plan and I knew that this saga of Jason-on-Jason violence would soon be at an end.

With my thumbs appropriately starting to blister (just like in the old days), I twisted through the camp one last time, sacrificing a few of the slower, dumber counselors for the good of the children and began to make close to perfect progress. Eventually, in a blood-pumping showdown, I would dodge his machete slashes and throw dozens of pitchforks at his chest, killing him and leading to this end screen:

Seriously?

All of this only to have the developers reveal themselves as omniscient gods that won't tell you the fate of a child-murderer with a notice that the game is over with a two-dot ellipsis?

After hours of struggling, I put on YouTube to see if there were any playthroughs, and how long it took other digital campers. One guy beat the game inside four minutes. Four minutes. It'd taken me 25 years. This was true horror.

Follow Jason on Twitter.

Note: In the column "How Scared Should I Be?" VICE staff writer and generalized anxiety disorder sufferer Mike Pearl seeks to quantify the scariness of everything under the sun. We hope it'll help you to more wisely allocate that most precious of natural resources: your fear.

A grocery store in Pennsylvania has had enough with what it calls "safety concerns" associated with letting minors buy eggs around Halloween, so all through Halloween week, you have to be 18 to buy them, and the store is carding people. It's not much of a hindrance—teens can, and probably will, just go to a different store, buy some eggs, and then egg that first store—but is it a sign that the usual teenage bullshit on Halloween has gotten out of hand?

Long ago when I was a fun size trick-or-treater, teenagers in store-bought wolfman masks and Freddy Krueger gloves scared the shit out of me. Later, when I became a feeble, anxious teen myself, my fellow teens, with their store-bought Matrix costumes—some of which were sexy—scared me for other reasons. But as an adult, even though Halloween is the night teens own the streets, they generally haven't scared me in the least.

I've recently wondered if I should revise that policy. Media coverage of teenage Halloween pranks makes them seem like they've turned into actual monsters. Could that be true?

For instance, last week, a teen showed up at the movie theater closest to my parents' house, barged into a showing of the movie The Gift, and tricked the audience into thinking he was a chainsaw-wielding maniac (It turned out he was armed with a leaf blower). It shows a good creative mind for pranks. But we now live in an America where movie theaters are frequently targeted by murderous psychopaths, so the fear was amplified. Three people were hurt in the ensuing stampede. One even broke a toe. That particular teen was a shithead, and I'm glad he was arrested and charged with three crimes.

After digging around in news archives, I can only conclude that even though some Halloween teen antics are unsettling, nothing has changed, not even a little bit. It should come as a surprise to no one that teens have been arrested over harmless pranks since time immemorial. All the way back in 1928, teens in California were hauled before a judge because they went out on Halloween and threw eggs, tomatoes, and oranges at cars. In 1947, some teens in New York broke into their own school. New York Teens in 1954 pulled some fire alarms. Who cares?

But teens have also been taking shit way too far since time immemorial.

All the way back in 1901, a pack of youths in New York City busted out the most deceptively unfunny Halloween prank in the prank book: stretching a string across a walkway, and getting someone to trip over it. They cracked the skull of a local politician, who had to be hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. That same night, some other kids were smacking passersby with bags of flour—which they were finding hilarious I guess?—and they hit a little girl so hard she bled internally, and later died.

Watch our documentary about teens performing exorcisms.

But apart from mere violence, teens have also been perpetrating their unique brand of psychological terror on Halloween for decades. In 1969, some teens in Philadelphia pranked a neighbor by telling the cops he had been placing razor blades in apples, when he was actually just a harmless old loner. That same year, teens in Virginia chopped down some trees on Halloween—far from the scariest thing you can do with an ax—but the prank blocked all the roads in the area, and left the residents stranded. In 1984, teens in Idaho stole some street signs, which, who cares, right? But these were stop signs, and the resulting car crash injured six people.

In Australia in 2012, a mainstay of Halloween fun—an egging—resulted in a serious injury. A seemingly one-in-a-million shot with an egg caught a younger kid in the eye, causing the kid to need medical attention. According to ABC News, eggs caused at least 13 serious eye injuries in a one-year period in the UK alone. But everyone knows eggs are for the front doors of houses that aren't giving out candy, not faces. If you go out for Halloween with a few dozen eggs, and the only place you can think to throw them is directly at people, you're a shitty pranker.

But further reading reveals another long-term trend: violent overreaction from the prankee.

In 1949, some teens in Lawrence, Kansas were going around tipping people's outhouses over on Halloween. They tried it on the wrong guy, apparently, and he got into a brawl with them, eventually shooting one in the leg. In another Kansas incident exactly ten years later, a 16-year-old honor student was pushing benches into a ditch on Halloween when an armed nightwatchman chased after him with a gun. The nightwatchman fired—he claimed that he had stepped in a hole, which caused his gun to discharge accidentally—putting a bullet in the teen's head, and killing him.

The fact is that when teens get into trouble late at night and it goes wrong, the victims tend to be the teens themselves. That can be their own doing, like In 1990, when a South Carolina teen, taking his haunted house routine too far, fatally hanged himself. Or it can be the result of overreactions, like last year when a guy in Arkansas overreacted to an egging, and fired a gun into a car full of teens, killing one of them.

Here in LA, where I live, Halloween is a lot of things. Right after dusk a lot of children go around the more walkable neighborhoods collecting candy. Once the coast is clear, it becomes a night when teens—and adults like me in a semipermanent state of arrested development—put on disguises, and run around literally mocking death.

That's all the more unsettling, because statistically speaking, minors, including teens, are in almost twice as much danger of dying on Halloween as they are on any other night. "Teenagers" and "pranks" don't show up on breakdown of parental fears on Halloween, but according to a survey by the nonprofit organization Safe Kids Worldwide, 31 percent of parents understandably fear "pedestrian injury."

"Historically, we have seen an increase in injuries from car versus pedestrian accidents, and often injuries and incidents due to increased use of alcohol," Peter Sanders, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department told me.

One thing that's really worth being afraid of on Halloween is the kind of hit-and-run that instantly killed three teens last year. No one was able to prove that driver was drunk, but on one Halloween night studied by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, almost half of the fatalities in traffic incidents nationwide involved a drunk driver, as opposed to the usual one third.

In short, it's the teens who should watch out on Halloween, particularly when they're crossing the street. Meanwhile, I'll be fine.

Any decent party comes with some official safety warnings from The Powers that Be, because real fun is dangerous. Teens will be around on Halloween, armed with toilet paper and eggs, until they get bored and try to get a hand job in the backseat of a Scion. Toilet paper is flammable, and eggs can hurt your eyes, but if that actually scares you, or makes you want to open up your gun safe, you should probably just stay the fuck indoors on Halloween.

Final Verdict: How Scared Should I Be of Teens on Halloween?

1/5: IDGAF

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Australian Immigration Minister addresses potential sea-borne refugees in January 2015.

Ali is a Hazara man from Afghanistan, who came to Australia seeking asylum in 2012. He fled his country of birth, as the area where his family lives is surrounded by the Taliban. The region is periodically attacked and it's dangerous to travel outside of. "My father was killed by the Taliban, when he was going to Kabul to get supplies for his work," he said, adding that his mother and uncle decided, as he was the oldest child, he should leave.

He traveled through Pakistan and was in Indonesia for six months, before continuing on by boat. "The sea is dangerous and expensive but I couldn't apply for a visa to visit Australia or any other country that would let me stay." Ali, who's in his 20s, applied for a protection visa when he arrived and is currently on a bridging visa. He's been allowed to work, the Australians he's met have been friendly, but the wait is worrying him. "While I've been in Australia, my little brother was also killed by the Taliban."

But since Ali arrived in the country, sweeping changes have been made to the process of applying for asylum via the Legacy Act 2014. Passed in December last year, this bill retrospectively deemed applications like Ali's to have actually been for temporary protection visas, meaning that after a period of three years a new application must be made.

Read: Australia's Mistreatment of a Pregnant, Allegedly Raped Refugee

The Legacy Act also narrowed the definition of a refugee and, according to Scott Cosgriff, a senior solicitor at the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, Ali may not be considered a refugee when applying for his next visa.

The decision to grant Ali refugee status was made prior to these changes. "He was successful because it was considered unreasonable—because of the security situation and because he was young—to relocate within Afghanistan to avoid persecution," Cosgriff explained.

But the Legacy Act has since removed the reasonableness principle from internal relocation considerations, meaning Ali would now need to show he'd be under the threat of the Taliban in every part of the country. So for instance, as Kabul is under government control, it may be considered a safe haven, even though it's being regularly attacked.

These Migration Act amendments mean proposed changes to complementary protection may have a far greater impact than what might be initially presumed.

On October 14, Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton tabled the Migration Amendment (Complementary Protection and Other Measures) Bill 2015. Complementary protection is granted to an individual who faces a real risk of significant harm if returned to the country they left, but are not classed as refugees.

"The categories of the Refugee Convention itself, while quite general, on the other hand, do not necessarily encompass a range of reasons why people need protection," said Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition. He gave examples such as women under threat of honor killings or individuals facing revenge attacks.

Complementary protection is a recent addition to Australian immigration legislation. Since March 24, 2012, it's been required that if an asylum seeker fails the refugee definition, then a decision maker must consider them for complementary protection.

As of June 13, 2014, only a reported 49 successful complementary protection decisions had been made by the Refugee Review Tribunal, because most people deemed eligible for asylum were considered refugees. But this small reach could be about to change. With the narrowing of the refugee definition, more of the estimated 25 to 30,000 asylum seekers in Australia waiting for their cases to be heard, could find this their last line of protection.

However, the government's new bill is set to bring complementary protection into line with the changes made to refugee legislation by the Legacy Act. "The actual effect of this is bigger because there used to be two threads these people were hanging by," Cosgriff said, and went on to explain that it means "a lot of people are about to be excluded, if this passes."

Along with altering the provision for reasonable internal relocation, the bill also amends measures surrounding effective protection. Currently, if the State can provide protection against the risk of harm, an individual will not be granted a visa. However, under the new bill effective protection could be supplied by non-government actors, opening up the way for mercenary or militia groups to qualify.

