TWIG Special - Halloween 2025 - Halloween Traditions With James Rolfe (AVGN) & Henrique Couto - ThisWeekInGeek

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Freddy Krueger here and then you're listening to Mike the
Birdman and the rest of the crew this week.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Indeed, dot Net, Halloween's coming. What are you going to
do about?

Speaker 3 (00:15):
It?

Speaker 4 (00:28):
Could be any thing steam plunk pickle or a zombie
on dog six, Ben Fronklin, Fucking Future, Gandhi Its din Halloween.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
For great Halloween fun. Pick up some spooky decorations at
Walgreens just seven ninety nine each scary sound activated Halloween figures,
battery operated pirate skull which is skeletons more.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
It's almost time, kids, the clock is ticking.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Be in front of your TV sets for.

Speaker 5 (00:56):
The horror and remember the big giveaway at nine. Don't
listen and don't forget to wear your masks.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Hey guys, what's going on you are listening to this
week in geek dot Net? I am one of your
hosts for the cevening. I am Mike the Birdman from Gwelph, Ontario, Canada.
But I'm not alone on the annual Twig Halloween Show.
That's right, it's spooky season, well at least for another
couple of hours anyway. As always, I'm not alone as

(01:24):
I get a chance to talk about all things halloween, e,
spooky and weird here on the show. I want to
welcome my good friend from the state of Ohio and
the world's best life coach that could ever walk the earth.
That's your cue.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
Oh god, see you scared me because the season is
so spooky. I'm Enrique Kuto from a weekly spooky podcast.
And then I'm happy to be here and talk about
Halloween because I'm honestly curious what you people and the
you people in the Great White North do for Halloween.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
I love it.

Speaker 5 (01:55):
But no, thank you for having me man. Always happy
to hang out with you guys and talk about Halloween.

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, it's always a fun time. And of course, welcoming
back to the show our good friend, who is one
of the best and oldest YouTubers around but also just
a part of internet culture, the brainsbehind cinemascer dot com
and a fantastic voice on YouTube. We welcome to the

(02:20):
show the angry video game nerd himself, James Rawl.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Oh, thanks so much. And you know what, I don't
do Halloween podcasts too much. I don't do podcasts that
often in the month of October because things are so busy.
But we've been doing this for so long. It's such
a tradition. I don't want to break the streak. How
long have we been doing this now?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
I think as of right now, this is either a
year fourteen or fifteen, potentially could be sixteen. Literally this
podcast is now old enough to drive. Wow.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Is that's impressive? Like this is quite a streak. Like
there's people who I don't even hang out with once
a year, but we have this thing going through the decades.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, it's so wild to think, Like this podcast started
out back in the winter of two thousand and seven,
and as far as I know, we are one of
Canada's longest running continual podcast And you know, a bit
of a side story, much like you and Hen, I'm
a workaholic. Back when I was really sick back in

(03:26):
twenty and seventeen, I literally podcasted from my hospital bed
in the ICU because I'm like, fuck it, I'm not
missing a deadline. I've got shit to do. I'll die later. Wow.
So it's always a tradition to do this with like
you guys, and I'm really glad like the three of
us have kind of hammered out this is the Halloween crew.

(03:49):
But obviously if you guys have been listening to this,
we can geek. Over the course of the last month,
we've done lots of cool things. We've talked about the
Resident Evil movies. Enrique's good friend Dave, He's been joining us.
We've also been talking about different types of Halloween movies.

(04:09):
We've most recently just did I want to say it
was either the hocus Pocus movies or Beatlejuice. Beetlejuice sort
of this sequels are they how do they fit into
the franchise? I know, Me, Alex and Aaron have done
some stuff, and it's just been a lot of Halloween
this month. This is like the second busiest month of
the year for me. Alex and Ken and all of

(04:30):
them do all the summer game fest stuff with all
the video games. I do all the Halloween programming, and
it's just a fun chance to hang out with friends.
Like you, guys talk about all sorts of things. So
I guess what I'm gonna do here is just kind
of give people the idea of what we're gonna do.
So previously, me, Hen and James, we've talked about our
favorite movies. We've talked about franchises this year, We're gonna

(04:54):
take things a little bit back. We're gonna sit back
in our punkin colored recliners and do something a little
bit more fun. We've never talked about kind of what
makes Halloween so special to us, like going all the
way back to our wee little childhoods and all the
way to the current day what makes it so special.
But one thing that I want to acknowledge before we
go anywhere is hen I understand you just had something

(05:18):
really cool happen to you where you were recently inducted
into the Horror Host Hall of Fame, and I would
love to hear a little bit about that.

Speaker 5 (05:26):
Sure, it's still kind of surreal. But at the end,
at the beginning of September rather at the Horror found
Convention Cincinnati, they host the Horror Host Hall of Fame,
and I was inducted into the class of twenty twenty
five for my contributions to the world of horror hosting,
namely the fact that I hosted a horror movie show

(05:50):
on Community Access Television when I was twelve years old.
Oh wow, and without adult supervision. And I guess I'm
the only one still that's done that. So it was
kind of wild, mainly because of that and also because
I felt like, really, I'm getting inducted now, and then

(06:12):
it was like, oh, yeah, that was like thirty years
ago because I was twelve, so it was a long
time ago. But yeah, so I was inducted into the
Hall of Fame and it's really cool. I mean, everybody's
that you would expect is in it. Elvira, Zacherle, Vampira, Svengoolie,
both Svengooli's the original and the current. So yeah, it

(06:33):
was very it was very cool and very yeah, very
surreal to find myself there. But I'm thrilled about it,
and thank you for bringing it up, because I still
don't think it's entirely real in my brain yet.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Yeah, that's awesome. Congrats, Thank you very much.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
It's so cool just to know that you stand shoulder
of the shoulder with people that have influenced horror culture
for decades. I gotta say, it's pretty cool to be
your friend. I'm just saying total bragging rights. So anyway, guys,
I guess let's kind of jump into today's show. So

(07:09):
I kind of have this structured a little bit differently,
even though I said, oh, it's going to be super casual,
but I'd love to know what everybody's earliest memory is
of Halloween. So I'll go first to give you guys
a kind of second the cook, so we'll go with him,
and then we'll go to James. So for me, I
grew up in smalltown, rural Ontario, Canada, so you know,

(07:31):
the great White North as it may be, And I
remember Halloween being kind of a big deal in my
elementary schools. Like obviously there was like the orange pumpkins,
and like the skeletons that were made out of like
paper that you could buy from the store, which it
seems like teachers always had access to the coolest but

(07:52):
I don't know, it's most basic Halloween decorations, but there
was something about them that was oddly charming, Like you
get those big, flashy pump these skeletons, the bats, the
witches and all that shit. And I remember like teachers
coming out to read us spooky stories, and I seem
to recall them just reading all these amazing little books

(08:17):
to us. And we'd get these books that were on
cassette or even on record, and you could listen to
them in the library, and I know, I seem really old.
I think I as of this recording, I'm forty four
years old. I just turned forty four last week, and
I just remember that really getting me excited. So when

(08:37):
I started to explore what Halloween meant, I started looking
in the more unusual corners of the library at my
local elementary school. And I think I brought this up
on previous podcasts before, but I remember finding a book
and it talked about horror movies and special effects, and

(08:58):
the thing that really stuck out of my mind is
it covered George Romero's nineteen seventy eight Dawn of the Dead,
and it was a little section talking with Tom Savini,
and he was talking how he did the special effect
for the blade machete kill in Donna the Dead where
he sticks the machete in the guy's head and he
pulls it out, and how that was a reverse camera trick.

(09:19):
And my little, like seven or eight year old mind
could not comprehend, like, that's how they do it, That's
how I make the spooky things on movie screens. And
it was just so incredible. And again the book did
not hold back from the blood and gore, but because
it was done in such a I would call it
a tasteful way, because the blood in Dawn of the

(09:41):
Dead does not look real at all, and I was wondering, like,
what why is that blood so hyper red? And it
went into the process of saying, here is how we
mix the blood together to give that visual effects? What
would pop on camera? I really wish I knew what
this book was called so I could find a copy
just from my own personal kind library.

Speaker 5 (10:00):
It's kind of like scream grades.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Maybe like this would have been around nineteen eighty seven,
maybe eighty eight. I want to say, like, because I
because this I was I'm trying to figure out what
grade I was in. I want to say maybe three,
maybe four when I got this, but yeah, like this
would have been in the late eighties, maybe at the latest,
early nineties. But yeah, that's kind of what really got

(10:26):
me into it. And then I remember going to a
lot of video stores, like in our like we had
the ubiquitous Blockbuster, but we also had the smaller mom
and pop shops, and I would just see these posters
and I seem to recall seeing a poster for Nightmare
and Elm Street. I want to say part three, so
Dream Warriors Classic poster, and that really got me going

(10:49):
and just again just realizing I don't have to be
scared of stuff that happens. And I really started to
embrace horror movies and sci fi and all that stuff
because it was cool to know that it was a
guy in a suit, but I wanted to know how
is the gag pulled off? And that's probably my earliest

(11:11):
memory of Halloween and getting involved in all this stuff.
But we'll go into what our first costumes were a
little bit later. So Hen, what is your earliest memory
when it comes to Halloween?

Speaker 5 (11:22):
Man, Halloween was something I would always look forward to
so much, and I think in part it was because
my normal, everyday life was a little more Halloween. I've
realized as I've gotten older than the average person. My mother,
who's originally from Hazard, Kentucky, of all places, she used

(11:45):
to tell me scary stories that she had heard when
she was growing up, like the Lady with the Golden Arm,
which I found out years and years later Mark Twain
had made that story famous. But my mom used to
tell me that story and it would scare me quite
a bit. And my stepdad, who was from Mexico, used
to terrorize me with La Rona and I mean terrorize me.

