Bloody Mary IV Bags Are The Creepy Cocktails Your Halloween Party Needs

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While one aims to create lovely tablescapes, photogenic cocktails, and even appealing napkin arrangements when entertaining for most of the year, October 31 takes a more disturbing turn. Only on Halloween can one position a giant arachnid outside like a lawn flamingo, pose a skeleton on the piano bench as though it were great uncle Charlie (and who's to say it isn't), and serve bags of blood as welcome drinks. It's all just so grotesque, a little frightful, and totally befitting of the macabre holiday, as long as the spider is just cute enough, the bones seem to smile, and the blood is of the Mary variety.

Like a lot of food and drinks, the bloody Mary's purported origins are fractured, but the name is plenty evocative, whichever tale is true. Serve the thing in the convincing approximation of an IV bag, and you might start thinking about it a bit more literally than you did at last weekend's brunch. These 10-ounce, plastic Lansian IV bags come in quantities of 12 to 60; they're cheaper than a bunch of new highball glasses (about $9 to $22), and they're easy to fill with a comically topical syringe. However, you might just want to reevaluate your favorite bloody Mary recipe ever so slightly to accommodate the unholy vessels.

Once you've secured the bags, you must at least try to slake your new, confusing, but also somewhat sexy bloodthirst. Now, bloody Marys are almost as famed for their basic-to-copious garnishes as they are for their spiked tomato juice. But these IV bags, terrific as they are, will not accommodate said accoutrement. Prepare a little mini tray of celery ribs, olives, and the like, if you wish, or eschew the extras just this one time.

You might also want to skip or reconsider any textured ingredients that would otherwise jazz up your bloody. Even a standard bloody Mary calls for a tomato juice base, vodka (or the spirit of your preference), Worcestershire and Tabasco sauces, a squeeze of lemon, and horseradish. That last ingredient is often more robustly bodied than the rest, with minced fragments that probably won't clog the IV bag's filling syringe sipping spouts, but still pose a mild risk. Plenty more creative bloody Mary additions like anchovies (a true Halloween horror for some!) can further gum up the works. So just give it all a whirl through the blender until it's passably smooth. Serve alongside hors d'oeuvres like devils on horseback and ladyfingers for even more ghastly nibbles that need no further adaptation.