Director at the Human Rights Law Centre Daniel Webb pointed to the personalized risk and generalized violence provision as a particular concern. "The Bill, if it becomes law, could deny protection to people fleeing war zones because the danger they face is 'generalized,' not personal," he said. "Danger is danger. We should never return a person to it, regardless of whether or not the government thinks the risk is sufficiently personal."

However, a Department of Immigration and Border Protection spokesperson said that, "the bill makes clear that if levels of generalized violence in a country become so dangerous, consistent, or targeted towards particular groups that a real risk of personal harm is faced."

The spokesperson told VICE that both amendment bills are designed "to deliver a more effective and efficient onshore protection status determination process." And the changes to the Legacy Act are not expected "to have a significant impact on the numbers of persons granted protection visas under the complementary protection provisions."

A new provision introduced by the bill concerns people "who could take reasonable steps to modify their behavior." Reverend Elenie Poulos, national director of Uniting Justice Australia said, this could affect outspoken journalists or human rights advocates. "You arrive in Australia and want protection because you face the risk of torture," she explained. "Then under this legislation the government is likely to say, 'Well no, because you can go back home, do some other work and you'll be fine.'"

Currently, the bill has been referred to a senate committee, with a report due February next year.

For Ali, contemplating a return to Afghanistan is too much. Since he left, the Taliban has grown stronger and many cities are being attacked. "What if the same thing happens to me that happened to my dad or brother?" he said. "Every day I try to be busy, so that I don't think about this too much."

Follow Paul on Twitter.

Photo via Flickr user Rescuenav

Earlier this week, a shocking video of a black South Carolina high school student being tossed around like a rag doll by a white cop went viral. It picked up traction on the internet partly because it fit into a nationwide debate about how the police routinely mistreat people of color, but that the target of the violence was a teenager sitting at her desk in school rendered the outrage especially acute. Beyond the usual questions about why this cop—a sheriff's deputy named Ben Fields who was fired on Wednesday—went postal on an unarmed civilian, there was a simpler one: Why are the police in schools anyway?

Cops assigned to schools are usually referred to as school resource officers (SROs) and are a daily sight at some middle and high schools—in particular, those in poorer neighborhoods or areas with large minority populations. At my mostly white public middle school on Long Island in the 90s, for instance, there was no police presence except on days when we were educated about the many dangers of drugs.

"Could you imagine this happening in one of these Manhattan prep schools where the kids pay $50k a year to go to fifth grade?" asks Eugene O'Donnell, a former Brooklyn cop and prosecutor. "It degrades our profession, too. This is what the police are for? This is what you need a skilled person in a police agency to do?"

According to the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), the first SRO program appeared in 1958, in Flint, Michigan. That happens to be around the time American adults really started to freak out about the scourge of juvenile delinquency. Rebel Without a Cause had come out three years earlier, Beatniks were roaming urban centers waxing poetic about the alienating affects of post-war capitalism and groupthink, and Elvis was gyrating in alarmingly suggestive fashion on television.

But it wasn't until about 20 years ago that SROs really began to take off nationwide, according to William Terrill, a professor in the school of criminal justice at Michigan State University.

"Most of what the police do is much more oriented to doing social work than law enforcement," Terrill says of American cops generally. He maintains that it's a myth that "even in high-crime urban areas... officers are often enforcing the law. All the evidence indicates that the bulk of an officer's time is spent doing non-law enforcement activities."

There are now an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 SROs around the country, as the New York Times recently reported, but less than half are members of the national organization, which sets standards for training and conduct. They're supposed to teach kids about the law and mentor them, as well as resolve conflicts before they get out of hand. But as Buzzfeed reported, many SROs—Fields apparently among them—are not trained by the national group. Meanwhile, federal data shows that the number of full-time cops at American schools rose by 40 percent between 1997 and 2007, with the 1999 Columbine shooting helping open the spigot for millions in new federal grants to pay for them.

The trend suggests many believe SROs can prevent or respond to school shootings and gang activity. And if police generally made students safer, who would argue with their presence? But according to the experts on school safety I canvassed, SROs don't have all that much to do with deterring violent crime. And in addition to the deeply problematic "school to prison pipeline," where arrests at school trap young people in the criminal justice system, there are enough horrific tales involving pepper spray, batons, and traumatized children that it's awfully hard to justify bringing armed officers into the hallways of America's places of learning.

"The average school can expect a student to be murdered every 6,000 years, and the idea that we would want an officer in the school to prevent something like that from happening, I think, is unreasonable," said Dewey Cornell, a forensic clinical psychologist and professor of education at the University of Virginia. "Using them to prevent school shootings is probably one of the least efficient and effective ways to make use of limited resources."

Dewey added that even in crime-ridden urban neighborhoods, where having police at schools is often insisted upon by parents and faculty, research suggests keeping cops on hand doesn't have a major impact. (Neither do metal detectors, he said.) Instead, most school resource officers—who are either employees of the school district or a local law enforcement agency—serve three roles under what's often called the "triad model": law-enforcement officer, counselor, and legal educator.

"The number one role of the SROs is to bridge the gap between police and young people," says Don Bridges, a vice president of the National Association of School Resource Officers. He called the video out of South Carolina "disturbing," but insists it doesn't speak to the broader profession. "If you walked my school with me, you'd know this is how the program is supposed to work."

Follow Matt Taylor on Twitter.

Ugh, white men. Photo via Flickr user Blondinrikard Fröberg

Read: The Contenders to Lead the Conservative Party, Ranked

If being a white male in today's climate wasn't already tough enough—with all the police officers who don't murder us and the impunity we get while doing just about anything—being a white male who works for the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) sounds like an absolute nightmare. At least that's according to the story of one Joe Bate.

Bate, a 40-year-old employee for the CRA, is currently heading up a discrimination case against his employer in federal court on the grounds that they denied him the opportunity for a promotion based on the fact that he was, as Bate puts it, born white.

"I could be twice as efficient and not me."

Bate also spoke of a theoretical scenario in which Team Canada didn't allow Wayne Gretzky to play or Don Cherry to coach (editor's note: don't listen to Bate about hockey) in exchange for making the team more representative. He compared this to how white people have been systematically eliminated from the CRA in exchange for an unending wave of women and minorities (according to him).

Also appearing to be a fan of social justice and champion of equity, Bate made the point that when past advances in civil rights have occurred—such as gay marriage being legalized or women being allowed to vote—the solution was not to shift from one extreme to another by banning heterosexual marriage or stopping men from voting. In his eyes, this has unfortunately been the case at the CRA.

"What a vicious cycle of discrimination," he said.

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

Bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hedges sits down with Ben Makuch at the Toronto VICE office to discuss what it takes to be a rebel in modern times. Hedges discusses his new book Wages of Rebellion, an investigation of the social and psychological factors that cause revolution, rebellion and resistance. From Wall Street corruption to why the elites in corporate media have eviscerated traditional investigative journalism, Hedges tries to make sense of the world we live in.

Read: America's People of Color Aren't Even Safe from Police Violence in School

On Monday in South Carolina, Spring Valley High's school resource officer, a brawny Sheriff's deputy named Ben Fields, flipped over and dragged a 16-year-old student out of her desk and threw her clear across the room. Footage of the incident promptly ended up in the hands of Fields's boss, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who allegedly (and appropriately) wanted to barf when he saw it.

On Wednesday, Lott—who also said the incident has given him heartburn—announced at a press conference that Deputy Fields has been fired.

"Deputy Fields did not follow proper training without ever calling the deputy," Lott said, conceding that there may be deeper issues with school resource officers in play. Meanwhile, a federal investigation that could lead to criminal charges against the officer is still pending.

Look at Stephen Maurice Graham's website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram.

Alleged child molester Michael Jones, photographed in 2014 by APLE. All photos courtesy of Action Pour Les Enfants

Rong Rattana was watching. Rattana, a Child Protection Coordinator for the Cambodian non-governmental organization Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE), had been on the American man's trail after seeing him ride through the city of Siem Reap on a motorbike with a young Cambodian boy in tow. For months, Rattana and other APLE investigators followed the man.

He was living on the outskirts of town, in a $1.2 million home outfitted with a pool and a water slide. The man, Jack Sporich, was a retired engineer who'd moved to Cambodia from Arizona, after spending nine years in US prison and another three in a state hospital for molesting young boys.

APLE investigators put Sporich's home under surveillance. They watched all day and saw three young Cambodian boys come and go. In interviews later detailed in court papers, the boys told APLE investigators that they called Sporich "dad." He gave them money for school and let them play on his computer. They told APLE that he'd slept in the same bed with them, bathed with them, and in those moments, he would sometimes reach down and play with their genitals.

The Cambodian group's investigation—a detailed account, which was outlined in a federal court complaint against Sporich filed in April 2009—led directly to Sporich's arrest in Cambodia and deportation back to the United States to face charges in federal court. Last month, 81-year-old Sporich was sentenced to ten years in prison for molesting two of the boys. It was a major success for APLE.

APLE sits at the forefront of efforts to crack down on child sexual exploitation in Cambodia, and over the years has become well-known for its hardcore approach. Relying on a team of covert investigators and a web of informants, the organization is dedicated to hunting down Western tourists who for years have regarded Cambodia—one of Southeast Asia's poorest countries—as a playground for hiring underage sex workers and sexually exploiting young children.

APLE's efforts have led to numerous convictions and the rescue of hundreds of abused children. In the process, it's become a key ally with the Cambodian police as well as with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security that runs its own Child Exploitation Investigations Unit. But the group has also been dogged by online critics, some actively defending convicted or accused sex offenders they see as wrongfully jailed. And in recent months, criminal charges against a former APLE director suggest that cases like Sporich's—as disturbing as they are—are just one part of a complex and deep-seated problem.

"The Pedophile Hunter, Part IV." Video via APLE on YouTube

Cambodia is well-known as a destination for "sex tourism." While many adult sex workers ply their trade willingly, the country has also been haunted by the history of red-light districts like Svay Pak, a village on the outskirts of the capital Phnom Penh where brothels openly pimped out girls as young as five, and a "virgin trade" drew the most corrupt local and foreign customers.

On VICE News: Did the British Establishment Cover Up a Political Pedophile Ring?

