80s Halloween Nostalgia: Scary Movies, Candy & Costumes

What markers?

Oh thank you, Doctor.

Hey all, welcome to Past Times at 80s High. Got a good one for you today. Happy October, and we are going to do a bit of a Halloween episode, as we thought that would be quite fitting. So, um, what we're gonna do is another Halloween hodgepodge. I guess that's what we shall name the show, boys. Have Mark, Kevin, and Dongo here, and myself, AJ. How are you doing, boys?

Fantastic.

Excellent. All right. So yeah, just a little bit of a hodgepodge. Just tried to come up with a few categories that you know things about Halloween and things that will take us all back to to the old nostalgia we love. And anyway, yeah, you guys got anything to say about it before I I kick it off? Yeah, let's roll. Let's do it. A little s little spectacular here. So what we're gonna do, uh, we're gonna start out with number one, and this one's gonna be an A and B category. And Mark, you're gonna have the honors. And this one is going to be your favorite treat. And then part B shall be your most disappointing treat. So off to you, my Brad Hare.

Okay, well, you know, I grew up in Littleton, New Hampshire, and that's during my trick of treating years. And I mean, my favorite treat back in those days was a Kit Kat. It would be my favorite treat in 2024 as well. I love little mini candy chocolate bars, candy bars, whatever. Um, and I had the teeth to show it back in those days. But uh my least favorite treat, I don't think they really give you out stuff, you know, like fruit and whatever, but apples. Apples are, you know, I mean, well, at least if you could expect a razor blade in it, that would have been a little more uh entertaining. But um, I don't know, AJ, you're probably too young to remember them, you know, next to the greenhouse that we lived in.

No, I remember it well.

Well, anyway, they were both senile and they would scream at each other all day. But yet we would still go there. I think mom and dad used to say, Oh, you gotta go in there, you're gonna go in there. I knocked on the door one year and they were like, huh? Halloween, what? What do you want is Halloween? And uh and she came out and gave me like two pennies. It's like that was pretty disappointing. So it was but but we, you know, we didn't have parents walking us all over town. I know we were up and down, we went everywhere, and nobody even had a fear about it. So it was a lot of fun, and you know, I like chocolate, I like all kinds of candy, and that's my number one.

I was back back then, Kit Kat was was my favorite back then as well. Um, but you're right, everybody is is it's what is it, trunk or treat now, where you like meeting somewhere. No shit. I mean, where's the sense of adventure where you get blinded by some costume and walking down a dark, unlit road late at night when the wind chill is 40 below, and you know, did you earned your fucking candy?

You earned it, you damn fucking straight you did. That's right. Your feet were wet, muddy, fucking exactly. All right, awesome. All right, so I'm gonna be boring as fuck here. All right, be but I had to go with my favorite and my most disappointing. My favorite was, you know, we'd you'd always know the correct houses. You'd learn after a few years, like who gave out the full-size candy bars and whatnot. But mine is the old, boring, straight out, full size Hershey bar.

I just with almonds and without them.

No, well, I love both, but without, I'm a milk chocolate dude. I'm not the fucking dark chocolate guy, and I just I like it all, but uh just Hershey to me still. I'd take it over a fucking crunched up piece of German chocolate. Just I don't know, Hershey chocolate is just my favorite. My least favorite is probably gonna be an abomination to you guys, but I always hated the person that gave me the friggin' penny size piece of bit o honey. They'd yank my teeth out, they'd take I think it's because I was so little and had so much candy that I just wanted to get to the next thing, and it took me 45 fucking minutes to eat the piece of bit o honey. But this was a bump, the speed bump of your goodie bag, the speed bump of candy, yes, and it was I don't know, it was huge back then. Like, I I don't even know if they exist anymore, to be honest.

But I haven't seen them in years, but I'm guessing they were huge back then because everybody was poor, except for the people who were given the full-size candy bars. Oh, yeah, really rich, but you could probably get like a 50-pound bag of bitto honey for a buck ninety nine. Exactly.

I actually kind of like bit of honey, but that's hey man, I didn't hate them. The flavor was great, I just hated the time consumption, right?

Uh dungo to you. All right, so hey, your chocolate's in my peanut butter. Your peanut butter's in my peanut butter. My chocolate. My favorite by far is Reese's peanut butter cups. I love the things.

Hey, you bought your chocolate in my peanut butter. What?

Delicious.

Yeah, you'd always love it if they gave you the full one, so you get two, or you get the grand that's got like four. Yes. Usually you get the one, you know, the little tiny ones too, but they're fine too. But so that's my favorite. With the foil, yeah, the little tiny ones. Fuck the foil. Oh, Louisa's peanut butter cup. Oh, I forgot. My least favorite treat was, and this is back in Massachusetts, 1970s-ish, they used to have these like paper bags that were like three by five paper bag, and people would put like a pencil or like a uh fucking spider ring or something stupid in there. I remember a couple little things, you know a mailing ballet. They thought they were being cool, you know, giving like I don't need a fucking pencil, you know.

Pencil tasting, Donald.

Yeah. That's that's my thing. You know, they had the little boo bags where they were street bags, yeah. Those were miserable. You always knew they filtered. When you think about it, you know, these people probably put a lot of time into it or whatever, but it's like when you're a kid, you just like give me the candy.

Yeah, they put the wrong type of time into it, is what they did.

Oh god, yeah. Crazy newspaper head man, give me some candy. Uh all right, Kev, to you. All right. Well, going back to that era, and I again another one I don't think exists anymore, and probably a good thing. I loved the fucking Charleston shoe. But I'm pretty sure that they were designed by dentists because 10 feet long, aren't they? Yeah, and they were sp well, you could get the you could get the mini ones later on, but they were specifically designed to rip your fillings right out of your head. I mean, there's I I must have lost at least two or three fillings before my mother was like, we're done, you can't have those anymore. I don't know what they were. I mean, it was like there was chocolate on the outside of it, but there was this white caulking extraction thing on the on the inside, you know. But I remember them being, you know, like AJ was talking about the bit of honey. Those ones were, I mean, they didn't call it Charleston shoot for no reason at all. You were you were chewing on that for a while, but they were delicious. Yeah, they were I mean, I loved them, but another speech just didn't have them, didn't have a dentist in my back pocket. So we did away with those. Um, as far as my least favorite, I think it's a dead tie between uh candy corn and necko waivers. Oh, candy candy corn, good way. I think maybe candy corn was worse because even today I look at it and I'm like, I really love Halloween, but I don't like candy corn do you see?

