Jim Henson

Geek Punditry #172: Creating a Character

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April is a little early to start talking about next year’s Oscar race, especially for somebody like me who – famously – does not care about the Oscar race. However, something interesting cropped up in the news cycle over the last few days that may potentially get me interested in the winner of a specific category for the first time in quite a while. This fella here is James Ortiz.

Some Jameses go by “Jimbo.” I just get the feeling he’s not one of them.

You probably don’t recognize his face, but he’s in one of this year’s biggest hits, Project Hail Mary. Ortiz is the puppeteer behind Ryan Gosling’s co-star, Rocky.

Rocky might, though.

Yeah, puppeteer. That little dude wasn’t CGI. It was an actual, physical puppet on-set, albeit with a few computer “enhancements.” But it was really there, interacting with Gosling, and crawling into the movie theater to reach into your chest and steal your still-beating heart.

Evidently, according to Oscar rules, Ortiz’s work is eligible for a nomination in the best supporting actor category in next year’s Academy Awards, and Amazon-MGM has made it clear that they intend to submit him for consideration. Finally, something about these awards is interesting again. You see, one of the (many) reasons I stopped caring about the Oscars is this feeling that they ignore large swaths of movies that don’t fit into their hoity-toity aesthetic, in particular deserving genre films. No puppet character – or any voice performance, for that matter – has ever been nominated for an acting award in the history of the Academy, despite several performances that have been sincerely deserving.

I’m not saying this to denigrate anybody who HAS been nominated. I’m not pointing to anybody specifically and saying “this person didn’t deserve the nomination, it should have been that voice actor instead.” I’m saying that in the 98 year history of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, you CANNOT convince me that there has NEVER been a voice acting performance that is worthy of at least a NOMINATION. 

A worse snub than Dicaprio in The Aviator.

If Ortiz gets the nod, that would be seismic. It would be the kind of thing that gets people’s attention, and the Academy wants that. But the thing is, he shouldn’t get a nomination just because the Academy is trying to get viewers, he should get it because he completely deserves it. Ortiz was the on-set puppeteer for Rocky and did the performance with the expectation that his voice would later be dubbed over by a big-name actor who hadn’t been cast yet. His on-set performance was so perfect, however, the directors decided to keep him for the vocal performance as well. And if you’ve seen Project Hail Mary, you know that the movie just flat-out would not work if the audience didn’t believe in and fall in love with little Rocky. It wasn’t just the vocals, but the motions, the mannerisms of the character. Ortiz created an entire living, sentient being that held his own with one of the movie industry’s top talents and the two of them made each other better. That’s what acting IS, whether you’re doing it with your own body or with a body made of rods and felt. 

It’s going to be an uphill battle, of course, because as I said, the Academy has traditionally shunned movies like this in all but the technical categories (things like special effects, makeup, costume design, etc.) There have, of course, been some few instances of genre films getting mainstream recognition. Sinners – a vampire movie – racked up a lot of nominations last year, including Best Picture, and it took home the awards for Best Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, and Original Score. But the acting award for a vampire movie still went to Michael B. Jordan for his (admittedly, deserving) performance of a pair of human twins. In 2017 The Shape of Water took home Best Picture, as did Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King back in 2003, although both of those were shut out of the acting categories. 

It’s that last part that bristles. Sure, these movies did well, but even though Return of the King took home awards for best picture, director, screenplay, and several others, not a single acting performance was even nominated. That’s absolutely absurd. 

The other thing that’s going to hurt Ortiz’s chance, besides the general Academy Attitude (Acadetude?) towards genre films, is the fact that Project Hail Mary came out very early in the year. By the time awards nominations are getting seriously discussed nine or ten months from now, dozens of other movies will have been released and have heavy Oscar pushes behind them, and it will be much easier for the Academy to ignore a film that doesn’t have that kind of recency bias. So as magnificent as it would be to see Ortiz get the nomination, I am not holding my breath.

