Trick or Treat (1978, CHiPs)

CHiPs (an acronym of California Highway Patrol) was the cop show for kids that didn't like cop shows. Officers Ponch (Erik Estrada) and John (Larry Wilcox) rarely drew their weapons, and let legions of criminals walk free with a stern warning.

In the world of CHiPs, police work wasn't about using either brute force or ingenious detective work to bring hard-boiled criminals off the gritty Streets of Mean. Instead, a typical beat might entail rescuing a runaway boat on jet-skis, luring an escaped circus tiger back to his cage, or delivering a newborn on the floor of the disco (after winning the disco contest, of course!)

The Season 2 Halloween episode, Trick or Treat (1978), stayed true to the formula.

Nothing scary to see here, folks, as Ponch and John tackle decidedly lightweight incidents like a hold-up woman dressed as a ghost, candy-bag theft by an older woman convinced she's lost her wedding ring in a batch of candy, and a pair of naughty ladies stealing city property for a scavenger hunt.

Sarge demonstrates how to thoroughly search a suspect for hidden contraband.

The biggest treat of this episode is getting a look at vintage plastic Halloween adornments... close encounters of the Ben Cooper kind.

Below we have Bigfoot (mask only, missing the smock, from the 1977 Sid & Marty Krofft show Bigfoot & Wildboy), a Batman (1974, this rendering based on the comic strip), and a Raggedy Ann (1973). Oh yea, there's also a non-plastic vampire and witch, too.

Later that evening we'll encounter this group. Bigfoot again, this time complete with smock, Skeleton (looks like a slight variation of a 1974 version that I remember as being the first costume I ever wore), The Incredible Hulk (looks like an earlier version than the 1980s model posted below), and Darth Vader (sin smock, con cape).

Here's a closer look at Skeleton.


Costume images came from the awesome and topical book Halloween: Costumes and Other Treats. See many more images in a previous post here.

The Haunted House (1975, Disney's Wonderful World of Reading)

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto explore a spooky old house after running out of gas in this 1975 Disney book, The Haunted House.

And no, this isn't Disneyland's Haunted Mansion... although Mickey visited that in an Oct. 1969 issue of Walt Disney Comics Digest (covered at Doombuggies.com).

This dilapidated old house is perched on top of a hill in a forest of gnarled, leafless trees, spider-webs, and a skyfull of swooping bats.

The trio encounters a portrait with shifty eyes...

...a bat-infested library...

...and a jiggling skeleton...

Buy it here.

Mazes and Monsters (1982)

I've name-dropped the 1982 made-for-TV turkey Mazes and Monsters a few times, and since the DVD seems to have quietly gone out of print recently, I thought I'd finally honor it with a proper post.

Based on Rona Jaffe's sensational novel of the same name, Mazes and Monsters is a thinly veiled fictionalization of the real-life disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, a 16-year old child prodigy and Dungeons and Dragons player, who went missing for several weeks in 1979, allegedly after attempting to live out his fantasy role playing obsession in the labyrinth of steam tunnels beneath Michigan State University. It was later learned the incident was a failed suicide attempt, and the significance of Egbert's gaming hobby on the emotionally disturbed teen's actions is questionable at best, but that didn't stop an alarmist media from stirring up suburbia with the Dungeons and Dragons connection.

The premier of Mazes and Monsters was a bit of an event in my circle of friends, as it gave us a chance to spend two hours of quality time in front of the TV with our parents so they could learn all about our strange new hobby with all the funny dice.

Meet Jay Jay Brockway (Chris Makepeace), a 16-year old genius attending Grant University, whose 190 IQ and young age make it difficult for him to fit in socially with his college-aged classmates. He deals with this by playing Mazes and Monsters, a fictional "fantasy role-playing game in which the players create imaginary characters...plunged into a fantasy world of invented terrors."

He also wears lots of stupid hats.

Jay Jay is one of four players in an ongoing Mazes and Monsters campaign, the other three being aspiring writer Kate Finch (Wendy Crewson), Daniel (David Wallace), a wanna-be game designer being pressured toward a career in computers by his parents, and a fourth player mentioned only in the past tense, who mysteriously "flipped out" last year and isn't returning this semester.

This leaves the group with an open slot that must be filled, and Jay Jay wastes no time posting an ad on the student union bulletin board, where he lurks throughout the day so he can accost any person who happens to read it.

Enter Tom Hanks as Robbie Wheeling, a new student to Grant (poor grades at his previous school forced him to transfer. Something about spending too much time playing a game of some kind...)

If you're wondering what a big star like Tom Hanks is doing within 100 feet of this production, you must remember that in 1982, Hanks was known merely as the slightly funnier guy on the cross-dressing sit-com Bosom Buddies (his turn as leading man in feature films Splash and Bachelor Party wouldn't happen for another two years). Believe it or not, the hottest name on the credits had to be Makepeace, having the summer camp screwball comedy Meatballs (1979), and high school drama My Bodyguard (1980) under his belt.