Wow, you do? Well, here, you can have mine.

That looks like it would be good. Like, what is it?

Wax?

I mean, it's like I don't know what it's it has no flavor. Yeah, it's got all these bright colors, and it tastes like wax and shit. Nothing. Yeah, and and then the Neko wafers, it's like you got this sleeve of them and this wax paper, and they're all different colors, but they all taste like coagulated wallpaper paste. There's there's I don't know what they were saying, communion wafers they had left over, and they were like, ah, let's give them out at Halloween. It's like no flavor to them at all, suck all the moisture out of your mouth.

Oh, yeah.

Terrible, absolutely terrible.

Neko wafers.

That's a no joy in those at all.

Before we go on, you I mean, you talked about uh dentist wet dreams as far as money. How about sugar daddy, sugar mamas, sugar?

Yeah, sugar babies, definitely sugar babies, sugar babies, yeah.

Christopher Guest SNL sketch, sugar babies, chocolate babies, chocolate babies. Um but there was a lot of those things. You think about it. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I went to the dentist as a kid, if you had a good checkup, he gave you a lollipop. You later on you got a lollipop. I'm thinking to myself, nobody caught on to that. My parents didn't catch on to that. Exactly. You don't have any feelings here.

Alrighty. So here we are. We're going to number two to you, brother. And this is going to be now, this is not necessarily your own, it can be, but just your favorite Halloween costume.

Okay, well, I'll take you back to Gold's Gym back in the early 90s, mid whatever it was. And there was a guy that used to call me, his name is Matt. He used to call me Marvelous Mark. So I came up with the Marvelous Mark. I remember this. Yeah, because it we we I took it to David's one of David's gigs. But no, the funny thing is though, Valerie and the uh the daughters, probably Nicole, um, they you know, they had me wearing fucking tights. And, you know, it had an MM up here. I had a mask and everything. What really bothered me was when I went into the warehouse at Environment International, and uh the uh one of the a very cute warehouse girl was pointing, and I swear to God, she was pointing at the junk, and I just wanted to scream, I have a grower not a shower, and it was so embarrassing, and I did not wear tights out to David's gig that night. So it was my favorite, but I can't believe what they did to me. She must have known it was a grower not a shower?

I mean, my wife, well, you know, if you go back to some of the early movie superheroes, it was it was the tights, but they had like gym shorts on over the tights.

Yeah. Right. Nothing over the tights, but I'm like, oh wow, I think I made a mistake.

That's why spinal tap just put some tin foil on a cucumber and shove it on in there.

Uh uh Marvelous Mark. I remember that, brother. That's fucking funny. Oh, I am pretty marvelous.

I mean, let's face it.

All right. So my mine is gonna go into a little bit of detail, and I apologize, but I my Ace Freely costume from the 1988 air band, I made out of cardboard boxes and a bed sheet. And this thing was so awesome. It was spectacular. You know, it's it was the dynasty outfit, mind you, all you KISS fans out there, dynasty outfit. And it I just loved it. And then I saved it naturally for Halloween, and I I think I might have worn it for like two years until it got wet and just dilapidated. But um, I just I mean, I worked hard on that, you know. We yeah, that airband we worked really hard on and put a lot of work into it. But um, just something I want to go to from here is um you guys all know that Brother David was in a kiss tribute band, and I have his legitimate Peter Chris outfit with the boots, everything. And uh Tom and Zeus from Shout It Out Loudcast, one of my favorite Kiss casts, um, were doing merchandise episodes or an episode, and they were kind of saying their wish list. And Zeus, one of his was to have the uh the Peter Chris costume with his arrow pointing to his crotch, you know, like just that that outfit, which that happens to be the one. So I reached out to him and I'm sending it to him this week. I'm not I'm not I'm never putting another spandeck suit on in my life, and I want it to go into hands where someone's going to actually appreciate it, and he's actually gonna purchase a mannequin and fucking set it up in his collection room. Nice now, so it makes me happy for David that you know it's gonna live on, and I think that's really fucking cool. So otherwise it's gonna sit in a fucking Tupperware bin in my shed for the rest of my life, and but and you in the solo with the wind carpet blower behind me.

I loved that, yeah.

Oh, that was cool. And everyone starts screaming when the spotlight comes on. I felt like a rock star for about eight years.

You played that song perfectly, too.

And then we fucking lost. We won. We won that, we won it, we won it! We fucking won that shit without a doubt. Damn it.

All right, to you, Donald. So mine is a costume that I made similar to you. This was circa 1994, maybe. I can't remember. Um, I was in the Navy, I was at a in Washington State, stationed on the USS Nimitz that was in Bremerton, Washington. We went to Silverdale, Washington. There was a little hole in the wall bar, and we didn't know it was Halloween, and then we're like, oh shit, everybody's in costumes. So it's like, what do I do? And my buddy's car, he had an atlas and some duct tape, and I just started ripping pages out of the atlas, and I turned myself into map man, and made like a little hat, a little hat and a little tape, and I put like Washington State and I put you are here to where we were, and people loved it, like they were like, Hey, it's map man, that's spectacular. Uh like a two-dollar atlas and a roll of duct tape, and like an emergent, like, oh shit, I gotta make a costume out of you know, we have five minutes to do it, and it came out awesome. Did you snip out the states or did you just wrap the maps around? A little arrow that said you are here on the chest, and then I made like a helmet and with eyes, and yeah, it was funny, you know, and it was just ripped pages out of an atlas. Do you have some pictures of that gone right now?

The downside is they couldn't find their way home.

Yeah, did you have map man? Do you have map man? Do you have photos? Yeah, yep. That's it. Do you have photos, Donald? I don't. That's it was pre- it was pre-cell phones. We had no cameras, you know, we didn't pack cameras with us, you know. Maybe once we have an audience, people out there, right?

Some videos and some random idiot.

Silver day of Washington, 1994, and a little they got a I got a picture of Map Man.

