Episode 37 - The Halloween That Almost Wasn't Special

Weird way media. Ni misters can see that guy with it. Now he's an actor. Name and the only camp driver in his place. Good evening and welcome to Night Mister Walters, a taxi podcast.

I'm HP your co host and with me as always is my co host, Father Malone. Father Malone, how are you this evening? I like tap dancing. This is gonna be a special episode of Night Mister Walters. We uh were changing it up a little bit this week.

This is a Halloween themed episode and we're gonna be doing something a little different we previously we did this with d C Cab a few episodes ago. Now we're gonna cover the Halloween That Almost Wasn't. This was written by Coleman Jacoby and Bruno Caliandro, and it was directed by Bruce Bilson. The Halloween That Almost Wasn't premiered on ABC on October twenty eight, nineteen seventy nine. It was also available on VHS in ninety two under the alternate title The Night Dracula Saved the World.

I confess this wasn't something that I was even aware of, But Father Malone, you're the one who brought this TV special to my attention. And suggested we cover it. Did you watch this when you were a kid? Does this go that far back? Did you watch it when it was originally broadcast?

HP, I'm actually fucking shocked that you had never seen this before. Yes, this was a staple of my childhood. Really, was it rebroadcast seasonally? I know it was on Disney Channel for quite a few years, but yeah, I never I never came across this. I'm more familiar with the Tim Curry TV movie The Worst Witch.

That's usually the one that comes to mind seasonally. But no, so you watch this as a kid several times? Well, The Worst Witches was on HBO, so you needed to have an HBO, but HBO would play the fuck out of it, whereas Disney Channel would play it maybe twice three times in the month of October. And I definitely remember watching it then. But I also remember having a videotape of this and watching it endlessly at age like ten or eleven.

What's funny about it is, and it's odd how memory works, but I remembered that this was a thing, and I remember that John Hurst had played Dracula, so that stuck in my head. And because Halloween was coming up, That's why I suggested it. So even though I had watched this endlessly as a child, I had virtually no memory of it until it started, and then I remembered everything. In my research, I found this on YouTube. You can everyone can go see it in its entirety, including commercials, on YouTube, and we'll talk about it.

But pretty much if you look at the comments, there's a lot of what you're describing, which is, oh my god, I watched this as a kid, and it completely left my brain until I found my way to this YouTube clip, and now it's all come flooding back, like this is what you're describing as a pretty common thing with this particular show. Obviously, the reason why we're covering this on a taxi podcast is because it does feature jud Hirsch playing Dracula, and we'll talk about that as we get into the episode. But let's dig into some of these production credits a little bit, just to get that out of the way. Bruce Bilson, the director. He was a prolific TV director.

He had credits going back all the way to the mid sixties. He directed episodes of Get Smart, Bewitched, Bonanza, all the way through the eighties and nineties, with the original Flash TV series. He did Touched by an Angel, he did Dynasty. He was a real TV lifer. Jacobeat, one of the writers, was primarily writing for TV in the fifties and sixties.

He wrote for The Red Buttons Show, The Phil Silvers Show, The Milton Burle Show, and many other series. Is with the show in the title The Halloween That Almost Wasn't was his final credit. In fact, Halloween That Almost Wasn't is one of only three credits for Bruno Calliandro, and it's the only writing credit on his IMDBAT besides co writing and associate producing The Halloween It Almost Wasn't. He also produced something called The Fourth King in nineteen seventy seven, which appears to be an animated retelling of the Three Wise Men's story, which involves animals. He also produced something called Heroes of Conscience, a tribute to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which I did not feel like investigating further.

Can't imagine why we open. This TV special on a close up of a coffin that pops open to reveal jud Hirsh in his Dracula finery. I have to say I constantly was flip flopping back and forth between really respecting his commitment to the Bela Lugosi of it all. There was also a real cognitive disconnect between Alex Rieger and this ridiculous movie. But I have to say he committed to the Bella Lagosi bit of it and he was actually quite compelling at times.

What did you think of his portrayal of Dracula. Well, I'll tell you two things. First of all, this was my first introduction to Judd hirsh at six because I did see this when it was first broadcast, So to meet the guy on taxi was Dracula for a good portion of my first view of Taxi. Wow. Now rewatching it, I'm just this is going to be an echo chamber of an episode because he's great.

I can't see riger here at all. He's playing a whole other style of comedy here, this sort of broad children's farce, like like a pantomime show kind of a thing. I think you'd call it in England. Meanwhile, giving the most committed Bela Lugosi impression, if he had looked more like Legosi, he could have played it instead of Martin Landau. Yeah, Landau as as Lego ned would.

