CASPER'S HALLOWEEN SPECIAL [1979]

 IT PROBABLY COMES AS NO SURPRISE THAT, SINCE I WAS KNEE-HIGH TO A GRAVE-ROBBER, MY FAVOURITE GENRE HAS BEEN HORROR. 

When my age was in single digits, I loved anything spooky: from my mother reading me Edgar Allan Poe and August Derleth's "THE LONESOME PLACE" to watching an airing of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925) on PBS or watching DRACULA (1931) on Dr. Shock program and THE NIGHT STALKER with my grandfather.  And despite all of this, I was never a fan of CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST.  When the original CASPER cartoons would air on Channel 48 after school, I would usually change the channel.  This may seem odd; however the answer is as simply as why I prefer THE ADDAMS FAMILY to THE MUNSTERS.  Casper was just too damn wholesome and saccharine to be any good.  There's nothing spooky about a goody two shoes ghost who avoids scaring people.  I mean, what's the point, right?  So here we have Casper's 1979 Halloween TV special (subtitled "HE AIN'T SCARY, HE'S OUR BROTHER") and, looking around the interwebs, it looks like most people think it stinks.  So going in, I'm not optimistic.

On Halloween, Casper decides that he's going to go out trick or treating without a costume and hopefully convincing people that he's just a boy in a ghost costume.  OK, that premise is actually pretty good.  Casper meets up with a group of orphanage kids trick-or-treating.  At first the kids think Casper is indeed a boy in a costume; however, once they realize Casper is an actual ghost they really don't care and accept him.  Also a pretty good plot point.  This way, we avoid the done-to-death scenario of Casper scaring everyone whose path he crosses.  Of course, we have a trio of naughty spooks (including ghosts named Harry Scary & Screech and Winifred the Witch) who want to foil Casper's plans, ruin the kids' trick-or-treating and scare everybody.  Now, those familiar with Casper might ask at this point:  "Who are THESE mugs?!?!  Where are the Ghostly Trio or Spooky or Wendy???"  Yeah, I thought the same thing.  There's only Casper here.  It's like Hanna-Barbera paid for licensing Casper but NONE of his supporting cast.  And let's face it:  stick-in-the-mud Casper is nowhere near as fun or interesting as his supporting cast.  So what we have here is a Halloween special without anything we haven't seen before and things come across pretty flat.  The animation is rather threadbare but not unwatchacble.  And that's probably the best way to describe CASPER'S HALLOWEEN SPECIAL is that it IS rather tired and threadbare but still watchable if you've got 25 minutes.  But it's not really a perennial Halloween rewatch.