Are Halloween specials still a thing? I don’t mean specials based on an existing property. I mean standalone Halloween specials. Something that’s been made from the ground up purely to be a special based around Halloween. I certainly can’t think of any recent ones. Though then again, I do live in Britain, a country that cares so little about this holiday, that the shops in October are typically filled with more Christmas stuff than Halloween stuff. Or maybe The Last Halloween’s title is more literal then you might think.
We start out with some narration. Apparently, the denizens of Mars have run out of a precious resource known as Koobi (that’s probably not how you spell it) and have sent out a specialized team to go find more. So of course, one of them ends up on the one planet that all aliens wind up landing on… Proxima Centauri b…. Yeah, really. Due to its fairly habitable environment, as well it’s general positioning in the galaxy, scientists have theorised that if there is sentient life out there capable of traversing space, this planet would make for an ideal hub of sorts for- I’m just messing with you. Of course, it’s Earth.
Specifically, Earth on Halloween where we see a couple of kids called Michael and Jeanie getting ready, dressed up as knock off Cobra Kai and bootleg Wonder Woman respectively. Jeanie however is finding it hard to be happy right now because she and Michael are suffering from the oldest of kid’s movie protagonist clichés: their mother is dead.
Not enough people appreciate Disney’s Princess and the Frog. It’s one of the only examples of the dad being dead and the mother being alive…. Although by that logic, we should be appreciating the Jem and the Holograms movie for the same reason. A movie that is not deserving of anything except pure unbridled hatred.
Apparently, this is the day the universe decided to really dump on this kid as moments after talking about how she’s wearing the costume her mother made for her, she’s nearly run down by the special’s villain Mrs Gizbourne, and her Liev Schreiber looking henchman Hans. After which, she and her brother return to their dad’s candy factory to discover it’s going out of business, as the lake has dried up, making the factory’s water wheel useless and forcing them to use “expensive electrical equipment”.
After the kids’ grandad asks why they aren’t out trick or treating (probably because it’s still the middle of the day), they express their worries about the factory. Their grandad proceeds to make those worries worse by informing them that the due to the factory’s closure, this will likely be the last Halloween in their town ever.
Because god forbid the townspeople buy branded candy, I guess.
Deciding they aren’t depressed enough; Grandad brings their dead mum back up again by talking about how she was the “greatest wisher” he ever knew. And that she believed that if you skip a stone across water and it skips three times, your wish will come true. Michael gives it a go, but the stone just plops into the lake and he figures he needs more practice. Personally, I think what he needs is some actual water. This lake is dried up. He’s literally just chucking rocks into mud.
Meanwhile, their dog has found the crashed Martian spaceship. The Martians (who despite all being of the same species, all have completely different designs and biology) consist of leader Romtu, who kind of looks like Marvin the Martian if he joined the Blueman Group. The barely present in this movie Gleep, who looks like a Mogwai that’s really let itself go. Koobi locator Scooter, voiced by veteran voice actor Frank Welker who for some reason decided to give this scrawny little guy the same voice as Soundwave from Transformers. And Bing, who like the search engine of the same name, feels rather redundant, as he has no apparent role on this mission other than to spout his name constantly and make you want to kill him.
After meeting the kids and briefly discussing the role of a mother (for god’s sake! Bambi didn’t focus this hard on the dead mother!) the aliens explain their situation and discover that koobi is actually candy. And if you think candy to them is some sort of all-powerful resource that their entire civilisation hinges on to survive, like gold was to the Aliens in Cowboys and Aliens…. No. It’s food to them as well. And they still have other food on their planet. Just not candy.
Is it still first world problems if said problems take place on a different world?
Taking advantage of it being Halloween, the kids take Romtu, Scooter and Bing out trick or treating while Gleep and the dog work on digging out the spaceship. After we see that Romtu can remove his own head (making us appreciate how fake their CGI looks, otherwise this would be far more disturbing), we’re then treated to a painfully unfunny scene about how this friend of Michael’s has to wear hand-me-down Halloween costumes from his sister and has to therefore walk around in a fairy costume… You know, you could just make a new costume, right? On one Halloween, one of my friends’ costumes was Shaun from Shaun of the Dead and all he had to do to make it was ruin one white shirt with fake blood. Why not do that?
Probably because this special came out in 1991, Baron.
Fair point, Redacted Text.
It’s revealed the lake drying up is due to Mrs Gizbourne syphoning off the water in search of bugs that contain the secret to eternal youth, which… frankly feels like a perfectly noble goal. Could have maybe discussed this with the town council, gotten a research team together on a grant, found a way that doesn’t ruin the local environment, but no. Makes more sense to do it in secret inside of a creepy old mansion.
She ends up capturing Bing who spends his entire capture and rescue inside of a burlap sack to save on the animation budget and the kids break him out, discovering she’s behind the lake situation along the way. They inform their father who, choosing to ignore the fact they’ve committed breaking and entering, goes to get the sheriff. While he’s gone, the Martians help themselves to his final supply of candy, the one that was apparently super expensive to make, working under the assumption the lake will fix itself with Gizbourne gone. With their mission complete, the Martians prepare to head home, deciding they’ll come back every Halloween to restock. Jeanie gifts Bing with her costume’s tiara to remember her by while Romtu gives Michael a shiny rock before he and his crew leave Earth and the special altogether.
We see the sheriff taking Gizbourne and Hans to prison an- wait, that’s it? That’s it!?! The bad guys are defeated OFF SCREEN?!! I mean, yeah, I get it, this isn’t a proper movie. It’s a half hour long made for TV special. Heck, cutting out the ads, it’s actually twenty-two minutes long. There’s not a lot of time to get stuff done (begging the question as to why you tried to cram so many story hooks in), but as underdeveloped as they were, could we at least get a proper ending for the villains?
Unfortunately, Michael and Jeanie are then informed by their father that this really is the last Halloween ever as the lake is beyond repair. Michael then skips the stone Romtu gave him, and wouldn’t you know it, it skips three times and repairs the lake, bringing back the water. The entire town gathers to celebrate this miraculous event, not realising they still aren’t get anymore candy since a water wheel needs to be in running water to turn. The real miracle here is how the Hell this factory got a water wheel to work in stationary water!
Yeah, this special’s pretty bad. I won’t be too hard on it since, as I’ve said, it isn’t a feature length film. I can’t judge it by my usual standards. But even for what it is, The Last Halloween feels lacking. There’s too many plot ideas shoved in and not enough time to develop them. The villains are incredibly corny. And there’s no proper focus throughout (except for the dead mother. She gets all the focus). The CGI on the Martians…. Yeah, they’re incredibly fake. But I appreciate that they aren’t trying to be realistic. While character wise, they’re flat, they’re designs are okay. Them being so cartoonish gels well with the CGI “quality” so they aren’t too awkward looking. Out of place in live action for sure, but still.
There are many classic Halloween TV specials out there. This is not one of them. Let the Last Halloween live up to its name and make it the very LAST resort when it comes to finding something festive to watch this year.
Media Baron 