Yeah. My feeling about watching this now is the production values are what they are, But the feeling the vibe I got was as kids, I remember six seven years old, and we would go on these field trips and sometimes we would go to like the North Shore Music Theater to see a production of Rapunzel or some fable put on for the kids, and it was all very low budget. That was the vibe I got from this that a everybody seemed very committed to making this as broad and funny and gentle as possible for the children. Having said that it was clearly not made for very much money, I think it was really made on pretty much one set. Special effects are lacking, especially with modern sensibilities, but there is a sweetness.

And we'll get into this as we talk about it a little bit more. This is also obviously my introduction into John Schuck. This is technically my childhood Frankenstein. All of these monsters, except obviously we'll get there as we get into the plot of this. But a couple of these monsters, even as a young young child, I rejected them, and I really reject them when I watch me now.

Well, for people who maybe aren't as familiar with father Malone's other work as other podcasts, his other interests outside of taxi. He is a real died in the wool horror fan. There's no I don't know any bigger fan of horror, any bigger historian of horror in movies, books, TV shows, works. So I'm not a bit surprised that, even as a youngster, you were already rejecting their depictions of let's say, the Mummy or the wolf Man. But we'll get to that as we dig into this episode.

We cut to Dracula's familiar. I guess you'd call him igor Is Dracula's familiar or his servant. He's sitting in front of the TV with a huge bowl of popcorn. Igor is played by classic character actor Henry Gibson. Everybody knows Henry Gibson.

You all know him. He was the head Illinois Nazi in The Blues Brothers. I love that that's what he's remembered for, wearing that fucking Nazi uniform when he had such a long and lustrious career. Like you know, he was one of the regulars on Laughing and he's absolutely menacing as the sort of the head of the Klopek fan family. In the Burbs.

This is another Joe Dante thing. My god, all of the night, mister Walton going to have a Joe Dante connection. He's a spectacular actor and it's just sad that he will always be We're going to get that son of a bitch. But he's so good in it. I mean, that's why he's indelible.

But you're right, this is another case of six degrees of Joe Dante. Like you said, he was in the Burbs, he was in Inner Space, he was in Gremlins too. He's been in a bunch of Joe Dante movies. So great to see Henry Gibson here. And he does a very good Igor.

He's got the accent down perfectly. He's very good. He's watching the television, like I said, and the TV cuts in with a special update from the Transylvania News Department. They're reporting that Dracula has convened a meeting with all of the world's top monsters at his castle. This is the day before Halloween.

This is apparently lending credence to a rumor that Helloween is in danger of disappearing forever. This confuses the Count and Igor, who wonder who could have started the rumor. The newscaster stresses the impact that this news would have on children all over the globe, and at this point we cut to probably the worst still shot of a building I've ever seen. A Matt title reads somewhere in Transylvania, and it does this pan in but you can tell it's not an actual shot of a house. It's like someone's zooming in on a still picture of a house.

Taxi has been a production value, they, I mean, their poor man's process is better than anything going on here as far as spooky of castles and shit. So we cut inside the house where a family that in no way sounds like Transylvanians, they're preparing for Helloween. There's two little kids in their parents and the parents they're watching the same news report that Dracula and Negor are watching, but the parents are schooling the kids on the origins of Helloween, while the kids themselves are fretting about whether they'll even be a Helloween because of what's being described in this news report. We cut back to Dracula and Igor as they're watching this newscast with interest. The newscaster openly wonders whether Dracula himself is the source of this rumor.

With the steely glare, Dracula refutes this allegation to the television. He's really, like you said, there's not a trace of Alex Rieger anywhere in his depiction. It's almost like the newscaster is fomenting this unease amongst the population because he's wondering if this is the end of Halloween altogether. As we cut back to the Transylvanian family, they're still discussing the origins of Halloween. Yeah.

Can I just say that I'm positive most of my knowledge of Halloween must have come from this. I mean, I remember, even as a young person, knowing that Halloween it's derived from All Hallows Eve, and that they had jack o lanterns because at one point they had bonfires to drive away the spirits. You wre cost to confuse them, like basic Halloween things just jammed in as exposition with this family that we're never going to see again, I mean until the end. I gotta say, this is a kids program that has a lot of good things going for it. I know this is dumb, stupid kids humor most of the time, but a lot of the information being delivered to the children, and I was one of them.

Are pretty good things. Not having much knowledge in the way of the origins of Halloween, I was going to ask you, obviously it's not a truly historic perspective on the they're dumbing it down, or they're watering it down for children. But I guess what you're saying is that there's some truth to how they're describing the origin of the holiday. Is that not the case? Yeah, I mean they don't go in and say, well, it's based on Sown, which is an old Celtic holiday that marked the end of the year.

