The Pumpkin Song Must Be Preserved

As Mischief Night draws to a close and Halloween 2017 gears up, I find myself doing what I always do this time of year: scrambling to finish my annual watchlist before midnight tomorrow.

"Hurry up, hurry up! We've got 32 hours of horror movies to watch and only 27 hours to do it!"

Halloween is Special(s)

Can I tell you guys something?

I LOVE Halloween specials. I mean, we're talking run-back-into-a-burning-building-to-rescue-rare-VHS-tapes-kind of love here. You want to talk nostalgia? All it takes is one viewing of It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and I am instantly five years old again, ready to don my own poorly devised ghost costume and go trick-or-treating until the last porch light is shut off. I think this is one area where Halloween has a clear advantage over Christmas. Christmas specials, while also nostalgic and frequently awesome, are more limited by plot conventions. Name one yuletide TV special that doesn't feature a grump trying to ignore the holiday, then undergo an emotional transformation and shed a few tears of happiness. Or the one where the lovable group of misfits heroically save the celebration from being canceled at the last minute. Christmas specials are fun and pretty, but also rather predictable. Halloween specials are in a class of their own. The supernatural air of the proceedings means that basically anything goes, so these specials are typically more imaginative and more visually interesting than anything you'll see in December. Not to mention funnier.

"But mom, I can't sleep yet! A new one just came on!"