Others have suggested that if he doesn’t get a competitive Oscar, the film could receive a “Special Achievement Award,” which is a rarely-given trophy the Academy hands out for groundbreaking work that doesn’t necessarily fit into any other category. It was first handed out in 1972, in an era where modern sound and visual effects were in their infancy and new innovations and technologies were beginning to be developed at a rapid pace. However, the last time a Special Achievement Award was given was back in 1995, for the first Toy Story film, ushering in the era of computer animation. That also feels unlikely. Besides, Ortiz’s performance isn’t a technical game-changer – puppeteering is an ancient art. He was just REALLY FREAKING GOOD AT IT.

This brings me to my larger point – there is a whole section of acting that the Academy has ignored for its entire existence, and it’s time to change that. After all this time, there needs to be a category for – and this is the best term I can come up with for it right now – Best “Created Character.” Vocal performances. Motion capture. Puppeteering. Instances in which a character is crafted in a non-traditional acting performance. These aren’t new concepts – even motion capture has been around for decades at this point – so why aren’t they recognized?

In the alternate universe in which I am in charge of the Academy, instituting this award will be the second thing I do, after installing a trap door under the microphone for anyone who starts yammering about politics in their acceptance speech. This award would be given to an individual or to a group of people who contribute to the creation of said character, with the exact names included decided at the discretion of the film’s producers when submitting for the award. In general, though, this would be used to recognize the vocal performer, on-camera performer, and technical creators of the character, whether that’s one person or an entire team. (It will pointedly NOT be given out for any AI “creations,” as all of the disciplines I mentioned consist of actual human skill and talent, whereas an AI character would require typing in prompts until the computer remembers how many fingers a human being is supposed to have.)

Let me explain. Had this award existed in 1979, when The Muppet Movie came out, Jim Henson could have been nominated for Kermit the Frog. He likely would have been the only person named in the nomination, as he was Kermit’s vocal performer, puppeteer, and designer. For the 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors, on the other hand, the nomination for Audrey II would have gone to Levi Stubbs, who voiced the plant, and be shared with the principal puppeteers for her. (Wikipedia lists 21 separate individuals as being “principal puppeteers” in this case. That’s a little extreme, but the point is valid.) The nomination would also have been shared with Lyle Conway, who designed the puppet, and the fabrication team who actually built it. 

Of course, if there’s only one trophy, they would have to work out some sort of custody arrangement.

In traditional animation it’s a little simpler. Let’s use 1991’s Beauty and the Beast – the first animated movie ever to get an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. In most major animated films, each main character has a lead animator or animation team assigned to them, so that person or people would share the nomination with the character’s voice actor. The nomination for the Beast would have gone to voice actor Robbie Benson and lead animator Glen Keane, whereas Belle would have been shared between voice actor Paige O’Hara and animators James Baxter and Mark Henn. 

Then there’s motion capture, the (relatively) new kid on the block, which is an interesting kind of marriage between puppeteering and animation. In mo-cap, a performer’s motions and mannerisms are captured by computer and used as the model for the animated character. The performer may or may not also provide the character’s voice. The most legendary example of this is Andy Serkis, who performed Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films, and is often cited as the most egregious oversight in the trilogy’s many, many acting snubs. Serkis was both the on-set performance actor and the voice actor for Gollum, and in my category would share the award with digital “puppeteers” Jason Schleifer and Bay Raitt, who used Serkis’s performance to create the animated character. It would be similar for a character like Rocket Raccoon from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, where the award would be shared between the digital creators (I wasn’t able to find the names of the individuals, but the effects company who worked on him in the first film was called Framestore), voice actor Bradley Cooper, and motion capture performer Sean Gunn. 

The worst Oscar snub since — no, really, I mean it this time.