You know, they don't get quite so granular with it, but the basic ideas are there. Yes, the idea of on that night you want to lock your doors because the walls between this world and the other are thin, and there might the dead might come a colum and stuff, costumes would confuse them, and bonfires are confused. Basically, the entire holiday is based on confusing the dead, and all of those things eventually got adopted into these quaint practices we know today. But they're not lying to these children here at the beginning. This isn't the grither.

We cut back to Dracula and Igor, and at this point, Dracula has asked Egor to convene a meeting amongst all of the world's monster representatives to come and talk about this crisis that they're now facing. Sensing the monster's rival, Dracula dispatches Egor to let them in and we go to commercial now. Side note, because like I said, I watched this on YouTube with commercials at all. This show was sponsored by Kenner. The Halloween That Almost Wasn't brought to you by Kenner, makers of long playing toys for children of all ages.

This episode is filled to the brim with Kenner toy commercials, everything from Star Wars toys. It's Star Wars radio controlled R two D two two nine bolt and two. CE Alkalin batteries not included. You can make R two D two move beep and flashes like by wireless radio control. Hey, let me try it.

You can make R two move forward, backward, turning, deep right radio controlled R two D two from the Star Wars collection by Kenner. It's a Plato. It's the new Plato. Doctor Drill and Phil up and wide look inside. He needs a Plato team and one goes here.

One goes there, some go underneath my own my one can this be more? Goodness? Sakes a cavity. When first the drilling must begin. Then put the Plato billing, and now his playdoting done.

Doctor Drelling Bella is one you can make it with play though the playto Doctor Drill and Phil. It's new from Kenner. To some Betty Crocker bullshit. Kenner's new Benny Crocker Juicer blender, food and four batteries not included. You can blend lots of puddings and toppings low speed or high speed.

Switch containers and the juicer will make fresh orange juice. You can mix lots of fun foods and drinks the. Bedrocker blender Crocker. Under for little moms. Kenner's new Betty Crocker Juicer blender with two containers and recipe book.

It's easy to forget, but this was a time when Kenner was really the name in toys, and I know you remember this time pretty vividly. I'm sure, Father Malone. Oh, I was at Kenner Devotee. They put out the Star Wars Joys, so I was always going to look at the Kennder toys first, just for that reason alone, I'm not surprised that they would have sponsored like a television special so that I could just pepper it with their own ads. I'm a little surprised that they or maybe they did, have a line of action figures from this.

I would really love a Judd Hirsh as Dracula action figure, and that John Shuck. I mean, you're more likely to find it John Shuck as Frankenstein because he then ended up being Frankenstein again. But when I think of Kenner, the first and really last thing I think of are those Star Wars toys, which we all had a million. I still have a lunch box filled with my old Star Wars figures. But I forgot that they had a bunch of other stuff as Betty Crocker stuff, Plato.

So they were really on top of the world. And I think it was actually a a bigger deal for Star Wars that Kenner produced the toys for them, because, like I said, they were so well established as a toy company. Can I just say that I watched a four K restoration. Of this, I saw that one two. Wasn't that weird?

Yeah? That was the Dracula state of the world. To think so that title came up and I went, what is happening? And then the movie began. I went, oh, no, here we go.

But I gotta say it looked great. It looked fucking fantastic. I was reminded when I went to see The Hobbit, the Peter Jackson movie. It was like a sixty frame rate. The frame rate was very high.

Like instead of twenty four frames, it was like, yeah, it was like seventy five or one hundred or something like that. So it looked like you're looking through a window, as if that's what we go to movies for. It had this effect that people looked like they were moving in fast motion even though they weren't. That's the effect of this four K upscaling where everything is moving very smoothly. And they mentioned AI quote unquote was used to produce this upscale version.

And what I assume is happening is the AI is filling in those in between frames with something interpolating the frame before it and the frame after it, so it looks hyper smooth, a little spooky, not in a Halloween way, but in a weird They're moving in a very altogether too smoothly. But anyway, you can take your pick. Those of you listening to this podcast. You can watch the good old rough version with the commercials, or you can watch this weird four K version, but either way you should definitely check it out. We come back from commercial and Igor is announcing the monster's entrance that he's doing it from what I presume is supposed to be the foyer of Dracula's castle.

But now this is the obligatory set decoration side note that I'm making here now, taxi set decoration. This is not the set, like I said, looks more like a kid's production of The Rapunzel or The Three Little Pigs or something. But I guess that matches the overall tone and direction of the show, So I guess you could call that charming. I guess would be a charitable reading of it all. The Wolfman makes his entrance, it seems.

