Caustic Soda [Podcast logo]

Halloween

Costumes, the confusing origins of Halloween customs, Devil’s night, old-fashioned candy vs. chocolate bars, candy-poisoning urban legends and of course Halloween movies and television specials!

Music: Ogdru Jahad by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets

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20 Responses

  2. Scottish New Year is called Hogmanay, Kevin. Get it wrong again and I’ll head butt you back to the Stone Age!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogmanay

    I lived in the UK and Australia and I can tell you they do not care about Hallowe’en. We went out on Hallowe’en dressed up and we were the only ones. Everyone knew we were American/Canadian because we dressed up. I will tell you that everyone still drinks on Hallowe’en. In fact, we got free drinks for showing up in costume.

    As for the origins of Trick or Treat.

    The act of going door to door comes from the Scottish tradition of “guising” children dressed up in disguises and going door to door performing for an edible treat or a shilling or two.

    The saying is traced to America. The earliest printed record was 1934 in Oregon.

    http://chicagoparent.com/magazines/web-only/2011-october/origins-of-trick-or-treat

  3. Great episode, guys!

    Halloween is finally starting to take off here in the Land of Horrible People (aka Australia). In 2009, we had 5 Trick or Treaters at my house. This year, we had 16! I’m majorly into Halloween, so I get my American Facebook friends to send me US Halloween Candy Care Packages to make up for it, in return for vegemite 🙂

    I agree that TRICK R’ TREAT is awesome. Another great Halloween film is NIGHT OF THE DEMONS (the original 1987 one, not the crappy remake from last year). I was not aware that Kevin was involved in HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION, aka the One Where They Kill Off Laurie Strode and I walked Out of the Cinema in Disgust. Still, it was better than the Rob Zombie remake…

    btw- Samhain is prounced “Saw- wayne” or “Sew- wayne”- he’s the Celtic Lord of the Dead/Harvest…

  4. Those are some slick costumes guys. I’m going to assume it was Toren dressed up as Leeloo.

    Meanwhile, that dog is obviously praying for death. Perhaps a cat in a snowspeeder costume.

    1. That’s my ex and I realized last minute I didn’t get permission to post her so I blocked out her face.

      Her stupid, stupid face.

      (I kid, she’s cool)

  5. I can’t speak for Hallowe’en taking off in my area of Australia (not sure anyone has ever trick’or’treated us in Adelaide, that I remember), but there appears to be a lot of interest growing in these zombie walk events, where people dress up as zombies and just wander around. I think the one in Brisbane is now a fundraiser, raising money for brain cancer or something.

    I get the impression that it’s seen as something that would be fun if everyone joined in, but it’s too expensive to go out on a limb by yourself. Plus everyone’s spending all their money on the Melbourne Cup horse race (well, not everyone, but for some reason it’s a national event of sorts (never figured it out myself)).

    I know, bitch, bitch, bitch.

    Maybe when my kids are older I’ll dress them up for the entertainment. Cats are hard to dress though, so I might just leave them alone.

    1. I won big money on the Melbourne Cup! 80 dollars AUS to be exact. Hallowe’en never paid so well.

  6. Booing and frowns on Chris for not adoring TRICK OR TREAT (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092112), which is the ridiculous tale of the kid who played Skippy on Family Ties as the local metalhead who befriends local DJ Gene Simmons and scores a test pressing of the aborted album by his recently-deceased musical idol (also an alumnus of his high school) which, when played backwards, dredges said dead singer up from the underworld and gives them both unholy powers. Ozzy has a cameo as a rock-hating TV fundamentalist type. Wall-to-wall goofy, and I might just have to watch it again tonight.

    As for Hallowe’en specials, I’ve always had really fond memories of MacGyver. I think one of Teri Hatcher’s many appearances on the show involved inheriting an old house that might have been haunted and I’m half-convinced that another one involved some crazy dude hitting a cop in the stomach with an axe (of evil!), which completely freaked me out at the time. Digging through episodes on MegaVideo now for confirmation, but maybe a fellow Jerk can lend a hand…?

  8. New listener, first comment post!

    I love the podcast guys, a friend got me onto them a week or so ago and I’ve been working my way through the back catalog. I had to jump ahead and listen to this weeks when i was told you mentioned Oz and not in a good way!

    It’s true Aussies do love a drink and most don’t need an excuse. I’m quite sure that why we’re all pretty much relaxed and happy people down here in Oz.

    As for Halloween, well loads of us love Halloween and celebrate every year. We definitely don’t think of it as Un-Australian. I’m in Melbourne and in my area we decorate our yards and get loads of Trick or Treaters. I had over 30 kids come to my door. Zombies were the “in” costume choice this year. Always loads of fun.

    Keep up the great work, listening to the podcast makes my drive to work almost bearable, not even noticing the traffic!

  10. Shittiest podcast I’ve ever heard, you guys are stupid as hell – get a real education somewhere before you try to tell other people anything. Dumbfucks.

    3. what I love about this, and seeing his earlier comment, is that he’s clearly still downloading and listening to the podcast every week.

  11. When you’re asked in the future when you knew the podcast had made it you can quote them 12:34pm on Novemeber 5th. I’ve loved the show since day one, but I’ve heard over and over again that you know you’re doing something right when people are that mad at you.

  12. .. as for Movies , Donny Darko? The whole movie is a countdown to Halloween.
    (Another Adelaide person)

  13. As a child in Denmark, I had never heard of Hallowe’en but we did have a similar (okay, slightly weirder) tradition in February called Fastelavn where (among other activities) the kids would dress up in costume and go door-to-door demanding sweet buns from the neighbours while joyfully singing a song that threatened trouble if the demand was not met and shaking a small branch which was symbolic of flogging. After my family moved to Canada, dressing up and trick or treating for Hallowe’en seemed so similar in theme that I thought the two holidays were the same. It wasn’t until consulting Wikipedia just now that I realized Fastelavn is the Scandinavian version of the Carnival before Lent that is prevalent among Catholic countries.

    Regarding your pop culture segment:

    I’d like to recommend the fun little Hallowe’en story “The Great Old Pumpkin”, and particularly Norm Sherman’s reading of it on Episode 136 of the Drabblecast (starts at 5:55). While you’re there, check out the news story featured at the beginning of Episode 51, that one’s squarely in Caustic Soda territory.

    I’ll second Toren’s accolades for “The Resurrected” as being one of the best Lovecraft movie adaptations out there. The HPLHS’s “Call of Cthulhu” is also right up there in my opinion, while the worst I’ve seen was HBO’s “Cast a Deadly Spell”, despite its cast featuring the likes of David Warner, Julianne Moore, Fred Ward and Clancy Brown.

    Christopher Sarandon seems to be something of a Lovecraft enthusiast, because he also has a great appearance in this “documentary”: http://cthulhulives.org/Shoggoth/index.html (Stuart Gordon shows up briefly, too).

  14. the conservative antagonist on the RGB halloween special ‘The Halloween Door’ (which featured some musical numbers and (bad) poetry constructed an ‘electronic positronic anti-halloween machine’ (given that two of those things are direct natural opposites of eachother i woulda figured it would just go boom, but… there you go.) take THAT Halloween!

    plenty of tv specials for halloween, i wonder if there were almost as many for it as there are for christmas?

    and speaking of specials, does anyone else recall the Midnight Hour halloween special with Shari Belafonte and Levar Burton. it also… inexplicably has a song and dance number