Childhood Memories: More Halloween Specials

The Halloween Train is a'rollin'! Our next stop? Some sweet childhood memories...

Several years ago, October 2013 in fact, I wrote about some of my favorite and most memorable Halloween Specials, from my childhood years. The big ones were covered, like It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and Garfield's Halloween Adventure. But there were certainly many more, some I remember clearly, and some that are more or less lost to the vapors of time. Today I'm here, all these years later, to finally get around to talking about some more of those pieces of my childhood. So let's get started!

Few things are worse than a sad pumpkin.

The Pumpkin Who Couldn't Smile (1979)

Directed by one of the greatest figures in animation history, Mr. Chuck Jones himself, this Raggedy Anne & Andy cartoon was something of a follow-up to the previous year's Christmas special, The Great Santa Claus Caper. While that story featured someone (who looked an awful lot like Wile E. Coyote) trying to ruin Christmas, in this story, Halloween is in the process of BEING ruined, for two sad, lonely souls. The first, is a little boy name Ralph, whose Aunt Agatha thinks that Halloween is a pointless holiday, just an excuse for children to get into mischief, and thus won't allow little Ralph to partake. Anne and Andy, voiced by veteran voice actors June Foray and Daws Butler, set out to find a Halloween pumpkin for Ralph, to try and cheer him up.

The principle players (minus Agatha).

 Which of course brings us to the second lonely soul, a lone pumpkin in a pumpkin patch, who hadn't been picked by anyone. Utterly depressed and crying uncontrollably, the pumpkin was resigned to rotting, or possibly becoming someone's pie, but of course Anne and Andy have other ideas. With the help of their dog Raggedy Arthur and his trusty skateboard, they manage, with a few hijinks, to get the pumpkin down the hill, to Ralph's house. They hoist him up to Ralph's window, where the boy instantly falls in love, but their job isn't quite done just yet. There's still Aunt Agatha (also voiced by Foray) to contend with. Raggedy Anne speaks to Agatha in her sleep, and reminds her of when she was a little girl, and had loved Halloween, to which Agatha awakes and remembers. Agatha realizes that her nephew deserves to have those beloved memories and good times too, so she has a change of heart, dresses up like a witch, and takes Ralph out Trick or Treating while there's still time.

All in all, a simple but sweet special, and very much embodying Chuck Jones' sense of heart that most of his works possessed. I loved this special as a kid, which they would show in reruns various years. Even though it made me sad for the boy and the pumpkin, to have these two lonely souls come together and have each other, and to have Aunt Agatha flip the script and become fun again, it was a nice emotional ride that made me feel good. Plus I really wanted my own Raggedy Arthur!

Childhood terror.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949)


Actually one half of the two-story 1949 Disney feature The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, both this and the Wind in the Willows segment were played with some regularity on the Disney Channel when I was growing up in the 80s and early 90s (back when the channel was worth a damn). This wasn't exactly a "Halloween Special", per say, but either as part of the Disney's Halloween specials of the 80s, or just by itself in full, the Disney Channel tended to play this classic gem pretty much every year, in some form.

The stuff nightmares are made of.

 For as much of reputation for being "kiddy" as Disney seems to have (even when I was a kid), they certainly had a way of embodying fear, and darkness, and evil, in their animated movies over the years. Whether it was Queen Grimhilde, who turned herself into the old witch in their original Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs feature, or the fearsome Sheer Khan in The Jungle Book, or The Horned King in the underappreicated classic The Black Cauldron. And the spectre of the Headless Horseman, roaming the woods on Halloween Night, is no exception. In fact he might be the most fearsome of all!

Based on the 1820 short story by Washington Irving, the Disney adaptation faithfully tells the story of the tiny town of Sleepy Hollow, and their new eccentric schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane. Crane fancies the young and beautiful Katrina Van Tassel, heiress to much local farmland and fortune, and wants to make her his wife. But the local hero and roughneck, Brom Bones, has other ideas. So at a harvest party at the Van Tassel house one night, Brom proceeds to tell a scary story of the "Legend of the Headless Horseman", who allegedly accosts travelers on that very night, and drags them to hell if they can't outrace him and cross the covered bridge, which he is incapable of crossing.

To me as a kid, the tale itself WAS legitimately spooky, but the sequence that followed, of poor Ichabod on his moonlit ride home, was outright scary. As he and his lazy horse get spooked by various sights and sounds in the night along their way, they eventually come to the darkest part of the wood. It's there, that they are indeed accosted by a mysterious cloaked form, who indeed seems to be missing a head. That Headless Horseman has a sword, and seems to be after Ichabod's head! The atmosphere of fear and dread that Disney created for this sequence is fairly unmatched, I think, in the history of animation, as far as creating a truly frightening scene goes. It is the perfect haunted tale, and thus is perfect for any Halloween. I always liked to think that Ichabod truly did get away, but that's up to each viewer to decide.

The Davis Family.