I'm gonna send it to these guys.

Uh man, that's awesome. I gotta do an honorable mention, but Kevin, you have the honors first to your pick.

Before you're honorably mentioned, I'll be honored. Your honor, your honor. I've always wanted to say that. You're offered your offer. So, I mean, I th I thought about, you know, all of the 99 cent Kmart costumes that we had as kids that like cut into your eyes and the the plastic, I mean the the rubber band that's they got twisted up into your hair and like cut the circulation off and your ear and all of that stuff. I thought about those, but there was one that stuck out to me, and it was probably because probably because they were lean years um in the early 70s. My mother is a fantastic. My parents met in art school. Um I did not get any of that. I can't draw a stick figure without our two rulers. That's me. I'm I'm nowhere. I can't, I couldn't, couldn't if you held a gun to my head and said draw a picture of a cat, I'd be dead. Um but my mother was very creative, and and um and one year um she decided we were gonna make our own costumes and do paper mache. So, of course, I wanted to be Batman. And so she blew up a balloon, and I remember laying the paper mache around the balloon, and I'm sure that she worked out the ears, but somehow it was it it had like the right colors of the 1966 Batman, which was well all that we had at that time.

Adam West.

Yeah, exactly. The real, the only Batman.

The real fandex or a leotard or whatever you were.

Yeah, yeah. I think actually his looked more like sweatpants, actually, but really when you think about it.

Oh, it's about the tights, ain't is it?

It's yeah, it's about the tights, yeah. And he did. He had some he had some gym shorts on top of that. Um, but so yeah, so we you know, we made the thing, we painted it up. Um, once it dried, cut the bottom out of it, and I had this thing, which was, I mean, probably just as miserable as the Kmart ones it got into your face because it was probably not big enough or whatever else. But it just, you know, when you talk about favorite costume, that one just really, really did it for me because it was something that it was like the the one piece of art that I was involved with that actually emulated what it was supposed to be.

And your mom worked on that for you. Yeah, yeah, with me. With me, yeah, yeah.

So super cool. Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. Did you have plaster on your face when you got out, got home? Or paper, you know what I mean?

Uh oh, I'm sure I'm sure it disintegrated before the night was over. I mean, it's you know, you got glue and and newspaper and paint. Uh, but I didn't care. I was fucking Batman, dude.

Batman.

And you were eating candy with the with the paste all over your face when you got home. Awesome. Yeah. All right. So that's number three, then, to you, Mark, and that's gonna be Halloween Tales, which this could be a personal story, this could be a story from a book, just anything that has meaning to you, and off to you, my brother.

Well, you guys might have seen this one on uh Unsolved Mysteries back in the day, back in the early 90s. It's a story of Resurrection Mary. Um it's uh it's a woman who well, she was in her mid twenties. I mean, in when she lived in the mid to late twenties, and she loved to dance. Anyway, she has seen hitchhiking out on. Archer Ave. She's in uh Justice, Illinois, you know, twenty or thirty minutes away from Chicago. And her home is Resurrection Cemetery. And um, you know, she'll walk up and down Archer Av, Hitchhiken, and she'll get picked up and she'll go to uh what is it, the Willowbrook ballroom, and uh she'll end up dancing. She'll find a guy, a guy will ask her to dance, and they'll dance, and she's I mean, it's crazy because when she's at the dance hall, she's not like your typical ghost, you know, radiant, uh transparent. She's like us. Uh woman. Yeah, she's cold to the touch. She's wearing a white gown, period clothing, and a lot of this was not too far after that, but it's happened over the years. And um so you know, she doesn't talk all that much. You know, she she's very pretty. She doesn't, like I said, doesn't talk, and then she gets a ride home. She gets a ride home, and uh she will say, Here, stop! And it's Resurrection Cemetery, and she just kind of goes out the door, starts walking and vanishes.

I remember she was very cold. So strangely beautiful.

Yeah, and and uh, you know, that there's been many sights. My hair's standing up right now, literally. The man would go, I just want to check on Mary. I was a little worried about her. And what do you mean, Mary? And they would see her picture and say, Oh, that that that's the woman I danced with. And they say, Well, she was killed in a car accident five years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love creepy stories like that, man. I mean, this one has always fascinated me. They have songs written about it. There's one uh restaurant that will put a Bloody Mary every Sunday for Sunday breakfast, and she hasn't come to claim the drink yet.

Awesome though. All right, so I took a very different direction on this, but it's also the way we went with it. So mine, I was living in Hinsdale, and Dungo, I don't know if you recall this, but I came back for Halloween, and at this age, I believe it was eighth grade, you know, it was more about raiding than it was, you know, trick-or-treating. So we had our toilet paper, our shaving cream, blah, blah, blah. And I'll never forget it because I we raided this girl's house that I was quite attracted to, and um toilet papered it, put tons of shaving cream on the colour. I know, I know. In my notes, I say, good idea, huh? But anyway, uh, as we do it, we we do the raid, and then I'm running through the woods and I fall and I smack my head on a boulder and got knocked out cold. Jesus. Yes, yes. I will not say the name of sad girl here, but oh god, you know, God love her. She has since passed. But um, but I wound up making out with her later that evening. All right, very traumatic brain injury.

Yeah, and right in the house. Yeah, she made out with the city. So my it worked maybe, yeah.

Say it's a terrible idea, but it worked. But man, just that meant so much to me. Like, I mean, God, it's so awful now. But I think back then it was just a little fun, some eggs, yeah, some toilet paper.

One of our friends who has a name similar to you, he would be basically be like a navy SEAL getting ready for combat. He would he get all camoed up and face paint and this would be VJ, everyone. Right. He was like a pro, you know, he was getting all dolled up and had his ammo and everything. Yeah. All right, so I went with the urban legend uh route where I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts, and this is probably a very common urban legend everywhere, but there was circa 1970-ish, 78-ish. Um the clowns, there was like a uh urban legend of like a van full of clowns that would snatch kids and kill their clowns from out of space somewhere, and it just grew legs and became an urban legend. But if you grew up in Massachusetts around Brockt in 1978, you believed in the clowns. Like they were there was a van that had a group of clowns in it that would snatch you and take you away and kill you. And I don't know if it's true or not. Maybe it happened somewhere, like I I don't know, but there's there's a lot of like clown lore in America. Oh, absolutely. Um, you know, like an insane clown posse becomes like a a group, like a almost like a group of some, you know, like people, an identity of some type. And and in horror lore, there's always been the you know, clowns are supposed to be happy, and and there's always that dark side of clowns that people are yeah, right up there with dolls.