Abuses of children in Cambodia once flew under the radar in part because the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen was hampered by corruption and lack of resources. But efforts shifted in the mid-2000s as the government began working closely with countries like the United States and Australia, arresting and then deporting foreigners to face trial in their home countries. The United States stepped up its own efforts by passing a law, part of the Protect Act of 2003, which makes it illegal for citizens and permanent residents to engage in sex acts with minors while traveling in a foreign country—a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.

But none of these efforts would be nearly as effective were it not for APLE, which often sniffs out suspects before anybody else. The group, founded in 2003 by the French activist Thierry Darnaudet, has become immensely powerful. Though it operates relatively modestly (according to its financial statement for 2014, the organization had an annual income of $519,213 with outgoings of $491,834), the group works alongside American law enforcement, with the official blessing of Cambodia's Ministry of the Interior (MoI). According to Samleang Seila, APLE's president, a government-issued Memorandum of Understanding empowers the group to do its own preliminary investigative work to assist official authorities.

"If APLE did not investigate, it would be unlikely that anyone else could or would." — Alastair Hilton

"Every sector in Cambodia, whether education, agriculture, or tourism, has been assisted by NGOs. Ours is a proven model in developing countries, and it is our belief that Cambodia's police force is getting stronger and will soon be wealthy and healthy enough to take up these cases by themselves," Seila told VICE.

According to Cambodia's Ministry of Interior, APLE's investigations have led to more than 680 children being rescued from sexual abuse—55 percent boys, 45 percent girls. The group also maintains a crime hotline, which rang up 227 reports last year, leading to 23 arrests; it offers free legal support and social assistance to children and their families affected by sexual abuse.

Still, APLE is just one player in what are often highly complex international court cases. Take Ronald Gerard Boyajian, an American who was arrested along with Sporich and Erik Leonardus Peeters in 2009 as part of a joint US-Cambodian initiative dubbed "Operation Twisted Traveler." The investigations involved APLE, Cambodian police, the FBI, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Boyajian allegedly paid a ten-year-old Vietnamese girl 20,000 Cambodian reil (about $5) to perform oral sex on him. According to the initial complaint filed against him in US Central District Court of California, the investigation was jump-started by APLE, whose investigators witnessed Boyajian visiting a child brothel in Svay Pak. Later, according to court papers, the girl identified Boyajian in a photo line-up and said she had met with Boyajian multiple times. At one meeting, she said he told her, in Vietnamese, "Kid, go to work."

Read: A Computer Generated Ten-Year-Old Girl Ignites Ethical Debate with First Pedophile Conviction

Boyajian—who had previously been convicted in 1994 on 22 counts of statutory rape in Orange County, according to records from the county's Superior Court—pleaded not guilty and hired a veteran Beverly Hills attorney, Danny Davis, to do research in Cambodia and punch holes in the prosecution's case. Davis suggested there were inconsistencies in the victim's account, and in 2012 he tried to get the case thrown out, arguing unsuccessfully that the charges were unconstitutional.

But that was just the beginning of what's turned out to be an epic saga of challenges and delays, causing Boyajian's case to lurch along with little progress for the past six years. After numerous stalling tactics, Boyajian's new trial date is set for November 3, but his court appointed assistant, George Buehler, says it might be delayed again.

An APLE investigation led to the arrest of three Cambodian women accused of aggravated procurement of and soliciting for child prostitution

So it's clear that APLE's investigations don't guarantee legal slam-dunks. Carol Smolenski, executive director of anti-child-trafficking advocacy group ECPAT USA, says these US child "sex tourism" cases can be especially hard on young survivors of sexual assault, who have to travel overseas to testify in US courts. As a result they may be re-traumatized by giving testimony, and they're also vulnerable to scrutiny from defense attorneys eager to discredit them.

"I remember speaking to some of the investigators about wanting to take the kids to an amusement park, because they were in a hotel for ten days, you know? And they're kids! They're cramped up," Smolenski said, referring to one US case. "But they really can't take them to an amusement park, because then that becomes something that the defense can use to say, 'That's why the kids are testifying. Because you wined and dined them.'"

Watch: Jay Ram was hailed as a public hero for fostering, adopting, and caring for dozens of boys that had nowhere else to go. But years later, his "sons" came forward to say that he preyed on them sexually and forced them to recruit other boys to molest.

Back in Cambodia, APLE has maintained a growing influence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this has led to accusations that the group has become too powerful. One of their most outspoken critics is James Ricketson, an Australian filmmaker and blogger who has become an advocate for a convicted rapist named David Fletcher. On his blog, Ricketson attacks the group and its founder, and highlights what he believes to be flagrant examples of shaky evidence collected by APLE that has been used to implicate suspects. In short, Ricketson thinks Cambodian authorities have given too much leeway to the organization.

"Evidence collected by APLE should be challenged by a lawyer representing the accused, but the veracity of APLE's evidence is rarely challenged in Cambodian courts," Ricketson said in an email to VICE. "This is a reflection on the incompetence of the country's judicial system, not on APLE's superior investigative abilities. It is time for the Cambodian government to stop outsourcing the policing of Cambodian law, with no oversight, to NGOs such as Action Pour les Enfants."

Seila dismissed the criticism, saying it comes from a misperception about how APLE operates.

"People seem to believe we are investigating cases by ourselves. What we do under the proviso of our MoI is to identify suspects, to pass information, and to carry out preliminary investigations," he said. "We don't make evidence—we assist the Cambodian police force in their investigations and our role is to support child victims from testimony throughout the process."

The US embassy in Cambodia and a spokesperson from Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to comment for this article. But the group also has the backing of other Cambodian groups dedicated to fighting child exploitation, like First-Step Cambodia, an NGO that provides resources for survivors of sexual abuse. Alastair Hilton, First-Step's organization's Technical Advisor and co-founder, said that "APLE, along with many other local and international organizations, has provided support, training, and resources to the MoI for a number of years in an effort to improve responses to and protection of children and others affected by and at risk of abuse. This has in many cases also resulted in sharing of intelligence and information leading to the arrest of a considerable number of Khmer and foreign nationals."

In general, it's perfectly legitimate for a private organization to help official law enforcement by providing resources and leads, says Diane Marie Amann, a professor of international criminal law at the University of Georgia School of Law.

"I think that collaboration with what we call 'civil society' is always positive," Amann said. "Criminal justice systems tend to need resources, and if there are private organizations that have familiarity with the situation, maybe better access or first access to the victims, it certainly is appropriate for them to cooperate."

Still, in a country where every week brings new headlines about pedophiles, recent events suggest that nobody—not even APLE—should be above suspicion.

In March, dozens of Cambodian police officers and government officials descended on a school and orphanage in Phnom Penh. The compound was called Our Home, and it was a residence for 60-plus kids, who were quickly evacuated and transferred to three different child protection centers in Cambodia. The children lugged their belongings in black plastic bags, and they had looks of confusion and fright on their faces as they were helped onto the back of covered pickup trucks. Meanwhile, the police arrested Our Home's owner, Hang Vibol.

The charges against him were shocking. For years, Vibol had been involved in fighting child exploitation; he had even served as APLE's former director of child protection. But in recent years he had become a target of an APLE investigation, and was now charged with abusing at least nine minors who were living at Our Home in 2013 and 2014.

One Step Ahead: Pedophiles on the Deep Web

Vibol's first hearing was held behind closed doors earlier this month. While behind bars he has protested his innocence, claiming that the evidence against him was fabricated in retaliation as part of an ongoing personal vendetta that began when he left APLE back in 2004, which he says was prompted by the organization's tactics. In a letter sent to VICE in March, Vibol said he was even planning to testify in Boyajian's case prior to his arrest, "in order to disclose all the activity of APLE in the US."

"I opposed the work of APLE," Vibol wrote in the letter. "APLE carries out activities that are beyond its competence by trespassing into police work, the poor, who are the victims, by providing them food and coaching them to demand compensation from the accused."

Vibol has also levied accusations against APLE founder Thierry Darnaudet, accusing him of child molestation and embezzlement. Darnaudet (who no longer works for APLE) is now in the process of suing Vibol for defamation.

"At first it hurt when I read stuff on the internet about me, Seila, and APLE at large," Darnaudet wrote in an email to VICE. "Then I laughed as the allegations are so amazing and so twisted that it blew my mind away to think about how some people have time and interest to come up with such conspiracy theories. I feel bad for Seila, as I know how hard he works, how honest, meticulous, and how much integrity he has."

Vibol's arrest has proven somewhat controversial for APLE. The criminal charges against him stemmed from an APLE investigation and following the arrest, the head of Cambodian human rights group Licadho, Dr. Kek Pung, publicly questioned whether it was a conflict of interest for APLE to investigate its former director for sex offenses, when Vibol was being sued by Darnaudet over similar accusations. APLE quickly refuted those claims. Seila, APLE's president, told The Cambodia Daily earlier this year that Darnaudet had severed ties with APLE in August 2014, just before the investigation into Vibol began.

The group First-Step Cambodia is now helping to support the kids evacuated from Our Home as well as the dozen who are testifying against Vibol. Hilton, the Technical Advisor and co-founder, has maintained his faith in APLE. He pointed out that despite all this, APLE is still leading the charge in the movement to protect children from sexual abuse in Cambodia and rescue its victims.

"If APLE did not investigate, it would be unlikely that anyone else could or would," said Hilton.

Follow Simon Henderson and Peter Holslin on Twitter.

A 22-year-old named Yibin Mu was violent arrested on Sunday evening for allegedly ignoring the numerous signs in Manhattan's Columbus Circle that ban skateboarding there. In a video Mu posted to YouTube, a police officer appears to tackle him and possibly employ a chokehold—a controversial tactic prohibited by the New York City Police Department and decried by police reform activists.

"Someone record!" Mu can be heard yelling in the video as the cop sits on his back. "Someone record this!" The officer eventually deploys pepper spray.

What's tricky to decipher here is whether the maneuver the cop used on Mu technically qualifies as a chokehold. An NYPD spokesman told VICE News that Mu refused to comply with the officer's request to sit down so he could issue a summons, and that Mu also refused to put his hands behind his back, prompting the struggle. The spokesman declined to comment about whether the move used by the officer was a chokehold, but did indicate that Internal Affairs is looking into the matter.