Amusingly, my own rules don’t specify that the performer be human, which would make a character like Krypto from Superman and this summer’s Supergirl also eligible. The puppeteering team would have to share the award with James Gunn’s dog Ozu, who was the model for Krypto. I mention this mainly because I find the idea of Gunn walking onto the Academy Award stage carrying his little hyperactive dog to be absolutely adorable.

Is the creation of this new award likely? To be honest, probably not. But it’s not impossible, either. After all, the Academy announced last year that it will introduce a new competitive category, “Achievement in Stunt Design,” beginning with the 2028 awards ceremony. That’s right! Stuntwork, one of the most fundamental elements of filmmaking since its inception, will begin getting recognized at the 100th Academy Awards! And if it took a mere  century for stuntwork to get the recognition it deserves, how far behind could my little idea possibly be?

I don’t really expect the Academy to make these changes, of course. And I don’t really hold out a lot of hope for Ortiz to get the nomination he deserves. But there’s always a chance, right? I suppose I agree with Ron Swanson: “I still think awards are stupid, but they’d be less stupid if they went to the right people.” 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. The fact that Carroll Spinney went recognized for his tearjerker performance in the 1985 masterpiece Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird will never cease to pain him.

Geek Punditry #152: Blake’s Five Favorite Unorthodox Christmas Specials

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With Thanksgiving behind us (save for a refrigerator stuffed with leftovers) I for one am ready to dive headfirst into the Christmas season. I’m ready for decorations, lights, radio stations that play holiday classics 24/7 and, of course, Christmas movies and TV shows. But today, I want to focus on wonderful little subset of entertainment we know as the Christmas special. It’s not a regular episode of a TV show, it’s not long enough to count as a movie, but somehow it’s just not Christmas without them. We all know the Rankin and Bass all-stars, of course, and we’re well-versed in the antics of the Peanuts gang and the wiles of the Grinch. Those of us who are particularly sophisticated even indulge annually in Garfield’s Christmas shenanigans. But in the decades that Christmas specials have existed, there are many that have come and gone without leaving the mark that these other, better-known specials have… and some of them are outright BIZARRE. This week, to help you kick off the season, I’m going to give a spotlight to five lesser-known, sometimes baffling Christmas specials that you may have forgotten – heck, that you may never have heard of at all.

Twelve Hundred Ghosts

We’ve all seen A Christmas Carol, of course. In fact, we have no doubt seen it dozens of times, maybe even HUNDREDS of times, and we can do that without ever watching the same version twice. The story is a perennial that we’re all familiar with: On the night before Christmas Ebenezer Scrooge, professional miser, is visited by three spirits who show him visions of the past, present, and future in an attempt to get him to change his ways. Charles Dickens’ book was originally published in 1843 and became not only a classic, but in many ways helped reinvigorate the popularity of Christmas itself in a world where it had been waning. It is well-known and well-loved and this, combined with the fact that it’s in the public domain, means that it has been adapted perhaps more than any other story in history. Just think about how many different movies there have been based on the story, how many TV shows have borrowed its plot for Christmas episodes, how many times it’s been produced on stage, spoofed in commercials, adapted into comic books, and basically translated into every storytelling medium imaginable.

Heath Waterman imagined perhaps a bit TOO much, and in 2017 his imagination gave birth to Twelve Hundred Ghosts: A Christmas Carol in Supercut. Waterman spent a year and a half assembling clips from virtually every iteration of the story he could find – TV shows, movies, parodies, and plenty of others. Using only these clips, he assembled a retelling of the story that is surprisingly cohesive. Despite the fact that we can roll from a clip with Patrick Stewart to Mr. Magoo to Basil Rathbone in the blink of an eye, it’s amazing how well the narrative holds together. Even someone who has only a passing familiarity with the story could easily follow along with the tale as assembled by Waterman, and by the time its 53 minute running time is over, you’ve got a more complete telling of the story than many of the different versions tell you on their own.

Being a supercut made of copyrighted works, Waterman can’t market or sell his creation, and you won’t find it on Netflix or on DVD. But the whole thing is available on YouTube, and it’s worth the time to watch if you’re even remotely curious about how it works. 