And yeah, where is the light side of clowns? I have never looked at a clown and felt any kind of joy or happiness. Yeah, and the older you look at photographs or drawings or pictures, the fucking creepier they are. Yeah, absolutely.

Bozo and Clarabelle and John Wayne Gacy, and you know, he was a clown. I mean, you know, this is like all the kids' entertainers.

Pennywise is a nice guy, yeah. Pennywise, exactly.

Yeah, I can't forget him.

Oh well, um Pennywise, the dancing cloud. Pennywise, yes, meet Georgie. Georgie, meet Pennywise.

Now we aren't strangers, are we? And there was a resurgence of that, Don, wasn't there? Like in the in the uh 2010s somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, recently there was a resurgence of oh, the clowns are there was definitely I don't know who thought up clown, but wrong. Bad idea. Okay, Kevin, to you. All right, so I'm gonna mix it up and do a personal story. Um, we're talking sometime in the mid-80s, um, when I was um hanging around with a bunch of hoodlums. I shouldn't say it that way. I was I was a hoodlum hanging around. I'm not saying that these people corrupted me.

There were a bunch of people hanging around you. No, I don't know about that.

We were hanging around together and we were all of questionable moral moral fiber at the time. Um Halloween night, we had decided to go out and get pumpkins. Um, my buddy, who I guess I can use his nickname, we called him Tuba, um, had a green Dodge Colt hatchback. Uh an absolutely pathetic vehicle, any way you look at it. I tried to find a green one online to have a picture to show you of how just sad.

There's certain vehicles that just like vanish. They don't so pathetic that they just disappear.

There's some yellow ones and some rust-colored ones and whatever else, but there wasn't because this was like a metallic green. We called the car the booger.

Dawson, Dudley, call me booger. All right, booger.

We that's that's how we refer to it as a booger. So we went out that night and we just started collecting people's pumpkins. And I felt bad about this when I got older. Probably at the time I felt bad about it. But now, looking back, thinking about the story, it's like it was Halloween. We saved them from having to throw them fucking pumpkins away.

Absolutely. We ended up right.

So at one point, right? We were just one house and there was a pumpkin that was like had to have been a prize pumpkin. The thing we it took three of us to roll it down the driveway and get it into the booger. Okay. This thing had to have been three and a half feet. That's a gourd. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So now we take this thing and we get it back to my buddy's parents' house who don't give a shit about anything. They used to buy us beer when we were 13, and you know, good good quality folk. Um, so we put that, then we go off. We put it was the last one of the night. We ended up grabbing this rotten thing off somebody's porch. Well, the dude had like a souped-up fucking duster or something, and chased us for like an hour, like high speed, as high speed as a dodge cone would go.

Getting these fuckers it was impressive was someone would take off after you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Holy shit, we're being chased. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's that gives you the hair on the back of your neckstands right now.

Oh, steel pumpkins off the porch.

That's a good way not to get chased, but let that go.

Right, right. Like I said, I was a dumb kid. So, anyway, we lose the guy, and we get to my buddy's house, and we all sit down on the couch. Next thing you know, you hear that car pull up. You just know as soon as you heard the exhaust and whatever, he pulls up, he's knocking on the door, and he's like, So my buddy's dad goes out and talks to him. He's they're fucking kids, they're having a good time, it's Halloween. Like, he's here, take whatever pumpkin you want. And there's so this we had piles of fucking pumpkins. So this motherfucker takes this fucking three foot tall, five foot, he had this shitty rotted out pumpkin on his porch and ends up taking our prize pumpkin from the night of of uh ill ill-gotten gains.

Um probably fair somewhere. Yeah, right. The greatest sword.

Which would have been a good ending to the story, but the the the extra note was that the next day, if you can believe it, there was a second green dodge cult in town, and somebody was going to a party and had an orange balloon in the car and got pulled over.

Wow.

So that they were looking for us.

Tied in the two Utes.

There was more than two of us, but it's just the same. Right, exactly.

It's exactly like my cousin Vinny. Right. Same car.

They will they were looking for the booger and they got somebody else, but that's were the Michelin 515. We didn't have a pausey rear end. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Awesome. All right, so that brings us to number four, which is going to be our favorite Halloween-related song. Okay, well, this is anyway. All right, brother to you. Song.

Well, yeah, this would uh be about a theme song to a show that has just a gorgeous family, except for that ugly, ugly, ugly blonde on the show. It is the monster theme song. Yes, it's just back in those days, man. I mean, seriously, she was homeless shows. No, Marilyn, I'm sorry. Oh my god. I but uh anyway, uh yeah, I I just I love the guitar on it. You know, it's just a fun song, it makes you happy. Incredible song. You know, it's just I love that theme song.

Oh, it's incredible. And there, I forget who sampled it, but it became pretty huge. Like, you know who it was, Kev? Yes, thank you. Fallout Boy sampled it. So I'll hear that in like Hannaford, the supermarket. When I'm walking around and it whether I like the song or not, and it's something about Uma Thurman in it, but when they kick into the But what I just was like, yeah, I mean, I love that song, but it's like really, this is where we're at.

We're we're we can't come up with a hook, so we're gonna say it's over. I mean, yeah, I don't know.

It's like you can't come up with anything.

That's pretty much with any of them nowadays. So mine, I know everyone, you know, you you three know for sure, but how could I not take it? And that is the song Trick or Treat from 1986, done by Fastway. Um it's the trick or treat soundtrack from same movie, and just this whole fucking album to me has so much meaning. I mean, from start to finish. It's incredible. I mean, fast Eddie Clark, um Pete Way, just this band in general is amazing, but this just I think is one of the most underrated soundtracks in history. It's so fucking fun. Um, it really meant a lot to me because 1986 was just one of those years for me. I believe this might be the year I yeah, I was in Hinsdale for sure. Yes, but just God, knock, knock, knocking for a sweet surprise. Uh yeah, I can't wait to put a little audio clip in here, but but I could have taken half the album. Yeah, Sammy Kirk. Go ahead. Mark and Kevin just watched this recently. I did. I think you'll believe it. They have the same input.

