(via Shutterstock)
Get ready to be scared! Or amused! Or both?
Being animated specials aimed mostly, but not exclusively – see special #1 for example – at kids, the scares, such as they are, are lighthearted and funny, the perfect way to celebrate Halloween if, like this reviewer, you are quite the scaredy cat when it comes to horror.
Give us curses and zombies and Frankenstein-animated bodies but make it cute and silly so we can have our Halloween fun but still sleep that night!
(courtesy IMDB)
Family Guy is 25! The gloriously subversive and brilliantly irreverent animated sitcom is marking its attainment of a quarter century of production – interrupted, of course, by a three-year break from 2002 to 2005 when it was cancelled and then brought back to life; which is quite Biblical or Halloween-esque depending on your perspective – with a dedicated spooky special for the season, “Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Cheater”. It’s as quirky and weird as you’d expect with our favourite Rhode Island American rednecks trying on costumes mid-aisle, because they are those kind of people (Lois, voiced by Alex Borstein is priceless here), trying to cheat on a giant pumpkin contest (Joe Swanson, voiced by Patrick Warburton, wants to beat his nemesis from across town but it’s almost ruined by Peter (Seth MacFarlane) and the gang until Peter comes with a stupidly ingenious plan) and most entertainingly, Stewie, voiced by MacFarlane too, trying to bring his beloved teddy Rupert to life when Brian the dog (Seth MacFarlane) refuses to dress up as Sonny for their combined costume. It’s not the best Family Guy episode you’ve ever seen, but it’s still buoyant with the show’s trademark wit, aggressive envelope pushing, and with some sage lessons about be careful what you wish for or you might just get it. This applies most particularly to Stewie who succeeds in rousing Rupert to life only to have things go murderously but highly amusingly wrong. It’s a hoot and it shows that no matter the season, the Griffins will be inappropriate, so wrong and yet so very, very right.
Family Guy Halloween Special streams on Hulu/Disney+
(courtesy First Showing)
How could something as pure and sweet as the Sing franchise get all Halloween scary? Quite easily as it turns out. Director Garth Jennings returns with Sing: Forever – he helmed Sing 1 and 2, writing and directing both instalments – and he takes fairly intense inspiration from Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Thriller” video which featured a fantastically catchy song and some brilliantly coordinated undead choreography. The zombies are back again but this time some technicolour blue, pink and purple goo, with a mind of its own, has exploded from the local science lab – yes, every town worth its salt has a lab and honestly, it never goes well for them, does it? – and turned everyone into music-respondent zombies … and that includes most of the Sing gang, who go from performing the song on stage to a highly appreciative audience to singing it under the power of zombie sludge. Everyone except koala showbiz entrepreneur Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) who finds himself on the run (or the boat, really) from the singing and dancing zombies – they’ve still got that rhythm! – with Miss Crawly (Garth Jennings). But is it real or just the result of a knock on the head by a pumpkin-y stage prop? Ah, that’s the spookiness of it all! Honestly, more of an extended clip than a special, really but still sweet, scary, fun and entertaining, and who would pass up a chance to hang up with this lovable band of singers and dancers, even when they’re undead?
Sing: Thriller streams on Netflix.
(courtesy IMDb)
The five anthropomorphic animal thieves from the highly successful kids’ book series by Aaron Blabey are back, given more life by Pierre Perefil, whose movie The Bad Guys has kickstarted a seasonal line of fun animated shorts, including this year’s Halloween special, Haunted Heist. Possibly the weakest of the bunch so far, Haunted Heist, written by Kevin Peaty and directed by Ben Glass, is still lightweight, diversionary fun thanks to the on-point characterisation of the suave Mr Wolf (Michael Godere), Mr Shark (Ezekiel Ajeigbe), Mr Piranha (Raul Ceballos), Mr Snake (Chris Diamantopoulos) and Ms Tarantula (Mallory Low), some fiercely snappy dialogue and a storyline which suitably channels the fears and scares of the season. In this fun, escapist little number, Mr Wolf, who has a history of Halloween pranks to the exhausted chagrin of the other members of the gang – they’ve had enough, to put it mildly, of his All Hallows Eve tomfoolery – proposes a series, legit job – they’ll rob the suitabley spooky mansion of Reginald E. Scary (Chris Diamantopoulos), who looks to be a big-beaked and imposing Shoebill bird, and take away his bejewelled, croissant-encrusted pendant, thus pulling off the uncommittable crime. Everyone is afraid to touch Reginald’s stashed goods because, while he’s dead, the curse remains that anyone who steals his stuff will be treated to terrible revenge. Of course, The Bad Guys, all swagger but all consequential chaos too, find themselves at the receiving end of all that cursing, but is it Mr Wolf pranking again or something else entirely? Get ready to be scared and amused, and a little underwhelmed but still, it’s all fun and really, that’ll do on a night where there’s enough genuinely terrifying stuff to sink a barge full of mummies …
Bad Guys: Haunted Heist streams on Netflix.