 Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, Halloween Special, the Patreon request from Andy Riggs to Halloween TV Specials. Both from the 70s, 1979's, the Halloween that almost wasn't, a.k.a. the Night Dracula Saved the World. The Night Dracula Saved the World makes no sense at all. It's Halloween, maybe, maybe, not the world. Judd Hirsch is in this, I think we all know him from Serpico. Maybe Taxi, I don't know. Oh really? Is he in that? Or Independence Day. Yeah, that's right too, yeah. Married Hartley's in this, she was in the original Star Trek series, and she was in the Incredible Hall. Henry Gibson is in this, he was that Nazi leader guy in the Blues Brothers, the Burbs. Dr. Klopak, or whatever, I love that movie. The Halloween that almost wasn't starts off with Judd Hirsch doing his best bellagosy. Igor is sitting there with popcorn watching TV, and there's this newscast saying there's a rumor that Halloween isn't going to happen tonight. What? What rumor? And apparently the Dracula is behind this rumor. While he's Dracula, he didn't start the rumor, so calls all the monsters into his castle for a meeting about this rumor that Halloween isn't going to happen. Kind of like a mob meeting or something almost. And all the monsters are all cheap and lame, like that wolf man guy. He's just some guy painted gray or whatever. And some beard, he all sucks, but Frankenstein comes in, he's all goofy doing his dance with those big boots, and I like the fact that there is a Haitian zombie though, it's pretty cool. I never talk about Haitian zombies anymore. No, but he's the king of the zombies though. Mummy comes in, that's going to be one of the worst looking mummies just seen in my life. They didn't even try, really. And then there is the witch, it was actually the witch who started these rumors, refuses to ride her broomstick across the moon. Right. To kind of signify it's Halloween. She will do this, but she's got a list of demands. Going over the merchandising, right, because most of the t-shirts have Dracula's face on and stuff. Let's go with the merchandising. To them, an unrealistic list that they have to make up for. Dracula doesn't want a cave, he will not cave on any of these. Halloween and the history of it slowly gets explained throughout, right, to like the kids while they're watching this newscast. By the parents. Yeah. They'll be somewhere in Transylvania, but they're just these American people, they're not even trying to put on like a European accent. They all force Egor to go outside to try and get through a window, he swings in, he just opens the door and he swings out. Poor Dracula does relent on the whole list of demands. The kids also convince her and they tell her that they love her the most. Yeah. They want to be just like you. Yeah, so she's got a bit of a soft spot for it, I guess, and she does do her trip over the moon, right? But Dracula still has to capitulate to the terms. That's right. And one of them was the disco dance. This is something we'd never seen before. It didn't air where we live, it's more of a Disney channel thing. It aired in the 80s and 90s. We didn't have Disney channel, I guess maybe if you had satellite here, you'd probably get it. We never watched it, so it wasn't something that's a nostalgic thing we grew up with. We went in completely clean. So I watched it for the first time, and I was like, oh, this is, oh, like this. Ooh, it's not too good. You know, I kept thinking, I don't like my monsters to be this silly. Yeah. I like silly, like, you know, House of Freightonstein silly. This morning I watched it before we shot this, and it's like, okay, it kind of grew on me even after a second watching. Okay, now that I know what it is. Yeah, yeah. Then you can start to appreciate, you know, it's just a fun little half-hour little thing, like, what can you do in a half-hour, really? Exactly. You're limited, and obviously you have a limited budget and stuff, so, you know, what it is, I guess it's not bad. Yeah, like, you have to take it for what it is. It's geared towards kids, right? So of course it's not going to have some huge budget and, you know, big production value. Okay, you can give them a pass. Yeah. Pretty haphazardly put together. I think even if I was a kid watching this back in the 80s and stuff, I don't think it would be really my cup of tea. I don't think so either. You know, one thing I can't say about it, it is educational. Mm-hmm. It talks about the history of Halloween, and the whole kind of message at the end, like, okay, we love you for who you are. It's got a good message behind it, right? Yeah, it's got a good message behind it. I can get behind the comedy. Tonight I wish I was dead. And stay dead. Yeah, yeah. And then, of course, like the disco dancing, well, that's just funny. So that moves us forward to Halloween is Grinch Night. 1977. The same vein as the Christmas special. Of course, the Grinch, and he wants to come down into Whoville and sort of steal their night, making his way down that mountain, right? That big mountain. And then the boy that's, like, taking it upon himself to go and stop the Grinch, compare quality of the previous one we just mentioned. Well, this is Top Notch. Mm-hmm. The animation is Top Notch. The songs are great, but it doesn't really have anything to do with Halloween really. No. It's Halloween in name only. It's more of a fall time, October, you know, the whole month of October kind of thing. Do a really good job of, like, for a cartoon, still making it very atmospheric. I can watch this at the start of October. Yeah. No problem. Yeah. You know, they don't make them like this anymore. As nonsensical as it is, like, you know, there's about this much story and this much nonsense and jibber-jabber and songs that don't have anything to do with anything, but it's still an entertaining watch, and it is an artistic piece, you know, it's a piece of art. The Halloween that almost wasn't is more of a Halloween thing. I get more of that Halloween vibe, like it's a better Halloween thing. But it's much lesser. Yeah. It's worse. Yeah. In quality. Give them both a watch. It's a whole half hour each, well, 24 minutes out of your life, to watch something that's a piece of Halloween history. Halloween is Grinch Night is perfect to get Halloween rolling. Yeah. Then you can watch Halloween that almost wasn't closer to Halloween because it's about Halloween almost not happening. Exactly. Yeah. And we're glad it did. On that note, some other Halloween specials that we enjoy. I just watched it today. It came on YouTube right after I was re-watching the Halloween that almost wasn't, and that was the Garfield Halloween special, and I've never seen it before. And it was tons of fun. It was so funny and witty and kind of creepy too, like this is an old man in his chair telling them the story and he's super creepy looking, and Lorenzo Music's deadpan delivery of Garfield is just so good. The cartoon itself, the animation is meant for kids, but the dialogue and it's all written for adults. Yeah. Right? It's obviously you have Charlie Brown, right? I don't like Charlie Brown. Neither do I, but it's an amazing stories segment. One with Christopher Lloyd was on in the 80s where he plays this teacher and these kids they like cast a spell on him. There's a lot of good Halloween specials. It's kind of a thing that doesn't really, with cable TV kind of gone by the wayside, you don't get these kind of like little kind of neat Halloween specials anymore. It used to get in the 70s and 80s and even 90s. Yeah, there's nothing really randomly nostalgic for kids anymore. You can just kind of have on in the background from cable. Yeah. You just catch something. Like back in the day, like you mentioned the Sleepy Hollow one. Yeah. Yeah, well that was on all the time. Yeah. It was Disney ones. I'd always call it the Disney Ghostbusters, Goofy and Daffy and Mickey and they're kind of like going to go bust some clothes. That's right in the mansion. And so we were lucky to have like a lot of random shit that was part of like pop culture history. So that's our little dive into some made for TV Halloween specials. And until next time, keep drinking.