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I purchased a copy of Elvira’s Haunted Hills back in the early 2000’s at Suncoast Video. It was the first Elvira movie I saw, and I remember being underwhelmed. Since then, I’ve watched Elvira Mistress of the Dark half a dozen times, and always have a good time with it. So, when I saw Haunted Hills was streaming on Tubi, I decided to give it a watch.

Truthfully, I spent my time doing other things, while only half-watching, which is advisable because this film is pretty terrible. It was not a great way to kickoff watching spooky movies, but at the time, I didn’t realize this was the beginning of my Halloween watchlist. It was just something I turned on.

Hellraiser

After Haunted Hills ended, I turned on Hellraiser because I haven’t seen it in a good twenty-five years and I am pretty excited about the upcoming video game.

Hellraiser holds up rather well and the practical effects and creature designs are incredibly top notch. The film makes you feel dirty and sweaty and in an uncomfortable way. I doubt I’ll ever watch it again, but it was a decent revisit.

Fright Night

It was by the end of Hellraiser that I realized I was going to watch another horror movie and my Halloween spirit was slowly awakening. I decided to check out Fright Night, a movie I’ve only seen once but enjoyed way more than I expected to. It was while watching Fright Night that I realized I should focus on more light hearted retro horror, since it feels more like Halloween than say Hellraiser.

Fright Night has the tremendous atmosphere and the soundtrack and score are amazing. Brad Fiedel of Terminator 2 fame did the score for Fright Night and it’s sequel.

Fright Night 2

I enjoyed Fright Night so much I decided to check out the sequel. Of course, it wasn’t streaming anywhere, but I found a great copy on YouTube. The sequel was surprisingly good! I don’t typically care for vampire movies, but for a fun 80s distraction that doesn’t take itself too seriously, it really checked the boxes for what I was looking for. I mean, it has a vampire on roller skates… what more could you ask for?

Mad About You, The Unplanned Child

This season two episode of Mad About You is not your typical sitcom Halloween hijinks. In fact, other than a mention of a Halloween parade, a homemade costume and a brief scene of trick-or-treating, there isn’t much Halloween themed about this. Definitely not one to add to any Halloween watchlists in the future.

Return of the Living Dead

Following Fright Night 2, I wanted something else lighthearted to watch and I haven’t seen Return of the Living Dead in a very long time. In fact, the only scene I remembered was the infamous cemetery dance scene.

I enjoyed Return of the Living Dead for what it was. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again, but it was goofy and fun.

The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper, Legend of Duh Bigfoot

This was not something I went out of my way to watch, but instead watched as part of a YouTube video that collected old Halloween themed cartoons with commercials. I was not aware that the 1995 film Casper had a spin-off cartoon, but I’m happy to report that it was pretty decent.

Halloween: The ’81 Broadcast

In 1981, NBC paid three million dollars for the broadcast rights to John Carpenter’s 1978 classic, Halloween. They aired Halloween the same night that Halloween 2 debuted in theaters. The original film was only 91 minutes, so once the censors cut some scenes, additional footage was needed to fill the time slot. Some extended scenes were used, as well as new footage that was shot during the filming of Halloween 2 which makes this an unique experience.

A DVD was released of this television cut in the early 2000s, and I remember enjoying it. I mean, it’s really not that different, but it does add a scene that better connects the first film and second film, and the big family reveal.

I haven’t seen the TV cut in many years, so when I ran across a fan edit I knew I had to watch. Darth Awesome took an updated HD scan of the film, edited it meticulously to match the original broadcast, then remastered the bumpers and added commercials from that era, all while adding a few film scratches and glitches, to give it that bootleg feel. Only one super low quality bootleg existed of the 1981 broadcast, and this facsimile is a wonderful way to experience the broadcast without straining your eyes.

Some more great information about the 81 Broadcast can be found on Dinosaur Dracula, Nightmare Nostalgia, and 45 Lampkin Lane.

The Midnight Hour

This made for TV movie is not something that has been on my radar. I hadn’t heard of it until my buddy Michael mentioned it and after reading his review on Letterboxd I knew I needed to check it out. Thankfully, someone has remastered and upscaled the original film (what a great use of AI) and uploaded it to YouTube.

This is a TV film from 1985, so I went in with low expectations and I was pleasantly surprised. It’s not scary, but has that spooky vibe kid-friendly vibe. The biggest star is LeVar Burton, but I recognized a ton of the cast including Kurtwood Smith, Peter DeLuise (Stargate!!), Dedee Pfeiffer (Michelle Pfeiffer’s sister), and Dick Van Patten.

The highlight of the film was a Thriller knockoff dance number that occurs towards the end of the film and is performed by Shari Belafonte (Harry Belafonte’s daughter). The song is catchy and the dance moves are cheesy and fun. It’s just a shame the song’s not streaming, because it would be a great addition to my Halloween Playlist.

