A Fool's Utopia 10.29.09: RETRO HALLOWEEN!
Posted by Ron Martin on 10.29.2009
This week in one man's utopia we travel back to Halloweens past to discuss old Halloween specials, episodes and albums. Also, music video with Freddy Krueger, PSAs and McDonald treat coupons. We also question the odd scheduling of network Halloween specials this year and talk scary ice skating. Lots of video this week, kids.
Do you see the shapes of Pac-Man ghost monsters everywhere you go? Do you long for the days of plastic smock costumes? Do you prefer your werewolves to lie still while they transform from man into beast? Still think Magnum PI is a viable costume idea? Ever uttered the phrase ‘Jigsaw Who?'
Welcome to
RETRO HALLOWEEN
Ah, it's that time of the year again. The air is ripe with the smell of dead leaves. Every porch is aglow with a creepy face staring back at you from the darkness. It's time for us to delve back to a simpler time where kids could be poisoned with candy and an escaped lunatic working at the local haunted house and killing someone seemed like a real option.
Let's start off the spookiest of seasons with the spookiest of announcements…the ones of the safety variety.
You hear that kids? Cross as corners and do NOT go out of your own neighborhood…not even to the rich neighborhood across town that gave out whole candy bars. It's not so bad. In a few years, the PSAs would no longer care if you tripped over your costume, only that you wore something reflective so that cars didn't run over you. Of course, this could be avoided if you just crossed at corners. Months of zigzagging strategy was down the drain. Up one side and down the other, thems the rules kids. Also in the future, you would be able to take your candy to a local fire station to get x-rayed, because radiation has to be way better for you than the possibilities that someone stuck a razor in a candy bar and perfectly re-wrapped it.
You thought the occasional strawberry milkshake available with your school lunch was exciting; Halloween (and sometimes the day after Halloween) was the only time of the year you could get an orange milkshake. I know these days, kids have a veritable mall food court at their school and don't have to deal with the slop I did, but orange milkshake day was a big day, alright!
Halloween wasn't only a time of extra milkshake flavors, but a time of interesting TV.
When you saw that, you knew there would be some goodness to come. Usually, it was It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown followed by A Garfield Halloween. Love for these specials is well documented all over the internet, but occasionally (not always on CBS) there would be a curve ball thrown your way. On a rare night when some channel had given up on some primetime show, we'd get the special Fat Albert Halloween or even Halloween is Grinch Night.
When we first think of Halloween, Disney most likely isn't the first company that pops into your head. When you really think about it, however, Disney is the perfect company to take advantage of Halloween. Every Disney feature has a nasty, smelly villain. Many Disney features contain death scenes. Early Disney not only had some psychedelic tendencies (Fantasia) but wasn't afraid to take put a little humor into the scary such as a short I recently watched where Goofy dies within the first few minutes of the short and leads Donald to his death by the end of it.
A Disney Halloween contains all these bits. It's a 90 minute special that plays scary shorts from yesteryear featuring Donald playing tricks on Halloween and even the one from the 50s where Donald, Mickey and Goofy are ghost hunting 50 years before its cool to do so. Toss in movies clips like the "Night on Bald Mountain" segment from Fantasia and the Siamese cats from Lady and the Tramp in action, and you've got yourself a pretty good holiday special. As a bonus, we get some character profiles and special guest appearances from our favorite movie villains (pre-1984 of course. No Jafar or Ursula here). This thing ran a couple of years early on and then made special appearances on The Disney Channel for awhile before disappearing completely.
Much of this appeared later on the Disney Channel special House of Villains, but it would be nice to have this on DVD. Without scouring the internet, I don't even know if it ever hit DVD, but it would be very unlike Disney to not capitalize on something they could make cash on. It still holds up and lucky for us, the entire thing is on youtube. In fact, here's a little preview…
Once a year Halloween specials weren't the only thing to look forward to, of course. Our favorite TV shows geared up for the season, some more enthusiastically than others. While one show would have a regular episode with a pumpkin in the background, others took advantage of the opportunity to weave in crazy storylines, creative costumes and spooky situations. Roseanne and Home Improvement are known for pretty good Halloween episodes, but one that has stuck in my brain since I was but a yute comes from Growing Pains, the show no one hated, but also was no one's favorite.