Like they're just shooting at some house in Riverside, and they threw up some walsconces, you know, like Beauty and the Beastyleisconsins, and they're like, Okay, it's Drago's castle, everybody, pretty. Much, because this show exclusively takes place inside of one castle or another. I guess there's a little bit with the Transylvanian family, but there's no outdoor photography at all, so I guess you could just, you know, some producers somewhere and like you said, in Burbank had a mansion. They just put a few cobwebs, maybe some candelabras, and voila, it's Dracula's castle. The Wolfman makes his entrance, but he looks more like a guy with a lot of hair and a big beard, which I assume is to avoid scaring the kids watching this show.

He doesn't look like if you showed me a picture of this guy, I wouldn't think he was a wolfman at all. I just think this is a guy with an afro and a big beard. He's played by veteran comic actor Jack Riley. Riley is somebody who's done a lot of TV, but most notably, he appeared in a bunch of mel Brooks movies. He was in History of the World Part One, he was in To Be or Not to Be, and he was also in Spaceball's Next to Arrive.

I think this is our favorite besides the obvious Dracula. Frankenstein is played by the simply delightful John Shuck. He's another accomplished actor who appeared in everything from the Love Boat to Law and Order. But father blone which particular movie do you and I have a soft spot? That?

He appeared in. Star Trek four, Undiscovered Country, Star Trek He's in another one, right. He's He's in Star Trek four The Voyage Home, and Star Trek five. He's in five, which is in Discovered Country. He plays the kling On ambassador in both of those movies.

Okay, you ready, it's time for a shuck off, baby. I don't know if I can compete. My favorite, well, obviously my favorite line of that I think he was in the trailer, which is why it made such an impact. He's pointing to Kirk and he says, there shall be no peace as long as Kirk lives. So perfectations outrageous, he's so good.

He's again one of those actors that you know him when you see him, but you can't necessarily place each and every appearance he's made. But he's everywhere. He's in mash he was one of Robert Altman's regular guys. He was on what's it called the fucking TV show? McMillan and Why Oh.

He was on McMillan and why you. Know what Henry Gibson was in Nashville another Allman movie. Yeah. Absolutely, Oh wait wait I got another one. I got another one.

Yeah, we deny nothing. What I find interesting is, and you alluded to this earlier. This appearance that he makes as Frankenstein presaged his eventual appearance as Herman Munster. Was this might have been the first attempt at a revival of the Monsters. It was a TV show from nineteen eighty eight, a series called The Monsters Today, and he played Herman Monster, and he was This can almost be read as an audition because at one point he does a little soft shoe like he tap dances as Frankenstein's monster, and there's a feel of Herman Munster in what he does.

So it's not a surprise that they would bring him in to play Herman Munster eventually. So he's very good. He's a very gentle Frankenstein, which Fred Gwinn was a very gentle frank and he's an actually natural fit for it. And if you remember John Shuck, you like John Shuck. I would encourage everyone to check out Gilbert Gonfried's amazing colossal podcast, The John Shuck episode.

He's still out there, he's still alive, he's still kicking around, and the interview is fucking spectacular. He doesn't talk specifically about this special, but he does talk about his involvement with the monsters and how he expected to not go for any length of time and then end up and being Herman Monster for many years. So they're the two main sort of, let's face it, they're the two main monsters that come in because there's also they introduce us to someone named Zabar the Zombie. I'm not familiar. I can only assume that Zabar the Zombie was an invention just for this particular show.

And they also bring in the Mummy. But the Mummy is just a guy. He looks like toilet paper wrapped around him. The Mummy doesn't. Uh.

Is that terrible? Yeah, that's the one I alright rejected. When I saw it again today, I was like, are they even thinking this toilet paper wrapped fucking thing? This is supposed to be the mummy from ancient Egypt? Now I rebuked.

Yeah, the two of them, Zabar and the Mummy have nothing to do, and it's I'm not sure why they were even here. I guess I know why the Mummy would be here, but I don't know why they gave them nothing to do. Maybe because this is a twenty five minute television special and there's only so much to go around. I know four certain hp that, even at the time of airing that I felt like their conception of a zombie was too old fashioned, even though we were getting all the classic Universal monsters here on display, Frankenstein, Dracula, and in the way that they appeared in the Universal like drag here is the traditional Dracula, I mean, the pendant and all, and the Widow's peak. So to see this like this sort of white zombie version of a zombie, you know, like the Ghoul is undead, but he's probably controlled by some zombie master somewhere, I don't know, it felt quaint, whereas the other monster just just felt like classics.

