Halloween Special!

I love Halloween. It's always been my favorite holiday, and autumn my favorite season. The shifting weather is a welcome invitation to reflect on endings and the constant of change. Then, Halloween comes along and sprinkles a little levity over it all. It's the year's last hurrah, like taking a final breath and blowing it on a belly laugh.

My favorite treat this time of year is the media tradition of the "Halloween Special". More than horror movies, I turn to specials as my seasonal entertainment of choice when October rolls around. I've compiled a list of my favorites to share with you, in addition to one of my own making. Since this is my newsletter, allow me the indulgence of starting the list off with mine:

Demos on the Radio, my podcast about making music with my friend Torraine Futurum, has just released Episode 6 | The songs that scared us. We discuss (in costume!) the warping effects of Busta Rhymes and My Chemical Romance on our young, impressionable minds. Then, I play the demo for a new song, 'Drying Out', and explain how Twin Peaks inspired the vocal production. Torraine plays the demo for 'Icarus', the song she originally thought might become the sonic blueprint for her next album. Watch the video version on YouTube to join us for a Halloween hangout and see clips of the music videos we discuss, or listen to the audio version wherever you find podcasts.

The earliest Halloween Special I recall enchanting me as a child was The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror series. Each year, on the week of Halloween, the show would release a new Treehouse of Horror installment featuring the family in three short segments spoofing various well-known horror or science fiction stories. The first included parodies of Poltergiest, The Amityville Horror, The Twilight Zone, and The Raven. The Amityville Horror spoof, called 'Bad Dream House', creeped me out as a kid. Even the 80s inspired, icy, synthesized tune that plays throughout was enough to chill me. A malevolent voice in the Simpsons' new house calls out to the family members at night, beckoning "Lisa....Lisa...the butcher knife, Lisa...", attempting to pit the family members against each other. Maggie sits up in her crib, head spinning round and round, her neck crunching loudly. Of course, as an adult who understands the references, these episodes are funny and not scary. The high-low genius of Homer and Bart Simpson reciting Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven is delightful. In terms of delivering pure Halloween atmosphere and hilarity, the early Simpsons specials are top tier. Avoid the new ones, (God, please let that show die) but seek out Treehouse of Horror I through X. (Even up to XVIII has some decent segments. Looking at you, Heck House.)

Another animated special from the same period comes from King of the Hill; an underrated show that I enjoyed as a kid, but truly appreciate as an adult. In the only actually Halloween themed episode of the show, Hilloween (Season 2, Episode 4), Hank must defend the trick or treating tradition from the objections of their neighbor, Junie Harper. Ms. Harper is a religious zealot and misguided moralist bent on exposing Halloween's 'satanist' undertones. In one scene, Hank protests that "Halloween is just good clean fun; it's got nothing to do with the devil!" Cut to Bobby, dressed in Hank's hand-me-down devil costume, looking on, perplexed. The whole episode is good, clean fun.

Otherwise, an honorable mention goes to Pigmalion (Season 7, Episode 9). Though not technically about Halloween, it does take place during Halloween, and the episode culminates at a calamitous costume party. Luanne, on the hunt for a new job, takes an interview at Larsen Pork Products and ends up in a relationship with Trip Larsen, an eccentric pork magnate with an unusual motive behind his interest in Luanne. The whole thing hits all the beats of a horror movie, but balances it's sinister elements with enough cartoon silliness to make for a highly satisfying Halloween watch.

These next two are my favorites on this list. The long running radio show This American Life has produced two excellent Halloween Specials over the course of their time on the air. The first, episode 39, Halloween aired October 25, 1996 and features "stories of things that are supposed to be scary, but aren't." Acts II, Scientists in a Haunted House and IV, The Evil Within are standouts to me, but the whole thing is mandatory October listening.

Their second Halloween themed episode came over a decade later on October 27, 2007 and was called And the Call Was Coming from the Basement. It features "[...] scary stories that are all true. Zombie raccoons, haunted houses—real haunted houses!" I have a hard time picking a favorite of the stories in this show, but again, Acts II (a chilling story of hitchhiking gone wrong) and IV (a hilarious reading by David Sedaris about his time working in a morgue) are standouts, coincidentally.

