There’s absolutely nothing interesting going on in the news right now, so why don’t you treat your ears to a couple of friends talking about sexy teen vampires? In addition to the vampires, the boys spend a lot of time talking about the sweaty sax man that you can never unsee after watching The Lost Boys. Additionally, we discuss how this film was one of the first movies to bring vampires into the modern age and we also spend a lot more time talking about McDonald’s than you’d expect.
Airdate: October 27, 1966
So… today was a crazy day. I don’t know how much enthusiasm I’ll have for writing about a 50-year-old children’s Halloween special, but we’ll see. If anything, watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was a pretty relaxing trip back to childhood to provide a little bit of comfort after a day that felt a bit surreal.
I say that the Peanuts transports me back to childhood not only because it’s about the comical melancholy of being a kid, but also because I have a few various memories of Peanuts from my own childhood. First, of reruns of the cartoon being aired occasionally (possibly on Nickelodeon?) as well as their presence in the comics section of the newspaper (remember those?) and experiencing the Camp Snoopy theme park at the Mall of America during my summers in Minnesota. In recent years, the Peanuts property I’ve returned to the most is the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas (as well as that special), though I do have a vague memory of watching It’s The Great Pumpkin on TV as a kid. Upon revisiting it, I was glad to see it has about the same high level of charm as everything else in the Peanuts universe.
Season 1, Episode 7
Airdate: October 30, 1964
Welcome to the first entry in this year’s Shocktober, in which we’ll be looking back at a bunch of Halloween episodes of TV shows! It seems like it’ll be a mix of shows or specials the three of us are familiar with or ones where we have all but a vague idea of what we’re getting into. Personally, I’m just looking forward to some spooky TV hijinks to distract me from the real-life horrors of the upcoming election.
The Addams Family seemed like a great place to start for this year, since they are altogether ooky (in addition to being spooky). They also seemed like a good choice for one of these theme months we do, which tend to see us watching things that we’re not all that familiar with. Because even though I have a general idea of what The Addams Family’s deal is, I haven’t spent really any time with their ’60s TV show or their somewhat beloved movies from the ’90s. In fact, I didn’t even know that The Addams Family TV show wasn’t the origin of their long-running status as America’s most famous goth family, as they actually originated with Charles Addams New Yorker comics that started in the ’30s. Continue reading
Hello Boils and Ghouls and welcome to Shocktober! A month-long celebration of the mysterious, the spooky, and the altogether ooky. This year’s theme is “TERRORVISION!” which means we’ll be reviewing thirty-odd days of Horror/Halloween-related TV shows.
Halloween Variety Specials? We got it. Halloween episodes of sitcoms? We got it. Made-for-TV 45-minute Disney movies with Richard Masur? Well, we got that too. From the Flintstones to Frasier, we got more shows than you could shake a stake at. So sink into that couch, grab a big bowl of candy and let the terror take over. For the next month, we will control all that you see and hear.
It begins…