The Great Santa Claus Switch

Before The Muppet Show, Jim Henson’s Muppets appeared in a variety of different forms – in commercials, as performers in sketch comedy programs, and of course, on that new kids’ show Sesame Street. In 1970, Henson and his team produced The Great Santa Claus Switch as a special episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. In this hour-long special, an evil villain named Cosmo Sam (played by the great Art Carney) has decided he wants to take over Christmas for himself. To carry out his nefarious scheme, he’s going to kidnap Santa’s elves one at a time and replace them with his own minions, furry creatures called Frackles. 

As you can tell from the description, Henson was never one to shy away from reusing certain resources. “Frackle,” for example, sounds an awful lot like the name of another pretty popular Henson production. He recycled actors as well – Art Carney wasn’t just Cosmo Sam, but also Santa Claus himself. (Carney, of course, would go on to star in another of the greatest Christmas movies of all time – The Star Wars Holiday Special.) And then there are the Frackle PUPPETS. Several of them were reused and repurposed into background characters a few years later when The Muppet Show premiered. You’d see them dancing in the background during sketches or hanging around in crowd shots…well, all except for one. One particular Frackle, a blue and purple weirdo with a hooked nose named “Snarl,” was given a new set of clothes and a new personality for The Muppet Show, not to mention a new name. You may have heard of him – these days he goes by Gonzo the Great.

This is a rare Muppet production that, as best I can tell, has never had an official media release. However, like 1200 Ghosts, the curious among you can watch it all right now on YouTube. It’s a decent enough special, and it’s really interesting as a piece of Muppet history that you may not have known about. 

Beebo Saves Christmas

The “Arrowverse” era of DC Comics television was a fun one. Beginning with Arrow, the line went on to encompass shows like The Flash, Black Lightning, Batwoman, Supergirl, and most pertinently, Legends of Tomorrow. That last one featured a team of superheroes on a time-travelling ship, with a cast that rotated with surprising frequency over the years. After a couple of seasons the show got stranger and stranger and eventually, they just embraced it. At one point, for reasons that are far too complicated to explain, the heroes wound up summoning a giant version of a blue, furry doll called Beebo to help fight demons. I swear, it makes sense in context. The show was utterly bonkers and once it accepted that fact, it transcended to the level of genius.

In 2021, they took it one step further and made an actual Christmas special, Beebo Saves Christmas. This was ostensibly an animated special that existed in the world of the show, a tie-in to the Beebo toys, kind of like how Pixar told us that Lightyear was the movie that Andy’s favorite Toy Story character was based on, except that the Beebo special was actually entertaining. In the special, an elf named Sprinkles (Chris Kattan) becomes obsessed with efficiency and convinces himself that he can handle the demands of the Christmas season better than Santa Claus (Ernie Hudson). So it’s up to our fluffy pal Beebo (Ben Diskin) to gather his friends and…well, you read the title. 

The astonishing thing about this special is how genuine and earnest it feels. It has all the hallmarks of a TV special that’s meant to shill toys but, at the same time, has a sort of warmth and heart to it. The people who made this weren’t just phoning it in to sell merch, because there WAS no merch. They were making a show to PRETEND they were selling merch, and they clearly had fun with it.

“So Blake,” you may be asking, “Where can we watch this holiday masterpiece?” Well, that’s the bad news. The main Legends of Tomorrow series is currently streaming on Netflix. (Why not on HBO Max? Because – and I cannot stress this enough – Warner Bros doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.) But the Beebo special, which was not technically an episode of the series and was never presented as such, does not appear to be streaming anywhere. And I think we can all agree that this is a true disgrace. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: We Wish You a Turtle Christmas

Remember in the 90s, at the height of Turtlemania, when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles somehow transcended the pages of comic books, fought free of the television screen, broke out of the movies, and became a real-life rock band? How they actually toured and you could see them live? And somehow, in 1994, they got a live-action half-hour musical Christmas special? How could you possibly FORGET, right? 