They didn't really go for the classic wolfman. That's my only knock against how they've portrayed the Universal monsters. But I have to believe, like I said, it's got to be because they didn't want to terrify children watching this. This was just a guy with a lot of facial. Hair, and that was the extent of it, Blond Cheney.

It wasn't no, not at all, nor was it even Oliver Reid. The final and maybe the most important monster next to Dracula makes her appearance. It's the Witch. She's played by Marriott Hartley. Marriett Hartley has done a ton of mostly TV roles her career.

I was shocked to find out is over sixty years she's been acting in TV, some movies, but mostly TV. But for folks who grew up in the seventies and eighties, like you and me, Father Malone, we probably know her best from her series of Polaroid commercials that she made where she starred alongside James Garner The Rockford Files. James Garner, do you remember these commercials? Well? I didn't until you just said that, but yeah, now I.

Do, because well, she's interesting because I know her by name and I remember her from childhood. But honestly, it was impossible for me to pin down a specific TV show or movie or a certain role that she was iconic for. But I did remember these Polaroid commercials because they were omnipresent. They probably made two hundred of these commercials. It was ridiculous.

They were so popular at the time, they led to rumors that the two of them were married because they would always be in these Polaroid commercials. They'd be bantering playfully back and forth. They were both married to other people, but they were so iconic in that time. People maybe under the age of forty, don't know any of this. Okay, I'm beautiful, not unto the party.

Proof of this, No you don't already. Don't worry. This is the world's best developing color. We see in the seconds now minutes. Well there's your proof.

Go on, get it all out of you. Assistance the time zero one step in times zero. Supercolor film are made for each other. That's why they both come and Polaroid's new made for each other pack. Okay, let's go.

You're taking that to the party. On them taking you. The Witch is annoyed at having to get up in the middle of the night, but Igor assures her that Dracula is going to explain everything. Dracula makes his grand entrance by flying in as a bat, only to crash in a slapstick manner into a window. It can't be overstated how much commitment jud Hirsh brings to the table as Dracula because he smashes into this window.

He transforms back to Dracula and he's pressed his face against the window, and it's all very very cute, but he's so committed and it's really fun to watch. I get the sense that they all were really having fun with this, because it's a trifle. There's really nothing to it. Dracula warns the assembled monsters that somebody has started a rumor that Helloween is going to be canceled, and he commands them to proceed because specifically he commands the Witch because apparently she needs to fly across the moon for Helloween to officially commence. If she doesn't fly across the moon, Helloween does not go on, which is interesting.

That's apparently some bit of Halloween lore that I wasn't familiar with. See, they had to front load us with so much fact because they were going to be making up so much bullshit for the rest of it. This is the main conflict of the show. The Witch says to Dracula that she wants to quit. Apparently she is the one who started the rumor that Halloween might be canceled.

That Dracula is the one who started this, No, she's the one who started all of this business in the first place. She's tired of being the witch. She's tired of getting made fun of for being ugly and for being feared. She even questions why Dracula is the leader of the monsters and not her. She ends up unfurling a scroll with a comically long list of demands that must be met for her to fly across the moon.

HP, You've got to appreciate a fucking labor dispute at the center of the children's fucking wacky comedy. I guess that is what this is. At the core of it is that she's going on strike, right. It's so fantastic and to think this is seventy nine. So I don't want to say that this was a very formative unknowing unknownst to myself part of my life.

But to have a strong female character because she's the lead. Ultimately she's the villain, but really she's the protagonist. And where we end up with her and the fact that why is Dracula just the de factoly like putting aside the genderness of it. It is important that we had a strong female doing it. But putting that aside like, what gives this guy the right He's been undead longer than the rest of us.

Fuck him, he didn't do anything. You know, who starts this whole thing? Me, this room, that moon baby. She is, in fact threatening to go on strike until her demands are met, And to your point, these demands are actually somewhat reasonable. The only one I might question is she demands that he go disco dancing with her.

But we'll get to that in a minute. That's not part of the initial salvo. But oh, that comes later. I want part of the merchandise, which I love because that's the one that hurts Dracula the most. There goes my big bucks.

There's no reason why she can't have a piece of the leadership of the monsters. Why not give her a little bit more cut of the action here. Yeah, she's not asking to take over, by the way, that's a Dracula move. She's asking for a seat at the table. It might be telling that none of the other monsters have anything to say.

You would figure that maybe they would back her, but they don't. They neither back her. I guess they in an unspoken way, they back. Up that labor cowed by management that's that's we know what that is. They just know what side of the bread their butter is on.

