by Nelson
I’ll be completely honest. We put out the Halloween decorations and kicked off the near-nightly horror flick routine last month at my house. I even went out and bought all the dogs creeeeeepy pajamas just to make sure they didn’t feel left out of the festivities. I may love Christmas, but I’m hardly oblivious to the fact that Christmas never fails to pelt you with stress snowballs of astonishing sizes year after year after year – no matter how much prep work you do. That’s the whole point of Christmas in July; I get to have the tree and the music and the presents without having to worry about whether or not my mother is going to dump all the juices out of the pot and serve up one of her signature dry roasts at the obligatory Family Christmas Dinner.
There’s really no reason to delay the part of the year when DoubtFire descends into weekly frightfulness, and there’s absolutely no better or more appropriate place to start than with The Real Ghostbusters classic – When Halloween Was Forever.
Ghostbusters and Halloween go together like Randy Savage and Slim Jims, so it’s no surprise that The Real Ghostbusters series pumped out an impressive three Halloween specials during its five-year run. Granted, that number should be higher, but a show that sees four guys facing down a constant onslaught of vampires, goblins, and ghouls each episode doesn’t have any trouble fitting snugly into the spookiest season of the year. It also doesn’t hurt that two of the three specials feature Samhain, and Samhain is awesome.
“Awesome” is an understatement when it comes to Samhain – the “living” embodiment of All Hallow’s Eve. He is to October what Santa Claus is to December. Actually, the pumpkinheaded phantom is much more motivated than Santa because he wants it to be Halloween forever while Claus is perfectly content to work once a year and spend the next 364 days sleeping while his wife takes care of the reindeer and oversees the elves. When Halloween Was Forever shows that you just don’t get that kind of laziness from an entity who’s spent the last 1200 years imprisoned in a big stone clock. He gets right down to business the moment he’s free – eternal night, eternal Halloween!!
Thanks to being all powerful and dark and evil and such, the OG Pumpkin King has dominion over all ghosts, monsters, and other assorted “creatures of the night.” Even Slimer is powerless to resist his influence and is forced to attend the big Eternal Halloween assembly before Samhain detects “the stench of mortals” and comes maddeningly close to destroying the annoying, inarticulate ball of slime and saving the world from the awful Slimer and The Real Ghostbusters rebranding, but, of course, the boys in grey (and brown, and blue, and cyan[totally didn’t have to look that one up]) manage to save him before he’s banished to oblivion by the world’s most enthusiastic trick-or-treater.
When Halloween Was Forever is inarguably one of the best episodes of the series. It squeezes in everything that’s great about the series over the course of its twenty-minute runtime. Goblins who show up at the Firehouse doorstep and send Janine flying across the room when she offers them bonbons? Check. Big clocks that transform in monstrous moon faces to assist with the whole freezing time forever deal? Check. Does the moon clock literally say “bong, bong, bong” at the top of the hour? Of course it does. There’s even a downtown diner with skeleton customers and a skeleton staff that seems a little intense for a kids’ cartoon, but this was a point where The Real Ghostbusters wasn’t afraid to go hard on the horror – nightmares be damned.
One of the best things about the show was getting to see more development with the main characters than the films had time for. Who knew that Peter studied engineering in college until he realized that it had nothing to do with trains and that his father is a lifelong conman, that Ray is from a town that never thought he’d amount to anything, that Winston’s dad is an adamant skeptic who doesn’t approve of his son’s career, or that all of Egon’s relatives have the same too-cool-for-school blond pompadours? You don’t appreciate how effectively this sort of knowledge can enrich your life until it’s laid out in front of you.
There’s no denying that he’s a highlight of the movies (and his absence is the sole reason I’ll never watch the new one), but Egon is the no-questions-asked hero of the show. The team would be helpless without him. Even if he does ultimately squash Samhain’s plans for the Halloween That Never Ends, you can’t be mad at the guy. Dr. Spengler is a character you want to see front and center – saving the day and setting fashion trends while doing it. He realizes that Samhain is a lot like one of R.L. Stine’s zombie vampire ghost creatures and is terrified of light. So, just when we’re on the verge of perpetual monster movie marathons, free candy, and a license to wear a costume 24/7, Egon rigs up a bunch of proton pack-powered spotlights that stun Samhain long enough for the other Ghostbusters to give him a good, old fashioned busting. Thanks, Egon. I guess.
The first of the three Real Ghostbusters Halloween episodes is unquestionably the best. Not only is it the only one produced before Dave Coulier took over as Peter and snatched away the sweet irony of Dr. Venkman sharing a voice with Garfield while being constantly plagued by a food-obsessed green glob of goo, it’s a part of those glorious early episodes that featured Tahiti – a duo of funky twelve-year-olds – on the soundtrack. If you haven’t heard two pre-teens sing about a grooving Frankenstein, then what are you doing? Head to eBay. Get the vinyl. Don’t thank me. The pure unadulterated joy that surges through your body whenever that record spins is payment enough.
When Halloween Was Forever boasts a legendary villain, a killer soundtrack, and the coolest concept for a Halloween Special ever. It’s an episode where Slimer comes tantalizingly close to total destruction, and the Junior Ghostbusters are nowhere to be seen. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Doubtfire 