There’s not even an attempt at a plot for this one. It’s a series of short music videos, some of them original songs, some of them turtle-ized twists on Christmas classics, and all of them absolutely terrible. These are some of the worst Christmas songs you’ll ever hear in your life. The music is lousy, the voices are awful, and the attempts at humor fall flat and cause ear-splitting, heart-rending agony in anybody unfortunate enough to have to hear them. It is perhaps the single worst Christmas special ever made.

Here’s a link to see it on YouTube. Watch it twice. 

Christmas Comes to Pac-Land

Speaking of trendy pop-culture characters that got overexposed, isn’t it wild that Pac-Man had a hit cartoon show? The game is just a circle running through a maze eating dots and occasionally ghosts. Somehow, Hanna-Barbera turned that into a Saturday morning TV series that built out the world and the mythology of “Pac-Land” and Pac-Man’s family crafting an entire world where everything is round and bulbous and susceptible to the kind of puns that I am absolutely DYING to make except that I try to keep these columns as PG as possible. And in 1982, that popularity spilled over into a half-hour special.

In Christmas Comes to Pac-Land, on Christmas Eve Pac-Man and his family munch the ghosts, as they do, and the ghosts’s eyes float away, as they do. But on this Christmas Eve, the eyes happen to spook Santa’s reindeer, causing a crash in Pac-Land. But the Pacs, as it turns out, have never heard of Christmas before, and Santa has to explain it to them, then enlist their help to find the toys that got spilled across the countryside before Christmas is ruined.

I’m never sure what to make of this special. Are we to understand that Pac-Land is a place in our own world, a place that Santa Claus glides over in his sleigh every year, but has never visited before? That we’ve never spotted? And if that is the case, what does the existence of ghosts imply? The theological implications of this special cannot be understated, and conflicting Biblical scholars have been debating the results of its teachings for over four decades now. Frankly, it was highly irresponsible of Hanna-Barbera to release this at all, and they now bear the responsibility for causing the greatest religious schism since the Protestant reformation. Merry Christmas!

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He may have gotten a little carried away on the Disney Universe thing, but he has no regrets. 

Geek Punditry #147: It’s Not Halloween (But Who Cares?)

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The whole “What Qualifies as a Christmas Movie” debate has been at a fever pitch for several years now. Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Iron Man 3 – each of these has defenders ranging from people who genuinely appreciate their holiday content for what it is to edgelords who think they’re somehow better than other people by picking Riggs and Murtaugh over Rudolph and Frosty. Strangely, though, Halloween has never really fallen victim to this sort of heated, brutal, occasionally family-schisming battle royale. People are eager to accept certain movies as part of their standard Halloween fare even if nothing in the film has any direct ties to the holiday. And I think we should embrace that philosophy.

Art.

Some of my favorite movies fall into this category. As anyone who has seen the posters in my living room knows, one of my favorite movies of all time is Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I love the Universal Monsters, I love Bud and Lou, and this film fused those two brands at their respective heights into a hilarious film that nevertheless holds up the Universal Monsters as icons that they are. Bela Lugosi’s Dracula! Lon Chaney Jr.’s Wolfman! Glenn Strange’s Frankenstein Monster! (Okay, it stinks that they couldn’t get Boris Karloff to come back to the play the monster one last time, but of all the actors who wore the makeup for Universal, Strange was #2 after Karloff.) And I watch this movie at LEAST once every October as part of my Halloween wind-up. There’s a masquerade party in the third act, but it’s not specifically noted as being a Halloween party, and the film doesn’t seem to have any indication of what time of year it takes place. But the gestalt of having the finest incarnations of the Universal Monsters is enough to place it on my list.