(12:11):
My memory is that he told me the story every
night before bed. I'm sure he didn't. I'm sure he
told it to me like five times, but I was
so scared of getting out of bed at night. It
was a story about a weeping woman, the ghost of
a weeping woman who drowned her children, and you know,
if you wander at night, you'll get drowned too. And
he tailored it to me. He made it that she
had two little boys. He said that I had that

(12:34):
you know, I would be that if I left my
bedroom at night, I would be called to the stream
behind our apartment building. I later found out there was
no stream behind our apartment building. I mean, he really
laid it on thick. So I already had a lot
of like the spooky stuff going on, and I just
remember My strongest memories are of seeing the Halloween specials

(12:58):
on like Nickelodeon and Tea GIF and kind of being like, WHOA,
everything is different. It's a little scarier right now, it's
a little bit more what I'm into, but for everybody
right now. And I think my strongest memory that helped
me really kind of connect with Halloween was I got

(13:21):
the Garfield in Disguise comic and I still read that
every year around Halloween. And I watched the Garfield Halloween Special,
which is based on that book, and it just gives
me that that incredibly late eighties, early nineties Halloween feeling

(13:42):
inside that I enjoyed so much. And then as I
got older, it became goosebumps as well. Goosebumps would really like,
you know, coast me through the Halloween season and beyond.
So those are like my favorites. And then of course,
you know, fantasizing about what my costume would be, going
through the friggin care Mark catalogs and mailers and stuff
and looking at all the masks or looking at mail

(14:05):
order things, and and you know, in hindsight, knowing I
was never going to order any of those things. They
were too expensive and it was too big a pain
in the ass in the early nineties to be mail
ordering a bunch of stuff. But I would convince myself, like,
I gotta circle this, gotta circle this, gotta circle this.
One of these days, you know, Mom's gonna put in
that order. And then it was like, no, we're going
to kmart, We're going to Walmart. We're gonna find a

(14:26):
costume there. So those are some of my my absolute
fondest memories really, you know, television specials and books and
just the idea that everything had that little bit of
a spooky edge to it in October.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
I love that. Just the fact that your family would
make the spooky tale tailor to you. That is that's
a that's something I wish someone had done for you,
because that's such a cool idea that someone would really
go to that level to like make it real for you.
You and I know, like because the only reason I
know of that legend is because of the really shitty

(15:06):
movie it came out a couple of years ago.

Speaker 5 (15:08):
I kind of liked it.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
That's actually a terrible person.

Speaker 5 (15:11):
That's fair. That's a fair point.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
But yeah, so James, what about you, homie, what do you.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Got well first memory of Halloween? I actually don't have any,
because I could tell you my first time playing Nintendo,
my first time seeing a Godzilla movie. The Halloween is
so ingrained in me that I just don't have a
first memory because it's a I mean, I have the

(15:38):
photographic evidence that my parents were dressing me up for Halloween,
since I was a baby, you know, since year one,
So Halloween is something I was so used to, but
it wasn't until the nineties when I started taking control
of it. I mean basically I lived through all the
eighties in case anybody needs to know. But by the

(15:59):
end of the eighties, i'd say, and especially by the nineties,
I was sort of taken Halloween into my own hands
and always making a point to whether it was throwing
a Halloween party with my friends or it was making
a haunted house in my basement. It was always these

(16:19):
activities that you do to celebrate the season, and then
it would be something i'd look for do every year.
That's just one of those things that you learn at
such a young age, like learning the alphabet, Like you
don't really remember when you first learned it. It's just
kind of like it's always been there. So my parents always,

(16:42):
you know, celebrated Halloween with me, and I remember at
school there was always like a Halloween parade or you
bring your costumes, you come dressed up. I even remember
my school sometimes had like a little haunted house they
would make so that it was cool. But yeah, as

(17:03):
it went on, it sort of became like a hobby
as well, making haunted houses and making horror films in
the backyard. And of course, you know, like you mentioned,
I associate all those TV specials with the season, like
Charlie Brown and the Garfield Halloween Adventure. All those things

(17:24):
would become staples to this day. So it's become a
very nostalgic holiday as well. Like now it's not just
about Halloween itself, it's sort of about sort of reliving
your childhood.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
I guess there's something that I've like kind of noticed.
It seems like Halloween like again, maybe it because I
was born in the eighties and I now had a
chance to witness it throughout my forty plus years. It
seems like in the eighties it really started to take
off to become its own thing. In the nineties it
became kind of cool, and then in the two thousands
it just seems like there was a huge spike where

(17:58):
Halloween be like, Okay, what elaborate costs and can we
do what haunted attractions? Can we do? I don't know,
it just seems like Halloween went under a weird transformation
post two thousands.

Speaker 5 (18:09):
I would millennials getting money.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's gotten bigger every year.
It seems it feels like, you know, Halloween became more
of a business that which is good to see. It's
good to see like haunted houses with like a budget
now and you know, like the type of stuff you
see nowadays is so advanced compared to what it used

(18:31):
to be. You can get really cool costumes, you could
buy really cool decorations. They sell all those like animatronic
figures now, which I mean that would have blown your
mind as a kid if you had something like that.
All we had was these cardboard little like two dimensional decorations,
you know, like the Beestol die cuts. A Halloween decoration

(18:55):
was something Scotch taped up to the wall. It wasn't
like some three dimension battery operated monster that's doing cool
stuff and making sounds. So it is really awesome to
see how Halloween's evolved.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, because like I can't recall when did Home Depot
and Spirit Halloween really become a thing, because like I
I have a friend of mine they work in a
Spirit Halloween in my local mall, and they always have
this amazing elaborate setup with like like you mentioned, with
all these like animatronics and spooky and insane shit. And

(19:30):
I'm like, when did this become a thing? Like, you're right, yeah,
when did this become a business? Like I in Canada
we have a I don't know whether you guys have
had this or not. Do Do you guys have a
store called Value Village?

Speaker 1 (19:45):
Value Village? No, I don't think so, but definitely Spirit Halloween.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, so Value Village. It's sort of like Salvation Army.
It's like a thrift store to place you can buy
like old clothes, VHS's, you know, all sorts of junk.
It's it's a second hand. So in about the mid
two thousands, I'm in college and they used to start
playing these commercials on the radio and it would just

(20:11):
be these jingles of how the hell did it go?
It's like spooky, scary halloovien And it was like people
going to a thrift store and buying the hobo and
the pirate costume and all this crazy stuff. And it
was just buying it off of used clothes. And again
it was just like I never saw Halloween become a business.

(20:31):
And then as you move into the twenty tens to
current day, like you guys mentioned, like like I saw
an animatronic Chucky. Last year I saw this like seven
foot electronic skeleton or like this lurk.

Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, that's another thing they have, Like the licensed figures.
I saw a lot of those this year too. I
think I might have seen that same Chucky.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Yeah, and it's like, when did this just become the norm?
When like like and I guess to.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Kind of a little tracked, I guess if you want
to get a little fact, I just looked it up
because you got me curious.

Speaker 6 (21:04):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
Spirit Halloween apparently was founded in nineteen eighty three, which
I guarantee it. I don't think anybody I know has
heard of it that long ago. But it says that
in ninety nine they had sixty locations, and I think
now it's saying they have fourteen hundred locations across North America.
So I guess it was just one of those things

(21:27):
started small and then got big.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah. Like it feels like again going back to what
hen said, like you would look at Kmar, you'd see
all these things in like Walmart or whatever. Like I
remember when like you get like the the Dawn post
masks you'd see in stores and those weird costumes that
were like garbage bags, then like a really shitty mask
that like you could never breathe out of. And I

(21:52):
always thought that was like, some of those costs are
really bad. Like I am he Man because I wear
a T shirt and a vaguely and a mass that
vaguely looks like him.

Speaker 5 (22:02):
Yeah, and the T shirt has he Man on it,
just like he Man.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
It'll say it'll say the words he Man, like if
it was a good word he Man costume, and he
got the the plastic mask with the strap around it,
which I mentioned that in my recent videos about costumes.
It was the Ben Cooper lineup of costumes, you know,
and then the Don Post masks, which were like the
more like screen accurate kind of things.

Speaker 2 (22:27):
So now there was something that you both mentioned and
talking about Halloween specials, and it just you triggered a memory,
and I remember I went down a rabbit hole a
couple of years ago trying to find it, and before
this recording, I was like, I'm going to rewatch this
just to get myself in the mood. So there was

(22:48):
a Halloween special and I hope you guys have seen this.
It was a Disney one and it was called Disney's
DTV and it was hosted by The Magic Mirror from
snow White. The Magic Mirror snow White was played by
I hate to say this guy's name, Jeffrey Jones from
Yeah and if you know what I'm talking about, you

(23:09):
know talking about And it was surprisingly funny. But what
they would do is they had set popular music of
the time, so it was Michael Jackson, it was rock. Well,
it was the Eurhythmics ello to Disney cartoons and you
get about a minute to two minutes of the music,
but they'd sink cartoons to it, and that I remember

(23:32):
being one of the earliest TV specials I'd ever seen.
Now I'm gonna commit a active blasphemy here. I did
not see Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin till last year.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Oh wow, And I hated it.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
I was like, that's it, That's the Great Pumpkins. You
know what.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
I feel as if you had to see it as
a kid, because I've heard the same reaction from others
who had not seen it, okay, and they're like, like,
why is this so popular? It's so slow paced and everything.
It's like, well, that's it was like innocent like that
those times, you know, we're so different. But yeah, and
you have to just be raised on it. I guess.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah. It's like, what were some of the other specials,
because like, you guys in America would get more than
me up here in Canada. What did you guys see?
Because like again, hen you're part of the horror host,
so you guys would get this on local access. We
never got that in Canada, and if we did, I
certainly never heard of it. So what are some other
specials that I might have never been exposed to. We'll

(24:34):
start with hand and then we'll go to James well Man.

Speaker 5 (24:36):
I mean there were I mean obviously, the Simpsons ruled
the Halloween special game, yeah, for decades with Treehouse of Horror,
and that became a really exciting thing once I was
in my teens. Once they were like, you know, I
don't know, probably twelve or thirteen of them because they
would run those in the rerun syndication more aggressively as
you waited for the brand new one to air. And

(25:00):
then of course Garfield, which was always always great. Nickelodeon
always had a lot of really fun Halloween specials, like
the Clarissa Explains It All Halloween special where they think
somebody's trying to break into the house and she tells
Ferguson that scary story about a severed hand in their
basement and which which As an adult those episodes, some

(25:21):
of them are even immensely better. Like there's a line
where she says, like, that's why we got the house
so cheap, and Ferguson goes, what do you mean so cheap?
Dad's always complaining about the mortgage, and then she says, yeah,
but he says, that's so you'll never know about it,
and I was like, oh my god, mortgage humor. Finally
I've arrived. But there were also like some really weird

(25:43):
Nickelodeon spinoffs, Like there was a special with Mark Summers
and Lance Burton where they go to the Magic Castle
in California and end up basically witnessing a bunch of
magic tricks, but they're in danger the whole time. I
wish I could remember exactly what it was called. It
was called a bunch of different things, but it would

(26:05):
just air. You never knew when it was going to
be on. You never looked forward to it. You would
just like have the TV on on Saturday, and all
of a sudden you were watching Lance Burton have a
sword fight and Mark Summers and a bunch of random
kids on a road trip, which is kind of weird
that there was no excuse. It was like, oh, this
is Mark's nieces and nephews. It was just no, this
is what Mark Summers does. He he just drives around

(26:27):
with kids because he's he's the double Dare guy. So
it was Those were some of my absolute favorites. And Roseanne.
Of course, Roseanne had some of the most fun Halloween
special and Home Improvement. I'm stealing all the good ones
before James can get to them.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Oh that's right.

