It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown [31 DVDs of Halloween]

Today’s DVD pick shouldn’t really be sur­pris­ing to any­one. If you’ve been fol­low­ing along with the count­down, you know I’ve teased it sev­eral times already. It’s the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown is the defin­i­tive ani­mated Hal­loween spe­cial and its appear­ance on my count­down was inevitable. The only rea­son it hasn’t appeared sooner is because I was wait­ing for a nice, brisk Fall day with lots of col­or­ful leaves on the ground to take these photos.

As some­one who was born and grew up in the 80’s, it’s hard to believe this spe­cial was made back in 1966. It’s just as relate­able and rel­e­vant to kids today as it ever was. I imag­ine one day my own kids (when I even­tu­ally get around to hav­ing some) will watch this for the very first time and it will become part of their Hal­loween tra­di­tion too. It’s  the Great Pump­kin, Char­lie Brown  is, in a word, time­less (over­look­ing Sally’s “wel­come to the 20th cen­tury” remark, that is).

One of my favorite things about this Hal­loween spe­cial (which goes for all Peanuts spe­cials, really) has to be the music. Vince Guaraldi’s tran­quil jazz is a per­ma­nent fix­ture of all my hol­i­day sound­tracks. I also love the muted autumn color palette and tex­ture of the cloudy night sky. The scenes where Snoopy explores the coun­try­side as the World War I Fly­ing Ace are among my favorites.

Though I still main­tain that I like  Garfield’s Hal­loween Adven­ture  bet­ter, it just doesn’t feel like Hal­loween until I’ve seen  The Great Pump­kin . I don’t think I’ve ever gone a sin­gle Hal­loween with­out watch­ing it. It’s an odd thing, watch­ing some­thing over and over again every year just to usher in a hol­i­day, isn’t it? We all know exactly how the story goes. We know that Char­lie Brown is never going to kick that foot­ball. We know that Linus, despite hav­ing the most sin­cere pump­kin patch as far as the eye can see, will never get to meet The Great Pump­kin. Like a favorite bed­time story, I look for­ward to hear­ing it every year.

“I got a rock.”

Spooky Screenshots

What is 31 DVDs of Halloween?

As a spe­cial fea­ture for the Hal­loween Count­down, I’m show­cas­ing 31 Hal­loween DVDs from my per­sonal col­lec­tion. I have a lot of Halloween-related and hor­ror DVDs in gen­eral, but for this year’s count­down I’m only going to focus on my absolute favorites–the ones I con­sider 100% essen­tial for my enjoy­ment of the holiday.

More stuff and things!