TRACK #221:

Witch Magic by Peter Rochon

Let’s keep the weird late 70’s Halloween Special train rolling here with this strange number from perhaps the strangest Halloween cartoon of them all, Witch’s Night Out.

First aired on October 27th in 1978, this festive Canadian offering follows the Halloween adventures of 2 children named Small and Tender. Fully disillusioned after their Werewolf and Ghost costumes fail to scare a single soul in their small town, they unwittingly call an equally disillusioned Witch to their aid.

She promptly turns them (and their weird babysitter Bazooey) into literal versions of their get-ups. They then proceed to scare the hell out of an entire Halloween party and then the whole town. Despite being hunted down like dogs by a town full of joyless assholes, the children (and then everyone else) manage to rekindle their love of All Hallows’.

Highly stylized and very 70’s, the characters are all monochromatic and the voices (provided by Gilda Radner and Catherine O’hara to name a couple) are weird. Hell, this whole thing is just plain weird, but  if you grew up watching it on the Disney channel during the ’80’s and ’90’s, chances are it’s nostalgic as all get out.

YouTube can definitely provide you with several trips down memory lane of varying qualities, if you feel so inclined.

As for The Shindig, we’re gonna slot in its bizarro, vocoder heavy theme song, Witch Magic and send you down an audio nostalgia trip to a time when Halloween Specials were great, and filled analog airwaves with festive joy.It’s a bag of garbage!