Hosting children's parties can be exhausting any day of the year, but throwing ones for those born on All Hallows Eve can be down right draining with the extra burden of having to make costumes. Once the games have been played, the cake has been cut, and the gifts have been opened, it's time to clear the room and send the little partygoers on their way. Should you not have an air horn handy or enough energy to call in a bomb threat to your own home, try the simple solution of slurred arithmetic as demonstrated in the 1976 After School Special FRANCESCA, BABY. In the time it takes you to count to five, your house will emptied and you can get back to doing what you really wanted to be doing, like drinking on your child's birthday!
Awesome! I'll grab any opportunity I can to haul out a caftan, pour the martini and rev up my Geraldine Page impression…
Oh Francesca! Leave your sister with the dishes and get to an al-teen meeting!
Am I the only one who actually HAS this video in their house? Granted- I keep them hiden in a cabinet in my basement – but I DO have every AfterSchool Special thats available for purchase on DVD! (Its a crime they ALL arent)
A few observations here –
* Does anybody actually decorate their houses for partys like this anymore? Do they even make/sell those crappy looking streamers? I havent seen them since the Early 80s. They seem to have disappeared along with those pointy cardboard hats that would cause your head to lose circulation because of the too-tight elastic string that held the hat on your head!
* Bobbing For Apples: Can anybody think of a grosser party game? "I'm gonna stick my face in this spit-filled bucket of water and fish around for food – and YOU can dunk YOUR head in there after me!"  In the 70s my Mom upped the games "coolness" buy putting MONEY in the apples. CHOKNG HAZARD. Was it really worth risking your life for a dime , nickel or quater? There was no way to get dollars to go into an apple so at best you made 50 cents.
* Look at the wholesome-ness of the kids in this videos costumes! When was the last time you saw a kid dressed up as Raggedy Ann? Or a clown even? A few years back they were all dressed as "Britney" and its pretty much been a pre-teen slut-fest ever since! (My 10 year old is going as Horny Lil Devil this year!)
For another good After School Special about a teen with an alcohilc parent that rains on their parade check out SHE DRINK A LITTLE which stars – I kid you not – the chick who played "Tina" in A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET!
Personally I still think the most effective party-terminator is the Zombie Clown from Diary of the Dead – but I'll take the Alcoholic Parent as a close second 🙂
As well as the toxic rain from the Dance of the Dead ep of Masters of Horror…although the clean-up is a bitch.
If you're going to have your birthday party come to a sudden aburpt halt, I think I'll take the pleasantly drunk mother over what happened to the little girl in the Hammer House of Horror episode "The House that Bled to Death". In that one, the birthday girl is sitting around the table with all her friends eating cake when an overhead plumbing pipe starts making loud noises, comes disattached at one end, swivels slowly over the kids heads, and suddenly starts gushing blood all over the place!
That poor kid. And was that Large Marge?
Good eye 4thtroika… that was ALICE NUNN… aka Large Marge complaining about stretch marks on her cheeks.
Wow, I have this on DVD and this Afterschool Special actually does drudge up a bit of my own personal Kindertrauma. A horror lover since I was a wee girl, nothing phased me. Jason, Freddy, Billy, Leatherface, The Shape, Pinhead, the Tall Man, Mad Man Mars, Cropsy, and the whole slew of them………child’s play, my friends, but what DID scare the pee outta me in my Hugabunch jammies? CHAINSAW TIM!!! That’s right, my alcoholic uncle. Don’t get me wrong, folks. He was hella loving, just hammered most of the time. It was a Saturday afternoon, and after having finished off a case or two of Lonestar, Timmy thought it to be as good a time as any to do some tree trimming. He somehow managed to climb a ladder and started going to town on the live oaks. I then glanced out the window just in time to see his chainsaw buck back at him and make mince meat out of his forehead, fall off the ladder (luckily AWAY from the chainsaw), and miraculously got back up, walked into the house, called 911, and was able to live another drunken day. This is one of dozens of Chainsaw Tim stories. Slashers, killer animals, monsters, and ghosts: none can hold a candle to my drunk family members!
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