Here’s a personal favorite of mine, if not my all time favorite Halloween special. When I had it on VHS it was titled, “The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t”, but was later re-titled, “The Night That Dracula Saved The World”.
The original title makes oodles more sense, which you’re aware of if you’ve seen this little gem. If you haven’t, boy do I recommend it! Drama, suspense, Judd Hirsch as Count Dracula, a zombie that doesn’t moan about brains constantly, and wait for it…
A Disco.
Plot twist: This awfully nice American family lives in Transylvania and has the same cable package as Dracula at the castle. Here they are watching the news and explaining Halloween to the kids. They’re also concerned that Halloween is no more, but that doesn’t stop them from carving pumpkins and getting dressed up. What enthusiasm! Maybe they’re Canadian.
Dracula calls for the high-ups in the monster world to meet at the castle to see just why things are so caddywhompus. Halloween not happening? All the most important monsters need to get together at Dracula’s castle to make sure this isn’t the Halloween that almost wasn’t!
Who shows up at Dracula’s castle? Well, Dracula and Igor are already there, and they’re joined by the wolf-man, Frankenstein’s Monster, a zombie, and the mummy. They all gather and long story short, the witch is behind all this no more Halloween nonsense. Dracula won’t play nice and what follows is 15 minutes of monsters rubbing up against each other, trying to break into a private home, and more. It’s fantastic!
The boys get into the witch’s place, but can they convince her to do the right thing? Will she get what she wants? Does the wolf-man smell like cheap vodka and a couch?
Watch it for the first time, or again…. because it ends with leisure suits and suggestive mummy pelvic thrusting.
