Category Archives: Horror Nostalgia

Horror Nostalgia

Celebrating the Most Nostalgic Halloween Episode of “Roseanne”- “BOO!”

Image Leave a comment

Halloween in the 80s ruled, there’s no question about that. It would be easy to say us “old timers” look at Halloweens’ past with beer-goggles, but I contest that those who actually experienced Halloween in the 80s as a kid, would tend to agree. From the school parades, to sacks of great candy from more than just a few houses giving out diabetic comas to eager kids on that night under the orange and yellow glow of a Halloween moon, people seemed to be more than willing to participate by today’s standards. And, lest us never forget, the glorious myriad of Halloween specials that were never in short supply on the boob tube. Syndicated shows often jumped on the holiday bandwagon, creating a special episode for the Halloween spirit, but nobody EVER did it better than ROSEANNE– and you can take that to the garage with a chainsaw.

Running for nine seasons and except for the first and last season, ROSEANNE didn’t miss a beat with those faithful Halloween episodes glorifying the holiday. While they’re all pretty damn great for their own reasons, the most nostalgic is the very first Halloween special, Season 2-Episode 7, “BOO!”.

There’s just so much to love about this particular special. You can practically smell the crisp Autumn morning air from the opening shot alone.

Seriously, the only thing that rivals this is the opening to HALLOWEEN 4.

This episode does nothing more than just reinforce my love for the holiday and stands as basically the ultimate guide on how to do Halloween right folks. And that would be including subtle things like Jackie’s chattering skull pin and orange cassette tape of “Sounds From the Haunted Mansion”.

As the episode goes, it’s Halloween and the Connors are in full-swing of the festivies with a prank war going on between Dan and Roseanne over which of the two are the undisputable “Master of Halloween”. All the while, the fam is gearing up for the night by transforming their residence at 714 Delaware St into… THE TUNNEL OF TERROR. Which is what everybody basically calls this episode anyway because it’s so damn unforgettable.

With little zombie ninja DJ answering the door to welcome the trick-or-treaters, Roseanne steps in and leads them through the living room into Dan with an ax protruding in his head. The room is decorated in all kinds of great stuff when you’re looking for it. One of my favorites is the skull blow mold on the wall by the door!

From there, we’re led into the kitchen, where Becky dressed as an armless Stewardess is cooking up something special for the little ghouls. I would imagine that is Darlene’s hand coming out of the pot since she isn’t seen anywhere else on the tour, but that is just me Sherlocking the shit out of everything until I get a migraine.

And everybody’s favorite jump scare in the tour!

The kids are led out into the laundry room for a hasty exit where the less spooky Crystal and her son Lonnie lead them to safety.

And since Darlene doesn’t visually make an appearance through the Tunnel of Terror, I would be doing a disservice to the world if we didn’t acknowledge her ode to Pinhead for the evening.

Oddly enough, some of my favorite decorations seen in the show don’t even make it into the grand tour! In the aftermath in the garage, Roseanne is shown committing a Halloween crime of throwing out some magnificent die-cuts. It was at that moment when Dan came in dressed as Jason with a chainsaw that I myself, decided Dan was the clear winner of the night. Regardless of how the episode ended with Roseanne scaring the shit out of her husband with telling him that her parents were coming to stay with them for a month. Sorry, but I just can’t overlook that sort of travesty.

Long gone are the days when people would put this kind of effort into kids for Halloween. Although I think folks like this still exist, I would put money on the fact it’s far and in between these days. It’s not something I see much of anymore in my personal experience over the past few years, and unless people start taking hints from these ROSEANNE Halloween extravaganzas’, I highly doubt it will change.

Regardless of your personal feelings on Roseanne in the present, she, and this episode in particular, taught us all that you’re never too old for Halloween. Growing up is stupid, and we all should be letting out that inner demon child residing in our souls that Halloween brings out of all of us. Just as with “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, or the standard John Carpenter’s Halloween, the “BOO!” episode is in steady rotation around here as it’s just not Halloween without at least two or three viewings of this nostalgic piece of 80s Halloween history.

That being said, get to streaming it on Peacock otherwise, as Roseanne would say, you might go straight to Hell! And remember, there’s no chocolate in Hell; erm, no chocolate with caramel at least.

Editorials, Horror Nostalgia

Tales From the Video Store: PUPPET MASTER II

Image Leave a comment

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster. Oh shit, wrong movie. As far back as I can remember, I was completely enthralled with the killer doll genre, long before Chucky took center stage in 1988 and really kicked off a line of killer doll films from competing studios. It all really started for me with Talky Tina and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, then spilled over into Stuart Gordon’s DOLLS– a film I became obsessed with when I was very young, and still has a grip on me today as an adult. Not long after DOLLS hit video store rental shelves, which is where I discovered it, another film that Charles Band, who produced the 1987 horror flick, and his production company FULL MOON PICTURES showed up in the horror section of my local Mom and Pop Video Store entitled PUPPET MASTER. And this little movie did for FULL MOON what Freddy did for NEW LINE- it built a legacy and a ton of quirky B Horror and straight-to-VHS horror films to follow. And we all have Blade and friends to thank for it.

To be totally transparent, I actually saw PUPPET MASTER II before seeing the first movie. I know, wild; I was totally confused, but it didn’t restrict any love that happened upon my first viewing because I was immediately hooked and went to rent the original the following day. So, hence, the sequel is the one that truly sparked my love for the franchise and the one that remains a favorite. Not just for nostalgic reasons, but I firmly believe this is the best film of the franchise without a doubt.