Robbie (Hanks) agrees to join the game after being assured it won't take up too much of his time, a decision no doubt influenced by his attraction to Kate.

Mazes and Monsters does make an admirable attempt to accurately portray the mechanics of the typical role playing game. One player, Daniel, is designated "Maze Master", who runs the campaign, keeps the maps, and controls the fate of other players, each of whom have their own hand-written character sheets and miniature figures. That said, how is anyone going to look up armor class tables in a dark room lit only by candles?



"Your fate is in my hands."

Kate is Glacia the Fighter, Jay Jay is Frelic, "the cleverest of all sprites", and Robbie is Pardue, a holy man, who uses a sword only when his magic fails him.

Robbie is quickly embraced by the group, and an outside-the-game romance soon develops between him and Kate.

But he's still haunted by recurring nightmares of his younger brother Hall. Several years ago, Hall (whose birthday happens to fall on Halloween... lucky boy!) left in the middle of a Halloween/birthday party to run away to New York. Robbie hasn't seen him since, and feels guilty for not keeping a better eye on him.

When Jay Jay learns of Robbie and Kate's relationship, he feels jealous and lonely. In an attempt to reassert his importance in their group, he conceives of an evolved version of the game Mazes and Monsters, to be played out in the nearby "mysterious, forbidden" Pequod Caverns, which have been boarded up and off-limits to visitors since some kids disappeared in them years earlier.

After borrowing a skeleton from the science department and some costumes from theater arts, the group embarks to the Caverns, lanterns in hand, for their new game, with Jay Jay serving as the Maze Master.

After a spooky encounter with some real cave-dwelling bats and Jay Jay's prop skeleton, the group splits up.

Robbie, still affected by his nightmares and having trouble distinguishing reality from fantasy, hallucinates a terrifying encounter with a "Gorvil".

"The most frightening monsters are the ones that exist in our mind."

The game ends and the group leaves the caves behind, but Robbie, traumatized by the experience, continues to speak and act in-character, as Pardue the holy man. His nightmares about his brother Hall become more intense. He breaks up with Kate, stops attending classes, and shows up at Jay Jay's Halloween party in character as Purdue.

After Robbie isn't seen for several days, Kate, Jay Jay and Daniel search his room, but find only an elaborate hand-drawn game map, labeled "The Great Hall" and "The Two Towers", which they recognize as a reference to Robbie's brother Hall and the second book in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy.


The Mayor of Shark City, Murray Hamilton, shows up as a police detective investigating their missing friend. He knows about Robbie's involvement in Mazes and Monsters and wonders what part the game may have played in his disappearance.

They finally piece together that Robbie must have left for New York to find his brother ("the Great Hall"), the Two Towers on his map referring to the World Trade Center. This is the first instance I'm aware of in which Tolkien's The Two Towers is linked to the twin towers of the World Trade Center. The second wouldn't occur for another twenty years, when an on-line petition was launched urging director Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema to rename the second chapter in their Lord of the Rings film trilogy to avoid any perceived reference to the 9-11 attacks. (A counter-petition in favor of keeping the title "The Two Towers" also emerged.)

The trio follow Robbie to the top of one of the towers, and are only able to talk him out of jumping to his death when Jay Jay asserts his authority as Maze Master.

In an epilogue meant to be chilling (but had me giggling), they visit Robbie at his parents' house three months later. He's traded in his cleric's robes for a trendy Le Tigre polo shirt and white shorts, but he's otherwise living in-character, referring to his parents as "the innkeeper and his wife." He invites his old friends to embark on a new quest in the "great forest beyond the enchanted lake" (or perhaps that's just his way of asking for help looking for stray golf balls.)

Spooky Little Rascals (Our Gang) episodes

The Little Rascal's (a.k.a. Our Gang) was something I remember watching very early Saturday mornings (before the current cartoon lineup got rolling) and afternoons after school. As far as I was concerned, it was the oldest TV show I'd ever seen (having no idea at the time that these were actually theatrical shorts, that predated consumer television by good twenty years or so).

Despite their age, the humor and appeal of the characters arrived in the 1970s intact (save a few head-scratching references to things like castor oil or "mush"). Part of the appeal for me was the sheer anarchy on display in many of the episodes... a sharp contrast to the supervised and safety-conscious play environments I was accustomed to.

These kids often operated in an adult-free, child-ruled alternate reality, like an urbanized Lord of the Flies. Either that, or they were being antagonized by a borderline criminal adult authority (e.g. crooked orphanage, evil dog-catcher, etc.) that wholly justified any mayhem they might partake in. Either way, it was alluring stuff.

Occasionally The Little Rascal's adventures took a turn for the scary, and of course those are some of my best remembered episodes.

BOUNCING BABIES (1929)

Our first entry is the only Little Rascals short I'm aware of that is actually set on Halloween day. Not that this has any import to the plot, which revolves around Wheezer's (Robert Hutchins) attempt to return his toddler sister to the hospital in exchange for a goat. But it does provide an excuse for the other Rascals to give him and Farina (Allen Hoskins) a scare while in costume.



