Circle Takes the Square, Florence Henderson Takes a Hit, and The Paul Lynde Halloween Special Takes Your Soul

Every October for nearly a decade straight, until I lost access to cable, I would unwrap a new VHS tape and park it in my VCR (lol OLD!! wtf) and leave it there for the duration of the month or until I'd manage to fill it up with 6-to-8 hours of holiday programming. Months later when my craving returned, I would revisit my growing collection and soak up as much creepy cathode nonsense as I could to carry me through the spring and summer months.

In the early years of this practice I was largely indiscriminate, setting the VCR timer to grab anything even remotely Hallowesque. The resulting surplus of Big Wolf on Campus episodes eventually convinced me to be a little more selective with my archiving, which made the whole process a little more challenging, but also equally rewarding. There's a goldmine of endearing, thematically rich Halloween TV specials waiting to be discovered if you're willing to wade through all of the Travel Channel's Most Haunted Outhouses and Phone Booths specials and Emeril's Gourmet Gourds on the Food Network.

The Paul Lynde Halloween Special is not one of them.



You'll find no perennial viewing material here; just a cantankerous game show host in a bat bow-tie and a musical performance by a Florence Henderson so visibly doped she doesn't notice that she's about to inhale the camera.

Along the way, Carol Burnett Show alumni like Betty White and Tim Conway show up to remind people that it's only 1976 and they're not dead yet, even though their careers might as well be. Oh yeah, and KISS make their television debut lip-synching to "Detroit Rock City," displaying chest hair so substantial the likes of which would not be seen again on network TV until Knight Rider.

Pop cultists have for years pointed to the Star Wars Holiday Special as the single worst piece of programming ever aired, but that's only because the Paul Lynde Halloween Special has been missing since its original broadcast date. Rescued from Lynde's derelict Winnebago in Fullerton, the only surviving master tape has now been "restored" and digitized so that all future generations can enjoy 51 incessant minutes of Lynde's snide quips backed up by disco numbers.

Welcome Back to the Orange and Black

The Shocking Return

It’s been a little while, but I’m back from the grave and ready to party.

While this space has been silent the last few months, I’ve been click-clacking away elsewhere. Late last summer (coincidentally around the time the posts stopped flowing here) longtime colleague Ryan “Rotten” Turek put out the call for contributing reviewers for his horror branch of the ComingSoon.Net franchise, Shock Till You Drop. It had been many full moons since I’d done regular reviewing duty – going back years to around ‘04 or ’05 – but the chance to really dive back into the genre after a bit of a hiatus and get to work with Ryan was too good to pass up (and that’s not just e-brown nosing; Ryan’s easily one of the best journalists in the genre. I was a fan when he co-helmed the original Creature Corner and Dread Central, a follower during his stint with Fangoria, and am honored to now have him as a friend and editor).

You can see the fruits of this collaboration over on the right, an ongoing archive of my Shock reviews, along with some other new features I’ll be adding and tweaking over time to hopefully make this joint feel a little more integrated with the genre at large and a little less like somebody’s very narrowly focused bathroom wall scribblings.

I’ve also decided it might finally be time to start pimpin’ this place. When I got into this I was just really itchin’ to start talking horror again, even if nobody was listening, but whether the result of the Shock gig or something else, I’m craving a little more feedback these days, so help me out by either throwing out your thoughts or passin’ me along to your friends and loved ones.

You can start by telling me if you’d be interested in hearing a podcast of horror-themed music. There are several shows out there that occasionally play horror music, but it’s usually an accent to a film discussion or something; I’d be rocking it straight out, with the horror film/book/TV/etc. stuff being the accent. In order to create such audio awesomeness I would be sacrificing the three and a half minutes of sleep I currently get, so I haven’t taken it beyond the idea stage yet, but I think it would be fun.

And finally tonight, there are new links to explore, all of them certified cool (or as cool as the official endorsement of a horror nerd can be). Cast your eyes their way, but get yer carcass back here soon.