Ghoulash for the Ghouls (1991)

Happy Halloween!

Well, it's finally here. It didn't exactly sneak up on me, but when you have small kids and family priorities, plus work to think about, festivities sometimes take a back seat. We put up some fall decorations indoors, but didn't get out all the ones specifically for Halloween. I'll assemble our harvest figure this afternoon. With other stuff going on earlier in the week, we haven't even carved our pumpkin yet—though we plan to do so after lunch.

However, I dug out a circa 1991 cassette tape recording that my sister and I made—a radio show we wrote and performed, titled "Ghoulash for the Ghouls."

In Scene 1, Dr. Gazinta and Igor try to figure out who (or what) left a large scratch on a piece of glass in the laboratory. Igor tells the doctor that perhaps The Brain did it. This turns out to be a red herring, though, because later—after the pair search the entire house—Igor finally admits to seeing the doctor himself accidentally scratch the glass.

Scene 2 is a sound-effect-heavy description of a woman's terrifying experiences inside a haunted house—though with an unexpectedly happy ending.

Scene 3 is an episode of "Freaky Family Game Show," a Double Dare-type game hosted by a character who sounds like Dracula, and with The Bride and The Mummy as featured contestants.

In Scene 4, The Wolfman observes Dr. Jekyll drinking a potion and transforming into Mr. Hyde. But somehow, this is less of a plot point than the fact that The Brain (the same one from Scene 1?) is growing larger and larger. In a slapped-on ending, the narrator announces: "It did get bigger. And soon it was big enough to conquer the whole world!" A cover version of "Monster Mash" serves as the lengthy outro.

After the recording cuts off, there is a second, though unfinished, episode of "Ghoulash for the Ghouls," written and recorded by my sister and her friend. The short skit describes the experiences of a boy alone in a haunted house. 

The first episode makes a little use of a Halloween tape titled "Horror Sounds of the Night," which I mention in this post, but most of the music and sound effects are from a later cassette, "Monster Mash Party," released by Parade Records in 1988. Here are sides 1 and 2 showing the track listings:

Most of "Monster Mash Party" was later re-released, with a few different tracks, as the 1996 cassette "Shivers! Monster Mash Party," which can be heard here:

Happy Days: Welcome to My Nightmare (1981)

This Season 8 episode originally aired February 3, 1981.  After a day of everyone asking favors of him, Fonzie has a nightmare about a mad scientist draining his cool. (Synopsis from TV.com)

Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Commercial (1993)

The Halloween that Almost Wasn't (1979)

Originally aired October 28, 1979. Upset by rumors that Halloween may end, Dracula calls his mild-mannered monsters together and delivers an ultimatum: either regain their frightening image, or leave his Transylvania castle forever.

The Brady Bunch: Two Petes in a Pod (1974)

"Two Petes in a Pod" originally aired 8 February 1974; sure, a few months after Halloween...but that didn't keep the writers from having Peter dress up for a costume party as Dracula. The plot is a bit of a stretch: one day at school, Peter runs into a student that looks exactly like him (except with glasses). Thinking about the fun he could have with an identical twin, Peter has the guy, Arthur, go inside his house to see if he can fool his family. Arthur pulls it off, except that Mr. Brady (thinking Arthur is Peter) asks him if he can take out his boss' niece, Pamela, Friday night. Not knowing that Peter had already made a date with Michelle for that night, Arthur agrees. So this obligates Peter to secretly entertain both Michelle and Pamela...at least until Arthur can show up. We see Peter changing in and out of his Dracula costume multiple times as he runs back and forth between the two dates. The tag at the end of the episode also has some Halloween-related dialog between Mrs. Brady and Alice. Incidentally, after this one aired there were only four more Season 5 episodes before the series was canceled. Denise Nickerson, who plays Pamela in this episode, appeared later in the movie Child of Glass.

By the way, while watching this episode I noticed a certain "ghostly" apparition after Peter runs into his double in the school hallway. As Arthur rises into frame, you can see an old man's profile rising with him, just peeking past the split-screen line. Apparently, this was a stand-in used to match the actor's movements between the two exposures. The fact that it's an old man's profile adds an eerie quality to it, and I bet if VHS had been available back in 1974 that more people would have noticed and possibly concocted stories about the ghostly image (like what happened with the unintended appearance of the cardboard stand-in from Three Men and a Baby). Here are a couple of stills of the profile from the video. (The extra profile does not appear on the DVD version of the episode.)




Don't miss the other Brady Bunch episodes: "To Move or Not To Move", "The Slumber Caper," "Fright Night," and "Out of This World."