SYNOPSIS:

The living puppets dig up their dead creator, Andre Toulon. Running low on the secret life-giving fluid, Toulon and his killer creations harvest brain fluid from a team of paranormal investigators at the Bodega Bay Inn. At the same time, Toulon targets a researcher he believes is his reincarnated wife.

Puppet Master II ramps up the body count, expands the franchise lore, and introduces some of the most iconic elements of the entire series. The deadly marionettes-Blade, Jester, Pinhead, Tunneler, and Leech Woman are running out of the mystical green elixir that sustains them. To save themselves, they head to a foggy graveyard, dig up the mummified corpse of their creator Andre Toulon, and bring him back from the dead.

Toulon is now alive, but he is a decomposing mess wrapped in bandages. To brew a fresh batch of his life-giving serum, he needs a very specific ingredient: fresh human brain tissue. YUMMO. Conveniently, a team of unsuspecting paranormal investigators rolls into the creepy Bodega Bay Inn to look into the events of the first film. Toulon, masquerading as a hotel guest and trying to channel his best Claude Rains impression, unleashes his mini-monsters to harvest the team’s grey matter.

Things take a bizarre turn when Toulon realizes the lead investigator, Carolyn, looks exactly like his deceased wife, Elsa. The plot shifts from a simple slasher into a mad-scientist romance. Toulon concocts a plan to murder Carolyn, kill himself, and transfer both of their souls into life-sized human mannequins so they can live happily ever after.

How romantic. Also the most nightmare-inducing images of the entire movie.

Puppet Master II is also the introduction to one of my favorites of the franchise, TORCH. The only puppet with the absolute balls to kill a kid.

As an 80s kid, I’m a stickler for practical effects, and David Allen’s stop-motion animation gives the puppets a distinct, uncanny movement that CGI just can’t replicate. Which is something I’m afraid of happening, as rumors are circulating that BLUMHOUSE will be rebooting the beloved B Horror franchise in the future. I’m all for breathing new life into the puppets of my generation, but let’s be clear- Blumhouse has always been hit or miss, with a lot more misses, unfortunately, when it comes to horror movie reboots. This is why I can’t even fuck with the new Chucky movies or series. There is way too much CGI going on, and it makes the dolls look even more cheesy than intended and completely unrealistic. I mean, it’s about as fake as you can get, and we’re talking puppets and dolls who come alive from spells and potions. Which is a WILD thing to even say. But I just know that Blumhouse would pull that same kind of shit, and Toulon’s creations will just become another mediocre product from Jason Blum.

Yeah. I said it.

That being said, Puppet Master II perfectly balances genuinely creepy imagery with the delightful, low-budget B-movie charm of the early ’90s, and I’ll always remember the first time I saw it thanks to my local video store. Another treasure that gained momentum through word of mouth, an intriguing VHS cover, and inspired young horror fans to come back for more B horror.

All hail the memories of horror movie video rentals.

Games, Horror Nostalgia

The Long Lost Hellraiser NES Game Brought Back to Life By Here Lies!

Image 1 Comment

No one knows the pleasure (and pain in the right ass) of games better than Pinhead and the Cenobites, and thanks to my buddy Eddie Spughetti over at HERE LIES, he, and with a little bit of consulting from yours truly, have brought the long-lost Hellraiser Nintendo game back to life by opening the Lament Configuration with our love and passion for 80s and early 90s horror hotlines and a mock video featuring the game!

The cancelled HELLRAISER NES game was being developed by a company called Color Dreams in 1990, which had a reputation for creating unlicensed Nintendo games on the NES- all of which were also notorious for their poor quality. So much so, you may not have even heard of titles like “Baby Boomer” and “The Adventures of Captain Comic“.

The game itself was to be an updated version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine, played from a first-person viewpoint. You play an (unknown) character stuck inside the Lament Configuration, with the main focus being for you to solve the box and escape with the bonus ability to manipulate the inside of the puzzle box. The catch is, solving the box would not only free you but also the Cenobites inside it. That being said, upon freeing yourself, you’d then have to solve it again in another riddle from Hell fashion to trap the Cenobites back inside and win the game.

Ambitious? Yes. So much so that the developers realised that the NES system could not handle the RAM of the super Wolfenstein 3D engine without having to create some sort of super cartridge, which would cost a fortune, and the main reason, according to game nerd lore, that Hellraiser was just shelved permanently. But not before Color Dreams pre-ejaculated a bunch of ads in Game Pro for the game, giving us fans forever blue balls.

Balls so blue that Pinhead would revel in the pleasure of my pain.

Anyways, we’ve been denied in what could have been one of the coolest horror games for Nintendo, although with Color Dreams rep that might be a stretch, but at least we can use that thing we call an imagination and NOT AI to put together something of what we think might have been in the era of marketing to gamers in the early 90s.

Video editor and VHS Wizard Master Eddie Spuhghetti used the only available image of what was the title screen of the long-lost HELLRASIER game, a created soundtrack for the game available on SoundCloud, some clips from the films, and a little bit of voice magic to make the game come to life in this mock horror hotline sweepstakes commercial that feels as real as it is glorious.

Behold, for we have such sights to show you!