I grew up during the 1980’s, a very special decade. We had Ronald Reagan, big hair, Satanic Panic, video arcades, Bruce Springsteen, heavy metal, Freddy Krueger, petting zoos, VHS tapes, monster truck tournaments, Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge, help-a-child foundations (all that’s needed is a desire to help and a clean criminal record!) and cheesy commercials for hot dog joints, to name just a few.
The WNUF Halloween Special starts with a news broadcast, where we hear all the local news – dirty attack ads in governor races, a local dentist giving money for Halloween candy, a Christian group claiming that Halloween is evil. The Halloween Special itself, which takes place in a supposedly haunted house where a young man killed his family and claimed the Devil made him do it, doesn’t start until about twenty minutes into the movie.
As is fitting, the WNUF Halloween Special comes complete with commercials for carpet joints, local dentists, bad TV shows and petting zoos. I watched a lot of TV in the 80’s, and can tell you the commercials are spot-on. As the night progresses and the kiddies go to bed, the commercials get weirder and more risqué. The special has been recorded on VCR, and the watcher fast-forwards through the duplicates.
The actors and actresses of this movie look like real people, not airbrushed gods and goddesses. Frank Stewart, the narrator of the Halloween Special, has messy hair and the sleazy appeal of a used car salesman. His guests include a pair of fake psychics and their pet cat, along with a priest who becomes increasingly terrified as the night goes on. They have a call-in séance where a caller tells us that Iron Maiden rules and White Lion sucks. It’s amateur hour, but Frank soldiers on, even though it becomes obvious that something’s in the house.
I wouldn’t call the WNUF Halloween Special found-footage because technically the footage isn’t found. But it has links to that genre; other influences include The Amityville Horror and the BBC mockumentary Ghostwatch, which I reviewed last year. The commercials get a bit annoying, but this is a movie worth seeing, if only because it takes us back to the 80’s, that magical decade!
Abandoned Places 