THE FIRST ROUND-UP (1934)

In this 1934 episode, Spanky (George MacFarland), Stymie (Matthew Beard), Scotty (Scotty Beckett) and others decide to go on a camping trip at Cherry Creek.

It isn't long after the campfire is lit when Spanky and Scotty, the youngest of the group, start speculating excitedly about the possible presence of ghosts.

SPANKY: I hope it gets good and dark!
SCOTTY: Yea, maybe we'll see some ghosts!

Ironically, its the older children that start to get spooked by this suggestion.

When Spanky notices the lantern is projecting his own shadow on a bridge beam, he playfully strikes various lurking poses...

...which appear as a sinister figure to the other kids.

After the others have fled the campsite, Spanky and Scotty are in for a fright of their own when the lantern appears to move on its own (we can see its merely sitting on the back of a turtle).

As they scramble to escape, they become entangled in some bedding which makes them appear as some kind of unusual beast, causing further panic.



OUR GANG FOLLIES OF 1936 (1935)

Spanky, Alfalfa (Carl Switzer), Buckwheat (Billie Thomas) and the rest of the gang are putting on one of their famous variety shows.

One of the acts opens in a moonlit graveyard. A spirit whistles past overhead.

Skeletons rise up one-by-one from behind the tombstones.

A skeleton dance begins!

Porky (Eugene Lee) provides the sound effects of the rattling bones.

The terrified faces in the audience are priceless.

As the dance ends, the skeletons are lifted straight up into the rafters.

But the scares continue between acts after Spanky tosses off his skeleton mask...

...and it lands on his pet monkey...

...which proceeds to chase a frightened Buckwheat off-stage.



SPOOKY HOOKY (1936)

When the circus comes to town, Alfalfa, Spanky, Buckwheat and Porky hatch a plan to get out of school the following day so they can attend.

They forge a doctor's note claiming they're all sick with colds ("or maybe new monia") and leave it on the teacher's desk.

But when they later learn the teacher planned to take the entire class to the circus the following day anyway as a field trip, they sneak back to the school later that night to retrieve their letter.

Buckwheat, left out front alone to stand guard, is freaked out by a nearby owl...

...which is admittedly a little creepy, with only its glowing eyes visible.

Meanwhile, inside the school, a distracted Porky has donned a sheet...

...which interrupts Spanky's lecture to a frightened Alfalfa that there's no such thing as ghosts.

At this point, all the commotion has awakened the sleep-in janitor.

Buckwheat, attempting to hide, accidentally backs up into the bony grips of an anatomy skeleton...

...which continues to cling to his shoulders as he runs through the school.

The janitor flees in mortal fear of the classroom skeleton, even though he surely must have seen the thing every day he came to work...



HIDE AND SHRIEK (1938)

Our next spooky episode begins when Buckwheat and Porky visit Alfalfa's detective agency, which sports the coolest front-door peephole I've ever seen.

While looking for clues investigating a stolen box of candy, the gang ends up hiding in a crate on the back of a truck that, unknown to them, is headed to a haunted attraction at a Long Beach amusement park.

They overhear the workers talk about delivering a pair of headless bodies to the "murder house"...

...but the kids are unaware they're referring to decorations for a ride, and exit the crate terrified.

Alfalfa accidently activates the ride while trying to switch on the lights. A record player with a scary narrator is triggered.

"Many enter this evil house, but few depart alive! But I will give you a chance! There are two doors. If you choose the right one, you may escape. But if you choose the wrong one... Ha ha ha ha!"

The first door they try opens to this jiggling figure.

The next door reveals this smoke-breathing monster. Porky and Alfalfa try to run, but the floor is a treadmill, and they merely run in place as the creature's arms stretch towards them.

Meanwhile Buckwheat, who stayed behind in another room, finds an aquarium populated by skeletal fish.

When he sits down on an organ bench, he is joined by two skeletons, which lower alongside him from above.

Soon Buckwheat joins Porky and Alfalfa. A trapdoor has opened at the end of the treadmill, and as each child tires and falls, they are dropped through the floor...

...and down a chute.

The exit is blocked by this devil-masked skeleton that swings towards them.

The narrator commands them to sit on the bench. When they comply, a safety bar lowers, trapping them as the bench lurches forward.

A massive buzzsaw, positioned right at their neck, blocks their path, but lifts at the last second.

The terrified kids are deposited at the ride's exit.




SPOOK SPOOFING (1928)

This final episode is also the oldest, a silent episode starring Farina, who plays a superstitious boy, afraid of ghosts.

Through a series of practical jokes, he is tricked into believing he's killed another boy, and carries him to the graveyard for burial. Of course the other Rascals are lying in wait with costumes and props to give him a good scare.

This creepy skeletal horse looks like something that escaped from a Survival Research Laboratories show.


The Little Rascals has been available in several different iterations on DVD and VHS, but just go for the 8-disc, 80-episode complete collection.