Halloween in April!

I always love finding references to Halloween at other times of the year. Easter, for example, is a time of brightly colored eggs, cute bunnies and baby chicks. But just because Halloween is six long months away doesn't mean you can't indulge your scary side. Take Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971, Rankin Bass), which features a terrific villain, Irontail.

Voiced by Vincent Price, Irontail explains that his tail was run over years ago by a child's rollerskate, and ever since that day he's detested children, and longed to ruin Easter to get back at them!

Having a character who hates children and hates Easter, smack dab in the middle of an otherwise cute Easter special, seems so deliciously subversive!

This is his home, where he lives with a pet bat (Mon Tresor) and a spider.

When he cheats in an egg-delivering contest and usurps Peter Cottontail as the new Easter Bunny, he makes several new decrees certain to spoil Easter:

First, all Easter eggs will from now on be the color of mud or new concrete.

Next, instead of chocolate bunnies, they will now make chocolate tarantulas and octopi.

Finally, bright Easter bonnets will now be replaced with Easter galoshes.

As part of a plan to save Easter from evil Irontail, Peter Cottontail ends up touring various holiday-themed lands in a flying time machine. This is represented visually by his balloon-powered vehicle smashing through giant floating calenders.

Here comes Halloween!

In the hopes of delivering his cargo of Easter eggs, Peter paints them orange and black. It's here that the idea of "Halloween Eggs" is introduced. The first one is given to Madame Esmeralda, a wicked Halloween witch.

Here she is flying with her Halloween minions.



Here Comes Peter Cottontail is available on DVD here.

Things You've Always Wanted To Know About Monsters But Were Afraid To Ask!

Things You've Always Wanted To Know About Monsters But Were Afraid To Ask! (1977, Tony Tallarico) is a primer for the monster kid looking to get up to speed in the horror film genre. The book is set up like a giant FAQ, with the history and lore of the horror genre communicated in a question and answer format, supplemented with full-page black and white stills throughout.

Of course the classic Universal cadre is covered in full, including Dracula, Frankenstein, the Wolfman and the Mummy. Other well-known horror icons like King Kong, the Phantom of the Opera, the Invisible Man, the Creature From the Black Lagoon, and Godzilla are here as well.

But you'll also learn about Tod Browning's "Freaks", lesser known films like "The Monolith Monsters" and Toho Company's "The Mysterians", the AIP "Poe" pictures, Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion creations, George Pal's morlocks from "The Time Machine", and Peter Lorre's child murderer in Fritz Lang's "M".

This still from AIP's "The Black Cat" seems comical as I look at it today. But as a kid, it kind of freaked me out.
He's taking off the guy's head---and laughing!!!!

That's fairly deep coverage for a book intended for children. There are even brief asides into the mythology and history behind some of our more popular monsters. We'll learn how Mary Shelley came to write Frankenstein, how Dracula may have been based on the real-life Vlad the Impaler, and delve into cryptozoology with the Yeti, Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot.

Once Upon a Midnight Scary

Once Upon a Midnight Scary (1979) was an hour-long television special for CBS that dramatized segments from three scary children's books, "The Ghost Belonged To Me" (Richard Peck, 1976); "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (Washington Irving, 1820); and "The House With a Clock In Its Walls" (John Bellairs, 1973).

Vincent Price plays a vampire who introduces each story from his castle. Price brings some gravitas to this otherwise luke-warm production. The show has its moments, and the program's emphasis on reading the books is admirable. It worked on me...after having happened upon this program one afternoon, I immediately checked out "The House With a Clock In Its Walls" from the library.

The first story, "The Ghost Belonged To Me", is also the weakest.


A boy investigates mysterious lights in his barn to discover a plaintive girl ghost, who helps him prevent a bus accident at a fallen bridge.

The second story is an excerpt from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".

We skip the exposition and start right at the tail end of the Van Tassel's Halloween party.

Ichabod is portrayed by long time TV actor Rene Aurberjonois, and he is actually quite good. The intense midnight ride more than makes up for the dry party scene that precedes it.







Finally comes "The House With a Clock In Its Walls", the most elaborate of the three stories.

The edition pictured features illustrations by Edward Gorey.


Young orphan Lewis moves in with his mysterious Uncle Johnathan, whom he soon discovers is a wizard.

Somewhere hidden in the walls of the house is a doomsday clock that threatens to end life on earth if not found. Uncle Johnathan stays up nights looking for it.

Lewis can't keep his family secret and tries to impress a schoolmate, who dares him to prove his wizardly pedigree. They meet at the cemetery at midnight to perform a spell to raise the dead.


After seeing this, I tried using the same set of symbols to cast a "headache" spell on a substitute teacher. I'm not saying it worked, but she DID have a headache by the end of the day. Causation, or just correlation?

As luck would have it, they raise a witch named Selenna who follows Lewis home in pursuit of the doomsday clock.

Once Upon a Midnight Scary (apparently also released under the title "Once Upon a Midnight Dreary") was available on a now out of print VHS.

All three books are still in print (though if you want a copy of "The House With a Clock In Its Walls" with the Edward Gorey cover, you'll have to find an older edition.)

Buy them here, here, and here.