Garfield’s Halloween Adventure

🎃 Put out the oars and surrender yourself to the mercy of the rivers of time as they take us back to Garfield’s terrifying 1985 Halloween special.

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🎙 Guests:

Jeff Somogyi (@sommerjam, Talkin’ Chopp).

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💬 Topics & Tangents:

1. Jim Davis wanted ‘Garfield’s Halloween Adventure’ to ‘at least scare 4-year-olds’ (The A.V. Club, 2014).

2. Samples of the comic book adaptation, Garfield in Disguise, from Rotten Ink and Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks, including even creepier drawings of the old man and pirate ghosts.

3. The first appearance of Binky the Clown!

4. Jon’s head going through the bottom of a falling jack-o’-lantern could have killed him at worst and concussed him at best.

5. How many kids in the history of trick-or-treating got suckered into getting double the candy for their siblings?

6. The time a raccoon broke into Jeff’s attic and left a hornet’s nest inside a Nativity scene shepherd.

7. Speaking of attics, the Pink Panther advertising Owens Corning fiberglass insulation.

8. The Roy Ogle of the very random passing reference “Roy Ogle’s roots” was a plant breeder at Clemson University. They’re sweet potatoes.

9. The black cat pajamas may be a callback to the killer panther from 1984’s Garfield in the Rough, another good special to put on if you want to give your kids nightmares.

10. If ghosts are real, as this special establishes, was the ghost of Jon’s grandfather watching all the Christmas festivities in that special?

11. C. Lindsay Workman, the voice of the old man, and also Garfield’s grandfather in Garfield on the Town, and God in Garfield: His 9 Lives.

12. The “double burn” glowing effect used on the ghosts reminds us of the Night on Bald Mountain sequence of Fantasia.

13. We had to ask: Did Garfield an Odie really survive the night, or is everything thereafter really Garfield Minus Garfield?

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📼 Retro Commercial Break:

McDonald’s Halloween Pumpkin Pails!

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“Garfield’s Halloween Adventure” ©1985 United Feature Syndicate, Inc./Anderson Digital.
Closing Music: Witch’s Night Out, by Razoreater, written by Peter Rochon.

Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
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Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.