"I would say this was a headlock and not a chokehold," says Joseph Giacalone, a former NYPD Detective Sergeant and law enforcement expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. "The reason I say this is that the maneuver does not go around the debt of the neck which would obstruct breathing."

Chokeholds were banned in 1993 by then-Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, but the death of Eric Garner at the hands of officer Daniel Pantaleo last year put chokeholds at the forefront of a public debate. A deep dive into ten chokehold cases released in January by the city's NYPD Inspector General showed that Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) and Internal Affairs Bureau often lost track of complaints, and that typically nothing came of them. Adding to the confusion, the 45-page report also found that NYPD's various internal agencies had difficulty agreeing on what constituted an illegal chokehold.

Earlier this year, city council members floated passing a law to explicitly make chokeholds illegal—rather than just prohibited under departmental policy—but ran into opposition from Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton.

Mu did not respond to request for comment from VICE, but was charged with resisting arrest and violating park regulations, among other offenses.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Given all the haunted landmarks in Los Angeles, it's surprisingly hard to find ghost stories about the city's motels. When you dig for them, you uncover things of the flesh, not of the spirit: bedbugs, roaches, used needles, bloodstains on the box springs. But there are, of course, plenty of real-world crimes. In 2007, a homeless teenage girl was murdered at the Olive Motel in Silverlake. This summer, inside a Rosemead motel, a mother shot her teenage son at the crack of dawn, and didn't call the police until 10 AM. A young backpacker was found dead in a motel in South LA last year, with his blood all over the walls.

If ghosts ever lingered around motels, they'd do so in Hollywood, where some of the motels are so wonderfully seedy and old that they seem destined to be the backdrop for a haunting. Was there lore of ghosts in some of these buildings? What had the motel clerks witnessed late at night? Why are people drawn to spend the night in these decidedly creepy places? Photographer Michelle Groskopf and I decided to poke around and see if we could uncover some glimmer of the supernatural in Hollywood's motels.

Hollywood La Brea Motel

Simon has been working as the night clerk here for ten months. He's cheerful and utterly uncynical, which is surprising given that most of his trade takes place behind a thick pane of bulletproof glass. Also behind the glass: A large collection of Ronald Reagan paraphernalia and a handwritten phone number tacked to the wall on a note that says "coke."

The night shift is a lonely one, and Simon is happy to talk. In general, he likes his job—especially when the most minor of celebrities come through, like the Australian model who stayed there once and took a photo with the owner. Sometimes drunk people give him trouble, especially when they come to the motel to "do business" (when he says this, he gives me a knowing look). Recently, a couple of wasted locals broke their own motel window, which seemed to shake Simon—he called the police but, disconcertingly, they didn't come quickly enough. At some point during each shift, Simon walks around the motel, checking each room from the outside to make sure that everything is calm and safe. I ask him if there are any ghosts lingering around. "No," he says, and laughs.

A girl named Augusta, who stayed there in 2008, does believe in ghosts. Or bad juju. Or whatever the word is for "weird vibes that happen when there's blood around." She and her then-boyfriend checked into the Hollywood La Brea in anticipation of a raucous, booze-soaked weekend on Hollywood Boulevard. They had a fantastic time chugging overpriced drinks and soaking in the general scamshow, but whenever they were inside the room—which she describes as "squalor"—things went very wrong. Each and every time the door shut behind them, they fought. And these just weren't lover's quarrels, but exhaustive screaming matches of the I-hate-you-forever variety. Things escalated and escalated until, on their last night there, her boyfriend ended up sleeping on the floor just to avoid her. Augusta slept alone in the bed, and woke with the sheets askew and a strange, metallic smell coming from the mattress.

Upon opening her eyes, she noticed that the bare mattress beneath her was stained with old blood. Dark brown blood. Five feet long and two feet wide's worth of blood. For her, this explained their strange fighting. They slept on the blood of the dead, and bad energy crept into their bones.

Alta Cienega Motel

"Creepy concentrate," a man named P.A., who stayed here in 2014, told me. "Definitely a shortlist suicide destination."

The Alta Cienega is famous among those in-the-know because Jim Morrison used to stay in Room 32, when he was reeling from a drug binge or fighting with his girlfriend. Next door, there's an abandoned flower shop that used to be a strip club called the Phone Booth, which Morrison liked to visit. The room is a sort of ever-changing shrine: fans leave graffiti all over the walls, ceiling, door, heating vent, and windows, and the management occasionally paints it all over so that the process of veneration can start all over again. The grimy, claustrophobic experience can be yours for a mere $120 per night. Don't want to lay on the mattress and think about Morrison where so many others have lain and thought about Morrison? A quick viewing of the room will cost you $20. As Morrison himself once sang, "Motel, money, murder, madness."

The current owner is loathe to talk about anything but the prices of specific rooms, and his wife glares at me over his shoulder. They describe the night shift as "nothing special." No drunks? No crazed Morrison fans demanding a viewing during the witching hour? Room 32 is glowing softly, while the rest of the motel is dark and silent. It is impossible to deduce how many people are staying here, and what they're up to. After a few stilted exchanges, the wife picks up a key that reads "Jim Morrison Room." It's a plastic keychain that they sell for $10.

The business of marketing hot, young, dead celebrities is generally an icky one, and this unsmiling couple, selling Morrison paraphernalia under the sickly green glow of motel lighting, makes us feel uneasy. I suppose anyone can own a sliver of a rockstar's life if they buy the right piece of real estate and print out a dinky little sign to mark the door. But it seems wrong, invasive, disrespectful. Still, people keep coming. On the internet, girls check into Room 32 and take photos of themselves on Morrison's bed, naked. I suppose we all have our own forms of tribute for our particular ghosts and gods.

Holloway Motel

Like the mother in Psycho, the Holloway Motel looks nice from the back, but it's eerie from the front. If you drive up from the north end, you might note the pleasing quiet of the parking lot and the soft glow emanating from the office. If you drive up from the south end, you'll see a handful of darkened windows that look like empty eyes. None of them match up. These are the manager's rooms. One of his windows is lit by the soft glow of a red lightbulb.

The woman who works at the front desk is named America, and the American flag waves gently outside her office. America has long red nails and long black hair. Her desk is cheerful and organized, illuminated by a classic neon sign that says "Office." On the upper balcony, a girl in tight pink pants drops to the ground outside her door, fishes something out from underneath a mat, and then slinks inside.

"The phone rings all night," says America. "There's always little stuff to do. We do laundry. We do maintenance. People lock themselves out of their rooms, and we let them in."

Unlike other motels, the Holloway's front office is not open all night, but the manager lives on-site. His sleep is often interrupted by people ringing the doorbell at 2, 3, 4 AM, demanding a room. These people are almost always turned away. "We're not even interested in business at that time," says America. "It's mostly drug addicts and transients and bar people."

The building has been around for decades, though a postcard from the 1920s shows that the motel has been unravaged by the passage of time. "This place is old, so there have been a few souls that have left here, if you know what I mean," says America. She assures me, however, that their spirits haven't stuck around.

Highland Gardens Hotel (formerly the Landmark Motor Hotel)

Back when this place was just a humble motel, Janis Joplin lived in Room 105. She died there, too, of an overdose on heroin, and was found face-down beside the bed, with change from the cigarette machine still clutched in her hand.

There is nothing rock-and-roll about the former motel today, though. The lobby is sparkling and sterile. The pool is nestled, demurely, amid California greenery and soft white lights. It is very quiet. This is partly because Highland Gardens is situated in a nicer part of town, and partly because many of the occupants actually live there, like Janis did. They moved in decades ago, got a killer weekly rate, and never moved out. Now, they live in a luxurious corner of Hollywood for less than the price of a regular apartment.

This clerk, like many of his midnight brethren, does not want to talk. He does not want to discuss disruptive guests, or Joplin fans on crazy missions, or ghosts. In fact, he's in the middle of saying, "It's quiet, and everybody minds their own business," when two flamboyantly dressed older women burst in from the courtyard. One of them is wearing a sparkling black hat. She yells, "There's somebody locked in the pool area with dogs!" and vanishes into the night. The clerk does not move to let out the person locked in the pool area with dogs. That person is a regular, says the clerk, and he'll be just fine.

But something about this commotion has warmed up the clerk, and he turns to us with a glint in his eye. He has decided to tell us one good secret.

There is a man who books Janis Joplin's room two to three times a year, for several months at a time. He knows the clerks by name; "he's a calm fellow, he doesn't bug anyone." He books Room 105 because he has a "connection" to Janis Joplin, and stays there for great, silent lengths of time. We beg for details—a former lover? a faithful friend?—but that is all the clerk will say.

Many of the rooms in Highland Gardens have been redone over the years, but Room 105 has remained basically untouched. "Some of these rooms are stuck in time," says the clerk. He gets off at 11:30 PM, and so is not around to witness whatever ghosts come out after midnight.

RODEWAY INN

The outside is pink; the lobby is mirrored. The black mat on the floor gives away the Inn's former identity: "Econolodge." The door is supposed to be locked at night, but Michelle and I waltz right in.

After a few minutes, Farhad emerges from the back of the building. We speak through the bulletproof glass, both of us leaning on the candy pink counter. He tells me that when he started working here, a year ago, he was concerned about the safety of the night shift. After all, the motel is situated in a rougher part of Hollywood, and the very presence of the bulletproof glass made him nervous.

"If you are there now, and reading this, do not leave your room at night."

"I'm the only person working," says Farhad. "There's nobody with me, except the guests." And at these hours, the guests are mostly invisible, except for a man with a bitter expression who leaves and then comes back 20 minutes later, empty-handed.

A.G., who likes to stay in sketchy motels, slept here in 2014. He left a cryptic review on Yelp, citing rats, bugs, overcharged credit cards, vomit, urine, and mold, adding that this particular Rodeway Inn "can be a scary experience for those unlike me."

"If you are there now, and reading this, do not leave your room at night," ran his review.

Farhad says the most important thing is to be vigilant: "Watch who enters. Watch the security cameras." He says that drunk people will wander by the Rodeway at night and, spotting the sign for the breakfast bar, will bang on the locked doors, desperate for food. He also tells me that he gets tired. That he gets bored. The fight to maintain a secure motel involves not just vigilance against external factors, like drunk men banging on your occasionally-locked front door, but internal factors, like your own mortal weakness. To be a good night clerk, you must deny certain parts of your own humanness: your desire for sleep and for company. You must face off against the night alone.