Maggie's pregnant in this one, so it's before the ‘jumping the shark' moment but I'm pretty sure it's also after Kirk Cameron took over the show and acted as dictator with his Christian values. Ben gets full voiceover thoughts action as he gets invited to his first boy/girl party and chooses to celebrate this occasion by donning a monk outfit. I'm guessing some writer thought this was funny, or that he was supposed to be Friar Tuck to Vito's Robin Hood, but whatever the reason, Kirk's Christian values need not worry because no one has ever gotten laid dressing as a monk for Halloween.
The issue is that Ben needs a date, lest he be like Stinky and have to dress up a blowup doll. Hmmm….come to think of it, maybe Stinky had the right idea. You know you have a quality Growing Pains episode when even Stinky is hitting it. Who should arise as Ben's date? That, of course, would be Jenny played by a pre-boobies Candace Cameron, who I am sure got the role entirely on her own without any help from anyone. You basic tomboy-turned-hot stuff, drooled on by former friend only to go out with another boy storyline ensues at a swank Halloween party. In the end, everything works out of course. Ben ends up with a hotter chick than Jenny (and one who is okay with playing doctor), Jenny gets her own show and The Wonder Years steals the entire concept and makes boatloads of money.
For years to come, they would talk about what happened that night at Vito's Halloween bash. I give to you, the Halloween party sequence so that you two may never be able to file this away for good. HA! Suckers.
From the box to the rack….
Magazine rack, that is. Maybe you are familiar with a little something I like to call Mad Magazine? We're not going to talk at all about Mad Magazine. Instead, I will expound upon a Mad Magazine rip-off. If' Mad Magazine is Maxim, then Cracked would be Stuff.
It didn't necessarily happen around Halloween – I don't know if it was ever the October Issue, but every now and then Cracked would have a special "Monster Party" issue.
I always forwent WWF Magazine to pick one of these up. Inside the cover were brilliant (if you use the term very loosely) parodies and satires of slashers/monsters of today and yesterday. A couple of my favorite included the one page spread of The Great Pumpkin coming to life and taking out the Peanuts gang and what happened to the Scooby Gang when they finally saw a real ghost. Here's a hint: Daphne realizes what she was put on Earth to do and Velma finds religion at an airport near you.
Mostly, the magazine was filled with silly, if not uproarious fun.
From the magazine rack to your trick-or-treat bag. It was in the 80s that McDonalds was at its most dominant. It's as if the man in the clown suit was hypnotizing anyone under 16 making them refuse to eat anything that didn't have "Mc" in front of it. Last year in RETRO Halloween I covered the collectible but impractical McBoo pails that McDonalds gave out in lieu of Happy Meal boxes for the month of October. What goes in these buckets o' glory? If you're lucky someone in your neighborhood was too lazy to go past the local McDonalds for trick-or-treat goodies and you scored one of these puppies….
I may have overstated myself. I apologize to anyone who was actually expecting a picture of warm, fuzzy puppies and instead got these McDonald's coupons. Sometimes it was a free small fry, sometimes it was an apple pie, but if you were really good thing year and listened to your parents, you might even get a coupon for a free sundae.
McDonald's ice cream = crack for kids. I am sure the advertise 2 oz. Sundae is much smaller than the regular sundae, but crap, you got 10 for $1! What more could you ask for? If you could talk your parents into going in late on a school night when the restaurant wasn't so busy, there was even a good chance that one of the stoner workers would misread the coupon and give out full size sundaes! Ah, the good old days when this formula always worked;
Marijuana + teenager = free ice cream.
Finally, from your trick or treat bag to your cassette player (I am really kicking on these transitions today!), I give you novelty CDs.
