The Last Great Halloween

Inspired by Thom’s ongoing overview of the Halloween movies, I thought I’d share a tale of my past, inspired by the awfulness that is Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.

Years ago, in college, my friends and I would watch all sorts of awful movies, guided by the philosophy, “If they’re awful, they’ve got to be good!” This led us to such gems as Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity and Beaks (shudder), as well as Halloween 3, one of the worst sequels ever committed. Not “committed to film,” either — committed, like a crime.

The details of this movie are mercifully hazy at this point. It has no relation whatsoever to the Mike Myers stalker from the first two and subsequent movies. Instead, it has a group of occult scientists scraping off bits of one of the Stonehenge rocks for use in a computer chip for use in a mask that will transform the wearer’s head into a mass of snakes and bugs when the chip receives a certain broadcast signal, and there’s an incessant “X more days to Halloween” jingle to the tune of “London Bridge.” And, at some point, the evil mastermind recalls the good old days, saying, “The last great Halloween was over five hundred years ago, when the hills ran red with the blood of children.”

This phrase captured our imagination like few others. It became a regular part of our repertoire of in-jokes, through our college days and beyond. And so it was that, years later, when we four ex-roommates were confronted at Universal Studios with a machine that would speak whatever was typed into it in the voice of various members of the Munster family, we decided to have jolly old Herman Munster say the most disturbing thing we could think of.

So we typed it in.

And out of the machine, in Herman’s chuckly voice, boomed
The last great Halloween was over five hundred years ago, when the hills ran red with the blood of CHIL-dren!

This was loud.

Really loud.

Parents drew their kids in close to them. The security guard gave us a suspicious glare.

We kept it up, Pat Benatar-style:

Hell! Hell is for Hell! Hell is for Hell! Hell is for CHIL-dren!

Man, this thing was loud!

There was only one thing to do: See what it sounded like when Grandpa said it.

His voice was reedier—Al Lewis had a tenor to Fred Gwynne’s bass tones. Somehow, that made it even more creepy.

We didn’t want to overstay our welcome, so we left soon afterward. But it kept us laughing all day long.

Rob