Saharan Motor Hotel

It's hard to know who to trust at the Saharan Motor Hotel. The décor is consistent with the vague "desert" theme: palm trees wrapped in lights, a pool, lots of blue and orange, a smattering of white roses. In the parking lot, a driver waits in a shiny black SUV. He tells me that he has no connection at all to the motel, though he's clearly waiting for someone inside. Across the street, you can shop to your heart's content at Tobacco Grand: Discounted Cigarettes.

You wouldn't know it from standing in the lobby, but the Saharan has appeared in plenty of films, like the 88 drama Cop and the 95 movie Species, as well as, most recently, an episode of Southland. Patrick Swayze considered the motel his first home in Los Angeles. When he moved to the city in 1978, unknown and unbooked, he and his wife checked into the motel for a week.

The man at the front desk is wonderfully kind, but refers me to another worker, who gives me the runaround and sends me back to management. Motels like these have two faces: one is the shiny brochures and the well-kept pool and the slightly aggressive parking lot signs and the peppy management; the other is the online reviews, where guests post photos of cockroaches and complain about heartless management. Which face is real? Is it possible that they both coexist?

Motels like the Saharan are "Micky Mouse" compared to others, according to A.G. Sure, these motels can be creepy and weird, but they aren't swarming with cops. A.G. cites the Olive Motel in Silverlake, the East West Hotel in Koreatown, and the Snooty Fox Inn in Vermont Square as the real hotspots, places with the "constant sound of ambulance sirens," places where "you could get killed by not minding your own biz."

I guess we're looking for something a little bit different in these eerily quiet Hollywood motels, though. We're not trying to uncover crime, or catch some business guy from the suburbs with his pants down. We're looking for the frisson, for the lore of these places. But as the motels start to run together and the clerks answer my questions with smiling assurances that nothing bad ever happens there, the idea of ghosts starts to feel murky and distant.

Follow Tori Telfer on Twitter and see more of Michelle Groskopf's photography on her website.

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Quebec Public Security Minister Lise Thériault wipes tears away at the legislature in Quebec City. Photo by The Canadian Press/Jacques Boissinot

A few weeks ago, I interviewed a Calgary police officer who told me that rape culture doesn't exist.

He went so far as to say that because of the media attention surrounding sexual assaults, "it's kind of come around the other way" where we believe victims whether the crimes happened or not.

The irony is that's exactly the kind of bullshit point-of-view that fuels society's tendency to side with sex assault perpetrators over victims. And while you might expect more from a person in authority—in law enforcement no less—what's happening in Quebec right now proves that your faith would be misguided.

This week, eight Quebec police officers were either put on leave or moved to administrative duties (not suspended) while they are being investigated for sexually assaulting Aboriginal women in the city of Val d'Or. They stand accused of using alcohol and drugs to coerce the women into performing sexual acts, targeting women who appeared to be intoxicated, and sometimes driving them out of town, leaving them to find their own way home. If true, it's stomach-churning behaviour. But the manner in which police and local politicians are speaking about it publicly is disturbing in its own right.

Let's start with Martin Prud'homme, director of the Sûreté du Québec (the provincial police), who told reporters "there is no crisis" in the force. "Everyone is in solution mode—on the Aboriginal side, from the community—and normally when looking for solutions, you find them."

One of the solutions he's referring to is the force's commitment to installing dashboard cameras in police cruisers. That's all good. But eight officers being accused of racially-motivated sex crimes sounds like it could be indicative of a systemic issue—an issue that cameras won't fix—and it's difficult to adequately address that without acknowledging there's a problem.

Then there's cop union president Pierre Veilleux who, apparently pissed off that people are pissed off about the scandal, said, "It is high time that various players on the public scene stop fuelling public outrage toward the officers of the Sûreté du Québec." He emphasized that these allegations are just that. "The presumption of innocence is a fundamental principle in a society based on the rule of law. We must not lose sight of that." (False rape accusations are extremely rare, a fact you'd think a cop would be well are of.)

Veilleux also threw a healthy dose of victim-blaming into his commentary when he noted that the issue really boils down to "difficulty" in Aboriginal communities.

"It would be unfortunate if these officers become scapegoats for problems that overshadow their responsibilities."

If you sexually assault someone, that is your responsibility. That's how that works.

During times like these, people often turn to their local politicians for comfort and leadership. When reached by the National Post, Pierre Corbeil, mayor of Val d'Or seemed to minimize the gravity of the investigation.

"Reactions range from sympathetic to skeptical," he said. "There are people who say straightaway, 'It's about time this came out,' and there are others who say, 'Is it really that big a deal?'"

Really, dude? Even if some moron actually pondered whether or not sexual assault is "a big deal," the mayor is giving that perspective more credence by parroting it in the media.

The one person who displayed empathy for the alleged victims is Quebec Public Security Minister Lise Thériault, who cried during a press conference in which she said she was "shocked" to hear of the allegations. Noting that some officers in the force are "rotten," Thériault said it's "time to do something." And for that, she is being publicly condemned. An online petition—reportedly started by an officer—is calling for her to apologize for taking sides.

"Through the lack of control of her emotions and through her words, minister Thériault helped increase the public's anger toward the police officers of Quebec," reads the petition, which has amassed more than 1,700 signatures.

Meanwhile, as a sign of protest, most policemen in Val d'Or reportedly skipped work over the weekend. So shedding tears over women who say they've been abused is inappropriate, but showing solidarity with officers being accused of sexual assault is totally cool? Right.

In this scenario, a group of marginalized women is coming forward against a police force. Faced with that type of power imbalance, I imagine speaking out would have been a very intimidating experience. Instead of being comforted, their accounts have immediately been cast under a light of suspicion. It's one thing for assholes on the internet to perpetuate rape myths and engage in victim-blaming. But when authority figures—people charged with protecting the vulnerable and marginalized—are imparting those views, it's harmful.

Only six percent of sexual assaults are ever reported to police. With situations like these, it's easy to see why.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

More politics coverage:
Trying to Understand Ben Carson's Rise
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White People Talk About Their White Privilege

On Wednesday night, America was treated to the latest episode of the worst show on television, the GOP primary debates. There are too many characters, the plot veers suddenly from subject to subject, and often, it's not clear who we're supposed to be rooting for. After two hours of watching the candidates argue against each other—and the CNBC moderators—in Boulder, Colorado, the party wasn't any closer to crowning a winner, but at least inched marginally closer to a finale.

In the past couple weeks, Donald Trump and Ben Carson have emerged as the two frontrunners both nationwide and in Iowa, momentarily turning a campaign that was supposed to have at least the seriousness of Veep into a particularly disjointed episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Every day brings a new non sequitur: Trump says he'll close mosques if elected and jokes about how burqa-wearing women don't have to wear makeup; Carson wouldn't trust a Muslim as president and recently seemed to float the very non-Republican-sounding plan to redistribute federal funds for public schools.

That these two are popular because of—not in spite of—their lack of experience and off-the-cuff style is clearly grating on the GOP's Establishment contenders. Jeb! Bush complained about Trump on Saturday, and on Tuesday, John "Hey, I'm still running!" Kasich was openly asking, "What happened to our party?" The only one seemingly relaxed about all this is also-ran superhawk Lindsey Graham, who spent Tuesday night getting on-the-record tipsy with reporters in New Hampshire and dishing about Hillary Clinton's alcohol tolerance.

Hiding out in a cozy bar and looking for the bottom of a glass of brown liquor would have been a reasonable response to Wednesday's boring, yet incredibly contentious debate, which was supposed to be about the economy or whatever but was mostly about how much the candidates hated the moderators and the media in general.

Here's how each of the candidates performed:

Ben Carson

Carson was sleepy, as usual, and barely got off the bench, even when Becky Quick, one of CNBC's moderators, said that his flat tax plan wouldn't produce enough revenue. Carson was largely absent from arguments about the tax code, Social Security, and Medicare that got fairly wonky. He did manage to suggest some radical ideas about letting people opt out of federal health insurance, demand fewer regulations and absolutely no subsidies, and argue that being against gay marriage does not make one a homophobe.

He expanded on that last point, saying that marriage equality opponents were being smeared by a PC culture that is "destroying this country." Economics aren't Carson's home court, and he looked unsettled throughout; his closing statement included the phrase, "It was made for we the people, we are the ones who will decide who we are."

Jeb! Bush

While Carson could afford a muted night given his poll numbers, Jeb! needed some sort of boost. But he sounded tired as he recited a litany of accomplishments and planned tax reforms that blended together with the other candidates' proposals.

How bad of a night was it for Jeb!? He was asked a question about fantasy sports and stumbled through an answer about how to regulate the nascent gaming industry—then Chris Christie swooped in and denounced the question itself. "Fantasy football?" Christie shouted. "We have ISIS and Al Qaeda attacking us and we're talking about fantasy football!" That, of course, was the correct response.

Marco Rubio

Before the debate, an editorial from Florida's Sun Sentinel criticized Rubio for "ripping off" his constituents by missing votes in Congress. Naturally, he was asked about it Wednesday, and pulled off the slickest political move of the night, turning the question around by asking why the media didn't similarly denounce Democratic presidential candidates for missing votes. This was bloody red meat for the crowd, who gave him a cheer.

Later, Rubio managed to get in a Benghazi non sequitur that let him call Hillary Clinton a liar, another applause line, naturally. In a night when no candidate was fiery, he was at least competent.

Ted Cruz

After Rubio's response to the question about his voting record, it became apparent that the way to the crowd's heart was through a trail of dead moderators. So of course, the other candidates joined in, with Cruz at one point saying, "This is not a cage match.... How about talking about the substantive issues people care about?" That devolved into crosstalk between him and moderator John Harwood.

Though the Texas Senator didn't talk too much the rest of the night, he was maybe the most substantive of the candidates, saying that his tax plan was so simple it would eliminate the IRS entirely, and getting into a fairly granular discussion about the Federal Reserve that ended with him calling for a return to the gold standard—which while low-key, was also the strangest moment of the night.

