The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t
Explicit content warning
07/13/20 • 47 min
1 Listener
🎃 It’s the 13th of July, so it’s time for the Advent Calendar House to unearth one of our favorite Halloween haunts, 1979’s The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t, starring an exceptionally great Judd Hirsch as Count Dracula.
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🎙 Guest:
Tom Coombs (TPIF: Thank Pod It’s Funny, @ClassicTomedy).
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. This was renamed for its VHS release as The Night Dracula Saved the World, except no, he doesn’t.
2. Lyndhurst Mansion plays the role of both Dracula’s castle and the Witch’s castle. It’s located in New York state, not far from Sleepy Hollow.
3. The opening music, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, was never in a Dracula movie. Its first uses in sound film were in 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and 1934’s The Black Cat, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
4. My association of the music to Dracula probably stems from its use on Castle Dracula, a haunted boat ride on the Wildwood, New Jersey boardwalk that burned down in 2002.
5. Jack Riley (Warren the Werewolf) was also the voice of Stu Pickles on Rugrats, and did a bunch of Country Crock spread commercials.
6. Judd Hirsch as Dracula exaggeratedly disco dancing in a white Saturday Night Fever jumpsuit is the greatest way to end anything ever.
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📼 Retro Commercial Break:
McDonald’s Scared Silly Halloween commercial, starring Ronald McDonald and the Chicken McNuggets, circa 1986.
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“The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t” © 1979 Concepts Unlimited.
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.
Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.
🎃 It’s the 13th of July, so it’s time for the Advent Calendar House to unearth one of our favorite Halloween haunts, 1979’s The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t, starring an exceptionally great Judd Hirsch as Count Dracula.
****
🎙 Guest:
Tom Coombs (TPIF: Thank Pod It’s Funny, @ClassicTomedy).
****
💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. This was renamed for its VHS release as The Night Dracula Saved the World, except no, he doesn’t.
2. Lyndhurst Mansion plays the role of both Dracula’s castle and the Witch’s castle. It’s located in New York state, not far from Sleepy Hollow.
3. The opening music, Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, was never in a Dracula movie. Its first uses in sound film were in 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and 1934’s The Black Cat, starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
4. My association of the music to Dracula probably stems from its use on Castle Dracula, a haunted boat ride on the Wildwood, New Jersey boardwalk that burned down in 2002.
5. Jack Riley (Warren the Werewolf) was also the voice of Stu Pickles on Rugrats, and did a bunch of Country Crock spread commercials.
6. Judd Hirsch as Dracula exaggeratedly disco dancing in a white Saturday Night Fever jumpsuit is the greatest way to end anything ever.
****
📼 Retro Commercial Break:
McDonald’s Scared Silly Halloween commercial, starring Ronald McDonald and the Chicken McNuggets, circa 1986.
****
“The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t” © 1979 Concepts Unlimited.
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.
Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.
Previous Episode
Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas
🎄 Go-go Gadget podcast! It’s time to spring back to 1992 to take Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas in for questioning.
****
🎙 Guest:
Chad Young (The Horror Movie BBQ, @horrormoviebbq).
****
💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Nick Knacks, a show-by-show video history of Nickelodeon.
2. Halloween 1992 was the year of white kids dressing like Steve Urkel.
3. Inspector Gadget’s run on Nickelodeon got me into Get Smart on Nick at Nite.
4. The time Chad got an crew jacket from the set of the Inspector Gadget movie.
5. The action figure that revealed Dr. Claw’s goofy face.
6. The Inspector Gadget Super Nintendo game, featuring the same alternate theme song as this special.
7. The Mount Rushmore of Frank Welker Voices.
8. Maurice LaMarche subbing for Don Adams for Gadget’s weird version of the 12 Days of Christmas is similar to Jim Cummings finishing Be Prepared for Jeremy Irons in The Lion King.
9. Where’s the camera Penny’s Not Apple Watch uses to see Brain?
10. Jerry “The King” Lawler entering the 1997 Royal Rumble Match in the middle of saying something, then finishing the sentence after being eliminated in 4 seconds.
11. Disney’s Christmas All-Time Favorites.
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📼 Retro Commercial Break:
Cookie Crisp Cereal Christmas Commercial, 1992.
****
“Inspector Gadget Saves Christmas” © 1992 DiC Entertainment.
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.
Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.
Next Episode
Super Mario Bros. Super Show: Koopa Klaus / Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush
🎄 Hey, paisanos! Join us as we warp back to 1989 for a double dose of Christmas segments from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show — the live-action Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush, featuring Santa losing his “transportation” in Brooklyn; and the animated Koopa Klaus, featuring a plot to... freeze the North Pole.
****
🎙 Guest:
Adam Pope (Retro-Daze, Retro Detention, The Retro Network, @hojukoolander).
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💬 Topics & Tangents:
1. Nintendo Power’s Preview of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, as tweeted by Adam, and preserved on the Internet Archive (for now) (it’s on page 93).
2. I didn’t realize till recently the music in the Back to the Future Nintendo game is a sped up version of The Power of Love.
3. King Koopa’s Kool Kartoons, a live-in-studio spinoff show local to Los Angeles and hosted by King Koopa, performed at one point by Christopher Collins, a.k.a. Chris Latta, the voice of Cobra Commander.
4. Captain Lou Albano’s Wrestling Hotline 1-900 number.
5. We map out where Mario and Luigi lived in Brooklyn.
6. Stunt Dawgs, an obscure 1992 cartoon featuring Harvey Atkin playing another character with the same King Koopa voice.
7. A brief discussion on the term “teeter-totter,” used by Mario here, versus “see-saw.”
8. How tall is Mario? Captain Lou was 5-foot-10, though other sources range from 5-foot-1 to 3-foot-8.
9. Preview of Super Nintendo World, coming to Universal theme parks.
10. Finally, I get to talk at length about The Legend of Zelda!
11. Adam’s SequelQuest episode on the Super Mario Bros. movie, featuring a parody of the Super Show theme song.
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📼 Retro Commercial Break:
Pepsi Nintendo Holiday Game, 1989, preserved by Dinosaur Dracula.
Nintendo Power Commercial, 1990, preserved by RobertDigitalGames.
****
“The Super Mario Bros. Super Show,” “Koopa Klaus,” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Flatbush” © 1989 DiC Entertainment.
“Super Mario Bros.” © Nintendo Co. Ltd.
Full show notes with links at adventcalendar.house.
Say hi on Twitter @adventcalhouse.
Theme song by Bronwen’s Ghost.
Full show notes and social links at adventcalendar.house.
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