My Name is Earl, Little Bad Voodoo Brother

I didn’t go out of my way to watch this, it just happened to come up as part of my watching of My Name is Earl. In this episode Earl is trying to make up for not taking Joy’s kids trick or treating, so he attempts to throw a Halloween party for them and the rest of the trailer park. In the meantime, Randy ends up taking care of Catalina’s nephew who practices voodoo and he disrupts Earl’s plan. It’s a solid episode, but really doesn’t scratch that Halloween itch for me.

Family Guy Halloween Special (2025)

This was not great, but it got a couple of chuckles out of me. I will not revisit this in the future.

I first watched Superstore a few years ago, and fell in love with it almost instantly. My only regret was not watching it sooner. Last night, I noticed Hulu added a Superstore Halloween episode to their Halloween hub, and the next thing you know I had watched all the Halloween episodes back-to-back.

Let’s take a quick look at how these episodes hold up.

Halloween Theft
Season Two, Episode Seven

I watched this episode, and instantly I remembered how much I enjoyed Superstore.

A box of damaged vegetables goes missing from an unlocked storage cage, which sends Dina on a rampage to discover who stole the box of veggies. It’s made so much funnier, because she doesn’t like Halloween and didn’t want to dress up, but once she realized Sandra dressed up as her, she found a costume, and it turned out to be a sexy cop. This makes everyone incredibly uncomfortable, as the normally covered up Dina is now putting her breasts on full display.

Meanwhile, Glenn, Amy, and Jonah try to find a way to fix the missing vegetable dilemma, while Garrett fights his hormones who are attracted to Dina physically, but repulsed by her emotionally.

This is a fantastic episode, and the fact that it embraces it’s Halloween setting just makes it better. Lauren Ash (Dina) steals the show by playing her character so straight, while everyone around her is both annoyed and aroused.

Halloween Theme: A
Re-Watchability: A

Sal’s Dead
Season Three, Episode Five

The show begins with the discovery of a staff member who was found dead in the drywall. His mummified corpse had been rotting for the past year, and unfortunately the coroner’s office is delayed due to an explosion at a local business. This means Cloud 9 is open for business with a corpse on full display!

While Glenn tries to deal with the corpse issue, Amy gets a hold of Jonah’s phone while he’s searching for girls on a dating app. She decides she knows what’s best for Jonah and begins swiping left and right until she lands on the new girl, Kelly. Amy swipes the wrong way and matches Jonah to Amy, and now she has to try and find a way to get Amy’s phone and cancel the notification. This leads to all sorts of hi jinks as Amy goes to extreme lengths to fix the situation she created.

Cheyenne is doing face painting and practicing her special effects makeup, when she has a great idea to turn Mateo into Sal, the guy who died in the wall, so he can leave the country to attend a wedding. Unfortunately, once Mateo begins to look like Sal, he starts taking on someone of his quirks and behaviors, which is not a good thing.

I absolutely love this episode, and it made me laugh so many times. I would easily add this to a yearly watch list.

Halloween Theme: A
Re-Watchability: A

Costume Competition
Season Four, Episode Four

The store holds a costume competition, with the winner receiving a paid day off. Amy, who was extremely pregnant and struggling to reduce her hours with the home office, is desperate for the paid time off, so she grabs a Mario costume from the rack and goes all out to win the competition.

Her main competition is Mateo, who changes into an elaborate costume as Jessica Tandy from The Birds. The two of them decide to team up by convincing their co-workers to find fault with everyone’s costume based on cultural appropriation. In a way, this episode makes some wonderful points about folks taking things too far when it comes to being offended, and I couldn’t help but appreciate a quote from this episode:

We can’t just live our lives afraid to offend someone. I think that we, you know, as a society, we need to just lighten up a little bit.

Meanwhile, Garret is having a breakdown after hearing the same Halloween song play over-and-over every ten minutes or so, and Glenn thinks he’s being haunted by the automatic cart collector.

This is a great episode, with a small message, but lots of goofiness thrown in.

Halloween Theme: A
Re-Watchability: B

Trick or Treat
Season Five, Episode Six

After last year’s debacle with the costume competition which resulted in sensitivity training for everyone, no contest is going to be held, much to Marcus’ chagrin as he went all out with an over the top dragon costume.

Amy meets the new district manager, while Jonah meets up with his old flame Kelly to collect union cards from the store she currently works at. This creates an issue when the new district manager sees Jonah and Kelly talking, and in a nervous moment, Amy states that they are a couple.

Garret and Glenn are in charge of managing the haunted house in the garden center, which causes a lot of anxiety as Glenn has some PTSD from a previous experience in a haunted house. After he throws away Garret’s candy corn because Glenn is diabetic, Garret decides to use the haunted house to his advantage.