Mike Huckabee

Huckabee's candidacy is pretty much based around the idea that he will not be president, which is wonderfully freeing. He spent most of the night sticking up for senior citizens who might see benefit reductions in any sort of Social Security reform, and demanding that the government fund more research into defeating cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and heart disease. Huckabee's biggest applause line came when he praised Trump, which he followed up by saying, "I'm the only guy who's consistently fought the Clinton machine."

Maybe he's trying to position himself as a politically savvy veteran who appeals to the elderly—which, incidentally, is exactly the kind of guy who would be a good VP candidate. Or maybe Huck's just saying whatever the fuck is on his mind: In his closing statement, he said, "I do not want to walk my five grandkids through the charred remains of a once-great nation called America."

Rand Paul

Paul's raison d'etre in this race is to criticize the GOP's hawkish foreign policy; in a debate focused primarily on domestic policy, he blended into the background.

Carly Fiorina

Fiorina talks. Very. Clearly. And Decisively. That goes a long way, even when she's just one of 10 candidates saying she would cut taxes and simplify the tax code. She made an interesting point, though, when she said that regulations lead to an economic environment where businesses are increasingly consolidated, and the smaller ones are forced out.

But that's not the kind of thing you can run on, so Fiorina threw in a bit about how Democratic policies were "bad for women," and later said that she knows everyone wants to see her debate Hillary Clinton, which is pretty much true.

Chris Christie

For the first quarter of the debate, Christie mostly leaned heavily on his lectern. When he came alive it was to denounce "Hillary Clinton's price controls" and promise that he would be a pro-cop president. In fact, he was one of the few people to utter the phrase "when I am president...," which is odd because the only thing more distant than a Huckabee presidency is a Christie one.

John Kasich

Kasich was the tragic hero of the debate, in the old Greek sense—you could imagine that he realized his fatal flaw by the end of the proceedings, that fatal flaw being that Kasich is dull, and not at all likeable. The Ohio governor opened the proceedings by deriding the other Republican candidates, decrying "empty promises" and "fantasies" peddled by the likes of Carson and Trump. He was fired up, but being disgusted with what has become of your party is no way to inspire voters.

But while Kasich dismissed the "outsiders" leading the Republican field, he didn't disagree with his opponents on anything substantive. That makes sense, as he's a Republican and they're all Republicans, but general agreement coupled with bile is not going to help his candidacy.

Donald Trump

It's unfair to judge a serious debate between people seeking the nation's highest office by its entertainment value, but it was a mark of just how dull this debate was that even The Donald seemed muted. He emphasized that he wanted immigrants to come into the US legally, waved aside a question about his bankruptcy filings with a rather good answer about how every businessperson does it, and only busted out the insults for poor Kasich.

Trump's biggest applause line came when he took credit for forcing CNBC to shorten the debate—which pretty much sums up what kind of night this was.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.

The cinephile's nook on South 3rd Street is seeking the public's help to keep screening the porn, horror, and arthouse fare that's hard to find anywhere else. All photos courtesy of C. Spencer Yeh

When the first sex scene started, two men in the front row started snickering. By the time of the film's climax—an orgy between a male ballerina and a group of working-class dudes, truck drivers, and construction workers—the audience in the small theater had shrunk from five to three. Perhaps it's what could be expected for a midnight screening of 70s-era gay narrative porn, but a few hours before, on a Saturday night earlier this month, there'd been a nearly packed house for a Czech vampire flick.

Founded in 2010, Spectacle is the only place in New York that I've watched porn in a room full of strangers. If you haven't been there before, you know that the volunteer-run theater has the seedy moviehouse feel you only see in actual movies these days. From the outside, it resembles a nondescript storefront with an unmarked black door, the windows newspapered over. Inside the former bodega, there's a cash-only box office cramped into one corner and five rows of five folding seats each. The hallway on the right leads to a bathroom at the back. Admission is always five dollars.

Spectacle's very existence is an anomaly. The theater's in Williamsburg, the eighth-most expensive neighborhood in New York, which, in turn, was recently deemed the most expensive city to live in the world. "Even four years ago, this part of Bedford Avenue was totally different," noted Matt Bonner one of Spectacle's volunteers,. Back then, the landscape was peppered with similar DIY-run arts and music venues. Then the next phase of gentrification happened.

Despite the rising tide of condos and boutique shops, Spectacle is determined to survive. They've secured a new ten-year lease, but it's a sizable increase from what they were paying before. That's why they've turned to crowd-sourcing, and so far, the response has been overwhelmingly generous. Even if only a handful of folks come out for some of the late-night screenings, Spectacle's campaign has proved it has a community invested in keeping the micro-theater afloat.

In the case of the rare Buñuel films Spectacle programmed, some of them turned up in Brooklyn Academy of Music's retrospective on the Spanish-Mexican director about a year and a half later.

There were about 20 people getting out from the earlier screening when I arrived. One of them was Craig, a Spectacle regular and a movie-theater enthusiast. "Last year, my wife and I saw 400 movies in the calendar year, all in theaters," he told me. Craig was wearing a graphic T, and he'd styled his long beard in a ponytail. I wasn't surprised to find out he used to own a record store because he looked exactly like a guy who might own a record store. He and his wife Rachel come out to Brooklyn from where they live in the East Village in Manhattan because Spectacle plays films you really can't see anywhere else. "A lot of their programming just isn't available," he said.

Spectacle screens a wide range of genre, arthouse, and experimental films, but this month has featured an unusually horror- and porn-heavy rotation. "They tend to be genres where political messages are less censored," explained Danielle Burgos, one of the core volunteers who keep this cinema-lovers' den up and running. That night, two films playing were from two different series the theater had programmed. Ballet Down the Highway (1975), directed by Jack Deveau, was from the series Man in Man II: More Gay Porn Classics from Hand in Hand Studios, featuring movies all by the same New York-based production company responsible for many of the decade's gay classics. Earlier that night, Ferat Vampire (1981) played from Spectacle's series Bohemian Delirium: Czech Horror in the 80s and 90s.

About the latter series, Burgos noted, "After the Velvet Revolution, there was a crackdown and directors started making genre films to get their political message across. It's the same in America, you get a pass with horror movies. Nobody really pays attention to them."

Because the films Spectacle is programming are so obscure—a lot of them you can't even torrent—securing the rights to screen them can be a hunt. "We always do due diligence," explained Sean Berman, another one of Spectacle's volunteers. Sometimes that means getting in touch with the small distributor who's released the film on DVD, sometimes that means tracking down anyone involved with the production that they can find online.

"I just got the OK for Shelf Life. I'm very happy!" gushed Burgos. The film's a dark comedy about a brother and sister trapped in a nuclear fallout shelter for 30 years directed by Paul Bartel, who also directed the 80s cult classic Eating Raoul. Shelf Life (1993) was never widely released—it only had a few New York screenings at small venues not unlike Spectacle. Several years later, when Eating Raoul got a Criterion disc release, Bartel started trying to get something similar for Shelf Life, but he died unexpectedly in 2000 before any distribution had been secured.

"I had to message both of his sisters on Facebook and contact the producer through LinkedIn because all the companies are gone," said Burgos. "They said it's cool to show it."

In another case, hunting down permissions led one of Spectacle's programmers to an Argentinian gentleman who owns the rights to four Luis Buñuel films, and who allowed the theater to screen the works free of charge. In some cases, Spectacle shares a portion of their revenue from five-dollar admissions with artists and distributors, but they can never offer very much. The volunteers explain that they operate at a very slim profit margin which goes right back into the theater.

There's a core team of about eight volunteers who are on the theater's organizational board and then there's a wider volunteer base of 30 to 40 people, which includes several VICE employees. Together, these committed folks manage responsibilities like curating the films, manning the box office, cutting trailers, designing posters, and updating the web site. Spectacle's trailers are especially cool. For the Claire Denis's 2001 thriller Trouble Every Day, which they're showing this month, they've cut a rhythmic minute of the blood, brains, and furtive stares to Nelly Furtado's banger "Maneater."

Even though Spectacle's a small operation, larger art house theaters seem to be paying attention to what they program. In the case of the rare Buñuel films Spectacle programmed, some of them turned up in Brooklyn Academy of Music's retrospective on the Spanish-Mexican director about a year and a half later. There's other examples, too, that Spectacle's volunteers suggest are perhaps not just a coincidence.

"We show these films and then sometimes they get picked up elsewhere and take off," noted Bonner, another Spectacle volunteer. Another example is this past September, Cinefamily, a nonprofit theater in West Hollywood, who programmed a series of industrial musicals, a genre of Broadway-style films produced by corporations and themed around Purina dog food or Ford cars. Spectacle curated a similar series in March.

On VICE: Talking 'Sicario' with Benicio Del Toro:

I asked the regular Craig what one of his favorite films he'd seen at Spectacle over the years, and he suggested In a Glass Cage. "That's this movie about a Nazi pedophile who is in an iron lung because he tried to commit suicide and failed," piped in Berman, one of the volunteers. "It's one of the more extreme things we've played."

Burgos, another volunteer, recalled that screening. "This guy was cackling the whole movie. He was like howling with laughter. I was like, am I missing something?" she noted. "It turns out, it was an exorcism for him. He'd seen it on TV in Spain as a kid and it had scarred him. Now he was watching it again as an adult and realizing it wasn't that scary."

Digging around and finding films no one else is playing, Spectacle's an incredibly valuable part of the independent film ecosystem. But if that's all the theater was doing, they could make some sort of online subscription service, a niche Netflix like Mubi or Fandor. Instead, they're cultivating that wonderful and uncomfortable magic you get when put strangers together in a dark room to watch a film.

Follow Whitney on Twitter.

To learn more about Spectacle's Kickstarter project, which runs through November 4, go here.

On Wednesday night, CNBC held the third Republican presidential debate of the 2016 election, and VICE was there to liveblog it.

A lot of stuff happened! Donald Trump attempted to establish himself as a candidate who wasn't all bluster, Ben Carson tried to stay awake, and Jeb! spent a lot of time making faces that suggested he wanted to fold himself into a little ball and hide.

We liveblogged all the insults, drama, and reactions below. If you didn't get to see the debate—or want some details to drop on your friends so you seem smart—then just start from the bottom and work your way up.