Speaker 2 (26:46):
Well, James, you're a bit of a you're like a
bit of a media historian when it comes to this
sort of thing. What was the first like what was
the first Halloween special with like a sitcom? Like do
you know? I remember the Roseanne stuff? But like was
there anything before that? There must have been?

Speaker 1 (27:04):
Oh yeah, I mean well Happy Days I know had
a Halloween special because I once did a month of
Monster Madness all about like just random Halloween specials.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
That I would pick.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
It's kind of you sort of have to distinguish between
special or like special episode or you can count them
all as the same thing. But basically it's like where
there's an episode of a running show and that's the
Halloween episode of the year, or there's something where it's
just a one time, like one off sort of thing,
And with those there's just like tons and many that

(27:40):
are forgotten or many that I don't know about. There
was one I remember called The Last Halloween. I'm gonna
say it was like ninety one, and it was basically
like I don't know, like a half hour or hour
TV slot, and it was about these aliens that come
to Earth to get candy because they don't have any
candy on their home planet. But the whole special was

(28:03):
like a tie in with like I don't know, M
and M's or something like. It was basically like a
big candy commercial, but it had these like aliens that
were like these kind of cute, little colorful CG aliens,
like like really early CG.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
And yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
Mean it was just one of those random things. I mean,
you could probably find it on YouTube.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
I'm not sure, but I'm kind of hoping that exists actually,
because I love finding weird loss media.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
Yeah, you know what I love finding is like old
Halloween commercials that I never seen, Like, you know, you
look on YouTube, you could find tons and tons of
these like playlists of just all these retro Halloween commercials.
And I saw one the other day and it was
must have came out around Gremlins too, But it was
basically like a hotel commercial where the Gremlins are staying

(28:59):
in a hotel and and if you remember Gremlin's too,
remember the smart Gremlin that speaks, Yeah, it was like
him on the phone like booking this hotel or something.
And it's the same animatronic the same like voice from
what I remember, like from the movie. And it was
just cool to see that. I was like, oh wow,
Like I didn't know that ever happened.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, I never even heard about that. That's really kind
of crazy.

Speaker 5 (29:24):
Now.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, there was something, Enrique. You used to do a
podcast with our mutual buddy Dave, and it was called
do You even Movie? And you, I seem to recall,
you covered a couple of unique Halloween made for TV
movies that I'd never seen.

Speaker 5 (29:42):
Right, there were quite a few of them. Halloween was definitely,
I mean it was the second banana to Christmas. Christmas
got all of the TV specials and special episodes. But
we covered a lot of different Halloween movies. I'm trying
to think of a well. I mean, one of my
favorites ever was Dark Knight of the Scarecrow. That is

(30:05):
a TV movie that if you haven't seen it, you
need to. It's really creepy. The way I heard about it,
I think it aired in like nineteen seventy seven or
something like that. The way I heard about it was
every friend I had who was a teenager or growing
up during that time period, when you would mention it,
they would like recoil. They'd be like, I remember the

(30:26):
nightmares I had after watching that at seven PM on
TV with my parents. Similar with Trilogy of Terror. That
was another great made for TV horror film that scarred
an entire generation into loving horror movies. So there are
several that are that are really great. And there was
a great period where Dan Curtis was just cranking out

(30:49):
these awesome made for TV horror movies and they would
enter heavy rotation around Halloween time, and I mean he
did it got to a point where he was so
legendary he could kind of do whatever he wanted. They
let him do his own telling of Dracula. He did
his own Frankenstein and they're all really fun. I mean
they're you know, they're a little cheap, but they're fun,

(31:10):
and you could tell he really wanted to make them scary.
So there was definitely that period of time where they
were legitimately trying to scare you and within the confines
of broadcast television, and as far as Halloween specials go,
I want to mention I feel like they were. There
were a decent amount of Halloween specials, but it was

(31:31):
Roseanne that like upped the ante to where everybody felt
like they had to really go hard and not just
have like one Halloween special. Ever, they did do it
every year and they had to get more and more
intricate because I remember, like Family Matters had some really
scary ones. They had the erkele Dahl come to life. Yes, yes,
scared me man, So so yeah, I feel like that.

(31:52):
And another one worth mentioning is all the Halloween commercials
were great. You were talking about the Gremlins commercial for
a hotel. Oh, that's another thing that would really help
kind of feed the spooky season vibes. Was no matter
what you could be watching Matt Locke at three pm.
But that Kmart commercial has goblins in it, and that
you know, and that Pigly Wiggly commercial has Dracula. You

(32:17):
knew that it was spooky season because the commercials would shift,
and that was something that I think is really fed
the nostalgia. And that's why there are, you know, hundreds
of compilations of Halloween commercials over YouTube.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Commercials, just a big treasure trove. And also like how
many celebrities would be in them that you wouldn't expect,
Like Vincent Price was doing Halloween commercials like in the eighties,
I guess, and it's so weird. When I'd see these things,
I'm like, oh my god, I never knew he was
doing well. He would be advertising something that's not Halloween
related though, it would be like like a dish detergent

(32:53):
or something. And it's just so funny to have Vincent
Price doing his creepy like monologue and everything.

Speaker 5 (32:59):
My favorite Kodak film and a video head cleaner. He
did a Halloween h I.

Speaker 1 (33:05):
Remember that, like the Santatic, like I found that one.
I don't remember it being I don't remember seeing it live,
but I remember finding it. And also speaking of specials,
I have to mention, did you guys see the Halloween Tree?

Speaker 3 (33:20):
No?

Speaker 1 (33:21):
Oh yeah, ninety three. Uh, it was direct to TV.
It's really good even to this day. I think that's
one that holds up really well. Just has a really
good animation style, and it's just loaded with Halloween. I
mean it just it just breathes the spirit.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
I always thought it was really cool when people would
commission these smaller studios to do stuff, Like you'd get
stuff from Deek which is now I think is now
defunct in Canada, the Deek Nelvanah Nickelodeon. That's I remember
seeing a fair chunk of Halloween specials on there. I

(34:02):
want to say I saw Buttons and Rusty was a
cartoon special that I seem to remember. But speaking of commercials,
I can think of one network that did it really well.
Despite like ABC and CBS and NBC having air own
Saturday morning blocks, which were fine. You got some amazing

(34:22):
cartoons on them, don't get me wrong. But Fox Kids
in the nineties, they as soon as it turned October first,
cranked up the Halloween stuff. Like I remember it was
a big deal when the X Men cartoon premiered on Halloween.
But they would do. All their bumpers would always be
Halloween filled. They'd always be running contests for all sorts

(34:45):
of cool shit. You could win one commercial. I remember
pretty clearly, and I know you guys have seen this
when they whenever the McDonald's commercials would come out for
the boo buckets, and the McDonald's buddies would all be
like Dracula, Mummy and Frankenstein and all that shit. And
I always thought that was tremendously fun and cool. One

(35:08):
person that carried on the tradition of the Halloween special
for sitcoms friend of the show and friend of mine,
Adam Goldberg from the Goldberg's television franchise. They always went
above and beyond for their Halloween specials. During that run
of their show, they got Robert England to put on

(35:29):
the makeup one more time for a glorified cameo. Well,
it was still fun seeing Beverly Goldberg interact with Freddie.
They had George Siegel in a RoboCop costume. They had
him dressed up as a Ghostbuster. I want to say,
the kid that plays Adam Sean Gambron got to dress

(35:53):
up in a cardboard ed two nine costume and it
was just so ridiculous. But to see someone continue that tradition,
always that always thought that was kind of cool, which
kind of transitions kind of into my next talking point
with us, and it's talking about costumes. We've kind of
touched on it, touched on it before, and I remember

(36:14):
my most memorable costume came from a very bizarre place.
So the first movie I remember seeing entirely too young.
I have two core memories as a child involving movies.
One is the glorious Disney classic Fox and the Hound Wonderful.

(36:34):
The other one is Friday the Thirteenth, Part five, and
the moment that sticks out in my brain is where
the big dude on the motorcycle is riding through the
woods and head gets cut off. Saw that at five
years old? You don't forget that shit. Five at five.

Speaker 1 (36:53):
Yeah, that's a crazy movie. Yeah, that's gotta be like
the most insane of all the Fry the Thirteenth sequels.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, well, it's wild because and it's actually directly because
of hen I have reevaluated that movie and I honestly
fucking love it.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
It's enjoyable. I mean, it's just so incredibly wild that
you know, you gotta love it.

Speaker 2 (37:20):
Yeah, So I remember for one Halloween I wanted to
be Jason, and my parents because I was raised by grandparents,
people in their sixties when they raised me, so they
had no concept of what this was. So they tried
to help me build my first Halloween costume, and I

(37:40):
remember going to the Canadian equivalent of Kmart more or
Less and getting a pair of coveralls, and I remember
being in my basement with a bunch of the really
shitty but expensive fake blood you'd get at Halloween because
you couldn't make your own at that time, at least
there were no easy directions to so I coated the

(38:02):
coveralls in blood, and they had this shitty Jason mass
that looked just off brand enough to not get them sued,
and it would glow in the dark. And they had
this plastic machete that also had blood on it. I'm thinking,
you know, that's not nearly enough gore. So again I

(38:24):
remember just emptying this thing, and my parents were pissed
because I fucked up the carpet real bad. And I
remember going out as Jason, and there was something about
that because I think at the time maybe Part six
had come out, maybe seven so sort of the body

(38:45):
movements and the body language of the performance of Jason
had finally start to come out and really be defined. Basically,
in my opinion, zombie Jason defined how he moves and
like the heavy breathing of Caane Hotter. So obviously I'm
a method actor and I wanted to do that in
the costumes. So I'd walk up to the houses all

(39:07):
big and hulking, and then eventually trick or treat. It
might always be like I have to break emerge, I
want to fucking snickers, but I remember that being so
much fun. And then my other memory, I remember this
going back to those costumes where they were just weird
t shirty things. This one was really strange because it

(39:30):
was that, but it wasn't. So it was this big
fake muscle chest, very much like Wrath of Con style,
but it was like these bandoliers of bullets. So I
remember going out as freaking Rambo from First Blood Part
two because I didn't know what that was. I just
knew that's Sylvester Stallone. He looks cool and getting this

(39:54):
giant like machine gun and just running around going who
and I just thought it was funny. But yeah, I
remember the costume and the weird fake bandolier of bullets
and like the weird headband mask, and I wish I
could you know what, I'm gonna have to go on
eBay later and look for this because it must exist somewhere.

