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10 Of The Best Halloween TV Special Episodes Everyone Needs To See

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Written by Patti Pauley

The most wonderful time of the year for horror fans is inching oh so close and the appearance of the sights of sounds of Fall warm my cold, ghoulish heart. Pumpkin spiced every-damn-thing, colorful leaves, pumpkin patches, and of course Halloween special episodes on the silver screen. Of course, I relish watching these episodes all year round, but re-visiting them within the Halloween season is an absolute MUST and only heightens all my fuzzies for  everything spooky.

roseanne gif

 

A few years ago, I compiled a similar list complete with watchable videos reminiscing of long ago Halloween specials that included Garfield’s Halloween, and The Halloween That Almost Wasn’t, which you can visit by clicking here. However in this post, we’ll be sticking strictly to weekly TV shows and their beautiful Halloween episodes that celebrated the festival of Samhain. So here’s 10 of my personal favorites from Halloween episodes’ past that embrace the Halloween holiday in all its glowing majesty.

 

10. The Office

“Halloween”

dwight

Surely we can’t make a proper Halloween TV list without mention of The Office! Season 2, episode 5 simply entitled “Halloween”, consisted of the crew at work dressed in their best with a two-headed Michael, three-hole-punch Jim, and of course the magnificent Dwight as a Sith Lord. The episode that sits on the background of the most wonderfully spooky day of the year, lands Michael in the hot seat with Jan spreading his nuts thin over the Scranton Branch Manager having to fire an employee at the office. All the while Jim and Pam are doing what they do best, playing pranks on Dwight.

 

9. Family Guy

“Halloween On Spooner Street” 

family guy

Family Guy is no stranger to special holiday episodes, as they seem to have an angle for even the most obscure of holidays. However, they do Halloween justice pretty much year in and out and Season 9, episode 4 entitled “Halloween On Spooner Street” still holds the top spot in their growing list of Halloween specials. This episode has it all and more encompassing all the wonderful clichés of the holiday with that McFarlane sense of humor. From Stewie’s troubles with trick-or-treating, Peter and Joe pulling Halloween pranks on Quagmire, and of course the all-inclusive party at that stuck-up wench, Connie D’Amico’s house. The party however, leaves a bad taste in the mouths’ of Chris and Meg. A taste that boasts the flavors of regret and shame possibly?

 

 

8. The League

“Ghost Monkey” 

the League

The gang from The League is probably one of the goddamn funniest ensembles ever to be thrown together. Throw in a little Dirty Randy and Rafi and instant comedy gold, every time. In this Halloween episode,Taco steals a monkey from a pumpkin farm they had visited earlier in the day, because well, he’s Taco. Said monkey became agitated at Andre’s Ke$ha inspired playlist- and really who wouldn’t be, and a frazzled Taco throws the monkey out of the window of Andre’s vehicle in motion, because again it’s Taco. Kevin and Jenny having a child, convince the guys to celebrate the holiday in the suburbs and trick-or-treat adult style with a wagon full of booze. Pete brings along a Wiccan girl as his date for the drunken trick-or-treat, and Taco steals her away to help perform a seance to commune with the dead monkey. Just another perfectly ridiculous episode from the series with the added bonus of some Halloween love.

 

 

7. Salute Your Shorts

“The Ghost Story”

salute-your-shorts-zeke-the-plumber

Yeah so, technically it was a kid’s program on Nickelodeon back in the early nineties, but if you remember seeing it as a kid, it was terrifyingly phenomenal. Though not an official Halloween episode, it was played quite religiously on the network on Halloween for a few years, and ultimately it totally qualifies as one. The ghost of Zeke, as told by Bobby, haunts the grounds of Camp Anawana after being killed in an explosion that resulted in a gas leak that the camp janitor didn’t smell with having lost his nose in an accident. The only remnant was his toilet plunger that now bears a curse that the ghost of Zeke uses to suck embarrassing secrets out of campers heads. Cool huh? The other campers disturbed by Bobby’s story, vow to get even; and it is oh so glorious.

 

 

 

6. South Park

“Pink Eye”

south-park-pinkeye

The very first Halloween episode of South Park, still holds up as one of the most outrageously funny episodes to date of this little cartoon that shoves any and all filters right up your ass. It’s also the episode that made you never look at Worcestershire sauce the same way again. Kenny of course is killed at the beginning of the episode and while at the morgue, the embalming fluid gets mixed with the infamous Worcestershire sauce and turns our little Kenny into a zombie, who in turn bites the coroners and they as well turn. The zombie epidemic begins to spread, but it’s totally cool; the diagnosis is merely pink eye folks. On a side note, Cartman’s choice of Halloween costumes in this episode which are meant to piss off Kyle, are so wrong on a million levels, and at the time this aired (almost 20 years ago!) it was kinda taboo to see a cartoon kid dressed as Hitler. Stone and Parker really had, and still have, a serious set of balls to push those controversial boundaries. However it worked,and  it’s still pretty damn funny.

 

 

 

5. Bob’s Burgers

“The Hauntening”

bobs burgers

Bob’s Burgers became an instant classic as soon as the first episode aired, and if you disagree with me then you’re WRONG. The Belchers’ have several Halloween episodes under their belt, however the show that features Dr. and Lady Bobbenstien wins hands down. The episode centers around a haunted house built by Bob and Linda in an attempt to scare the now “un-scareble” Louise. The episode has all the fun Halloween elements one might expect from said seasonal special, but with the beloved Belcher humor. Oh, and a horrifying Boyz4Now song. That shit is pretty scary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCTXlerK8M0

 

 

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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