Gianni Versace's mansion. Photo via Flickr user Phillip Pessar

If there's something strange in your neighbourhood, like 39 people committing mass suicide, you're probably going to call Randall Bell.

Bell, a Laguna Beach real estate appraiser, specializes in properties suffering from "detrimental conditions." In layman's terms, that means he works in real estate disaster porn, helping sell homes where the grisliest of crimes have taken place.

His repertoire includes Nicole Brown Simpson's Brentwood, California condo; the LA house where actress Sharon Tate was stabbed to death by members of Charles Manson's "family;" the South Beach mansion where Gianni Versace was shot dead on his steps; the family home of slain child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey; and the aforementioned Heaven's Gate property where 39 cult members poisoned and asphyxiated themselves believing their souls would be transported to outer space.

VICE asked Bell about some of the craziest shit he's seen in his line of work.

VICE: So why did you decide to go into damaged real estate?
Randall Bell: I was swimming in the pool the day before law school and I literally had kind of an epiphany where I just thought it'd be really interesting if I took my skill set with real estate and valuation and flipped it upside down, instead of looking at valuation I looked at devaluation. It was a really bold, risky decision coupled with really great timing. We had the Malibu firestorm, the firestorms in Laguna Beach, the Northridge earthquake, the LA riots, OJ. We just had this whole rash of Southern California problems and I was just inundated with work.

JonBénet Ramsey's childhood home. Photo via Flickr user Jennifer Boyer

Do property values go down a lot when a crime has taken place?
I've seen things where you actually have an expected increase in value. Take an extreme case like sounds and that kind of stuff.

Do you ever hire a psychic or priest to cleanse the home?
I try and be respectful of different points of view and if it makes you feel more comfortable, by all means do it.

Are there things sellers can do to mitigate the stigma of their homes?
When there's a crime involved, obviously you have to make sure that it's completely restored and repaired. I've actually seen people that were too lazy and unethical to make repairs and people bought house and found out there was a crime because they found unrepaired bullet holes in the kids' bedrooms. That's just a bad idea.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Regulars at Café de Zon. All photos by Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands

Today in Amsterdam there are people everywhere walking around with Polaroid cameras trying to convince tourists to pose for a picture that they will then try to sell back to them as a keepsake from their vacation. But back in the late 1970s, artists Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma were the first people in the city to go from bar to bar selling Polaroid portraits.

The two moved from New York to the Netherlands in 1979, and started selling Polaroids at 6 guilders a pop to make some extra cash. In the process, they captured all the different faces and places that made up Amsterdam nightlife back then—from the Red Light District's rough sailor bars and Turkish cafes, to the trans club Madame Arthur and the Whiskey A Go-Go near the Leidseplein. Their pictures offer a unique glimpse into a time when moustaches were full, sex was a plenty, and rambunctious drunks cheerily flashed their bits in the pub.

I caught up with Marc H. Miller, half of the photography duo, to learn more about his Polaroids.

VICE: How did you get the idea to start selling Polaroids in bars?
Marc H. Miller: Bettie and I had just moved to Holland and we needed money. In New York, we had seen someone that sold Polaroids to people on the beach at Coney Island. We decided to try to do the same thing in the beach town of Zandvoort, but obviously sand is bad for the camera, and trudging through the sand was pretty laborious. And then there was the tension because of the topless women that were sunbathing there—so even though we were selling some photos, it wasn't the best business model. Then we got the idea of doing it in the nightclubs and bars, and that was just a hit from the second we started.

Did you always visit specific bars or did you go door to door?
We just went door to door. One night we would do the Red Light District, and the next we would go to the Leidseplein or the Rembrandtplein area. Bettie and I would alternate, and we often took around 50 shots a night. After a while we developed little routes. The Red Light District was the most interesting, and probably the most lucrative. But there were a lot of little subcultures there, too, like the Turkish bars.

At the Turkish bar Cascade. Photo by Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma

They took a very different approach in those bars. We would come in and the owners would set a little area aside where people could pose. Most sent those photos back to Turkey to their families. Those pictures were a lot more formal than in other places—it was a more conventional form of portraiture.

There are a few nude pictures in the collection as well. Was Amsterdam nightlife that wild at the time?
There was this one bar called Café de Zon. To call it an exhibitionist bar is probably an overstatement, but there were a few regulars that enjoyed taking their clothes off. But coming into a place where people have been drinking with a camera—that encourages a certain amount of exhibitionism. It made them the center of attention for at least a moment, and exactly what they did with that moment was dependent on their personalities. There were some that took the opportunity to drop their pants, or expose their breasts. Although the alcohol probably had something to do with that, too.

Did you ever run into any trouble?
If you look at the collection, you'll notice that a lot of people wanted pictures with Bettie. Those shots really show the rough and tumble of the Amsterdam nightlife at the time. That picture with the guy with that huge knife; you can tell he's completely out of it.

We never really had a bad incident, but it was an adventure. Fortunately, Bettie is very good with people, and that was really important—especially when it came to collecting the money. Sometimes that was the hardest part—dealing with drunken people and getting them to pay.

Bettie. Photo by Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma

The collection didn't initially start as an art project, but it did become one later on. How did that happen?
At first we were just selling the portraits. The reason that this collection exists at all, is that we went to the Polaroid Corporation one day and said, "Hey, we have the makings of a great exhibition here, if you just give us some free film." Polaroid ended up giving us five hundred shots. These pictures are essentially duplicates: We would shoot twice, sell one photo, and keep the other photo for ourselves.

At some point, someone also arranged a small grant for us, so we could record a video of the project as well. And we exhibited the collection in Amsterdam, and later in New York.

Were your pictures well received?
The show in Amsterdam was in a small gallery, but we also had an article published in the Dutch magazine Nieuwe Revu with six pages of our pictures. That really caused a commotion. After that article came out, people were literally following us in the streets. Bettie and I went back to New York in 1981, and the article came out about a month before we left. We were shooting as fast as we could shoot in those last few weeks, getting up to about 150 shots a night, and people would follow us from bar to bar—it was pretty amusing.

But we also got a little negative feedback on the article, like one person blamed us for his wife leaving him because of a picture we took.

Ko at Café de Zon. Photo by Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma

Did you have a lot of competition?
When we started we were the only ones taking Polaroids in bars. But by the time we left there was someone from Senegal who'd come over from London and was trying to work the bars doing the same, and there was also a young boy who was a mute, and a woman—so I guess seeing us around or reading the article inspired others to try it as well.

Do you think your pictures are an accurate representation of what Amsterdam was like at the time?
I feel like we really captured that year of nightlife. You know, we really went to all sorts of bars, and of course the images are totally authentic. These people chose to have their pictures taken and they chose their poses—all we did was press a button. I mean, we were pretty good photographers, so the quality was better than what they might be getting from others. But I do think this is a unique document of that time in the history of Amsterdam.

Check out more Polaroid portraits and other work by Marc H. Miller at his website 98bowery.com

Illustrations by Sam Taylor

Summer is officially dead and buried and I'm dancing (so sexily) on its grave. Autumn is ideal because I can spend my Saturdays watching 18 episodes of Diners, Drive Ins and Dives without that ever-present fear of my mom shouting up the stairs, "It's a beautiful day outside! Get out of bed!" Because it's not a beautiful day and I can stay in bed. I can get Uber rides at a 1.8-inflated fare now, completely guilt free, because the sky looks a bit ominous. I can un-ironically drink Pumpkin Spice Lattes now. I don't care. Autumn rules.

But there is one blotch on the foggy, autumnal horizon: Halloween, Halloween, Hallo-fucking-ween.

As a child, All Hallows' Eve had you traipsing around in the freezing cold, awkwardly knocking on your weird neighbor's door just to get a few bite-sized pieces of old candy they found in the back of their cupboard. And that was when Halloween was good. This year you'll inevitably find yourself at a shitty Halloween party, standing on a sticky kitchen floor, in a ridiculous costume, beneath some glaring strip lights, trying not to eat too many gummy bears while someone plays "The Time Warp" on repeat. Come through from your spectral realm, ghosts, and save us from this hell with a ritualistic slaughter.

Anyway, here is your comprehensive guide to everyone you'll see at this year's Halloween parties.

Photo via Flickr user Matt Anderson

TV COSTUME GUY

"I'm actually quite unique," he's saying through a Heisenberg goatee that keeps peeling off and getting in his snakebite. "I'm an 'off the wall' type of guy, you know? I got into left-wing politics a bit more this year. I love Frank Ocean's music. I probably spend too much time on my phone—naughty! My favorite food is a burger and I'm on a mission to find the best one in town, but nothing's going to top DuMont, is it? DuMont really is excellent. Sidenote: I think Breaking Bad is fucking great!"

Yeah, we all do, pal, because we're all the same. You're not different or special, because we're all just exactly the same homogenous pieces of shit. You've essentially come in costume today as "every single 25-year-old dude's bio on Tinder, all at once."

There will be at least two guys dressed as Heisenberg this year, and they'll bump into each other at 15 minute intervals throughout the night and shout: "I am not in danger, I am the danger!" at the tops of their voices, before conversation instantly dries up and they shuffle away to try to instigate games of beer pong. Do not say their name, no matter how much candy meth they offer you.

MEAN GIRLS

At every party there's the mandatory few girls who didn't get the Mean Girls memo from 2004 and are subsequently dressed as a sexy cat, sexy devil, or some kind of erotic fairy. Everyone at the party hates them, yes, but they're the only people who ever end up having any post-party sex, so every cloud has a silver lining, I guess.

Becky, Becky, and Lindzi-with-hearts-instead-of-dots-on-the-I's have kept up a WhatsApp group thread for the past three weeks to discuss their costumes in minute detail. You'll find them in the living room, mainly, bickering over the iPod and sloshing around to Little Mix's Black Magic. They speak exclusively in a lingua franca of compliments about each other's costumes, bodies, and eyebrow makeup. One of them will pretend to bite the other's neck for an awkward amount of time while the fairy struggles to open the camera app on her phone. They keep going quiet for 20-minute periods while they consider which Instagram filter is the perfect combination of spooky and hot.