Okay, Frankenstein has a wife at home. We know that at least he's got a family support He can't afford to lose his job. What better way to Indoctrin eight children and to the idea of unionization than then a Cantra sponsored monster show. It's fantastic, fucking worked, it did. And it's it happens to be the right move.

And then I went and I bought some fucking Star Wars toys. Dracula refuses, and he dispatches his minions, the monsters to stop her in a bit of hard day's night, high speed chasing around one hallway of the castle, very low budget. Like I said, she gets away, but Dracula turns into a bat to try and catch her. Unfortunately for him, he failed to notice that it's almost daylight. The Witch says to him, Hey, you know it's almost sun up?

You ready to get back to the castle, So his plan for the moment is thwarted. He gets back in the nicked time, and after a little bit more slapstick comedy, we cut to another word from Kenner and we cut back to the castle. You got what did I tell you about the cat to the tomb? Open at night. The day at night in the day, so good.

We cut back from the commercials. We were back in the castle. The monsters are watching the newscasters, still forecasting the end of Halloween, and we go back to our weird sort of I kept thinking about Willy Wonka. Remember the movie Willy Wonka was filmed in Frankfurt or something. I don't know exactly where it was filmed, but it's very European looking, but it's stocked with a lot of American and English kind of actors.

It creates this bizarre vibe where the architecture is German but the people are American. And that's kind of what we have here. We have this Wonka esque family. They're fretting about the end of Halloween. Still, the kids are going out of their minds worrying about this whole time.

By the way, as the family is forecasting the end of Halloween, they're making up the kids in their costumes. I think the little boy is going as like Raggedy Ann or Raggedy Andy or something, and the little girls going as a witch, which will become the scarecrow. Is it a scarecrow? I thought it was Raggedy Ann and Andy kind of thing. Come on, but I guess he is a scarecrow.

The monsters are also concerned with what they're going to do if there's no Halloween, but once again, Dracula rallies them to go to the witch's castle and take her by surprise and presumably force her to It's like a strike breaker, trying to go in and make the people go back to work. I guess we cut to the witch. She's applying makeup in her mirror as Dracula kind looks on. The monsters grab her, and this is that moment that Dracula tries to hypnotize her, but inexplicably, and I didn't know this is something a witch could do. She casts some kind of spell that causes a painting of the three Musketeers to come to life and start battling.

The I didn't know which either, but it's anything's possible with witchcraft, so makes sense. They just intimidate them. The monsters, don't they slash the cement candelabra that that Dracula is parrying them with. Oh, you're right, they do slice up the candelabra, which scares them even so I guess they are real. You can't mess with a bride of state, probably no, definitely, and access to things you can only imagine.

The witch gets away, but Igor has taken her broom and they go she's barricaded herself. Now this is hopeless to try to describe this because it happens so fast. They go to the room that she's barricaded herself in and Dracula turns into a tiny bat to try and slip underneath the door in order to get to be a small bat. He has this chant that he does, saying teeny tiny bat, ten teddy bat, and his voice is going higher and higher and higher to become the small bat. So you get jud hersh actually his voice rising and pitched naturally.

More slapstick ensues. She I think she hits him with a broom to get him to shoe him out of the room, and he becomes Dracula again with two black eyes because he's been hit with this broom or stick or something. At one point, John Shock Dracula is accusing him of like being kind of a publicity whore, and he says, I can't believe you're out there like tap dancing for the people, and John Chuck's like, well, I like tap dancing, and then he's sten then of course drack of the steps on his foot, ha ha ha. Right, but is this not a reference to Young Frankenstein, which was very popular at that moment. I got that vibe as soon as Frankenstein made his initial appearance, because Igor says something to him like, oh, you've got some fancy footwork, and Frankenstein says, oh, you ain't seen nothing yet, and he does a little tapped like a soft shoe routine before Dracula comes in and interrupts it and does all that stuff.

The fact that he's dancing at all in the Frankenstein get up is only going to invite comparisons to Peter Boyle and Young Frankenstein. Right, but was Young Frankenstein? What year was Young Frankenstein? Was that seventy Was it seventy nine? Surely not seventy seven, if anything, maybe even earlier.

Young Frankenstein was nineteen seventy four. Wow, that is much earlier. I didn't expect that. Clearly, an indelible image of Peter Boyle doing me in my Shadow with Gene Wilder. The Witch makes some more demands of Dracula, including, as we mentioned earlier, having Dracula take her disco dancing.

Ultimately, she decides to quit anyway, because she says, no one likes a witch. But just at that moment, the kids from that weird Willy Wonka family come in and they beg her not to quit. This moves the witch. I gotta say, Mary at Hartley is fantastic. The little girl says, Oh, you're my favorite.