The Halloween hijinks get a bit lost in the whole union card situation, but every scene has something Halloween in it, from decorations to costumes, and I appreciate that the show embraces the concept and doesn’t just use Halloween as a backdrop.

Halloween Theme: A
Re-Watchability: B

You can find the playlist here if you have Apple Music and are curious about what songs I’ve selected. I thought it might be fun to look at a handful of the songs that get the most play from this playlist and their spooky roots.

Killer by Crazy Lixx

This banger of a song is performed by Swedish hard rock group Crazy Lixx, who is heavily inspired by 80s hair bands, which is fitting because the song sounds like it could have came off a horror movie soundtrack in 1986. But no, this song was actually used in a trailer for 2017’s Friday the 13th game. Crazy Lixx has some great songs, but Killer is my favorite.

Anything, Anything by Dramarama

At first glance this song seems out of place. It’s a catchy song that doesn’t seem to fit the theme, but I always associate Anything, Anything with my favorite Nightmare on Elm Street movie, Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master where it shows up twice. Fangoria did a nice little write up on the song last year with Andras Jones from NOES 4 and John Easdale from Dramarama.

The Shape Hunts All by John and Cody Carpenter

This entirely too short of piece of music was featured in 2018’s Halloween. I remember sitting in the theater when the music began and I was blown away by how terrifying it is. It truly outshined everything else on the score, and I still get chills when I hear it.

Trouble in Woodsboro by Marco Beltrami

If you’ve watched Scream, you’ll know this tune. This soft, haunting piece of music is the perfect backdrop for Sidney Prescott as the people around her begin dying. The moment I hear it, I’m taken back to the mid-90s and that sense of uneasiness that Scream so perfectly captured.

Some of my first memories of alt.horror was reading posts about how much Scream sucked and how it was a disgrace to horror movies. It’s funny, now Scream is pretty much universally loved, but when it was released it was hated for doing everything different than an 80s slasher film. I guess, it just goes to show, the internet has always been toxic, it’s just more toxic on a larger scale these days.

The newsgroups were fine, but where I really found myself enjoying horror movie discussions was on AOL’s Horror chatroom. In the mid-to-late 90s, there wasn’t a ton of chatroom options on AOL, but horror was one of them and I spent hours hanging out, chatting with folks, and learning about horror movies I’d never heard before. It was a place where I could go and ask about a specific movie I ran across in the video store and get some feedback before renting it. It was also a great place to learn about horror movies I didn’t know anything about.

I’ll never forget discovering Evil Dead from this chatroom. See, back in the 90s Evil Dead was out of print. It’s sequel and Army of Darkness were readily available at most video stores, but finding the original film was almost impossible. Having worked in a video store, I’ll let you in on a secret, usually when films were out of print or hard to find, people just stole them. If they weren’t stolen, then eventually they wore out from being rented and watched so often.

Anyway, whenever you’d log into the AOL Horror Chatroom, you’re IMs would lit up.

“Do you have a copy of Evil Dead?”

“I got tons to trade for a copy of Evil Dead”

“I’m willing to send you cash for a copy of Evil Dead”

Fans were clamoring for a copy of Evil Dead and even if you did run across the rare person who had a copy, it was a copy of a copy of a copy, and was barely watchable.

I rushed out and rented Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness but it would be a couple of years before I finally got my hands on Evil Dead. Thankfully, Anchor Bay obtained the rights and released it on VHS. I found copy at Walmart and being that I was still a young teenager, I ran across the store to plead with my father to buy me a copy. I tried to explain how rare and hard to find it was, and how I’d been looking for a copy of it for years, but his eyes just glassed over and I think he agreed just to get me to shut up about the history of some random horror film that came out before I was born.

Anyway, Evil Dead lived up to it’s reputation and I’ve watched it dozens of times over the years. I’ve also bought it probably a dozen different times over the years. Currently, I own the Evil Dead box set which includes the first and second film in 4k, along with Ash vs. Evil Dead. Of course, I also have Army of Darkness in a 4k steel book!

Looking up Halloween themed videos from the 80s and 90s is a blast on YouTube. There are so many great videos. I thought I’d share a handful of interesting ones I’ve watched this week.

Rebuilding the Shape

In this video, Tommy Lee Wallace (director of Halloween III, Fright Night 2) takes us through the process of re-creating the original mask from Halloween. Mr. Wallace was the person who doctored up the William Shatner mask back in the late 70s, so its fun to see his process that led to such incredibly imagery.

Halloween Channel Surfing 1992

I discovered this channel that takes various clips of news programs, advertisements, and Halloween specials, from Halloween night of a specific year and cuts them together like you were flipping channels. It can be a bit heavy on the use of news footage, and so you hear the same headline over and over, but it’s a fun way to take a little trip to the past and makes for decent background noise.

