I decided today to watch and discuss a Halloween-themed movie that seems to have been long forgotten. It turned twenty this year, and I don’t think I’ve heard anyone mention it in almost that many years.
On October 20th, 2001, a movie called When Good Ghouls Go Bad premiered on what was known back then as the Fox Family channel, now FreeForm. I had been anticipating the movie’s premiere since the channel had first started advertising it. I wasn’t quite into horror yet, though I would be very soon, and I was still put-out that I wasn’t able to watch the Halloweentown movies (the second of which also premiered in 2001) since the Disney Channel was still a premium subscription channel at the time. I was so excited to finally be able to welcome a new, lighthearted Halloween movie into my life, as there really weren’t very many at the time besides the obvious Hocus Pocus.
When Good Ghouls Go Bad follows the story of Danny Walker, a young teen who’s just moved back to what is actually his namesake town, Walker Falls, following his parents’ divorce. He and his father, James Walker, have moved back in with Danny’s grandfather, known by everyone, including his own family, as “Uncle Fred”.
Uncle Fred is the town eccentric, played expertly by Christopher Lloyd. It seems like the residents of Walker Falls either love him or hate him, with many teetering toward the latter after he shut down the family business, a very impressive chocolate factory, twenty years prior and drove the town to economic ruin. James, however, wants to start up the chocolate business again, and devises an elaborate plan for investors to come visit during a town-wide “Spooktacular” on Halloween night.
This would be perfectly logical in any other town, but there’s just one little problem with Walker Falls:
They haven’t celebrated Halloween in twenty years, and refuse to do so ever again, thanks to a local legend.
The legend is told to us by Danny’s bully, a boy named Ryan Kankel, son of the aspiring mayor and high school football coach. It revolves around a boy in his father’s class, Curtis Danko, who excelled in art but apparently created very concerning works, and was feared by both his peers and teachers alike. At some point near Halloween 1981, the town held a sculpture contest, prompting all of the art students to create sculptures of their personal heroes, and one would be chosen to stand in the town square. While all the other children worked during the day, during school hours, Curtis Danko opted to hide his sculpture from the class and come back to work at night, when the school was empty and dark.
Curtis Danko was last seen in the window of the high school art room on Halloween night, 1981. When the kids came to art class the next day, his charred remains were found in the kiln, along with his statue, and a note in the ashes that read
IF YOU EVER HAVE ANOTHER HALLOWEEN,
I WILL RETURN, AND DESTROY YOU ALL.
Ryan’s father also claimed that statue blinded him for three days after seeing it, and that it was so horrible and terrifying, that only someone who’d met the Devil himself, face to face, could have sculpted it. No one asked any questions, he just threw a shroud over the statue and it was taken away and put in a crypt with what was left of Curtis himself.
The fact that no one questioned any of this for twenty years, and that grown adults were practically shitting their pants for two decades and refusing to celebrate Halloween, is pretty silly, but for the sake of the movie, the small town herd mentality does its job.
Anyway, despite the terrified townsfolk’s warning against a Halloween celebration of any kind, decorations suddenly start appearing around Walker Falls, and naturally, everyone suspects that the Walker family is to blame. The main attraction of this strange display is a massive pile of pumpkins in the town square.
Uncle Fred picks up one of the pumpkins while the townsfolk try to decide what to do about the weird, sudden onslaught of Halloween spirit, and, sadly, the pile of pumpkins falls on him and kills him. (On a side note, my own grandfather actually passed away just a few days after this movie premiered, and I do think that’s where my attachment to this movie may have come from at the time.) But the adventures are from over.
At the funeral, Danny’s classmate/crush, a girl named Dayna (who also happens to be the daughter of the also conveniently recently-divorced-and-back-in-Walker-Falls love interest of Danny’s father), attempts to cheer him up by showing him the project she’s been working on since the summer. With the help of some classmates, Dayna has been working on transforming the abandoned former home of Curtis Danko himself into the ultimate haunted house, with every Halloween activity imaginable poised to take place inside. Dayna, whose dedication to Halloween instantly made her one of my spooky-girl dream BFFs, describes the children of Walker Falls’ feelings about Halloween perfectly, stating that the Curtis Danko mess happened before they were all born, so they don’t have the same attachment to it that their parents do and feel pretty safe, but at the same time, they don’t want to necessarily feel safe. They want to be at least just a little bit scared. (Also, it is so weird to me to think that any child who grew up in this town may actually have never experienced Halloween in any capacity. It’s one thing to grow up in a family that doesn’t celebrate certain holidays, but an entire town?! Also, the fact that Curtis Danko’s house has been abandoned for this long, when it wasn’t even where anything happened, is also kind of mindblowing to me. I mean, even Michael Myers’ house sold! And don’t even get me started on the Murder House.) Meanwhile, Ryan Kankel has stolen the shrouded statue from Curtis Danko’s crypt, and blackmails Dayna into giving him a room in the house to display it, hoping that people will pay him to not see what’s under the shroud.
Danny comes home from this excursion to an even bigger surprise, though: Uncle Fred, though he now looks a little gray, is back home moving around like nothing ever happened. He and Danny believe at first that he somehow got just enough oxygen through his skin to stay alive, but as things keep getting stranger, it starts to seem like Uncle Fred may have been exhumed from his grave for much more important reasons.
I won’t reveal too much about what actually happens from there, to avoid spoilers, but while some moments get a little silly and drawn-out (There’s a crazy chase at one point to get Uncle Fred’s severed zombie hand back that goes on for a little bit too long in my opinion.), it really is a fun movie and a spooky story worth hearing.
When it all culminates at the end, and we learn the true circumstances of Curtis Danko’s death, you just might find yourself tearing up.
It surprises me greatly, how forgotten this movie seems to be. In addition to having Christopher Lloyd in the starring role, it’s also based on a story by R.L. Stine, which you’d think would garner a little bit more attention. I may be biased because it’s a movie from my own childhood and also had a direct connection to my grandfather’s passing and ultimately became a comfort movie of sorts during that time, but I personally think this movie is superior to most of the R.L. Stine adaptations that came after it, such as The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It and Monsterville: Cabinet Of Souls, and, on some level, even the full-length Goosebumps movies. It has a lot of heart, and really doesn’t seem dated, despite the fact that it’s an unbelievable twenty years old.
It’s actually up on YouTube right now, so if you have about an hour and a half to spare, and especially if you’re missing Halloween like I am today, you should go check it out.
Stay spooky, my friends.
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