In an attempt to help Halloween cover some of the ground between it and Christmas, every music studio figured they could make instant Halloween classic carols by putting out cheap compilations of songs that have the word "blood," "Halloween," or "scare," in the title. When that didn't work, they hit up every horror icon (well, the ones that actually talked) that they could find to put out an album. This is why Elvira has three (maybe more?) albums. Even Freddy Krueger got in on the action with Freddy's Greatest Hits. This shouldn't surprise you much as no horror icon is a bigger whore than Freddy Krueger. This guy would have put his image on toilet paper if he thought he could get little extra green out of it. Not only did he put out his own album, but he appeared in any song that any group asks him to be in. You can't say the guy wasn't accessible.
What do Freddy Krueger, The Eagles and Chubby Checker have in common? They all appeared in songs/videos with the Fat Boys.
Freddy never did the Monster Mash? The zombies were having fun.
Do you get angry when your 1500 song music player is more than half the size of your fingertip? Has the only pornography you've seen in your life taken place on your computer screen? Have you been banned from going anywhere except for "houses you know" every Halloween since you can remember? If that is the case, then you are ready to exit our little RETRO Halloween experiment and reach into the modern day where I just have one small complaint and then a final week of Halloween related activities.
First, to the networks – what the hell, man? Look, I much appreciate the double showing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown -- there's just something about seeing it on TV that can not be replicated on DVD. However, why does it have to be paired with You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown? There's only two dozens Halloween specials sitting there waiting to be loved again. The second night, it's not paired with anything?
Also, while I appreciate Monsters vs. Aliens new Halloween special, is it so good that it needs to be played twice…in a row? It made my decision of what DVR much simpler, but there are better ways to use a half hour. I know you want nothing to do with Halloween, networks and are just waiting for that lucrative Christmas Season, but at least act like you're trying – for my sake!
SEVEN DAYS CLOSER
A recap of Halloween related activities
Thursday
I managed to listen to Nox Arcana's Darklore Manor all the way through. I bought this at a horror convention about a year ago from the creators. I've listened to it here and there but never the entire album. I had a chance to listen while I did some thing around the house. It has a nice theming to it. It's supposed to be a journey through Darklore Manor. Can't say I caught all that upon first listening, but I'll definitely give it another try.
Friday
Took in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad off the Disney Family Movies channel. Despite the great love for Mr. Toad's Wild Ride people seem to have, I got to admit that I don't care much for Mr. Toad. He's kind of an ass. I dug Disney's take on the old Sleepy Hollow story. Next time I go to Disney World, I can now order funnel cakes from the Sleepy Hollow shop without being a poser.
Saturday
We have one of the best rated Children's Museums in the world in Indianapolis. For as long as I can remember, every October they have a "haunted house" fundraiser. This thing scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. It's been about 15 or so years since I went through this thing, so I thought I'd grab my niece and my nephew and tramp through the house once again. The theme was "Tomb of Doom" to take advantage of the King Tut exhibit the museum had up until last weekend. Walking through the airport, Egypt and the pyramids, the rooms were pretty well done. All the scares came from people walking (not jumping – remember this is for kids) out of corners. There was a group of about a dozen 6th grade (totally guessing on the grade) girls in front of us that were screaming their heads off. That in and of itself was worth the $6.
Sunday
I'm almost afraid to admit this one, but the Bears/Bengals game was such a blowout (and my fantasy opponent has Chad Ochocinco, so I was disgusted) that I turned it to NBC to catch Mannheim Steamroller's Halloween on Ice. I got my fix of campy Halloween decoration along with some classic melodies while skaters skated around in some decent costumes. All the regulars were there; the vampiress, mummy, werewolf, the mad scientist, the hypnotist, the witch and even Nancy Kerrigan as the zombie bride. I flipped back and forth, but this as close as I will get to watching ice skating. It should be noted during the curtain calls that Kerrigan (the creative director) got top billing even though she was the least decorated of the cast.
Monday
Halloween Candy! Got around to mowing on the seasonal candies I picked up at various stores. Peanut butter pumpkins, crackle chocolate witches, fudge skull and gummy everything you can imagine. My dentist is going to love me.