Not a good movie, it was just poorly acted. I mean, the freaking the main character, the uh protagonist.

Oh my god, hey, he talked. I mean, his voice is way up like this, and it was being bad.

Skippy. Skippy.

Yeah, you know, it it just I thought that it was would have been on par with most any other horror movie at that time, yeah. If they had picked a better actor to play Sammy Kerr, to play the bad guy. Thank you. That's what I was waiting for. Actor was a choreographer, and when he comes out and minces around on the stage after he comes back from the dead, spoiler alert if you haven't seen this since 1986.

I think we're okay.

Yeah, I think we're safe here. Uh, but he starts mincing around on the stage, and he doesn't he doesn't look the part, he doesn't, he he just uh it's like any any salvation the movie might have had was gone with him. I mean, you've got fucking Ozzie Osborne playing a priest talking about the evils of rock music. You've got Gene Simmons as the DJ, and it's all wasted because they chose this fruitcake to be. I mean, again, you just look at him, and he doesn't he doesn't look like a metalhead. He didn't then, he doesn't now.

No, Gene and Ozzy were the best in it.

Oh, absolutely. But I mean, even the rest of the movie wasn't that bad. I mean, it was I I mean, you compare that if you take Sammy Kerr away and you compare that to any of the nightmare in Elm Streets or like that, I mean, it wasn't you know what I mean? We're not talking Academy Award-winning shit here. Um, but I think that guy just put the nail in the coffin, which I think what's worse is in turn it destroyed that soundtrack, which should have been huge. Because and I'm not gonna name any songs because they might come up again. I know the one so there were some great, great songs on that soundtrack, and it's it's one of those, but again, now now at this point in our lives, it's kind of like one of those things where it's like if you meet somebody that knows that and knows how great that album is, it's like, yeah, you're cool.

You're part of a club, exactly. It's a club classic.

But anyway, if you if you your protagonist and your antagonist are both terrible actors, that's gonna destroy any movie.

Well, yeah, absolutely. But like I said, I I I could forgive Skippy because I mean that was the character he was supposed to be. He was supposed to be a mealy-mouthed little pencil neck geek, as you would say.

You worded it perfect, Kevin. You worked it perfect, worded it perfect because it could have been a decent movie with the proper characters.

All right, so Dungo. All right, so this was the one that I was worried that we would have the one category we'd have doubles, but I went with Halloween, the song Halloween, and they're a German rock band, very similar to like Iron Maiden, they're fucking rocky, they're awesome. That's why they play it. They were very popular in the and influential in the like heavy metal scene in Europe, yeah. But the song, like, if you play it, um, you know, it's like watch out, listen, take care, yeah. In the streets on Halloween, there's something going on.

I can't wait to air this. It is awesome, man. And uh Chris Jericho, who is a massive KISS fan, so I hear him on so many different podcasts. That I might be his favorite band.

Like he talks about them.

And they were like rocking guitar riffs and very Iron Maiden-ish. Yeah, I agree. They're great underrated, yeah. Oh, what a great pick. So Halloween did end up going on the monsters of rock tour. Halloween. Halloween, right. Oh, they did, yeah, yeah. What what era? It was the it was the 1988, I think, monsters of rock tour, European leg.

Yeah, and I think they have recently done the monsters of rock cruise.

All right, that's four to you, Kev. All right, well, you broke the ice on this. We talked about it a little bit, but I kind of knew that was gonna happen. Yeah. So, right back to Trick or Treat and uh Fast Way, and it's after midnight. I knew it! Not the not the uh not the JJ N after midnight. Eric Clapton version. Um again, uh just another great song off a great album. Um these guys were fantastic. You talked about Fast Eddie and and uh and Pete Way, and again, the um his king, uh Dave King was a lead singer. Anyway, I I was just always amazed by the fact that he hate. I was I was always amazed by the fact that he was such a balls out lead singer in an 80s metal band, and then became like that flog. Molly song that was like a huge hit in the what the early 2000s or something like that. That was him.

Yeah.

That was him singing like Irish folk type fucking Matthews type. Yeah. So I mean, very, very versatile that he could that he could do that and great that he had a resurgence in his career and and all of that. But Fastway was just one of those bands that was just massively overlooked for the quality of the work that they did. They were great.

Say that you will, man.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Just you never know. You never know what happens to bands. Um, what was the one we were talking about a while back where the guy ended up just going back to plumbing? And oh god, plumbing so many. And then the guy that was writing the article about him, like called a plumber, and it was it was this drummer shows up to me. And he's like, Hey, didn't you used to be? And he was like, Yeah. Yep, and now I'm a plumber. Yep. I'm fucking believed. Which is what Ace Freely's dream will always was, anyway. So I'm a plumber.

But you're kind of like a spaceman, huh?

No, actually, I'm a plumber. Listen, I got a little piece of pipe the next day.

I'd like to have your work on.

You almost sleep talking for you.

Awesome pick, Kev. And I have it on my board. You know. That island pick. No, well, no, I had that as my second in case you picked it up. That was a great song. I knew Mark wasn't gonna take it when the show started, but still, I'm like, because those are the two like Halloween-ish ones. You know, the rest of the album's incredible, but didn't really have to Halloween.

Awesome song, but it's not really Halloween-based.

Yeah, and that's on their other album, too, which I found funny.

Right. Yeah, that was yeah, it was weird. They probably just used it to flesh that out.

Awesome. Okay, so this next category is quite broad, and it's going to be our favorite Halloween-based or associated movie, television show, or cartoon. You could go whatever route you wanted. So that is to you, Mark.