(40:17):
But yeah, so that was my earliest and first Halloween costumes.
Jason and Rambo. How much more eighties can you possibly get?

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (40:27):
They both had the highest body countins of the eighties too,
so it's true.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
I mean, the only thing that could make this more
eighties is if I dressed up as Eddie Murphy from
Eddie Murphy Raw or Rodney Dangerfield. So anieway, hen what
about you? Well, what were your first costumes?

Speaker 5 (40:45):
Man? I was a weird kid and I got obsessed
with being Dracula. I wanted to be Dracula every year
for a good chunk of my childhood. I just because
every year I would be Dracula, and every year I
would think up like how I could have done it better.
I'd be like, oh, but this time I'm going to
get the little like ambulant thing around my neck, or

(41:07):
oh I heard about these vampire fangs that are way better.
Because when you were a kid, none of the vampire
fangs worked back then. I mean, you just good luck.
You start with the plastic ones, then you try those
the ones that stick to your canines directly, but your
canines are super tiny because you're a child, so they
just fall out. It was always an ordeal with the fangs.

(41:30):
But I would every year. I would be like, oh,
I'm going to keep an eye out for better fangs.
I'm going to keep an eye out for a cooler cape.
I'm going to keep an eye out for this or that,
and you know, making my mom slick my hair back
and give me the little widow's peak and wipe my
face out. I just thought that was like the epitome
of Halloween was being Dracula.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
So I've been trying to find an image of Dracula
with the widow's peak because that's what I think of too.
I'm like, oh, yeah, the widow's peak. I can't find it.
I was like, oh, didn't Baila Logosi have the widow's peak?
No he didn't, So where did it? Where did that
come from?

Speaker 5 (42:03):
I you know, I really I have no idea. I
feel like it was one of those I mean, well,
I mean, unless we're in a Berenstein versus Berenstain Bears situation. Yeah,
just in the role of universe. Yeah, because yeah, that's
the thing I remember too, is that like a widow's
peak was absolutely required in order to be Dracula. And
yeah there's like, I mean, you would know better than anybody.

(42:25):
I watched your video by the way, James, about all
the Dracula movies. Oh yeah, yeah, which inspired me to
watch like six or seven of them I have seen
and really enjoyed the hell out of. Now I'm positive
that that Jess Franco's Dracula is the best Dracula as
far as like overall dracula ism.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, that opening is really legit. Yeah, so whole part
when he's in the castle a shot so gritty.

Speaker 5 (42:52):
Great, it works so well. I always believe Jess Franco
was the guy who just he made so many movies
so quickly. He just would stumble ass backwards into genius
every so often. Yeah, you know, like he would he
would step in a prairie dog hole and fall and
make a brilliant little movie.

Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:07):
Yeah, but yeah, there's there's no friggin widow's peak. It's like, yeah,
it's a how was the concept.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
Yeah, just a speculation. It might have been Eddie Munster
even though he was like a werewolf, but maybe that
kind of got wrapped up in the whole.

Speaker 5 (43:22):
Like you know, Lore, I think, I think, dude, I
think you're onto something because I just pulled up a
picture real quick. I mean that widow's peak is there
also illustrations because Grandpa Munster had a widow's peak too,
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Oh yeah, I never even thought about that.

Speaker 5 (43:40):
And and illustrations of Dracula, like those cheesy paper cutouts
you were talking about that would be like taped to
the walls of classrooms and stuff. Dracula always had that
big widow's peak as well. Yeah, so yeah, it's one
of the chicken of the egg thing. I wonder if
it was Eddie Munster or if it was the cheesy
illustrations that came first.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, it's worth worth diving into sometimes.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
So what about you, James, what are your earliest costumes
or favorite costumes?

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Well, only because of the photos from the old family albums,
I know that the first Halloween that I had in
nineteen eighty, I was a bunny, so my parents dressed
me up as a bunny. I just kind of had
that little like, you know, that cut out where the
face goes through.

Speaker 2 (44:26):
You know.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
And the next year was a clown, then Superman, then
a dog, then an astronaut. But if I were looking
back at like this is forty five years of Halloween,
like the one that I think is my favorite, that
was just the funniest idea in general was one time
I went into a it was either a Halloween Adventure

(44:51):
or Spirit Halloween, whichever it was at the time, and
I went in and just was like, Okay, I can't
decide on anything, you know what, I'm just gonna take
a little of everything. So I got like a Spartan mask,
you know, like the helmet, got a blue wig put
over it, a cowboy hat, a Dracula cape, a crucifix

(45:16):
and a and a peace sign around my neck, and
then like a Rambo like bullet you know of those
bullet belts going over everything, and a tie die shirt.
So I was the most mixed up thing you could
possibly be. And I remember when I went to the
cashier with all these random accessories, he was like, what
are you supposed to be? I'm like, I'm just being

(45:39):
the most indecisive person he's He just laughed. I'm like, yeah,
this is good. I hit the jackpot.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
What are you supposed to be? Schizophrenia.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
It's always a decision though, It's like, well, where are
you gonna wear the costume? Like what's it for? And
some years I've even had multiple costumes for multiple occasions
because be like, Okay, well this is the one I'm
gonna wear with my children when we trick retreat, and
then this one I'm gonna wear when I go to
my friend's party. You know that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
So one of the things that's always so cool is
seeing the creativity that comes out online around this time
of year. I remember this would have been in the
late two thousands. I saw a video and it must
have been on like early YouTube, but it was someone
who's Halloween costume used dual iPads or video screens, so

(46:32):
it seemed like you could see through them. NIC's interesting,
and I thought that was so cool. Another guy I
saw locally did a xenomorph chest burster and it would
pop out of his chest and like it would just
like you get a little splash of blood and it
is so cool. Yeah, it was intense and We live

(46:54):
in a culture now, especially in two thousand and twenty five,
where a lot of people have costuming skills due to cosplay.
So you would go to these conventions like San Diego
Comic Con or New York or whatever. And even with
the smaller horror conventions, you see people dressing up. Like

(47:14):
I've seen some of the pictures from like your Facebook,
James and Hens from yours. How people just they go
to these conventions and they dress up. You see like
outstanding Jason's or are the clowns and like or even
weirder stuff like a pumpkin head like stuff that you
just never expect. And I've always had this weird head

(47:35):
cannon of mine. I'm like, I wonder what Halloween is
like in Los Angeles, where the special effects industry lives.
I'm just curious, Like, what kid is walking around with
a fully functional Iron Man suit? One? What kid looks
like the Tara Man from Night of the Living from
Return of the Living Dead? Like this surely must exist.

(47:58):
So what is the coolest costume you guys have seen,
either online or in person?

Speaker 1 (48:05):
Well, I feel like the biggest hot spot is Comic Con.
I feel like every year I've ever been there in
San Diego, It's always just swarming with these really impressive costumes. Boy,
I mean off the top of my head. I remember
a Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago pair going together, and

(48:26):
they it helped because they kind of looked the characters.
So a lot of times they'll sort of dress the
part of what they look like. To begin with. There
was a guy going around as there are two guys
going around as a Kirk and Spock, and but they
weren't the the ones from the show or the movies.

(48:50):
It was basically like what they would look like today.
Like these were older guys playing like basically like what
William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy would look like, you know today.
More So, it was kind of interesting take on it.
But they were still wearing like the nineteen sixties uniforms.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Oh that's cool.

Speaker 5 (49:07):
So I saw too. Somewhat recently. I was that Living
deadfest in Pittsburgh in twenty twenty four, and I saw
a kid dressed as Jordie Verel from Creep Show, you know,
the character Stephen King played, But he had like the
moss all over him and he had a voice bubble. Oh,
that's saying you lunkhead or whatever that line was, and

(49:31):
I thought that was great. But the other one I
saw that blew my mind was there was a woman
in a prom dress with a flame thrower and a
guy in a tuxedo with his face ripped off from
Night of the e from a Night of the Creeps. Yeah, yeah,
from Night of the Creeps, and she had the flame
thrower and he was like looked like the zombie from

(49:51):
the poster. And I thought that one was, bar none,
one of the best ones I've ever seen in my
in my all my days, because the second I saw it,
I immediately recognized it and was impressed by the reference,
the effort, the detail, all of it.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
That's amazing. And such a deep cut too.

Speaker 5 (50:13):
Yeah, that's wild. Oh. I want to mention I did
a little quick research when we were talking about the
Widow's peak. Bello Legosi had a widow's peak in Mark
of the Vampire in nineteen thirty five.

Speaker 1 (50:24):
Oh, that one. I always forget about that movie.

Speaker 5 (50:26):
Yeah, And I bet you that was a much cheaper
movie to license for TV, And I bet it was
a It was a cheaper movie to license photos, So
I'm thinking that might have fed the Dracula widows peak
a little bit more, although it's not nearly as comical
as like Eddie Munster's Yeah it's just a scene, but

(50:47):
I widow's peak, Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
That's exaggerated.