I dressed up as you and married Hartley as the witch says, oh, my goodness, you look just like me. You really love me. It's silly, It's such a goofy, goofy TV special, but damn it, Marriott hardly sells the hell out of the fact that this witch is moved by these little kids love of her and the holiday. The kids tell her they love her just the way she is, which I think is really the central point of this whole thing is really, you know, love who you are, don't worry about what people think of you, love yourself for who you are. And I just think it's kind of a It was a nice, beautiful sentiment in the midst of all of this.

I think it's an appropriate end to it, but only after her demands had been met, because if this has come beforehand and changed her mind and she just let Dracula continue as is, we would have had a problem here. But it didn't know. It is very sweetly affecting, and it's because of Marriett Hartley. As you said, this is a trifle of a half hour Halloween special for children, basically just existing to sell toys. But you can't stuck with sentiment when it's portrayed so realistically.

You know, the Witch is so moved by the love of these two kids that she finally decides she's gonna fly over across the moon and save Halloween. We see a very poor special effects shot of her flying across the moon. You see the monsters and two kids watching from their little window in the castle. What's odd is a little jarring, is that they do a freeze frame, which was a very common thing to end a show on in the seventies and eighties. But unfortunately it's frozen at a moment where the kids are not smiling at all as watching the Witch.

They almost look sad. It's they caught them at a very bad moment in the freeze frame and it like zooms in. I found that a little bit. I don't know, it was an odd ending to this part of the show. Well, they want to let us know that even though there's a happy ending here, that labor must be vigilant in the face of management from here on out, that these are her way if we just turn our heads for a second.

So we cut some more Kennor commercials and we cut back to the sounds of generic disco music. It's some sort of Monsters Club. But not the Monster Club. I mean, they should have gone to the Monster Club, but this is a monster club. The Witch does this wonder Woman style spin in the middle of the dance floor, and she transforms from the Witch into the beautiful Marriott Hartley she's wearing.

She looks gorgeous, it has to be said. She offers her hand to Dracula to get him to dance, because, as we noted earlier, he agreed to all of her demands, including taking her disco dancing. Now, this might be the most embarrassing part of the whole episode for me. Dracula fling his cape off, revealing a John Travolta esque Saturday night fever, white suit underneath it, and he does I don't know what you call the move, but it's the classic John Travolta pointing up at the sky and coming down and down and up. It's all too embarrassing for me to even think about father alone, these disco moves that jud Hirsh does.

Nevertheless, he takes the Witch's hand and they boogie with the rest of the monsters and we that's the end of the episode. No, it's it never ends, the disco, The disco continues. I loved all of the disco stuff. I loved. I loved the white suited disco gross person Dracula and married her.

And here's my question as we wrap up here. Yeah, when when the when our story began? It was the night before Halloween? Right, yep? Okay, so the whole story takes place during Halloween, the thrust of the action, and it ends with the Witch flying over the moon.

Thus Halloween can happen, right, But didn't like really late at night at this point? Isn't it basically midnight? So isn't she really inaugurating All Saints Day? Like, didn't Halloween already happened? Didn't those kids just go trick or treading, Like, who cares if she flew over the moon?

If this was, then if this were, she has to fly over the moon on midnight of Halloween so Halloween can commence. That makes sense. This didn't make any sense to me. Traditionally, as children, you remember this. I'm sure when you would go trick or treating the sun was still up and maybe you got into twilight a little bit of darkness, but basically Halloween as for children was over by the time the moon was up.

The only people she was going to affect with her moon thing were like slutty nurses and you know, guys dressed as boob inspectors. The FBI, that's the Federal Body Inspectors or female body inspectors. Is that what you're talking about? That's right, that's the socket that the couples wants, like a socket and a pluck, Like if their Halloween was going to be ruined, maybe Marion Hardley should have taken that year off. Maybe we're drawing a distinction between the commercialized, sort of pretend Halloween versus the actual, the supernatural part of it that somehow figures into all of this.

I don't have a good answer for you, but that's certainly food for thought. That's the Halloween that almost wasn't but there's not. There will be no yellow light review on this because it does. Not yellow light. This gets how many yellow moons do you give?

No jack o lanterns? Before we wrap up, I have one last question for you, father alone, any particular memories of trick or treating from that age range five to sixty seven eight, Any favorite costume that you had around that time. Give me your two favorite costumes and some memory associated with trick or treating. I remember going out as Indiana Jones the year that Raiders at the Lost Dark came out. I remember that specifically because my dad did my makeup and he gave me a five o'clock shadow, which I thought was the fucking coolest thing on earth.

