I wasn’t thinking ahead this year and have nothing meaningful for you for Halloween. Add to that the fact that I have a nasty cold and I am not really in the mood to do anything too elaborate. So here’s a YouTube video that features something from a special I saw again and again on HBO called The Worst Witch.
Enjoy…I hope.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUhuPn8_d0Q
So the question becomes what does this clip have to do with comic books?
Well…
- The music was composed by Charles Strouse, who also composed the music for It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman in the sixties.
- Tim Curry was in The Shadow, which also starred Sir Ian McKellen, the once and future Magneto. He also was initially cast as the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series, but that didn’t work out for some reason. He eventually got to play in the Bat Universe when he voiced Mutro Botho in an episode of Batman Beyond. Also, the Rocky Horror Picture Show was adapted into a comic book back in 1990 by Caliber Comics.
- Fairuza Balk, who plays MIldred Hubble, was the voice of Penny, John D.’s girlfriend in the Justice League episode Only a Dream.
- Diana Rigg’s role as Emma Peel on The Avengers was part of the inspiration for the “new look” Wonder Woman back in the sixties.
Ok, that last one was reaching, but you get the idea.
I loved this special as a kid. I was ten in the fall of 1986 and my family had just moved back to the Allentown area and this is one of my clearest memories of that first fall back in Pennsylvania. It’s kind of dated now and it is interesting to see Fairuza Balk playing a good witch in this special when she would go on to play a very bad witch in The Craft but still. Good memories.
And is it me or is Tim Curry trying to turn into Mick Jagger at the end of this song?
Happy Halloween, everyone!
More to follow…