POST-PRETTY MEAN GIRLS

Tina Fey has made it almost impossible for any girl with a conscience or more than two A-levels to dress as a sexy without also being clothed in a layer of guilt, so thanks for nothing, Tina Fey.

That said: anyone who took high school biology will tell you that survival of the fittest is about being able to adapt, and some more evolved girls have managed to do that in their quest to remain hot. Here are your options, babes: Natalie Portman circa Black Swan; a Day of the Dead Mexican bride; Disney princess with an inevitable twist. That's it. So, tbh, you may as well just go all in and be a hot cat.

Photo via Flickr user Pikawil

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Dressing up as characters from this twisted tale seems to have become a kind of idiot's rite of passage, like mastering how to juggle, or listening to only gypsy-electro-swing music for the entirety of sophomore year of college. What they're trying to communicate to you is they absolutely luv literature, guys, but—more importantly than that—they are totally into mind-opening drugs.

"Yeah, I've been down the rabbit hole once or twice," some dude called Hugo is saying. "Let's just say that when I was down there, I did three tabs of acid, smoked some pretty sweet green, and danced all night. Absolutely blotto!"

Someone in a Mad Hatter costume will spend the night boasting about how he's consuming something a bit stronger than tea at this party (it is drugs; he is talking about taking drugs), and by the end of the night the dusty hat that he fishes out annually from from the top of his wardrobe will double as a vomit bucket, Tweedledum and Tweedledee tasked with desperately getting him into his Dad's Audi. The rabbithole ends here.

ZEITGEIST GUYs

Recently, traditional costumes—your witches, your vampires, your pumpkins—have become a rare sight. Anyone who tags a friend in a Fat Jewish Instagram post or has ever taken a BuzzFeed quiz knows they have a "wicked" sense of humor and want to quite literally wear it on their sleeve.

For instance, there will definitely be a boy dressed in a bad taste costume. Just know this now. He's a member of ISIS. Or Jared Fogle. Or the Ebola virus made flesh. Or, keeping it super current, Lamar Odom in a coma. He is almost clinically desperate for people to comment on his outfit. You can see him itching for someone to clock his outfit and say this exact word: "Ooh." He's the guy who hides around the door yelling "BOO!" at people. He's the one lacing the punch. He is a prick.

Thing is, he isn't alone—and soon a loose tribe of them assemble in the garden. Donald Trump is fucking David Cameron's pig's head, Katie Hopkins is pinching a cigarette off Netflix and Chill. The eggplant emoji is trying to break into the shed. And you think, slowly at first—quietly, but then it gets louder—you think: maybe we don't need every single human who is alive right now. Maybe we could stand to lose a few people, to death.

Photo via Flickr user Ryan Harvey

THE NO COSTUME DICKHEAD

Some bro named Dean has turned up in his work jeans and T-shirt, and, to get into the spirit of things, accessorized with a dollar-store mask. What have you come as, Dean? "Ogre or summat," he says.

He's drinking a room temperature can of Guinness. He lets all the pores in his face fill like buckets with sweat, then discards the mask and let's someone sit on it. Why aren't you dressed up any more, Dean? "I am dressed up, aren't I?" he's saying. "I've come as a psychopath; they look like the rest of us. That's what's scary—they could be anyone."

THE TOO MUCH COSTUME DICKHEAD

Every year there are a couple of people who go the extra mile for Halloween, usually utilizing at least one cardboard box. Maybe a girl dressed as a milk carton with her head pushed through the cardboard as the missing person. She's proud of her get-up, but you can't help but feel a bit depressed, imagining her every day after work, schlepping boxes up the stairs to her top floor apartment and nearly breaking her hand as she tries to scissor the thick cardboard into submission. She's the type of person who, in a decade, will have a wedding full of lollypops, paper doilies, and homemade soaps. She probably plays the ukulele and organized the office bake off. Also, she won't drink at the party because "if I get this high on the E numbers from all these sweets, imagine what I'd be like with alcohol!"

The answer is: Really Into Crying.

But as the evening progresses you see her in the line for the bathroom, staring enviously at the sexy cat, and you can't fathom how she'll manage to piss. At the end of the night she'll attempt to get into an Uber, alone, frustratedly yanking at her ginormous costume. Her energy depleted, her sugar rush over. A decade of silence later, you receive a hand calligraphed invite to her wedding. How did she find you? How does she know where you live?

Photo via Flickr user Ryan Harvey

HORROR FLIRTS

Oh no, don't look. No, d– don't. There's a werewolf and a zombie flirting in the kitchen. The pair insist to all of their friends that they don't like each other. "What?!" they're saying. "We're just friends. Can't a girl and boy just be friends?!" But now they've got horror masks on, it's like they're flirting with other people, and they're all over each other.

The girl takes her mask off and the guy goes, "Now, that is scary—put the mask back on!" She hits him softly on the chest. He gnarls his werewolf hand gloves at her. "You're in for it now." Hold on, is he... no, don't look—he's mischievously forcing marshmallows into her mouth? Is this a blowjob thing? She's just draped herself over him and asked, "Trick or treat?" He's doing that "hiding an erection walk" upstairs. The next day, the girl who lives in the single room finds a clump of werewolf hair on her pillow and a used condom in her trash can. The horror.

THE SUPERHERO

There are two distinct types of people who dress as superheroes: if they come as The Incredible Hulk or Wolverine, it's most likely a football player who uses Halloween as a flimsy excuse to show off his bulging muscles, the male version of a Mean Girl. Like an animal, he'll predatorily mark his prey, but instead of pissing on them he smears the hot girls with his green body paint. It works, though, so fair play.

The second is a self-professed film geek, and Halloween is as an excuse to wheel out his opinions on how CGI is killing the modern horror genre (but he is also very excited about the new Star Wars). He's the type of guy who still likes Fall Out Boy, still pulls his sleeves over his thumbs, and has a girlfriend who has changed her name on Facebook to "Sarah 'Sparkledust Unicorn' Evans." He ordered the cape weeks ago from a specialty shop online. He gets really annoyed if you step on it, because that cost $200.

But are you really any better? Black jumper and jeans with stick-on bones attached, huh? Skeleton, are you? Legitimately ploughing into Halloween candy? Drunk on a neon green cocktail for yet another year? Night bus home with someone dressed as a Hobbit? Fake blood under your fingernails three days later? Nobody escapes Halloween alive. It is terrible and it is tired and all the horror long ago gave way to memes and the worst parts of our culture distilled into a single night.

But it is an excuse to get drunk and dress like a dickhead, so at least there's that. At least there's that.

Follow Phoebe and Sam on Twitter.

Images courtesy of Yazemeenah Rossi

She's about to celebrate her 60th birthday and she has two grandchildren, but her freakishly young-looking body has landed her on the cover of fashion magazines all around the world as well as prominent roles in advertising campaigns for brands such as Marks & Spencer. I had a conversation with the Malibu-based French model Yazemeenah Rossi about beauty standards, the world of fashion, and the relentless passing of time.

VICE: When it comes to fashion you were a late bloomer—you were about 30 when you started modeling. How did that happen?
Yazemeenah Rossi: By chance. A friend of mine knew a designer who needed a model quite urgently, so he thought of me. I worked as a catwalk model for quite a while, which is a very difficult part of the business. You work extremely hard but it's harder to get noticed. Around the same time, I started working as an actress for TV commercials, so I moved to New York and then to the West Coast.

You are about to celebrate your 60th birthday, but you still model. is there something in particular that attracts you to your lifestyle?
Mainly, the freedom modeling offers. I get the chance to travel the world, which is one of my great passions. It's a wonderful job, but not everybody is able to manage the uncertainty it brings. Models and actors often have no idea when we are going to work next, and many times things tend to go real slow. But to me, it is a part of what makes this job so interesting—not knowing what your life is gonna be like in the short term.

Would you say you are going through a second youth?
That's a way to see it, yes. Mainly because I became a mother when I was very young. These days, 40-year-old women become mothers for the first time. I was 45 when I went through menopause and I thought that was the end. But I met a therapist who made me realize I had so much energy left in me and so much more to give.

"Nobody likes to see their skin give in to gravity. It's been a human problem since the dawn of time."

Is the world of fashion too focused on young people?
It's always been that way and it will always be that way. There was a time, some years ago, when I started to think things would gradually begin to change and we'd start to see more older models, but that did not happen. It's of course way more common to see ads featuring older men with young women—it's so common it's a cliché. My agent in Japan tried to start a small revolution 20 years ago—he began booking women in their 40s to model with men in their 20s, but it didn't last long.

I live a bit like a hermit and I don't even have a TV set at home, so I can't have a broad opinion on this issue. But I do believe that men and women have the same concerns about growing old, although men might talk less about it. Nobody likes to see their skin give in to gravity. It's been a human problem since the dawn of time. At the same time, growing old is something beautiful because you become stronger with the passing of time.

Do you feel younger than your real age? Is youth a state of mind?
Yes, it definitely is a state of mind. If you are connected with your inner child, you can recharge your batteries and keep that energy. You need to have a playful, adventurous, curious spirit. And you need to rid yourself of fear. It's fear that makes you grow old.

What are the main challenges when competing against younger models?
I believe I could work for big brands like Prada, D&G, Ralph Lauren, or Gucci but they clearly look for younger models because they don't want their brand to be associated with old people. And yet, I very often meet women between 40 and 70 years of age who would love to see models their age in their advertising campaigns. Can you believe I have never been asked to advertise a moisturizer? Have you seen my skin? Or my hair—I'm one of the first models who decided to leave my hair white, when it wasn't trendy. You wouldn't imagine how many clients have asked me to get my hair dyed.

How have you kept your body looking so amazing?
When I was 20, and after having two children, I weighed . I have lost a lot of weight since then, but I haven't starved myself to do it. It's been a matter of a balanced diet, an active spirit, and yoga.

Have you had any plastic surgery?
I won't say this idea hasn't crossed my mind, but I haven't had any cosmetic surgery so far. I only had surgery once, when I was 30, because I had some excess fat under my eyes provoked by the terrible allergies I suffered since I was a kid. So, the idea of going under the knife when I am perfectly healthy, doesn't make much sense to me. But I think it can make certain people feel better about themselves so if the operation is done well, I have nothing against it.