Sunday, October 19, 2014

Spooktober: The Last Halloween (1991)

To be honest with you, I wouldn't have known this even existed, were it not for a review that appeared over at Twin Factor the other day.

The Last Halloween, if I'm not mistaken, will go down in history as the last live-action television special produced by Hanna-Barbera. The last live-action series, Wake, Rattle, & Roll, had bowed a year earlier. Co-authored and directed by Savage Steve Holland, who'd later bring us Eek! The Cat and some other goodies, Last Halloween might as well have been alternately titled, "Mars Needs Candy", because four bizarre beings from Mars arrive on Earth searching for something called "coobi", or, in our language, candy. As was noted at Twin Factor, M & M/Mars, now known simply as Mars, Inc., was the primary sponsor, which is why this has such a sweet plot. Sweet in terms of candy, that is.

Co-executive producer William Hanna serves as narrator, which itself is a rarity. The cast includes Rhea Perlman (Cheers), Eugene Roche, whose extensive resume includes Kojak, The Corner Bar, Soap, All In The Family, & Magnum, P. I., and Richard Moll (Night Court), as a Lurch-like chauffeur/assistant to the main villain, played by Perlman. Two kids team with the four Martians (voiced by Frank Welker, Don Messick, and singer-songwriter Paul Williams) to save the town's candy factory from being closed, thanks to the villain's experiments involving bugs. Eeeew. That does sound a little on the gross side.

I never saw this when it first aired, so there won't be a rating. We'll just serve this up, just for kicks, especially with Halloween less than 2 weeks away.



Unfortunately, Warner Bros. is holding this in the vaults, as I don't think this was ever released on DVD.

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