JBuck’s Halloween Video

JBuck’s Retro Rewind is a neat channel that takes various 90s cartoons and cuts them together with old school commercials and bumpers to create a time block that is pretty accurate to the era. If I’m honest, most of is videos feature shows that I was a bit too old to watch, but I did enjoy watching an episode of The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper from 1996. I watched the 1995 Casper film a lot, but I didn’t know there was a cartoon spinoff. It features the characters from the film and many of the folks who worked on the show also worked on Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, and Pinky and the Brain. It definitely has that same art style and comedic timing, which made for an enjoyable watch, that was further enhanced by the mid 90s commercials.

Three Hours of Vintage Halloween Commercials

Speaking of great commercials, this three hour block is nothing but Halloween commercials! I do see the irony that I will out of my way to avoid commercials and ads in 2025, but will actively seek out and enjoy ones from the 80s and 90s.

The Real Ghostbusters – When Halloween Was Forever

One of the most memorable of the early episodes of The Real Ghostbusters, When Halloween Was Forever was written by J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) and features a pumpkin headed demon named Samhain, who wants to make Halloween permanent. I always enjoyed this episode, mainly because of the great character design of Samhain.

A Nightmare on Elm Street VHS Promo

This is a VHS promo that was created to encourage retailers to purchase copies of Nightmare on Elm Street 3. It’s a fun look at how business was once conducted, all while being hosted by Freddy himself.

Keep Laughing Forever Radio

When I haven’t been listening to Dino Drac’s Halloween Jukebox, I’ve been enjoying Keep Laughing Forever Radio. This app was created by a home bound person in New Zealand. He’s channeled his nostalgia for 80s and 90s radio into creating a retro radio station, complete with hosted shows, random movie quotes, and a vibe that really fits. I’ve listened to different takes on a retro radio station, and this by far is the closest I’ve heard that takes me back.

Brave

I recently upgraded to the latest iOS and it has been a major pain in my rear. I’m not one to typically find fault in new features and honestly, the liquid glass doesn’t bother me. What does bother me are the bugs! I have had so many issues with Safari when trying to type into the browser, especially the address bar, that I’ve pivoted to using my backup browser Brave.

The more I use Brave, the more I like it. It does a better job of blocking ads than Safari, the bookmarks sync better, and websites tend to display more coherently after blocking ads. It also does a great job blocking ads on YouTube, which was something I was already using it for. Now that I can easily use Apple Passwords with Brave, I really have no reason not to use it. It started with my iPhone, then my iPad, and then I finally started using Brave exclusively on my MacBook.

Khaleesi’s Impromptu Halloween Photo Shoot

Khaleesi has found herself being rather photogenic and channeling the fall vibes.

For Halloween, I posted a series of articles under the title: Halloween 2K14. Unfortunately, not many of those posts survive, but if I remember correctly I posted one post each day for the entire month of October. These ranged from recollections such as my trip to visit The Devil’s Tramping Ground to sharing a random Halloween special I found online.

While reminiscing, I couldn’t help but feel a bit somber that I’ve lost my holiday spirit. Not too long ago, I really looked forward to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but now I dread it. I don’t feel like decorating, nor visiting family. I don’t feel like watching themed movies or specials. I really want nothing to do with the holidays. Halloween was always my favorite, especially since I love horror movies. So, what happened?

Well, I think in some ways, I burned myself out. I would start celebrating Halloween at the beginning of September, and often I’d cram as many horror movies in as I could. I’d get to the middle of October, and I’d be over it.

I also felt compelled to keep up with the latest. It was during this period, I’d catch up on horror movies I missed throughout the year and the truth is, I’m not really a fan of current horror. So, I’d watch film after film, more out of an obligation than enjoyment, and I think after a couple of years of this it made me think of Halloween as more of an inconvenience, than something to be excited for. It was just the time of year that I completed the chore of keeping up with the latest horror.

I even stopped writing about the holidays on my blogs. I recycled some old posts last year, but I haven’t had much to say on the topic.

Earlier this week, I found myself thinking about how Halloween was just two weeks away, and I felt like I wanted to try and get into the Halloween spirit. So, I turned on some movies on Tubi, found some interesting YouTube videos, jammed out to Dinosaur Dracula’s Halloween Jukebox as well as my own personal Horror playlist. I went to the grocery store and intentionally bought some Halloween candy, and you know, I felt a bit of a spark. It’s not the full-blown Halloween spirit I once had, but I’m realizing that there is still life in this holiday for me. I think I just needed a reset, and I needed to refocus how I spend my time celebrating. You know, simple stuff, like maybe watch some old 80s movies that you like or want to revisit, instead of forcing yourself to watch the latest depressing trauma horror film.

We have ten days until Halloween, and I’m going to do my best to post one post a day. I’ll probably have to recycle some old posts, and who knows, I might even dust off one of those posts from 2014, but I’m excited to talk about all things spooky and celebrate the season.