Well folks, tonight’s the night! The night where spooks and horrors come about and scare the living bajesus outta you. But have you ever wondered why Halloween is the way it is? Why Halloween is so important? Well the 1993 special The Halloween Tree tries to answer these questions.
This special has some great history behind it. It first started out as a screenplay for a movie that Ray Bradbury wrote. It was scrapped and Ray turned it into a kids book. Then in 1993 the boom was turned into this short by Hanna Barbara.
Now I have also read the book for this and I do admit the book goes more in depth, but this special is amazing with or without the book.
Available almost everywhere for 5 bucks!
Here’s the story, a group of kids are celebrating Halloween but discover something’s wrong when their best friend, Pip, can’t join them. He tells the friends to go into the woods and to a haunted house.
At the house they meet Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud, voiced by Lenoard Nemoy, who is…essentially the grim reaper. He has a huge tree in his yard that holds millions of jack-o-lanterns. A ghostly Pip is in this tree with his pumpkin and he takes it on a journey to halloweens past.
Moundshroud gathers the rest of the kids and takes them with him while searching for Pip and his pumpkin soul. Along the way the kids learn the origins of their costumes and traditions of Halloween.
The artwork and storytelling here are spot on and you can tell that Bradbury himself had a great hand in this. He even narrates this!
But there is one flaw I can name and that name is Wally. He’s the gargoyle friend and is the reason why I can make this into a drinking game.
And he has the coolest Halloween history! Not fair!
But the best part about this special is the end. When the kids come back home and the sun is rising, a sense of melancholy always falls upon me, like when you’re trick-or-treating and you just turned the last corner to your house. I don’t want this to end, I want to watch these characters with the rest of their lives and how they live with the decisions they made on this night. And if it was worth it?
Also, the music is hypnotic.
Anyway The Halloween Tree is available as a burn on demand from Warner Archive. But WB really screwed us over by not using the laserdisc print (which was enhanced) and not giving us the Bradbury commentary from that same disc. Assholes. Now we can either watch it here, or buy the disc and return it with a note with our demands. That shows there’s a market, but the market doesn’t like getting screwed over.
Also, for all you Disney fans out there, if you go to DisneyLand and go to FrontierLand around Halloween, there is a Halloween Tree dedicated to Ray that was put up on the 35th anniversary of the book.
This man fascinates me so much. And I hope he is doing well in his own Halloween Tree in Heaven.
Happy Haunts. And you can watch the whole Halloween Tree here
RT Gomer Productions 