THIS IS HALLOWEEN 2019

Welcome, foolish mortals, to my Halloween Playlist 2019! My Halloween Playlist has been a tradition for many years now, as evidenced by my previous Halloween Playlist posts.

I'm not about the scary or the disturbing, but I'm way into the absurd, supernatural, and, occasionally, morbid. So bring on the spooky, not the scary, and see if any of my Halloween viewing picks this year line up with yours!

Part I: Rediscoveries

When we moved houses, our giant plastic bin of video tapes were deemed superfluous and then tossed in the trash.

I rescued a few of the treasures that I couldn't bear to part with, including my original childhood VHS copies of The Little Vampire and The Wizard of Oz, but since we got rid of that box of tapes, I've missed being able to peel off the flimsy lid of that plastic VHS storage bin and take a trip down memory lane.

Every once in a while, I remember something from one of those tapes and wish I could still go grab the VHS from our crawl space and revisit it (yes, I do still have a functioning VHS player! Welcome to my life).

We live in a super old house and we joke about it being haunted, so ghosts were on my mind this year. That's how I remembered I used to have a VHS of Casper Meets Wendy (1998).

As a kid, I loved Hilary Duff and thought this movie was so entertaining. I found a copy of it to revisit it and discovered it didn't hold up well at all. Little Hilary Duff was still the best part, and what I remembered most was Desmond Spellman, played by George Hamilton, terrorizing Wendy and her witch aunts by almost throwing them into a magic inferno.

The entire viewing was strange; as much as I remembered specific moments as I watched (like the kid getting squirted with ketchup and the paper boy being attacked with newspapers), I found that the whole budget on that movie had been poured into silly special effects. I had hoped I would find that this movie was as sweet as I remembered, but it ended up feeling much more embarrassing than I hoped.

Weirdly, as kids, we owned a copy of Casper Meets Wendy, which was made as a direct to video sequel to Casper (1995), but we didn't own Casper, so I never saw it before I watched the sequel. Maybe that's why I was happy to settle for something overblown like Casper Meets Wendy.

Oh well, it still had cute moments and there's nothing like rewatching something you saw as a kid.

Part II: Discoveries

Looking back on my previous Halloween playlists, I was shocked by the lack of Nickelodeon Halloween. I'm talking about Nickelodeon from my childhood, of course.

We have a DVD (circa 2002) of 5 Halloween episodes of Spongebob, which I will always endorse. That includes the classic episodes "Scaredy Pants", "Imitation Krabs", "Frankendoodle", "I Was a Teenage Gary", and "Squidward the Unfriendly Ghost".

The most important classic Nickelodeon discovery I made this year relevant to my Halloween Playist is iCarly. I have always been in love with Drake & Josh and still watch it quite frequently (thanks, Hulu!). I wish there was a Drake & Josh Halloween special or episode that I could include here, but there wasn't one I could really justify.

I made time to try iCarly since it shares a lot of cast and crew with Drake & Josh. We own some of the seasons of iCarly in our Amazon video library and each season was only $9.99, which was a steal considering how much it has brightened our household.

My favorite Halloween iCarly episodes include the first season's "iScream on Halloween" where the kids do a web show from a supposedly haunted apartment, and two other costume and monster-related eps.

Part III: The TV Classics

As always, I've included my Halloween episode of Pushing Daisies, S1 Ep5, "Girth". Pushing Daisies is a great spooky staple because it is both consistently morbid (it is, after all, about a guy who can bring dead things back to life) as well as joyful enough to pass my not-too-scary test.

The Monkees have made their usual appearance on the list. I included the three non-negotiable Halloween episodes, plus the fourth "Halloween" episode, "A Coffin Too Frequent", which is optional (I decided this based my personal episode preferences).

Somehow, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has never made it on my Halloween playlist. The first reason my playlist lacked serious Buffy is because I like to be cautious when I recommend this show. It's a show that experiences drastic changes over the course of seven seasons. Just to clarify, when I say I love Buffy, I'm talking about seasons 1 - 3. That's where I'm at.

The real reason I never included Buffy on the list is because I avoid serial dramas on my playlist; for my Halloween viewing marathon, I prefer to jump into sitcom episodes without feeling that I need to rewatch the whole show to know what's going on.

That means that Buffy, and the similar shows I love, have to suffer when it comes to Halloween. It's certainly a serial drama, in the vein of some of my other favorites like Smallville and The Vampire Diaries (or rather they're in the vein of Buffy, but let's not get technical).

The good news is that I've been rewatching Buffy this month while working on some of my painting projects and when I saw S2 Ep6, "Halloween", it occurred to me how audacious it was that this episode wasn't on my playlist to revisit.

Because it's one of the most Halloween-y things I've ever seen. And for all its fun costumes, candy, and magic, it also doesn't slack in the quality department. In fact, it's probably one of my favorite episodes of Buffy.

The obvious other serial drama on the list is Stranger Things. But seriously. How can you not have Stranger Things at Halloween?? (Even though I didn't care for season 3... but I'll take the first two seasons, thank you).

And The Addams Family and The Munsters will always be on this playlist because ESSENTIAL VIEWING.

Part IV: The Movies

I got started on the playlist early with both The Addams Family and Addams Family Values this year. I also got the chance to rewatch The Lost Boys, which is a movie I've loved for a long time and was shocked to find it was also overlooked on my other playlists. It is a must-see, both for the Kiefer Sutherland that haunted my younger nightmares as well as laughing out loud at the true masterpiece of the film: every moment with Corey Haim and the Frog Brothers.

As you know, I save the best for last and watch The Little Vampire (2000) at the end of the night! I hope I can carry on this tradition for many years to come.

So there you have it! Check out my full Halloween 2019 playlist below. Hope your Halloween is full of fun and may a ghost follow you home!

x

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Halloween 2019 Playlist

TV Shows

Pushing Daisies

- S1 E5, "Girth"

The Monkees

S1 E2, "Monkee See, Monkee Die"

S1 E18, “I Was a Teenage Monster”

S2 E18, “The Monstrous Monkee Mash”

+ bonus: S2 E11, "A Coffin Too Frequent"

The Addams Family

- S1 E7 "Halloween with the Addams Family"

The Munsters

- S1 E1, "Munster Masquerade"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

- S2, E6 "Halloween"

+ all of season 2 if you can handle it

Stranger Things

- S2 E1, "Chapter 1: MADMAX"

- S2 E2, "Chapter 2: Trick or Treat, Freak"

iCarly

- S1 E7, "iScream on Halloween"

- S3 E8, "iBelieve in Bigfoot"

- S6 E4, "iHalfoween"

Movies

- The Addams Family (1991)

- Addams Family Values (1993)

- What We Do in the Shadows (2014)

- The Lost Boys (1987)

- Edward Scissorhands (1990)

- Sleepy Hollow (1999)

- E.T. (1982)

- The Little Vampire (2000)

+ bonus: The Little Vampire (2017)