Halloween Top Movies Selection

     Monte's Flicks & Pics Selection For Halloween Night

     Okay, this really isn't a flicks and pics selection, because this list consists mostly of television specials and not motion pictures. It's because I've never been a person into "slasher" movies, or stories that have a lot gore, or stories that focus on witchcraft and the occult. Alfred Hitchcock suspense movies are about as "wild" as I go, in watching movies dealing with the macabre.
     Listed below is my list of shows to watch for a "perfect" Halloween evening. Okay, maybe not perfect. But at least an enjoyable evening that won't leave you so scared that you can't go to sleep. I'm not listing them in order of being my favorites, but more about the order in which I would show these movies, beginning at dusk and ending around midnight.(?)

1. BEWITCHED - "The Witches Are Out," October 29, 1964. This is one of my favorite Bewitched episodes, where Darrin is asked to design an advertising campaign for a candy manufacturer, depicting witches as ugly crones with warts on their noses. This campaign flies in the face of Samantha's relatives who are trying to promote a positive image of witches for Halloween. Shelley Berman steals the show as the candy manufacturer who gives a melodramatic performance in his role. [I have an autographed picture from Shelley Berman.]

2. BEWITCHED - "Trick Or Treat," October 28, 1965. If there is one show on my list that must be dropped due to time constraints, I would drop this one. This episode doesn't bring the laughs to me as much as the previous Bewitched episode. Endora wants Samantha to go away with her to celebrate a traditional Halloween ceremony, but Darrin forbids it. Seeking revenge, Endora turns herself into a little girl in a gypsy costume and turns Darrin into a werewolf.

3. PEANUTS - "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," 1966. This Peanuts classic always get a laugh from me when the gang goes trick-or-treating. After the third house where they collect treats, and after the third time when they're comparing notes about what they got, and Charlie Brown always says "I got a rock"...THAT'S when I lose it. Charlie Brown, the ubiquitous born loser, endures hardships that we can all relate to at one time or another.

4. THE TWILIGHT ZONE - "Walking Distance," October 30, 1959. This is the only show on my list that does not have a Halloween theme, but I would be remiss is if I didn't include at least one episode of The Twilight Zone on my Halloween list. (It helps that this episode originally aired the night before Halloween.) Ironically, this is not a scary episode, but a heartwarming, nostalgic episode from the series. In fact, numerous critics acclaim "Walking Distance" as the best episode of the series. It's about a man who inadvertently goes back in time to his hometown, and relives past memories, and re-visits his parents while they were still alive.

5. THE PAUL LYNDE HALLOWEEN SPECIAL - October 29, 1976. I'm not a big fan of the rock group KISS, so there are some things that detract me from this one-time television special. Nonetheless, I wouldn't miss watching this campy classic that unites Witchiepoo from Pufnstuf and the wicked witch of the West from The Wizard Of Oz. Florence Henderson from The Brady Bunch singing the song Black Magic adds to the cornball antics of this offbeat special.

6. THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW - 1980. I saw this version, starring Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane, in 1980 at the Starlite Indoor Theater in the Green district of Roseburg. This version of the Washington Irving classic depicts a "kinder, gentler" version of Sleepy Hollow, than does the 1999 remake (more graphically violent) starring Johnny Depp, or the Fox-network series (more into witchcraft and the occult) currently airing on television. I played Ichabod Crane when my seventh grade class performed the play before our school, so I naturally would include some version of this movie on my Halloween night list.