Mr. Boogedy (1986)

Unlike the previous two specials listed, this one was new when I was a child. I would have been about five years old when it premiered on the Disney Channel. This live action special is unique for a couple of reasons, but the chief one is, that it manages to be both goofy as hell, yet at parts legitimately creepy, especially if you were a kid like me. Starring Richard Masur and Mimi Kennedy as Mr. and Mrs. Davis, as well as young actors Kristy Swanson and David Faustino (who would later go on to fame in the Married with Children show), the Davis family (including youngest son "R.E."), are a perfectly likable, yet goofy family. Carlton, the father, who adores pranks and jokes of all sorts, runs a novelty gag shop, which he is moving, along with his family, to the sleepy hamlet of Lucifer Falls. He's moving them into a requesitely spooky old house, with a purported haunted history to boot!

Boogedy Boogedy, BOO!

As silly as this movie can be, including the town historian Mr. Witherspoon, played by the great John Astin (of Addams Family fame), to me as a little kid, it also genuinely scared at least a little shit out of me at times too. It turns out that their home used to belong to a mean old bastard named William Hanover, who loved a young widow Marion, who did not return his feelings. So he made a deal with the devil himself, to gain a magic cloak which granted him great power. He used this cloak to kidnap Marion's son Jonathan, in an attempt to force her to marry him, but when he used the magic he couldn't control, he accidentally blew up his house, killing all three, who would be stuck in the place as ghosts. The Davis boys, Corwin and R.E., first meet the ghost of Jonathan, who still has the cough he died with, and the entire family eventually begins getting haunted by Hanover, the titular "Mr. Boogedy" of the film, who has the ability to possess objects, and even people.

The Disney Channel played this for several Halloweens when I was growing up, as well as its somewhat unnecessary sequel Bride of Boogedy, though I think they had stopped playing it in favor of newer stuff, sadly, by the time the mid-90s hit.

That says it all.

Halloween Is Grinch Night (1977)

Another spooky piece of my childhood, this was played at least two or three times on TV as I was growing up, in repeat of course, as I wasn't born until late 1981. Produced by Dr. Seuss himself, as almost all of the animated specials based on his works were, this one was, I do believe, a TV exclusive sequel, much as the later The Grinch Grinches the Cat in the Hat was. It was executive-produced by DePatie-Freeling Enterprises, co-founded by legendary animator Friz Freeling of Looney Tunes fame. DFE was responsible for the Pink Panther shorts of the late 60s and 70s, as well as most of the Dr. Seuss specials, and several TV shows like the 70s Fantastic Four and Spider-Woman. As for this special itself, while not AS classic as the original 1966 adaptation of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (directed by Chuck Jones), I'd personally say that it's pretty close.

That mean ol' Grinch!

I suppose that you could, as I do, consider this to be a prequel to the Grinch's Christmas story, as he's still terrorizing Whoville at this time. The setting is on Halloween night, which in Whoville means trouble. For on Halloween night, that's when the "Sour-Sweet Wind" starts a'blowing, and that sets creatures like the Gree-Grumps and Hakken-Kraks to making all sorts of noise. Which in turn makes the Grinch, who is permanently grump, go into EXTRA grump mode. And THAT means that Whoville is gonna suffer, because when he's EXTRA grump, he likes to scare people!

He ain't afraid of no ghosts!

But there's one little Who, who doesn't give a single shit, or at least pretends not to, about this scary, scary Grinch, on this scary scary night. His name is Euchariah, an intelligent and learned little fellow, who has to use the "Euphemism" (the outhouse) after those Sour-Sweet Winds start raging, and those winds blow him all the way up to Mt. Crumpit, where the Grinch lives. On the road, he encounters said Grinch, driving his Paraphernalia Wagon with the begrudging help of his dog Max, down to Whoville to stir up trouble. But in Euchariah, he finds a boy who claims not to be afriad, and so he decides to put the boy to the test, inviting him into the wagon, and all the terrors that await. The boy does just that, which leads to a surreal and awesome segment where all manner of Dr. Seuss weirdness abounds. But in the end, ol' Euch ain't havin' it, and tells the Grinch to stuff it! It's a great testament to standing up to your fears, but it's also a really great special, perfectly suited to the holiday.

While the great Boris Karloff, who originally voiced the Grinch, was about a decade passed by this point, voice actor Hans Conried, who would voice Thorin Oakenshield in my beloved Rankin-Bass adaptation of The Hobbit the same year, filled in admirably in the role. In a fun bit of trivia, Henry Gibson, of Laugh In and The 'Burbs fame, did the "voice" of Max the dog. This is one of my favorite Halloween specials, and in my opinion the second-best Seuss cartoon, after the original Grinch affair.




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So there you have it! Some more Halloween Special goodness, which I'm sure some of you were aware of, and some of you weren't. If you've never seen any of these, or even if you have, do consider looking them up and dusting them off during this month of October. Classic horror movies are nice, but nothing beats a good Halloween Special, if you ask me. Stay tuned, as there just MIGHT be one more Halloween treat headed your way before the big day hits! Cheers!