That’s one of the great things about Halloween – the inclusivity of the concept. You can get away with almost anything as a Halloween costume, even if what you’re dressing as has no Halloween link. You can be a superhero or a princess, you can make a costume based on a pun, you can be a character from your favorite TV show or you can dress up as your friend who you know is going to be at the same party and watch them stew about it as you imitate their mannerisms flawlessly. All of it counts. And because of that, it’s much easier for a character or a movie to be elevated to iconic Halloween status even if there’s nothing strictly Halloweenish about them.

My other top two movie franchises that fall into this category are, of course, Ghostbusters and Scream. None of the Ghostbusters films take place at Halloween, and Scream didn’t touch upon the holiday until the sixth installment, but both of them are eagerly accepted as standard Halloween costumes now, much like any other Universal Monster, 80s slasher, or Beetlejuice. And, in fact, I try to work them into my Halloween viewing rotation almost every year. (If I don’t get around to Ghostbusters I’ll save it for December – Ghostbusters II is a New Year’s movie, after all.)

Halloween movies are like pumpkin spice. Pumpkin spice doesn’t actually taste like pumpkin, it tastes like cinnamon and the other assorted ingredients you add to a squash to make it taste like a pie instead of…well…a squash. Similarly, there are a lot of great movies that may not have any Halloween ingredients to them, but nevertheless, deliver hard on the Halloween flavor. 

The Stuff (1985)

Still can’t get enough.

I remember seeing the poster for this in the video store every time my parents took us there to pick out a few movies when I was a kid. I knew my mom would never let me rent stuff like this, but it never stopped me from looking at the poster and wondering what it was all about. Once I was old enough to seek out the movies I wanted myself, I found that this Larry Cohen film was ridiculous and delightful at the same time. “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarity) is hired by a dairy company to investigate a new product called “The Stuff,” a creamy substance that is obliterating sales of ice cream and other traditional desserts. Nobody knows what’s in it or what it’s made of, and when Mo learns the truth, the answers are horrifying. The Stuff has the feel of a 50s sci-fi alien invasion movie, it’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers mixed with The Blob mixed with a Baskin-Robbins commercial. The tone is perfectly appropriate to blend in with your Halloween viewing – silly and over-the-top with an antagonist that is absurd on the face of it. As far as Halloween costume potential goes, there’s not really an iconic character for you to dress up as, but if you were to whip up a costume that looks like a “Stuff” carton, you’ll immediately figure out who the cool kids at your Halloween party are. If nothing else, this movie is the quintessential argument for food nutrition labels.

Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)

Pictured: 2016.

True story: Last year on November 1st, after Spirit Halloween put everything at 50 percent off, my wife picked up the 12-foot inflatable Jumbo the Clown from this, one of her favorite cheesy movies. Jumbo sat in his box in the closet until this September, when I told her it was time to test out our Halloween decorations to make sure they still worked and she remembered buying this thing. It wasn’t until he was plugged in for the first time that we realized just how tall 12 feet actually is.

Eddie for scale.

Totally worth it, though, because this movie is a delight. In Killer Klowns, alien clowns come to Earth and begin abducting people in cotton candy traps and taking them to their ship, which happens to resemble a circus tent. The story is ostensibly about a bunch of young people who band together to fight them off, but nobody is watching the movie for the humans. The clowns are the stars, lovingly created by the Chiodo Brothers in a fashion that evokes the finest puppet work of the Jim Henson company. The Chiodos actually repainted and reused some of the clowns a few years later for the trolls in a legit Halloween classic, Ernest Scared Stupid.

It may not be a Halloween movie per se, but there are few things in the world that feel more Halloweenish than a good ol’ creepy clown, and the ones from this movie are some of the best. The iconic looks make for great costumes, and the movie itself is a ton of fun.

It (All versions)

Georgie for scale.