Speaker 1 (50:52):
Yeah, I guess everything with Dracula just got more exaggerated,
like the accent, all the uh, you know, lines of
dialogue that he never said, you know, like I want
to drink your blood and this and that.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
See. I kind of figured it would have come from
something that was easy to license, Like like I figured
it was either something like like you guys mentioned, or
maybe it might have been like a really popular early
television ad that somebody drew based upon something that was
easily kind of reference.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Could have been a Bugs Bunny cartoon or something.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah, so next question kind of again following along with
this cautming trick or treater memories and experiences with this,
Most of my experiences were from a small town, which
I kind of feel is kind of the perfect Halloween experience.
And what I mean by that is it feels isolated

(51:52):
in a bubble where like you've got that small town vibe.
People just want to hand out candy. It's just it
wants to be a good time. And my place that
I grew up was a small village close to the
to the town of Owen Sound, a little place called
Shallow Lake Village of five hundred people, so not very

(52:12):
big at all. And the rule, the kind of ruling
of etiquette, was you couldn't go out until at the
earliest six pm, so about that time. Sunsets usually around
that time, I want to say, but the second the
porch lights came on you could go out, and if
a porch light was off, you avoided that house. That

(52:35):
was the rule. And I seem to recall my village
was pretty quiet, like there were almost every place in
town did it. So that's a lot of candy for
a really, really, really small place. And I remember a
few people did like haunted houses or attractions, like not

(52:57):
quite to the same elaborate of having like a five
foot tall pumpkinhead or something, but I remember a few
people setting up like fake graves and like a Frankenstein.
I seem to recall there used to be an autobody
shop or something, and they took out all the tools
and everything and for a night they transformed this house

(53:19):
into a haunted two level expirited, like flashing strobe lights
and fog machines. It was the coolest I'd ever seen.
But they only did it like one year for sure,
maybe twice, and then I think that place closed and
they left town. I remember that being really intense. I
also never really encountered bullying on Halloween, which was kind

(53:42):
of weird because I was like the town fat kids,
so obviously I'm easy to pick on. But I don't
recall a lot of that happening. But I remember my
trigar treating experiences very, very different when I went to
a larger city. So when I went from the town
a five hundred and I'm moved over to the next time,
which was about twenty twenty five thousand, it was almost

(54:04):
an overload. And I remember I would hear kids in
my class because I went to a smaller elementary school,
they would talk about coming back with like three four
pillowcases worth of candy. I'm likeing, holy shit, how the
hell are you not the size of me? And like,
I always thought that was crazy because I figure, if

(54:26):
I got a pillowcase pillowcase in a half, that's a
pretty good haul. It's time to go home and kind
of pack pack it in. But like I remember a
lot of people just being really kind. I didn't get
too many of the quote unquote bad houses, like very
rarely did I ever come across someone going, here's a toothbrush,

(54:48):
or here's like an apple or whatever. I seem to
recall those circus peanuts being given out a little bit
of the time. Because we're gonna talk about candy, for sure,
so keep that in the back of your mind. There
were these weird I would almost call them old people
adjacent candy, but they were these little caramel kisses wrapped

(55:09):
in this really halloween esque wax paper that would always
be full of pumpkins and black cats and stuff like that.
And I remember really liking those. But I seem to
I don't recall a lot of license candy outside of
little bags of chips and maybe some candy bars, but

(55:29):
it was always like weird knockoff stuff, but it was
never bad. And for some reason, you guys we call
them sweet tarts in Canada, you guys call them rockets.
I seem to recall those being everywhere. I guess they
were just cheap or something. But yeah, and i'd probably
say the favorite thing I would get for Halloween. I like,

(55:49):
I was a soda fiend, so if there was like
a full can of PEPSI let's go. But that was
sort of my jam. And yeah, we ever had any
rumors in our area because it was always like the
big thing, like be careful of people putting razors in
your shit, which I don't think ever really happened that.
Maybe it happened like once, but I never recall that

(56:13):
even becoming a concern in my area. It was like, yep,
just be careful, you know, check everything. And I never
even heard like a whisper of anything bad ever happening
in my area. So yeah, so those are my experiences
with trick or treating and fave candies.

Speaker 5 (56:29):
Hen what do you got, oh man? Well, the the
myths that children would spread during Halloween, there they know
no bounds. The big myths I would always hear were
the multiple full sacks of candy. You'd always hear that
it's like catching a fish that's you know, eighteen feet wide,

(56:51):
but you threw it back in for some reason.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
You know.

Speaker 5 (56:53):
They'd always say like, oh man, we were getting like
so many sacks of candy. It's like where are they?
Like oh I took them home. Yeah, sure you did.
But also there was always this mythological house that had
like giant barrels of candy, like two giant barrels of
candy and a sign that said please take one, and
people would supposedly go there and just like shovel, you know,

(57:16):
giant handfuls into their bags. But again, I never actually
found any place that had anything bigger than like a
big bowl that said please take one. So that's the
kind of thing that I always remembered hearing about. And
of course, you know, having to have your candy checked
was a big one. I do remember one year getting
apples and me and my cousin who was a little

(57:37):
bit older than me, who was really trying to teach
me to be a little shit. He was really trying
to instruct me on the ways of that. He insisted
we like bash them into the side of the curb
and like make them explode everywhere, because what they're probably poisoned,
like you can't see if there's needle holes in them.
And now looking back, I'm like, I think he just
wanted to destroy things, and that's that's fine, But no,

(58:01):
I was as far as the candy itself. I was
looking forward the most to the little sweet tarts that
you would get three sweet tarts in a little plat
paper thing. I look forward to those, and I looked
forward to fun sized kit cat bars. Those were like
that was what I had to have always from the

(58:21):
Halloween candy hall. Like, I wanted those super super bad,
and I would steal those from my house's candy we
were going to hand out. I would steal just the
sweet tarts, and I would steal the fun sized kit
cats for myself if I could get away with it. So,
but there were so many. It feels like there were
a million generic Halloween candies, you know, the weird toffees
that were wrapped in just wax paper that was either

(58:44):
orange or black. We got lots of like those strawberry
bond bonds. You'd get those for some reason. It feels
like there were just, yeah, just so many weird, random candies.
But I'm sure when you're a kid, everything just kind
of is more. So those were my my favorite ones.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
All right, James, Oh, let's see, Well, I posted an
episode on candy which you probably have seen by now.
We'll see. But in that one, I talk about all
different types of you know candy.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
I remember.

Speaker 1 (59:21):
I didn't eat a lot of candy like post you know, childhood,
so whenever I do, it's always it's very nostalgic. It's like, oh,
I remember what that tastes like. You know, it kind
of just comes back to you in an instant. And
I think the one that always stuck with me the
most was those Rece's pieces cups or just the Reces cups.
I guess the Race's pieces were the ones in e

(59:41):
t right, like the little like yeah, which were different,
but the ones that were like the full cups with
the chocolate coating and the peanut butter in the middle.

Speaker 2 (59:51):
I remember.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
The packaging is always like orange. I mean to this day,
it's always has that familiar orange packaging and it's Halloween
color first of all, and then when you were trick
or treating and it's kind of dark out, you know,
you would always be able to spot that. You'd always
see like in the when there's like a basket of
candy or candies being passed out and being thrown into

(01:00:15):
your bag, you always see that orange wrapper. And the best,
which was rare, was when it was like the full
packaging where it was like the two Recis cups. Usually
it was like one, or it was like a smaller
version or something. But no, that had the full size
double Reces cups. That was like, that was where it's at.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Yeah, like getting the full sized candy bars. I can
recall in all the years I went out trick or treating,
I think I only ever came across that maybe two
or three times, which, again, you're right when you see
those giant candy bars, especially the Reese's cups, like, yep,
that's a win.

Speaker 6 (01:00:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
We always used to make fun of how the smaller
version of every thing was called fun size, and they're like, well,
come on that, why would that be fun size? I
think fun size would be like the size of a house.
It's kind of it's weird.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
I love Halloween candy for this reason, specifically because it's
fun sized. It's it feels like that, like if you
want to just satisfy that chocolate urge, you don't want
to buy a full chocolate bar, that's enough. Like I
buy Halloween candy obviously around this time of year, and
I always buy gummy things, like I'm a big gummy fanatic,

(01:01:34):
and I love the gummy body parts now, and for
some reason, I find they have a really long shelf life,
so they stay really spongy and fresh forever. Like there
was this other one that I found last year and
my wife loves it, and I can't find it this year.
It really pisses me off. I'm sure it's out there,
but it's this Haribo witch's brew and it is this

(01:01:59):
amazing using sweet and sour gummy like cauldron and they're
just they're like you can get like I think they're
like two dollars a bag, but there was a place
blowing them out last year, and I think I must
have bought like fifty bags and that last of us
the like entire year, and again it was just amazing.

(01:02:23):
So my wife would always bring those in her person.
We'd call them purse gummies. But yeah, like and it
even feels like Halloween Kenny now has like changed so much.
Like I know there's like certain candies or jawbreakers you
can get where it'll turn your your saliva red into
blood I've seen. I'm trying to think of like the

(01:02:46):
really weird types of like Halloween candy I see I
seem to recall, at least again going back to Reese's.
There's there's Pumpkins now, which is like one of my favorites.
I think that like like Marshmellow Frankenstein's and Marshmellow Ghosts
and stuff like that. Yeah, I don't know, it's it's

(01:03:09):
it seems like Halloween candy is like definitely changed nowhere.
It's more elaborate and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (01:03:16):
And much more name brand, much more high quality.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Well now they have like Halloween Soda, so there's like
the Jon and Soda always does something, but now they
have like this Fanta Chucky and Michael Myers and shit
like that. I tried the Chucky. It's gross, uh, which
sucks because I love Chucky. Like, if I'm gonna love anything,
it'll be the fruit punch you lied to meet Charles
Lee Ray.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
What about candy corn, because that's like the most classic.
Oh yeah, but I've been coming to realize that not
everybody likes candy corn, Like there's a lot of people
who actively hate it. How do you guys feel about
candy corn?

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
I tried it for the first time last year, and
again I went into this thing and every everybody has
I'm gonna be contrarian. I'm gonna love it. Fuck you,
you can't make me try it. Okay, that was not good.
Now I get it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
So regardless of how it tastes, just the appearance of it,
it almost becomes a Yeah, it almost becomes a Halloween
decoration itself. Like there's always got to be like a
bowl of those candy corn out because you get all
the you know, the colors, and it just feels like
Halloween when you see those things.

Speaker 5 (01:04:32):
Oh yeah, and I love I love candy corn. I
never it always was more of like the candy you
bought your your household would buy for yourselves, not the
one you'd hand out, because you wouldn't get little individual
packets of candy corn necessarily. But I'll tell you as
an adult, I mean I've always liked it. But as
an adult, a little little bowl of candy corn and

(01:04:53):
a particularly bold cigar is a phenomenal combination. Wow, because
that honey marshmallow flavor with all that sweetness goes great
with like a really like heavy coffee, earthy cigar.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
It's like combining something like like like something childish with
something more adult.

Speaker 5 (01:05:15):
Yeah, exactly, And I there are Halloween cigars, believe it
or not. Some people. So there's a company called Tatuahe
and every year they released the monster cigars. One year
they did a Freddy, they did a Jason, they did
one year they did a Boris Karloff officially licensed cigar,

(01:05:35):
and one year they did the Monster Box, which was
a cigar box shape like a coffin, and I had
to buy it. I had to have it because it
was too cool. But they're all really bold cigars. So
it's become a Halloween tradition. When I kick back to
watch a movie or whatever and I break open one
of those monster cigars, I always have, Like it's usually
it's candy corner twigs or the candy of choice with those,

(01:05:58):
So yeah, it's it's a perfect merging of like childhood
nostalgia with like the refinement of an adult enjoying I
prefer cigars named after spooky monsters.

Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Wow, that's really cool, and that actually kind of is
a good transition point. So that's your tradition. That's something
you do as part of your Halloween experience. So I
have an unusual one and probably a hot controversial one
that I always get people on my Facebook up my
ass about. So to set the scene, a little bit,

(01:06:36):
and I'm going to get a little bit serious for
just a moment. So back in two thousand and seventeen,
I had a very big set of health complications, and
long story short, I lost my left leg below the knee.
I became an amputee, and I had to spend Christmas
in the hospital. And let me tell you, that is

(01:06:58):
the most miss and depressing experience you can possibly imagine.
It's sadder than what you think it is. So how
does this tie in to Halloween? So fortunately I was
released from the hospital in early twenty and eighteen, did
all my physical rehab, I was cleared to come home.
So in Halloween of twenty and eighteen, I looked at

(01:07:22):
my wife and I said, look, I don't want to
take anything for granted anymore. I missed a pretty big
holiday last year, so can we do something funny. She's like,
what are you talking about? Can we put up the
Christmas tree on Halloween? And she's like what. I'm like, yeah,

(01:07:44):
let's fucking do it. She's like why, Like, because it's weird.
It fucked up. So on Halloween of that year, we
put up our Christmas tree and we would see out
the window of our apartments, does all the kids slow
turning their heads Christmas tree grow go up, and then

(01:08:06):
over the course of the next couple of years, we
would have people again doing the same head turn, but
people would start cheering and people would come up to
the door we had. We had a kid one year
came up to the door. I'm like, you're the bravest
kid who came up for trick or treating and we
had a bunch of candy. Because we have like kids

(01:08:27):
in our building, we just happened to be like super
kind of friendly with But this kid had the balls
to come up knock on our window and say trick
or treats you Like, all right, kid, you just won
the jackpot today. So we gave him like thirty bucks
worth of candy. So I was like, we are that
house that has the barrels. This kid was like, oh
my god, mister, are you sure? Like fuck yes, keep

(01:08:48):
taking more.

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
Who came up to your door?

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Beauties? But but yeah, it was so fun though to
do that. And people are like, oh, we don't put
our Christmas tree up until after Remembrance Day. My dad
like no, no, no, fuck off, who cares. It's fun and
it's always kind of cool because we always had a
blend Halloween and Christmas, so we have a lot of
spooky decorations in our tree. So because my wife is

(01:09:18):
a fucking comedian again I mentioned the amputee thing, so
she went to a spirit Halloween to find a bone
that matches my left leg and got a shoe. So
she put my left leg under the tree. She's like, well,
you want your left leg back for Christmas. Every year
they going you fucking ghol awesome, I love you. Wow.

(01:09:41):
So I up to the ante. The following year, her
dad had passed away, so I got a scull like, fine,
you want your dad dad back. So so now it's
escalating war of Halloween versus Christmas.

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
You both have some sense of humor with each other.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Now, oh yeah, she lets me get away with fucking.
And then at the top of our tree is Jack
Skellington and a Jason vorhee'z mass. Those are our stars
and it's just been kind of cool for us to
do that. And what we also do is while we're
watching or while we're putting up the tree, we have

(01:10:17):
to watch one Christmas movie, one horror movie, and they
can't be anything that we've seen. So last year we
watched I can't remember. I think it was the Kurt
Russell Christmas movie from a couple of years ago from Netflix,
The Santa One. We watched that, which is surprisingly entertaining,

(01:10:38):
And then I showed her a movie called The Bellco Experiment,
which is a movie about people getting trapped in a
building and if there's not one person left at the
end of three hours, they all die. So Battle Royale
but Battle Royale meets Office Space would be a weird
way to describe it. But yeah, So that's our Halloween tradition.

(01:11:03):
So I guess, hen, what do you have?

Speaker 5 (01:11:05):
Oh man? I mean, every year I try to get
a little more intricate with the decorations. When I started out,
you know, decorating my home, I didn't have much. So
every year I try to throw like another couple hundred
dollars into the pot and get more lights and more
statues and things like that. So that's always been one

(01:11:28):
and I usually start decorating like the end of September
and try to be done by the middle of October,
depending how busy the month has been, because October has
always been a crazy, crazy month for work and travel
and everything. But my other big traditions are handing out candy.

(01:11:49):
In Ohio and then most of the Midwest, we have
this weird thing that you guys don't have called Beggar's Night,
which is a dedicated time for trick or treating. And
when I was growing up, it was almost always the
night before Halloween, although in the last five six years
Beggars Night has been almost exclusively on the day of
So I remember when I first was living in New Jersey,

(01:12:11):
I asked somebody when is Beggar's Night and they had
no idea. I was talking. I said, well, when is
trigger Treat? They were like, on Halloween. And that's when
I realized, oh, okay, that's not where I am. Where
I am, they literally will say, like, trigger Treat is
October thirty first, from six o'clock to eight o'clock. They
just that's it. We just have it laid out. There's
no enforcement. You'll get kids later than eight. Sometimes it

(01:12:34):
just depends. But so I'm in my costume by like
five o'clock. I've got the speakers in front of my
house playing the McDonald's Haunted House tape on loop, and
then I'm ready to hand out candy. I try to
watch what kids are coming, and if they're bigger kids,
I try to jump out and scare the hell out

(01:12:56):
of them. I have a fog machine spraying in front
of the or because it's usually colder outside, so when
you open it, the fog sucks out into the cold
air because the fog is hot. I try to have
a lot of fun with that. I like when I
feel bad, but I like it when the kids are
almost afraid to walk up. And then like right at
eight o'clock, as the kids start to trickle away, and

(01:13:18):
my neighborhood's like on a major upswing. Every year, we
seem to have more trick or treaters, so I try to,
like I usually order a pizza, like right at eight o'clock,
so that by the time I'm out of the shower
getting my makeup off, my pizzas here and it's time
to watch, you know, trick or treat or And that's
become a pretty big Halloween night tradition is trick or

(01:13:41):
treat It's a good one, yeah, or murder party. Murder
Party is one of my favorite Halloween night watches. Oh
you've not seen.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
I love it. I've of it.

Speaker 5 (01:13:52):
Oh Man you guys would both love it. It's from
the guy who went on to make Blue Ruin and
Green Room. It was his first film, and it's really
funny and really good. Takes place on Halloween night. It's
it's super funny. It was on Netflix for a really
long time. One of the Vinegar Syndrome labels just put
a blu ray out of it as well. But that's like,

(01:14:15):
if you haven't seen that, that is a perfect Halloween time.
You will laugh your ass off the whole way through it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:20):
Check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Yeah, it morror movies that take place on Halloween or
like have a Halloween party in it. Yeah, you know,
like you mentioned Dark Knight, the Scarecrow like that has
a Halloween party in one scene. You know, it's like
things like that, but especially if the whole movie is
drenched in Halloween, like the way Trick or treet is.
I mean, that's just you know, that's awesome.

Speaker 5 (01:14:43):
No, I agree, there's like it takes place on Halloween
and then about Halloween. There are two different things that
overlap a bit. Yeah, and yeah, I'm usually always hunting
for it takes place or about Halloween. Same with Christmas.
It could take place on Christmas or it could be
about Christmas. Yea when it comes to horror movies and stuff.
But yeah, Murder Parties one my all time favorite Halloween
horror movies and I can't recommend it enough. You'll be

(01:15:04):
quoting it forever after you watch it. It's it's super,
super good and it really skewers, like the the Brooklyn
Art scene, which is really fun too.

Speaker 2 (01:15:15):
So James, Oh sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
Just just thrown it in there since you got it
on topic. There's you would not expect this that there
is one that I saw in recent years that has
that quality where it's like drenched in Halloween excellent production value,
where like every shot outside like if it's outdoors, you're
going to see a big full moon, like a huge
exaggerated full moon like that. There's like, you know, jack

(01:15:39):
o lanterns everywhere there's a scene I think at like
a hay ride or a haunted house, there's a Halloween party,
there's trick or treating, like every single thing is in it.
And I'm like, wow, this is one of the best
looking Halloween movies I've seen. And it's an Adam Sandler comedy.
It's called Hub Halloween, and uh yeah, yeah, I love

(01:16:03):
that one.

Speaker 5 (01:16:03):
No, I love that movie.

Speaker 2 (01:16:04):
It's yes, I'm probably it's on my watch list before
the end of the day. Actually, yeah, we watched tonight.

Speaker 1 (01:16:11):
Actually yeah, Like you wouldn't expect how overboard it goes
with Halloween, but it is just awesome. There's just so
many decorations in every shot and it's it'll get you
in the spirit.

Speaker 2 (01:16:22):
I love that. So what are some of your traditions, James, Well, I.

Speaker 1 (01:16:27):
Feel like it's it's over the course of the whole month.
It's sort of like a season, so I kind of
try to get everything in over that course. But so
I don't really have any one thing that always happens,
but I do have a checklist of things where I
usually cover most of them. But it would be like
go to a haunted house, which I already went to

(01:16:49):
one this year, so I'm already good. I'm covered, which
we show in the first episode of Monster Madness. This month,
I went to this haunted house called Reaper's Revene that
I've never been to before. It's out in Scrannon, Pennsylvania.
It is awesome. It's like you get on a hay ride,
so it has the whole hay Ride thing, which is
great in itself. The hay ride drops you off at

(01:17:12):
the Haunted House and then you go through this like
you know, elaborate thing. Then you go through another one
and then another one. Basically it's like consecutive like Haunted attractions,
and then you get on the hay ride again, and
it's basically likes it's like ninety minutes to to like
two hours of just NonStop like Haunted House action, really

(01:17:36):
good effects, really good you know, lighting and layout and everything.
The actors are great. Like it's just I couldn't I
can't recommend it more. It's just so awesome. It's just
like it was one of the best I've seen. But
every year I try to find another one that I
haven't been new. So that's a big tradition. And then,

(01:17:57):
of course, you know, trick or treatings come back into
my life because I have children, so it's it's sort
of like reliving my childhood through them, you know. And
then like all the other things like watching horror movies,
they find some Halloween candy, you know, all those type
of things.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
So I want you guys to percolate on this because
I'd like to know what is your favorite Halloween movie
or what's your favorite horror movie? I myself, I always
because because I've been friends with Hen for so long,
I challenge myself, try to watch something you've never seen
before or if it's been covered through via podcast. I've
just listened for two hours on this give it a whirl,

(01:18:38):
and you and Hen and Dave did a wonderful thing
about a year or two years ago where it's like,
here's a shit ton of horror movies, check these out.
And I've been I've been challenging myself to go back
and do that, like try something new. And this year,
I challenge myself to try something new. And it's a
movie i'd heard about, but I didn't know what it

(01:19:00):
was about. All I knew was the title, and the
movie was called Late Night with the Devil. Yes, And
I sat down and watched that earlier this month, and
I could not keep my eyes off of this. And
I love horror movies, like as much as I love
Freddie and Jason and Art the Clown. I don't come

(01:19:23):
across many horror movies that the horror slowly builds over
the course of the hour and a half and weirder
shit starts happening, and this one to give people an
idea what this is about. It's about a talk show
host who has a successful career and then it just
it craters. And then suddenly they're back and they're doing

(01:19:45):
a Halloween special, drink Sweeps Week and Shenanigans ensue. It
stars the guy who played Polka Dot Man.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
David Desmouski, and yeah, my buddy from the AVGN movie.
He has a cameo.

