The Halloween That Almost Wasn't
Encyclopedia
Disney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
until the late 1990s. It revolves around Dracula
Dracula
Dracula is an 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker.Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to relocate from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small group of men and women led by Professor...
(Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch
Judd Hirsch is an American actor most known for playing Alex Rieger on the television comedy series Taxi, John Lacey on the NBC series Dear John, and Alan Eppes on the CBS series Numb3rs.-Early life and education:...
) trying to save Halloween from the Witch (Mariette Hartley
Mariette Hartley
Mary Loretta "Mariette" Hartley is an American character actress.-Personal life:Hartley was born in Weston, Connecticut, the daughter of Mary Ickes “Polly” , a manager and saleswoman, and Paul Hembree Hartley, an account executive. Her maternal grandfather was psychologist John B...
) who threatens it. It won an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
for "Outstanding Individual Achievement - Children's Program" and was nominated for three others. On VHS releases, it was retitled The Night Dracula Saved the World. It premiered on ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
and was shot at Lyndhurst in Tarrytown, New York
Tarrytown, New York
Tarrytown is a village in the town of Greenburgh in Westchester County, New York, United States. It is located on the eastern bank of the Hudson River, about north of midtown Manhattan in New York City, and is served by a stop on the Metro-North Hudson Line...
.
After hearing rumors from a TV newscaster (portrayed by Andrew Duncan) that Halloween may end and that he is being blamed, Dracula exclaims, "How dare they suggest such a thing? Halloween is my national holiday!" and he calls the world's most famous monsters - Warren the Werewolf aka Wolf Man (Jack Riley) of Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
, the Mummy of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
(Robert Fitch), Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...
(John Schuck
John Schuck
Conrad John Schuck Jr. is an American actor, primarily in stage, movies and television. He is best-known for his roles as police commissioner Rock Hudson's mildly slow-witted assistant, Sgt. Charles Enright in the 1970s crime drama McMillan & Wife, and as Lee Meriwether's husband, Herman Munster...
), Zabaar the Zombie (Josip Elic) of Haiti
Haiti
Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...
, and the Witch - to his castle to make them scary again. Dracula believes that the problem is that the monsters have "exploited their monsterhood" to the point of being funny rather than scary, for example, Frankenstein's monster has let a a movie
Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein is a 1974 American comedy film directed by Mel Brooks and starring Gene Wilder as the title character, a descendant of the infamous Dr. Victor Frankenstein. The supporting cast includes Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Richard...
influence him into tapdancing rather than scaring people. As it turns out, the rumor about Halloween coming to an end was started by the Witch herself; sick of jokes about how ugly she is, she no longer wishes to participate, and without her annual ride over the moon, there can be no Halloween. She has prepared a list of demands, which Dracula refuses to meet, so she rides off to her own castle.
Dracula pursues the Witch as a bat but realizes that the sun is about to come up and he goes back into his mausoleum. The next night, on the eve of Halloween, he and the other monsters break in to the Witch's castle. They have her cornered but she turns a painting of the Three Musketeers into minions. After a brief chase scene using Munsters
The Munsters
The Munsters is a 1960s American family television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. It starred Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster and Yvonne De Carlo as his wife, Lily Munster. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era,...
-style fast motion, the Witch is cornered in a room while Igor (Henry Gibson
Henry Gibson
Henry Gibson was an American actor and songwriter, best known as a cast member of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and for his recurring role as Judge Clark Brown on Boston Legal.-Early life:...
) has her broom. Dracula turns into a bat again to sneak under the door but gets smashed by the Witch and comes back; Igor tries climbing on a ledge and swinging into the room through a window Hunchback of Notre Dame-style, only to have the Witch open the door so he goes right back outside. "It's one of those days I wish I was dead," Dracula declares. "And stayed dead."
Although Dracula finally gives in to the Witch's demands (including a randomly added wish for him to take her disco dancing every year), she suddenly changes her mind and decides not to go along. Then a pair of children who were watching the newscast of the events on TV appear outside the door, one dressed as the Witch, and plead with her, telling her they love her the way she is. Moved by the children, she does her ride over the moon as promised.
The film concludes with a disco scene where the Witch turns into a disco queen resembling Stephanie Mangano and Dracula, figuring he may as well go with the flow, rips off his costume to reveal a Tony Manero-esque leisure suit influenced by Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 drama film directed by John Badham and starring: John Travolta as Tony Manero, an immature young man whose weekends are spent visiting a local Brooklyn discothèque; Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual friend; and Donna Pescow as Tony's former dance...
.
Following its debut in 1979, the movie aired regularly as part of the Disney's Hallowing Treat/A Disney Halloween special until the 1990s when that block was replaced. Though it was released on VHS, it has never been released on DVD.