Similar to the Killer Klowns, Stephen King’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown is one of those characters that feels as perfectly suited to Halloween as Ebenezer Scrooge does to Christmas. The Creepy Clown Coefficient is in full effect here, whether you’re looking at Tim Curry from the 1990 TV miniseries or Bill Skarsgard from the 2017 and 2019 films and the new Welcome to Derry streaming series. Pennywise isn’t silly like the Killer Klowns, of course. He’s a much darker threat and can be legitimately frightening, whereas it’s hard to imagine anyone being anything but charmed by the Chiodos’ creations. The movies lean on the darker side of Halloween, but that’s okay. The darker side is more pronounced here than in any other holiday, and that’s kind of what we love about it. 

The Addams Family (All Versions)

If Taylor Swift had referenced Gomez and Morticia in her songs instead of Romeo and Juliet, maybe she would have made something of herself.

I wonder what Charles Addams would think if he could see the cultural phenomenon his little one-panel gag comics have become. The original Addams family came from a series of comic strips that mixed comedy with macabre elements of a monster movie, and although some of the characters became regulars, they didn’t have names or distinct personalities until they were adapted into a TV series in 1964. While it was a popular enough show, and fondly remembered, Addams died before the property really exploded with the 1991 film starring Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Christopher Lloyd, and Christina Ricci. Since then we’ve had multiple cartoons, three live action films, two animated movies, a Broadway musical, and a new streaming series focusing on the Addams’ daughter Wednesday. But although Wednesday may be the breakout star, virtually every member of the family has become iconic. Gomez, Morticia, Uncle Fester, Cousin It, even Pugsley all have a distinct, unique look to them, and you can throw on any of the movies or any of the assorted TV shows and get a beautiful blend of creepy and comedy that is a perfect fit for the season. 

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Because this is what it feels like going to WORK, amirite?

Edgar Wright’s comedic send-up of zombie movies has the perfect sense of scary and silly that you’re looking for. Shaun (Simon Pegg) is a retail jockey struggling with a girlfriend who wants more out of life than he seems willing to give, a mother whose husband he constantly clashes with, and a best friend who is enabling his arrested development more than anything else. He’s ALREADY living like a zombie even before the dead start to rise. Like a lot of the all-time great horror/comedies, Shaun works because the zombies themselves are played absolutely straight – nothing silly or goofy about them. The human characters, however, are funny and highly relatable. One could make an argument for virtually any zombie movie as being part of your Halloween rotation, but I’ve always felt that the more comedic ones fit in more with the fun of the holiday. And although there are plenty of zombie comedies out there, I don’t think it’s controversial to say that this is probably the best. It’s definitely the most iconic. Zombie costumes are easy, but cosplaying as the HERO of a zombie movie is often tough – they are, by the standards of the genre, usually kind of dull, generic, everyman types. But you can cosplay Shaun easily – a white shirt, crimson tie, a nametag, and a cricket bat are all you need. And make sure to get a little red on you.

Labyrinth (1986)

Where the hell is Fozzie?

Jim Henson’s fantasy film from 1986 may have flopped at the box office, but today the fans are devoted, dedicated, and legion. A young Jennifer Connelly plays Sarah, a teenage girl whose frustration at babysitting her infant brother inadvertently leads to his abduction by Jareth, the Goblin King (David Bowie). But Jareth offers her a chance to get him back – make her way to the Goblin City at the center of his remarkable Labyrinth before time runs out and she can take him home. The film is lavish and gorgeous. The characters, too, are memorable and loveable, with some of the finest work Jim Henson’s creature shop ever did. Even the bad guys have distinct personalities and witticisms that make them a joy to watch. And as the movie, technically, is all about monsters, it gives off those Halloween vibes any time of year.

There you have it, friends, a few non-Halloween flicks that you can throw into your rotation and feel perfectly seasonal. What are some of your favorites?

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. You can subscribe to his newsletter by clicking right here. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. He didn’t mention the Munsters because lord knows he doesn’t feel like stirring up THAT can of worms yet again. The scars still haven’t healed from the last time.