WITCH'S NIGHT OUT By Punkin Nightshade

#12: Punkin Nightshade

Well, hey there, y’all, and Happy Halloween to you!  This here is Punkin Nightshade, what am a witch and Adept, and welcome to The MonsterGrrls’ Thir13een For Halloween!  Today I am speakin to you about somethin what just come out on that DVD gadget, called Witch’s Night Out, and as I am a witch and can be considered an expert on witchly didoes, I am goin to tell you about it.

This here is the DVD cover

This here is kind of interestin.  Witch’s Night Out is an old Halloween special that was only showed on the television once, back round Halloween 1978.  It was made up in Canada, and it had a very famous actress named Gilda Radner what was doin the voice of the witch.  Once they showed it, they didn’t never show it again until round 1983, when the Fox Network and that Disney Channel started showin it right regular ever Halloween for a little while.  Our old friend the Mad Doctor remembered seein this show from when he was a little ‘un, and he liked it, so as it is a Halloween special and what he also calls an interestin piece of animation it is natural that we are talkin about it here today.

The witch, bein all in a snit

The story is about a witch who’s a bit down in the dumps ‘cause ain’t no one round where she lives doin much to celebrate Halloween.  Well, almost no one, ‘cause a couple of young’uns named Small and Tender are runnin round trick-or-treatin and tryin to scare folk, and it’s natural all in fun cause it’s Halloween, but ain’t no one scared of them and everbody knows who they are.  Now the grown up folk round the neighborhood, what consists of some straight-laced sorts named Goodly and Nicely and some ugly nasty folks called Rotten and Malicious, are wantin to make Halloween into somethin that ain’t rightly Halloween, to my mind.  (Mad Doc said 

that this here was satirizin the community effort what was prevalent in the 1970’s, and I ain’t rightly sure what that means, but if you listen to them talk about what they’re doin for Halloween you just know they doin it all wrong.)

They's scary, but they's nice too

Some kind of community effort and such

So anyway, they all run up to this old mansion and start havin this party, and it ain’t rightly no Halloween party cause ain’t a single one of them even dressed up in a costume, and the witch is rightly upset cause they havin it in her house and ain’t even acknowledgin that she’s there, and them Rotten and Malicious folk done brought some of the nastiest party food there is, so it ain’t no Halloween party of nohow.  Meanwhile, Small and Tender are at home with their babysitter Bazooey, who’s a good-natured sort and tryin to cheer them up about Halloween.  Small and Tender natural want to be scarin folk, and they end up summonin the witch, who uses her magic wand to turn them into a ghost and a werewolf like they was tryin to be for trick-or-treat, and turns Bazooey into a monster what’s like my friend Frankie, except it’s a boy monster.  The witch takes them back up to her house and sets em to scarin folk, and they all run out of the house and in the resultin flapdoodle the witch loses her wand, so she can’t change the young’uns back to theirselves.  (This right here is how come real witches don’t use no wands or nothin.)  They run off to find the wand, but them Rotten and Malicious folk have got it, and they don’t know how to use it, so there’s a lot of highjinks and such afore everythin gets straightened out.  If you ain’t never seen it I don’t want to tell you what happens, but let’s just say that everbody learns the true meanin of Halloween, which is that it is a happy time where folks get to be what they want to be, if just for one night.

The DVD that this is on also has about nine more old cartoons on it, which I guess was put on there so that they could kind of fill out the space and not waste nothin.  There ain’t no special features much because there just ain’t much information out there about this show or them what made it, but the art and such is pretty good, kind of like a children’s picture book, and the place that it shows in the story is all its own original world and ain’t based on nothin what was already there, like that Charlie Brown show or such.  These same folk had also done another special for Christmas, called The Gift Of Winter, and that there will be out pretty soon on a DVD too.

So that is Witch’s Night Out, and if you are lookin for somethin interestin to look at on Halloween that ain’t nobody seen much of, why then you can watch this right here.  I hope you will be back tomorrow for the next postin of The MonsterGrrls’ Thir13en For Halloween, cause we is just gettin started and there’s a whole lot for us to do.  Blessings be on you!

Sincerely,

Petronella “Punkin” Nightshade