Okay, this was a no-brainer to me. This show meant so much to me. It's called Dark Shadows. Yes. It was a serial from back in the late 60s and early 70s. Um, this is a show where they they didn't do like, okay, cut, take two, take fifty, whatever. They taped it live. Wow. Well do it live. Yeah, and there was a lot of funny stuff about it because of that. You know, but uh, I mean, this show, I can I can literally, like when I'm trying to sleep or whatever I'm trying to do, I fantasize about being in a certain room and talking to, you know, to me, they're not even characters, they're real. But you have Barnabas Collins. Yes. He came on, his first episode was 211. As the story goes, they uh they weren't doing too good. You know, the serial wasn't doing great on ABC. This is we gotta step our game up. They brought in Barnabas Collins, who uh, you know, he was born in the 1700s. You know, a lot of people know what this show. I'm not gonna get too far down the weeds. But some of my favorite characters are Angelique, the witch. She was damn hot. Um, you know, I had Quentin Collins who came in uh after a while. And I gotta tell you, this show when I lived in Guildford, uh it w it was not the happiest times of my life. AJ, you you feel those years are a lot different for you, but I always just look so much forward to watching this show every afternoon. I remember it well. Yeah, and I I saw it on syndication. I was really young. I remember um even in the greenhouse that the original house, that's where you were when you were born, AJ. And uh, you know, Charlene, she was uh watching it, and I'm like, I was so scared, you know. It was a funny. I mean, you know, they had the paper bats and stuff.

It was you know, it's kind of soap opera though. That's so cool, you know. It was like they were they didn't do that shit back then. I mean, you had as the world turns and oh I know that type of stuff, you know, just to have something like this cool and dark, and I loved it. Yeah, we are number five to me, right? Am I in the right place? Yes, okay, so number five to me, and god, this was a really difficult category for me, but I could not not take this, and that is the legend of Sleepy Hollow. Good one, yeah. Just growing up and watching this, and you know what? I'm taking the cartoon here, boys. No shit. There was a cartoon. Oh my god, it was so important to me, and and there's so many of them that I would have to go back and watch it again to see which one is the correct one for me, but I assume it's whatever was closest to the 80s and the 70s, but just Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman, and uh I mean, it was just very, very creepy to me, you know. He was a German soldier, like during the American Revolution, and the story goes, I mean, there's different types, but the one I watched, he got his head shot off by a cannonball.

So that'll do it every time.

That'll do it. So he would go to Sleepy Hollow and he would tie his black horse to a gravestone. Makes me think of your bloody Mary story, Mark. And he'd tie it up to the gravestone, and then he would go about Sleepy Hollow looking for his head.

And how can you look for your head when you have no eyes?

I know, right? Well, he's a ghost, I imagine, but he'd always carry the jack-o'-lantern around, you know, as his head and replace it. But oh just it was really, really, it was just creepy to me, you know.

And it's a lore that's creeped into so many pop culture, like House in the Prairie had a headless horse move. So it creeps into so many pop cultures, unbelievable. Scooby-doo.

There's yes, and there's also, you know, the the tie-in, not a tie-in, but he it's very much, you know, if you go to the Bible in Revelations, you know, he's the black horse, and right, he is death, and it's just I couldn't leave that. I had to go with it, you know. I mean, things that make me feel, and that's one of them. So dungo.

So I'll lighten it up a little bit. Um, I went with because I have a youngling, um, it's the big and Charlie Brown. So it's a classic, it's something you watch every year.

I was hoping someone would take it.

It's funny, you know, like it's awesome. I love it. You know, it's just a good-hearted I love peanuts, but in that episode, is the greatest like Snoopy, like gets on his house and does the red baron, like yes, you know, like getting attacked like it over Germany, and he goes through France or whatever, you know. Great, it's awesome. Yeah, I love that. Oh, I'm so thankful someone took that.

I need to say something. Charlie Brown got no respect, no respect, no respect.

He got rocks that we've got about the worst screen. He got rocks. Everyone's like, Oh, I got this, I got this.

He didn't deserve this disrespect. No, it used to bother me.

And that bitch, Lucy, would always pull the football out from under him.

Yeah, that was everything we needed to know about life, right there, right? Good guys finish last, and women are gonna ruin you every time. And they called this blockhead.

Why do they think it was a blockhead?

Yeah, right. He is kind of a blockhead. That's an awesome pick, Donnie. I'm so psyched because I really didn't want that one to be left out. And so that's it. That's five to you, Kevin.

Okay. Well, you know, I I thought about it, and you know, I I was hoping somebody would would do the great pumpkin. Um, but I felt like the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror needed to be mentioned because it was, I mean, again, it's it's the show's been on since what, '89,' and I probably haven't like religiously watched it since you know the early 2000s. But some of the best episodes came from those Treehouse of Horrors because as a writer, you could do all the crazy shit, and you know, the next day everything was back to normal and whatever else. But those are just those are great fun episodes. There's so many of them. I still think my favorite one is when when um Homer goes through the singularity and and comes into the into third the third dimension, yeah. He becomes like, you know, a fool and he's walking down the street in in our world. Uh just crazy stuff. And just the way that they always like every bat graining, you know, they changed everybody's name so that they would they would have like Halloween or horror kind of um meanings in the credits and whatnot. But those were always fun, just a just a great uh Halloween tradition to see what what they'd come up with each year for for the Simpsons to be a little spooky, a little crazy, yeah.

Longest range and a little funny has to be without aging at all. Yeah, without aging at all.

Yeah, that's your thing, Mark.

You are that baby must be like 40 years old, still walking around with a friggin' binky, right?

She could be voted for president and she's still got the binky. All right. So, Mark, we're going to you and uh to number six. This is our favorite Halloween monster. Now, this can be anything, so whatever you guys want. Doesn't have to be you get my point, but have at it, Brad Hair.

Okay, well, mine is vampire, but it has to be a certain kind of vampire. We don't walk around with sparkles on our faces.

Right. Yeah, that bullshit.

We don't go to the store and get a six-pack of true blood. We don't do it.

Ooh, I like that.

We don't go to bed with women in the last 17 hours. Um, you know, that's what they do on that show. And no fucking daywalkers. Thank you very much. No daywalkers. Yeah, I'm a very traditionalist with vampires. You don't sleep in a hidey hole, you sleep in a fucking coffin, and that's it. That's that. And uh, you know, I my favorite vampire obviously is Barnabas Collins. Naturally. I do like the true traditional vampire. And uh, I mean, there's a traditionalist noseferatu's right up there, too. Right? Well, when it comes to my vampires, yes. I mean, I believe you know, you don't like a cross, you can't do daylight. I mean, I I guess you turn into a reflection in the mirror. Right, no reflection. Absolutely, and you turn into a paper bat on Dark Shadows, at least. But uh, but that's what I got. I love I love vampires. I wish they were real. I you know, maybe they are, God knows, but that's just my number six pick.

