Since Halloween is fast approaching I thought I'd write in with my trauma. I was (and still am according to my wife) a bit of a scaredy cat, which is amazing considering how Halloween is my favorite time of year. My favorite part was the specials. Kids today will never understand the EVENT that was catching THE GREAT PUMPKIN or GARFIELD the night it aired. But Halloween specials were not as plentiful as the amount that would hit you as Christmas so they were more treasured and rare. And they all used to scare me. I think I even covered my face watching the FAT ALBERT HALLOWEEN SPECIAL (that old lady that lived by the cemetery was creepy!)
The trauma I wrote to tell you about came eleven years after the Grinch terrified me while ruining the Who's Christmas. Old Grinchy was so popular they threw him a new special. The original name of the program back in 1977 was HALLOWEEN IS GRINCH NIGHT. And I had no idea the absolute terror I was in for. First thing I noticed was that this Grinch wasn't anything like the Grinch I saw carving the roast beast with the Whos eleven years ago. This Grinch was much more sinister. To keep the synopsis brief, what I gather is the same time every year (around Halloween) the Grinch comes down from Mount Krumpet and scares the sh*t out of the Who's. He was sort of like Jack Skellington, but more of an asshole. His heart was no longer "3 sizes bigger," it was gone completely.
So one small Who decides to delay the Grinch as he heads towards the town. He approaches him and asks to be scared. What followed are images I'll never shake from my head. I can't believe this special actually won an award back in 1977. And even more surprising was that the teleplay was written by Seuss himself. I know he's known for bizarre sometimes frightening images, but this seems above even something he would conjure.
Luckily this show didn't air very often, but it never had to. Those images were burned in my brain the rest of my life. So fast forward 32 years later when I picked up a DVD of GREEN EGGS AND HAM for my daughter and flipped it over. As an 'extra feature' they included HALLOWEEN IS GRINCH NIGHT. Needless to say my daughter was excited to see it. So I sat next to her last week while asking over and over again while watching it, "Are you sure you want to watch this? We can turn it off if you want?" When I should have just told the truth and said, "Daddy peed his pants."
Awesome site guys, love it!
Jergy
WHY am I JUST NOW finding out about this??? I didnt even get all the way through the video – I was on AMAZON toot sweet buying a used copy of the DVD and it only ran me $2- (Im thinking it was originally the copy from Jergy's house that he snagged and put up for sale while his kid wasnt looking!)
Im having some friends over for a little drinking party this weekend where I plan on screening TRICK R TREAT and DRAG ME TO HELL. Im going to sneak this on in between as a sort of INTERMISSION. Hahaha.
I just told her it made daddy sad, so I buried it in the back yard.
This is epic.
Holy HELL, that thing scared the crap out of me when I was a kid. As soon as I saw that image at the top of the post, my reaction was "Oh NOOOO!" I'm not even starting that video. That cartoon is evil and must be destroyed.
I'm surprised this one never traumatized me, but I loved it. It makes me sad that most of the Halloween specials we got back then are all gone now. That greedy Christmas!
Excuse me, what the HELL is this? I think I remember it! I remember not liking it!