Speaker 2 (01:20:00):
Yeah, Like, honestly, I really like his stuff. I've heard
him on a couple of podcasts. He did The King
Cast a couple times in the last couple of years,
and I've just really gotten into him as an actor. Mean,
while I was watching this Late Night with the Devil,
I was like, that's fucking amazing. And then last year

(01:20:24):
me and David Denoyer started doing anthology movies, so we
did Tales from the Crypt, we did The Twilight Zone,
and then we started watching the Vhchess movies and recently
this year, Shutter is the exclusive home of this stuff,

(01:20:44):
but you can find across other kind of streaming platforms.
There's the VHS movies and this year was VHS Halloween,
and this year was to give a mini review. Fucking intense.
The last two stories are almost borderline disturbing, where like
I'm a horror like, we're all horror guys here. This

(01:21:06):
is when I almost had to turn off.

Speaker 7 (01:21:08):
Oh okay, and I'm thinking that's that's I don't know
whether that's the mark of a good film that it
gets under your skin that much, or it brings you
into that world of terror.

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
And because they both involve children in peril, which you know,
whatever you want to say about that. But the but
the story that really got me was called kid Print,
and it very much involves those myths about Halloween where
kids go missing and horrible things happen, and it's it's
pretty fucked up. I'm not gonna lie. But the last

(01:21:44):
one that really got my attention mostly is of how
gory it was, because I can't think of many horror
movies where kids are actually killed, like I think of
Terrifier three, The Blob nineteen eighty eight where the kid
gets liquefied, and I guess, to a lesser extent from
brine yep from dust Hill, Dawn and Friday the Thirteenth,

(01:22:06):
Part six and four. They hint that Jason's gonna kill Tommy,
and they hint that Jason's gonna kill the kids at
the camp, but he never actually does. Oh m, rat's
right where the kid dies because he gets hit. But yeah,
I was like going, I can't think of many about this.
This movie channels terrifyer vibes and I'll just say a

(01:22:27):
kid gets mortal combated and I'm like, holy shit, wow,
but that was intense.

Speaker 1 (01:22:33):
Yeah, you should not looking for anything like like around Halloween.
I'm not really looking to get like disturbed. I'm more
kind of like looking for something that's fun.

Speaker 2 (01:22:43):
Yeah, fun. Yeah. Yeah, So I guess that is my
question to you guys. What's your favorite Halloween or horror
movie or what movie you feel really exemplifies You mentioned
Hubie Halloween. Are there any other ones that people may
not necessarily be thinking about.

Speaker 1 (01:22:59):
Yeah, well, we mentioned and that one that I would
put really high up there. I know, of course, the
movie Halloween has Halloween the title. That's kind of a given.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Satan's Little Helper.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
Maybe Satan's Little Helper.

Speaker 5 (01:23:14):
Oh man, that is a great one. This small island
community off of New York State has a real serial
killer killing people in a Halloween costume in this little
boy thinks it's a game that he's helping him, you know,
kill people, but it's like a video game he's played.

Speaker 1 (01:23:31):
Interesting.

Speaker 5 (01:23:32):
It's a really really great one from.

Speaker 1 (01:23:35):
That on the list too.

Speaker 5 (01:23:37):
Yeah, it's directed by the same guy who directed Squirm
and Blue Sunshine. It's really really wild one. Okay, here's
one that's like a serious deep cut that most people
don't know about at all. But it's from nineteen ninety
one and it's called scary Movie. But it's not that one.
It's from nineteen ninety one and this one's about this

(01:23:59):
group of friends who go to a haunted house in
Texas and I mean, like they're waiting in line and
all this crazy stuff happens. It turns out there's a
maniac on the loose and one of the main characters
he's so scared of Halloween already he starts going crazy
being stalked by this entity or what have you. My
favorite thing about that movie and why it like screams

(01:24:21):
Halloween is it's a very homegrown movie. But it's about
a homegrown haunted house built out of a old barn
raising money for charity. But the thing I love about
it the most is almost all of the movie is
them waiting in line, which is the haunted house experience.
Is waiting in line, like getting the hot chocolates, seeing

(01:24:42):
all the costumes and all the decorations. But you know,
the actual haunted house is usually in oftentimes the shorter
part of the experience versus the driving out there, getting
park getting in line. Now we have a fast passes
and stuff, but still waiting in line has actually become
one of my favorite parts of going to haunted houses
because you get to absorb that atmosphere. Yeah, Halloween music

(01:25:05):
and the costumes and the people running around. So scary
movie from nineteen ninety one. It's not the best horror
movie ever, but it really makes me feel very Halloween
vibes because it's an old, homemade haunted house on Halloween
night and it's a horror movie.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
Oh cool, what about it? Yeah, when it comes to
Halloween horror movies, I mean, I guess the idea is
that it doesn't necessarily have to be a Halloween themed movie,
but just something that you want to watch around Halloween
every year, like a tradition.

Speaker 2 (01:25:41):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
On the comedy side, I think Ernest Scared stupid comes
up a lot. I feel like, yeah, that one's that
one just totally invokes Halloween and reminds you of the
good old fun times as a kid, and then like
as a regular horror movie. I'm thinking since we mentioned
trick Tree mentioned Halloween, I'm thinking to go older, go

(01:26:03):
to like the black and white era. I think really
a movie that just exemplifies Halloween and all the tropes
that came afterwards is the original Dracula. I think it
just has, like, you know, there's the really phony looking
bats flapping around. It's got the creaking door that opens,

(01:26:25):
and like the Old Castle has those really long pauses
where it's so quiet you can just hear like the
film crackle, and it just has that eeriness to it,
that really slow kind of hypnotic pace. I think even
you just put it on your TV around the glow
of like jack lanterns and stuff and your decorations, it

(01:26:48):
just has that spirit.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
That kind of reminds me. I think I talked about
this on the podcast before, but I know James, like
a number of years ago, you me, and I think
it might have been you, Hender, it might have been Alex.
We did a show on Universal monster movies. Yea, And
I recalled a time so way back when I could drive.
I remember going to a drive or a movie theater

(01:27:14):
that was in the next town over, and I had
never seen Frankenstein and I'd never seen Dracula before, and
our local movie theater was like, okay, for like Halloween
was showing a different Universal monster movie. And I remember
the night that I went to go see Dracula was
the most atmospheric night of all. So it's late fall,

(01:27:38):
the leaves are more or less off the trees, and
there's just this low fog hanging over everything. Oh night.
So I drive into the movie theater, go get my
popcorn and just watching this on like this one hundred
foot screen and there was like maybe five of us
in there. Would they say it was?

Speaker 1 (01:27:56):
They said it was a different Universal monster movie.

Speaker 2 (01:27:58):
Which was something like, yeah, like this was Dracula, So
this was the first.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
One that I've never seen, So it's the one I
was talking about, Dracula nineteen thirty one.

Speaker 2 (01:28:07):
Yeah, yeah, and I'd never seen it before because I
haven't seen a lot of black and white hormies until
you and I became friends. So I was like, okay,
let's give give this a whirl, and again sat there
in thrall. I'm surprised how short it was, but it
never overstayed. It's welcome. But the things I remember most
about this movie, it was the atmosphere and the experience

(01:28:28):
of leaving the movie theater. That's what I mean. So
I'm leaving the theater. It's like ten o'clock at night,
there's nobody in the parking lot. And you know how
when it's really foggy out, the orange of the street
lights hits the fog in a certain way. So I'm
walking out in the theater, I'm like, cool, gonna get murdered.
Walking up to my car and I'm just getting ready

(01:28:50):
to drive away, and it's like everybody on earth was
gone except me, and like even like just driving down
the highway, there's no other cars. I didn't even turn
on the radio, and it's like if this was the
end of the world, I think I'm here. And it
was just so intense and like I haven't had many

(01:29:13):
movies be able to recapture that vibe coming out of it,
and like I'm perpetually chasing that high again, like can
I ever get this? And it's not long outside the
zombies already, that's rare.

Speaker 5 (01:29:25):
It can happen now.

Speaker 1 (01:29:26):
I do remember one time seeing fog bats and a
full moon at the same time. It was a It
was a fleeting instance, but I was like, WHOA, that's
probably never gonna happen again.

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
That's so cool, all right, guys, So final question today,
and I think it's probably what brings us all together
as friends and compatriots here, what makes Halloween special to
all of us, So percolate on that. So for me,
it's a bonding experience. I've always loved horror movies. I
always loved special effects. But it goes back to that

(01:30:02):
tradition of my wife and I putting up the Christmas tree,
and it's recognizing that every moment is precious and as
much as we're having fun putting together the Christmas trea
and getting the random kid that comes to our door.
We even have bizarre Christmas ORNs because we don't throw
things out. We have a one armed Simpsons character that

(01:30:25):
is Marge Simpson. We've called Midge because it's terrible, but
it's us sitting there watching horror movies and just bought
it because my wife doesn't watch many horror horror movies,
but she's seen way more Supernatural and Buffy the Vampires Layer,
so well, when I can show her something horror that
doesn't like. She'll never watch Art the Clown and Terrifire,

(01:30:47):
but she'll dig stuff like the Bellco Experiment, or she
probably would like Satan's Little Helper and stuff like that.
And I'm gonna show her Hube Halloween later on tonight.
And it's just it. It's a cool bonding experience. And
then like even as a whole, it's a one thing.
It's the one time of year where it forces me

(01:31:11):
to sit down and challenge what I know, to sit there.
What's a new movie I've never seen? What's a television show?
What's a comic book I've never read before? And I
don't know. It's just as an adult, it means more
than when I was a child, because I think I
can recognize this is a real moment in time, It's
a real good moment of growth and experience. And this

(01:31:32):
is the fact that I can share this with my
wife and my friends, and even last year or no,
this would have been about two years ago. My next
door neighbor Liam dressed up as Michael Myers, and I
didn't have a doorbell camera at this time, so he
knocks on our door and he's holding my cat, doctor Wiley,

(01:31:55):
who's now since passed away, but it's just the Michael
Myers holding a kitten and the cats like love. Me
was just like, this is why I have the best
friends in the entire world, And not saying a word,
he hands me the cat, and he hands me a
fake head that has the Freddy versus Jason version of

(01:32:18):
the Jason mask on a fake head and just takes it,
hands me the cat, hands me Jason, leaves me a
bowl of candy, and just silently walks out. And it
was just such a moment in time, thinking, man, this
is why I love Halloween. I've got like the best
friends in the entire world. I've got the best family.
This is really really special to me. So that's why

(01:32:38):
Halloween means a lot to me, because it is family
and making memories. Hen what about you, my friend?