'POSSIBLY IN MICHIGAN' is a 1983 art film by artist Cecilia Condit. It is not a Halloween Special, but a "musical horror story about two young women who are stalked through a shopping mall by the cannibal named Arthur." I'm including it here, however, because it is certainly unsettling, and because the artist gave a charming interview in the form of a short Halloween Special for the obscure, cult film streaming service Eternal Family. First watch 'POSSIBLY IN MICHIGAN' (11 mins 45 secs), then watch the interview above (9 mins 28 secs), and fall in love with this artist making films that balance humor and horror while exploring "the dark side of female subjectivity [...]"

UNHhhh is a web series featuring drag queens Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova, both of whom rose to fame as contestants on season 7 of RuPaul's Drag Race, but are long since stars in their own right. The most concise description one might give UNHhhh is that it's a sometimes topical, stream-of-consciousness, improv show with a bent towards the absurd, silly, and downright insane. Or, as the hosts say, "the show about whatever we want, because it's our show, and not yours." Basically, they spend 10-20 minutes improvising jokes, anecdotes, and absurdities that are at least, in theory, tied to a theme. Naturally, the most hilarity ensues when they veer wildly off topic. They've had 7 Halloween themed episodes over the years, but the second is my favorite. If you've never seen the show at all, I'd suggest starting with episode 3, Traveling. If you like that, then proceed to episode 66, Hallowiener. Be in the mood for zaniness. Not for the easily annoyed, grossed out or up-tight.

This next recommendation also comes from YouTube, and is not technically a Halloween Special in and of itself, but a review of a different, disastrous Halloween themed video. This is Jenny Nicholson's There’s something wrong with Hallmark’s youtube channel; a humble, but hilarious skewering of Hallmark's (yes, the greeting card company) YouTube channel, on which they upload video tutorials demonstrating the laziest Halloween craft projects ever conceived. From half-baked ideas, to hosts who clearly don't get along, to botched demonstrations, the whole tutorial is a comedy of errors, and Jenny, our maestra of mediocrity, guiding us in savoring every delightfully dumb detail.

I stumbled upon the WNUF Halloween Special on YouTube entirely by accident one year. I guess their algorithm has me pegged. This is a horror-comedy spoof made in 2013, but lovingly re-creating the style of a 1987 local news report. You, as the viewer, are tuning into a taped broadcast by fictional news station WNUF. In between reporter Frank Stewart's live segment from the Webber House, the site of ghastly small-town murders, there are parody commercial breaks for invented local businesses like "Phil's Carpet Warehouse" that really drive home the local television feel. The whole thing is a nostalgia bomb for people who grew up in the mid 80s and early 90s. It really delivers on the feeling of getting home from school on a crisp fall day and turning on the TV to sneakily watch something you probably shouldn't while your parents are in the other room. It used to be available for free on YouTube, but now I believe it's pay to view on various streaming services. At least you can check out the trailer above (but frankly, I think it's much better than the rather messy trailer lets on).

Finally, I'll end on another thing I made. In 2020 I put out an EP called Homo Erotic Horror Show (I still love the title). It was the first collection of songs I made that I wasn't totally embarrassed to have other people hear. Sure, it's a little lo-fi and the vocals are recorded on a cheap, noisy microphone, but I re-listened to it recently and still think a lot of the sounds, lyrics and song structures are quite interesting. It's short (only three songs and a transitory interlude), but spooky all the way through, and features a song called Halloween that might be my favorite of the bunch. Across the project are unsettling musings like:

In the Night:
Thanks a lot, wipe the snot
The front door is unlocked
For strange men and the cops
Waiting for the shoe to drop

Mouth 2 Mouth:
F*ck, fight
It's all the same when he's around
God's dead
But I gave him mouth to mouth

Halloween:
When you feel like flesh
Life is most painful
Count every breath
And flinch at every vein-ful

Did I mention that I consider this a pop record? Strange that it didn't garner me a record deal...

And that's all for now. Happy Halloween!