That made me really feel like I was that guy. That I remember particularly, and I remember years later being too old to go trick or treating. Nevertheless, going out with a group of friends dressed as the Drews from Clockwork Orange. That was very memorable because we went trick or treating as those guys. Wow, that's intense.

Yeah, the best costume I ever had was not when I was like tiny. It was I'm going to say I was thirteen and I had purchased a Nathan Grantham mask from the Creepshow collection of masks, and then. Was it a Don Post mask? I think it was a Don Post. It might have been a competing company.

I don't want to smirch whoever actually created the mask, but it was a good looking at mask, I guess to that. I went to the Salvation Army and I bought a suit and a tie and everything, and I took that out and I like slashed it up with razor blades and I rubbed in the dirt and everything, and I went out as Nathan Graant prolem and I that was my favorite costume of vault On. One memory that I have that I'm sure you remember. This is not specifically to me, but at the time, you remember those those costumes you would get in a box at the drug store. It was almost yeah, it was like it was almost like like a cake box.

And they had everything from Spider Man to the Fawns to Charlie Brown, and they all had the same basic form factor. They were like a cheap mask that was held in place with an The last stick around the back of your head and a vinyl smock with something crudely printed on the front of it. If you were lucky, it might be if it was Spider Man, it might be a screen printing of Spider Man's costume. But if you were going as let's say you could go as Gabe Gabe Cotter from Welcome Back Cotter, it might have like a montage of faces from Welcome Back Cotter in the front, which made no logical sense if you're dressing up as Gabe Kaplan. First.

I hated those that never made sense, Like I hate if you buy a novelty T shirt for a movie and it has the name of a club in a movie or something, and then on the back it says the name of the movie. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, we want an illusion here. And that's how I felt as a kid. I'm sure you did too. I would just outright reject a costume unless it had the printing of the further costume on it.

That was basically overworked. Parents could go to the drug store and pick out something easy. It was that we didn't have stores like Party City at the time to make it easy for you to put a cheap costume together, so it was a shortcut to having a kid go trick and treating. For me, I would say one memory I have. I don't know if I ever shared this with your father Malone.

I probably did. I wasn't and I am still a big fan of the band Kiss and I got one year, I got the Kiss your Face makeup kit, which was the official Kiss makeup kit for kids. Kiss It be incredible outrageous rock group wants you to kiss your Face, introducing Kiss your Face makeup just like the makeup Born by Jean, Paul, Peter or Ace your Face makeup as all the equipment you need professional makeup brushes and cream remover with makeup diagrams so you can look like Gene, look like Paul, look like Peter, or look like Ace. So kiss, Kiss, kiss your face and get your act together. Kiss your Face made is from Remco.

Yeah. I was so happy. I wanted to go as Gene Simmons, but my mom wasn't confident that she could get the makeup right. So as a compromise, I was going to go as Paul Stanley because all he has really is a star over his eye, and she couldn't even she couldn't even get the star correct, so it was kind of the saggy star. So in a bit of trying to say salvage the costume, I went out as a clown.

It was basically half Paul Stanley half clown. They put like a hat bat sideways on my head. It was okay, but I always wanted to be kiss and I never was. This is a fond memory of yours, Jesus Christ. You know, we made the best of it.

One year I went out as mister t That was fun. We went to Paper Amma and I got a bald skin cap that had a mohawk integrated into it, and I had a jean jacket that my mom cut the sleeves off. They used like Mas Garrett to make a beard. It was great. I'm gonna need to see some photographic evidence of this.

We could reminisce about Halloween all day. That's going to do it for this special Halloween episode of Night, Mister Walters fallom alone. Where can folks find you when you're not enjoying Halloween. I'm always enjoying Halloween every day of my life. You can check me out at midnight viewing then that is my podcast, twice week podcast alternating segments of shows.

There's stuff for everyone there, mostly anthology related, but a lot of current stuff too. Check that show out, and yeah, that's all. I'm gonna make my recommendation. I really loving the weekly wrap ups you do with other weekly roundup I should say with Ripley Jean, your erstwhile co host, I love the They're a lot of fun. It's a great way to get some interesting current reviews of things that are in the theater, things that you can find on streaming for free, and they're just funny as hell.

Please check those out, I'm imploring you you won't be disappointed. And check out Patreon also great content for myself. I can also be found on the Weirding Wade Network. I am an occasional guest on the Culture Cast with Christashut. I also have a band campsite hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com.

Please check that out. But that's going to do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please feel free to subscribe to this podcast, write a review, rate us. We'd love to hear from you in any way you see fit for myself and for father belone, thank you so much for listening, Happy Halloween, and we'll see you all next time At two