Speaker 5 (01:32:44):
Oh boy, it's a I mean, you nailed a lot
of really good points about you know, just family and
friends and reasons to get together. It also kicks off
the beginning of the end of the year and all
the celebrations to come, you know, Thanksgiving and then Christmas
and New Year's They're all they all roll one after

(01:33:06):
the other after Halloween. And I always thought that Halloween,
I don't know, it's it's got the spooky element is
a wonderful thing, but when you look at where it
comes from, it really comes from the idea of not
avoiding the people who are gone and avoiding your ancestors,

(01:33:27):
excepting that like death is a part of life, and
that death is a part of all of our lives.
And that's where it kind of I don't know where
it starts to hit me as I've gotten older, as
I've started to realize, like this is about finding joy
in the reality that we all have to go someday
and everything everyone we love will have to go someday,

(01:33:51):
but that we can remember them and we can still
laugh and you know, dress up and eat candy and
watch movies and dream and love just as much as
we ever did. And I think it's a perfect way
to lead into celebrating thankfulness and celebrating you know, lights
and the new year to come and everything that. I
think it's a great primer because it could be a

(01:34:13):
really heavy solemn way, but instead we make it kind
of a joyous celebration. So that's what I love about Halloween.
I love embracing something about life that we don't necessarily
embrace all the time, and that is very important to do.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
So yeah, and then James Buddy bring us home. I mean,
I think you guys got it all all covered. It's
all that everything you guys have said and everything we've
said throughout the podcast. But yeah, to your point, Uh,
we're heading into like the darker season where you know
you're you're about to be plunged into winter and longer nights.

(01:34:53):
And even though Halloween's a modern holiday, how it has
roots with the festival sen and of course back then
as it is famously known that when the seasons are
getting darker, that was when they felt it was like
things were getting scarier in general. I mean like you're

(01:35:15):
your crops aren't going to grow, and like all this
stuff is going to be everything's going to get dark
and miserable for a little while. So they also felt
that that was like the the barrier between the living
and the dead would happen right around that time. So
we're heading into the darker seasons. But like you said,
we celebrate it sort of in a way the Halloweens

(01:35:38):
sort of to get yourself ready for all that that's
to come. So yeah, it really is just like the
beginning of like the turn of the season really and
then we'll come out of it at the other end.
But when we go around the time, we start coming
out of it as Saint Volpurgis Night, which is kind

(01:35:59):
of becoming like a lesser known version of Halloween because
it kind of has a similar background a little bit,
and it's also a spooky night. I mean, we mentioned
Dracula in the In the movie Dracula, they say it's
Saint Vaalpurgis Night when they're when Jonathan Harker, well, in

(01:36:19):
that movie they made it Renfield. When Renfield is driving
to the castle, that's on Saint Vaalpurgis Night, which happens
at the end of April. So that's your halfway to Halloween.
So basically that's sort of what the reverse you're coming
out of it now. So it's gone interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that Halloween always gives
us a chance to get together, and I'm glad, if anything,
it's strengthened friendships. I mean, James, you and I have
been doing this for over close to two decades. Now,
that's that's a long time. Like I said, I don't
have many friendships that have endured this long. Me and

(01:37:03):
enriqueve been friends since the beginning of his prod podcast
Welcome the primetime of Freddie's Nightmare Show. And now I
can text message him and if I have a life
coach problem, I can text on ri K two o'clock
in the morning and I'll get an answer. So it's
kind of fun how horror movies and Halloween has developed
long lasting and enduring friendships, and I'm eternally grateful for that.

(01:37:26):
Oh awesome, Yeah yeah, I said, thank you boys for
being a part of my life and continuing this Halloween tradition.
Next year, don't know what we're gonna do. I'm sure
we'll have something equally as fun. Don't know whether it
will be as emotionally moving, but.

Speaker 5 (01:37:43):
We'll see what happens.

Speaker 2 (01:37:45):
Yeah, yeah, So I guess before we close out, Enrique,
what do you got coming up between now and the
end of the year.

Speaker 5 (01:37:52):
Oh goodness, well, there is so much. Just at the
end of October, we have two horror novella is publishing
the Wednesday and Thursday before Halloween, and then we have
a very special Halloween episode on Friday on Halloween Day,
which will be the begin that will mark six years

(01:38:13):
of Weekly Spooky. In November, we have a novella coming
out on the day before Thanksgiving about Thanksgiving because I
am a big fan of that kind of thing. And
then in December we have a ton of bonus Christmas
stories coming So Weekly Spooky you'll be publishing much more
than twice a week pretty much until the end of

(01:38:37):
the year.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
You're going to kill yourself because you work really hard
on that podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:38:42):
I have my moments.

Speaker 2 (01:38:43):
Yeah, And then James, is what is coming up for
you and cine Massacre. I believe recently you just launched
a novel and you've got a video game that is
coming out. Correct.

Speaker 1 (01:38:56):
Yeah, So I've released a short horror novel called nome Cave,
which is about an abandoned amusement park, and we released
the nerd game on eight bit it's on a legit cartridge.

Speaker 2 (01:39:11):
And Everything I Will Be.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
And Monster Madness. And with Monster Madness, the topic has
been what we're discussing tonight. Basically, it's like all these
Halloween themes, so we covered haunted houses, costumes, decorations, horror conventions,
and candy. So if you want to hear more about that,

(01:39:37):
and then you can head over there.

Speaker 2 (01:39:39):
And then what do you got coming up in terms
of Nerd episodes between now and the end of the Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
Yes, okay, so we just we probably right about this
time when you're hearing this, the Nerd episode is launched,
and in this one, I go through a full werewolf transformation,
so we do like a you know, four hour makeup job,
sticking hairs in my face. My buddy Joe did the makeup,

(01:40:06):
and he also did the makeup on the Jekyl and
Hide episode from a couple of years ago where I'm
old Nerd. So it's always been a great experience, you know,
getting a taste of what actors go through when they're
in the makeup chair. So yeah, that's a lot of fun,

(01:40:28):
did in the style of the original Wolfman black and
white and everything. So yeah's tons and tons of content
that just came out. What's next, like, who hopefully I
have a little breath, but more NERD videos on the
way and more content.

Speaker 2 (01:40:44):
Fantastic, all right, guys, So I guess again coming up
from us here at this week in Geek we have
our we just finished Broke Tober and all the Halloween content,
so to be sure to be checking out that. We
have a bunch of shows coming up during Nove. We're
not quite sure what we're recording just yet. Other than
the weekly show. I'm doing stuff with Luce Cannon, with

(01:41:05):
Dave Ken and Adam. I think we're looking at we
might have some Disney movies or some other stuff. I
know we're going to try and do some more Christmas content.
I know me and Aaron and Alex are working on
more Star Trek content, so you should hear that. If
not between now and December, you'll definitely hear that over
the Christmas break. We also have our annual Holiday Gift Guide.

(01:41:27):
We've already had multiple partners involved this year, so everything
from toys, video games, the books now again and role
playing games. Lots of good stuff to look forward to.
That'll be broadcasting on December twelfth, and then we'll have
our coverage of the Video Game Awards, hosted by Jeff
himself from Los Angeles, so look forward to that coverage

(01:41:48):
as well as well as our Christmas content. So yeah, anyway,
guys again, well, I want to thank Enrique from Weekly
Spookies for coming, and then obviously James from Cinemascar, your
participle patient each and every year, makes these shows extremely special,
and thank you guys for taking time out of your
extremely busy schedules to speak with this fucking idiot that

(01:42:09):
is me. I appreciate it immensely. So anyway, guys, for
this week in geek dot Net from the land of Ohio,
we have.

Speaker 5 (01:42:19):
Been Enrique Kuto from the nerd Basement James.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
All right, guys, once again, I've been Mike the Birdman,
saying have a safe and happy Halloween. And as I
sign off each and night, every podcast, especially in these
troubling times, be excellent to each other. We'll catch you
guys again next time. Right here on this weekend geek
dot Net.

Speaker 3 (01:42:44):
It's life and debt.

Speaker 2 (01:42:50):
If it goes out, it means the death of millions
of people everyone watching. Don't you want to stand that?

Speaker 3 (01:42:58):
People will say it's a bum that's let me say
whatever you want, say whatever you like, just get it
off the air, please you get.

Speaker 5 (01:43:07):
No. No, I can't prove it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:09):
You've got to believe me. Believe me. Take it off
the air now, please, you've got flip me.

Speaker 6 (01:43:17):
We're having technical problems. Please stand by.

Speaker 5 (01:43:31):
You've gotta please stop it.

Speaker 2 (01:43:32):
Stop it now, turn it off, turn it off, stop
it stop, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it,
stop it.

Speaker 1 (01:43:46):
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you
even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.

Speaker 4 (01:43:56):
Thanks for listening to this episode of This Week in Geek.
Hungry for more, check out our website at this weekn
geek dot net. You can subscribe to the podcast, browse
our Twitter and Instagram, and leave your thoughts on today's topics.
If you'd like to give us some feedback, send us
an email at Feedback at this Week in Geek dot net.
Tune in next time, and remember.

Speaker 2 (01:44:15):
Lower your shields and surrender your listenership. We would be
honored if you would join us. Thank you for your cooperation.
Good night,

All Episodes

TWIG Special - Halloween 2025 - Halloween Traditions With James Rolfe (AVGN) & Henrique Couto

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Medal of Honor: Stories of Courage

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}TWIG Special - Halloween 2025 - Halloween Traditions With James Rolfe (AVGN) & Henrique Couto