All right, so that's number six to me, and you guys from the northeast, you know, probably know where I'm going with this. Up here it was channel 10, which to us was WLVI channel 56, and that would go back to creature double feature, one of my favorite shows of all time. Every Saturday they would have the double feature. I think it might have been four three or four hours, not a hundred percent sure, but my monster is the werewolf. I mean, I just there's so so much about the werewolf that I love. I mean, you can go to Stephen King's Silver Bullet, we can go to comedy and go to Teen Wolf. Just this is I don't know, I just love it. And some new movies like Van Helsing, where the werewolf was just badass, just just really cool to me that this guy changed at the full moon. Every no, everyone knows the werewolf story, but that channel 56 and creature double feature to me just is where I think I first learned about the werewolf, and it was just incredibly important to me. So to you, Donald.

American Werewolf in London was uh Yes. Ah, how did I fucking forget about that? Because that's my favorite movie ever. Incredible movie, but it was still scary. It was great, uh great, great movie.

Incredible movie when they're sitting there and talking to each other when he's changed and they're just shooting the shit. What a great fucking scene that was. Wow.

All right, Donald. So this was a tough one because yeah, there's so many awesome monsters out there, but like you, I went with the creature double feature character. Um, one from Japanese lore is Godzilla. Yes, Godzilla is my favorite monster. I mean I tore back and forth between a bunch of classics like the vampires and Medusa and da-da-da. But Godzilla just is awesome. Awesome. Because he's like he could be mean and menacing, but then again, he's also very cool.

Like he was our buddy for a while, yeah.

And he's like understood misunderstood, which is oftentimes what happens to a lot of these villains, is they're they're actually coming from a place of good, but they're just misunderstood, and then you know, they because they look evil and they smash cities that people are a little bit zoomed. But he's actually got good intentions, like he actually has an underlying like good soul, yes, and that's why I go with the Godzilla. Plus, I love the old anime, not anime, but the old creature double features where he would just like lift his feet and then just start sliding across the tail. Did you ever see Godzilla vs.

Megalon?

Oh, yeah. I mean, I love the you saw that at the theater, Mark.

I saw that at the theater in uh Jack's Junior Theater, Littleton, New Hampshire. There was one person rooting for Megalon. I don't know if you can figure out who it was.

But I love all the reboots that they know there's a lot of a lot of reboots now of Godzilla. Yeah, yeah.

And some of them are really good.

King Kong.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like him and Kong go at it, and they're allies and they're not allies. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's like Tom and Jerry.

Well, history shows again and again.

Yeah.

On to you, Kevin. Oh, what a great fucking song, though, Kevin. Speaking of which Tokyo. Don't fear the reaper.

Come on, baby. I'm just like you. I put on my pants one leg at a time. That's what I do. Oh, I make gold red.

Before I go back to you, Kevin, to start the category. Yeah. Mike going back to my pick of sweet of Sleepy Hollow. I never knew that Christopher Walken was the headless horseman in the Johnny Depp version of the movie. Oh. Good tie around. Yes.

Yes.

I just I was looking it up today, trying to find the cartoon I liked, and there's Christopher Walken putting the skull on his head and then the skin growing on. And so he does find his head eventually. All right. Oh, he does. Yes, he does. All right. So that six to you, Kev.

So I am gonna be a traditionalist here and go right back to the beginning of the origins of creatures and science fiction and all of that. Go with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Yes, sir.

What a what a concept, whereas you know, the vampire gets bitten or whatever and becomes eternal. The werewolf, again, it's it's some kind of thing has happened to him. Godzilla's coming out of the Mariana trench and whatever else. But Frankenstein's monster is a scientist, which is, you know, I mean, I'm sure there's somebody out there working on it. Trying to resurrect the reanimation, absolutely, and then you've got all so many great references and and and moments about it. It's alive, it's alive right through into real um, yep, weird science and and and all of those. And then you've got, of course, the amazing Mel Brooks, young Frankenstein with Rhino Boyle and just putting on the writs. Walk this way.

I used to go out with a girl named Abby.

Abby Normal?

Abby Normal.

I'm almost sure that was the name. Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long fifty-four-inch wide gorilla?

Yes. How do you know?

Because I love that movie. Oh yeah. Igor, can you help me with these bags? I'll take the blonde, you take the brunette.

All right. So that's number seven, which is going to be um, you know, a real life haunting or story or something that had bearing in our lives. And that goes to you, brother.

All right. Well, I had a couple things, but I settled on a night here I had down uh up in uh Farmer Drive in Guildford, New Hampshire. And um I'm sleeping down in the basement, also known as the Spittoon. We shouldn't have been spitting our skull on the freaking spittoon. I mean on the floor, but anyway, so I'm down there on the bed and I'm sleeping, obviously. It's God knows what time it was. And all of a sudden I'm having a dream. My uh cousin, um, the self-proclaimed boss, John Simon, is up pulling around in the the fuse box, and all of a sudden I'm starting to feel electrical charges going through my body. And I'm like, I panicked, and I I said, I gotta get up there and stop him. And I ran up the stairs on my knees in about one second, and my heart my eyes were beat red and it was terrifying. It w I mean, night terror. It was absolutely terrifying. And dad was there to wait for me, and he you know, he he he he could tell that something wasn't right. I was probably sleeping on my arm or something, you know. I I don't know. But yeah, it was it was terrifying to me. Um I did not get electrocuted, thank God.

Oh my god, that was so just to clarify, so it was it was a nightmare that you had that you were getting electrocuted?

Yes.

Yeah, because my cousin John Simon was playing with the fuse box.

Not really in the dream, Kevin. In the dream, he was playing. Okay, okay. That was that's that's where I I wasn't sure what was happening.

Oh no, and it was it was terrifying because I could feel the electrical charges going through me.

Going into mine, it's kind of similar. And I don't know if I can call this a night terror, because to this day, I still don't know if it was real or not. And for anyone out there that doesn't believe the supernatural, then they've never, you know, went through an experience like this. But I'm in my bed. Um, this is at the Prescott Hill House mark, Kevin, the one you looked at buying. Right. Dungo, where you lived. And um, I'm in my bedroom, and the reason I say I don't know if I was sleeping or not is I literally remember waking up and putting my elbow onto my pillow and propping my head up and looking into my closet, just looking in that direction. And I could get emotional here because I saw what was most one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen in my life, and it looked like a demon to me. Can I describe it? No, all I can describe is terror, and I fucking jumped up out of bed and released the most blood curdling scream ever and just bolted out of my room, and it must have been over a few seconds because by time I busted my door open to run out, our brother David opened his bedroom door and dove and tackled me. When he tackled me, if you could have seen the look in his eyes and on his face, he was probably more horrified than I was. And I'll never forget that because I feel like it was like a 10-minute thing where just what happened, what happened? I mean, that it was so fucking real to me, and I mean that'll last my entire life. Yeah, that'll never be a lot of it.

AJ, I was in that little tiny room, yeah, a little bedroom I had because I was the most likely to get out of, and I heard it, and it just went through me like well, it was just hearing it, AJ, was terrifying. It was over before it happened, and you know what I mean. It it happened, and I'm like, it was blood curdling. I could not have described it better.

Yeah, and uh I think Dave was more you guys were more afraid than me after that. And I I don't know. I mean, I want to say the face was red, but I don't know. It was just fucking evil. That's all I know, and it was, you know, that's a haunting in my book. Yeah, same thing with my story, to be honest.

Yeah, uh, all right, Donald. Wow, yeah. So mine is a story that was passed on to me from a cousin of mine, and it just goes to show how when a story grabs you, how long it it imprints in you. Like this was told to me 40 something years ago, and I can remember it very clearly. So, this cousin of mine had a home in Florence Mass, it was an old farmhouse that they had bought, it was a family home, it was their grandparents, and she was telling us ghost stories that she was having interactions with something in the house. Like she was pregnant and she had these slippers, and she almost slipped and fell one day while she was pregnant. Well, those slippers like disappeared like out of nowhere. And you know, this is weird to say, but you know, a lot of times people misplace things, but everyone, it was only her and her husband, and he's like, I didn't move them, and they were like hidden back in a in a closet. And there was other stories where she was like, We needed to stoke a fire one night, and we didn't have a poker, and we were like, Oh, I wish I had a poker, and like the next day one appeared, like it just appeared out of nowhere. Wow, like a poker. And she can say that she was upstairs one day and she could hear keys rattling and the door open, and she came down and there was no one there, but it was snow on the ground and no footprints, and all these kinds of things, like multiple stories that she would tell of like odd things that happened in this house. And then, you know, I reached out to her about this podcast. I'm like, hey, you know, I'm gonna talk about this, and she's like, Oh, that's so cool! Like, she told me that when they went to sell the place, her and her husband were standing outside, and they could hear all the windows rattling in the home, like from the outside, like started at the top and worked all the way down. And then she told me that people that bought the house. People that bought the house ended up like getting out because it was haunted, and they ended up tearing the house down. So it was kind of cool. Like, it was like just a like weird, but that shit's real, I'm telling you. Like stuff that just happened, like weird things, but stuff you can't discount.

Incredible, and you can't discount it. Like, yeah, I mean, to experience is to believe, in my opinion.

Like, I just I've had a lot of that, you know. Yeah, and there were small, subtle things, it's not like scary, like things, but creepy things you you have to be like, well, there's something going on here, yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

Wow, that's a very interesting story, yeah. Oh Kevin, to you, and maybe afterwards we could speak of Giuseppes, but I will let you go first. What a creepy place, yeah.

And the van went off the cliff, and when they found it, stairway to heaven was still playing on the tape player, man. No, um, this is actually from the days, this is gonna be a little lighter than what you guys have all talked about, but this was the one that came to mind for me. Um, it was a moment, and um, it was in the days of cassette tapes, probably 86, 87, somewhere in that area. Um, and I don't even remember where we were going, but we were driving around and made a wrong turn and pulled into a cemetery to turn around. And you know, I can still close my eyes and you see the headlights hitting the tombstones and and all of that. You know, we're talking like two o'clock in the morning. Um, we were listening to uh Ronnie Dio's last in line, and I looked it up and I and and I don't know if the the I it seemed to me like the order was different. I thought it was the end of the side, um but as we turn around in this driveway, I mean in this in this cemetery, as as we turn around in the cemetery, we start hearing this heavy breathing. Getting louder and louder, and it was the song breathless, but for like a minute, I thought my buddy and I were gonna shit our pants because you just kind of like let's turn around here in this cemetery, and it just kept rising up, and I'm like, fuck me, what is that? And then the guitar part to you like timing is everything, scared the shisel rat out of us.

Wow, awesome, yeah. Those things, timing too, though. That's yeah, you gotta wonder about the timing of shit too, right? Like, yeah, like why did that happen, right?

And correlation isn't causation, and yeah, right, yeah. Awesome.

Well, that was our fucking super fun episode, I thought. Yeah, you know, I thought it was gonna be our quickest one yet.

And yeah, so did I. I I was on the phone with AJ 20 minutes before we went on. AJ, this is probably gonna be an hour or so. I mean, this is gonna be quick.

Well, if there's any issue when we think something's gonna be quick, I'm pretty sure we've all figured out that we can yap. All right, well, that was super fun, guys. Great episode, I thought. Little Halloween action. Um, so Mark, thank you. Oh, you're welcome, AJ, and thank you, fans. Kevin. Thank you, AJ. Yes, Donald and Margot.

Thank you very much.

Indeed, and I'm AJ. And listen, everyone, thank you so much for all the downloads, the five-star reviews, and please email us at pta80H at gmail.com. Really love hearing from you guys, and we appreciate all the emails. So, anyway, uh happy Halloween, everyone, and we are out.

From my laboratory in the castle east, to the monster bedroom of the vampires defeat. The Google came from the envelope to get a joke from my electrode. They did the monster man, it was a graveyard and it got on and off. They did the mat. They did the monster man, the zombies were having fun. The party had just begun. The guest included Woody, Dracula and his son.