Trick or treat? It’s a simple question, and the answer is almost always the same. Everyone knows little Billy in his homemade pumpkin costume couldn’t pull a trick to save his life. No, he’ll just repeat the Halloween catch phrase over and over again until he’s halfway to a case of childhood diabetes. Charming, but boring. What good is Halloween without a spark of mischief? After all, not all Pumpkin Day tomfoolery turns into an Eric Draven murder-rape scenario.
Break Yo T.V. is the perfect accompaniment to your haunting season: a fusion of trick and treat, an audio-visual car crash that you can’t help but rubberneck. The brain-rotting lolz that you’ve come to expect, now with a distinct Halloween flavor. This delicious dose of bad taste comes courtesy of spook royalty, the illustrious Mister Tim Curry.
Since his motion picture debut as the megalomaniacal transvestite Dr. Frank N. Furter, Curry has portrayed many legendary creepy characters. Not only was he the horrifying clown in It, but also the cloven-hoofed embodiment of Darkness itself in Legend. Throughout the years, Curry has played countless mad scientists, villains, demons, and has the distinction of being the number one go-to guy when you need vocal talent for supreme evil. Type cast? Sure! But the man has a true knack for being sinister, dastardly, and downright devilish. Why knock a good thing?
Why indeed…
Not nearly a year after he set new precedents for evil as Lord Darkness in Legend, Tim Curry left a heinous stain on his ghastly visage — a heinous stain that has since been forgotten, until now! Behold the 1986 made for T.V. movie, The Worst Witch– an adaptation of a children’s novel confronting the now all-too-common subject of paranormal boarding schools. The film is “the worst” of a lot of things, but at the top of the heap is the song “Anything Can Happen on Halloween” performed by Tim Curry.
Imagine, if you will, the excitement of being a child and meeting the President. Now imagine that the President looks like some kind of Dracula Jesus and floats from the sky wearing a gigantic pink cape. Now imagine that it’s Tim Curry. Now imagine that your life has meaning anymore.
Curry plays the Grand Wizard, and he swoops down from the sky to deliver a Halloween speech to the assembled witch school. After a short speech that “awkward” is too weak a word to describe, Curry raises his arms and explodes into one of the worst music videos ever made for one of the worst songs ever written. “Anything Can Happen on Halloween” is a true monument of songwriting incompetence, aptly matched by the abysmal concoction of blue screening and video toaster effects on the screen. Example: Tim Curry sings, “Anything can happen on Halloween/ Your teacher could become a sardine.” Meanwhile there’s video of a whale behind him. What rhymes with “Halloween”? Oh yeah: “Has anybody seen my tambourine?” …cue Tim Curry jingle-jangling through a motion-blurred void of shifting darkness. No one could put something this awful together on purpose, and therein lies its terrifying beauty.
Though Curry’s music video is the mind-melting pinnacle of The Worst Witch, the rest of the film is chock-full of so-bad-it’s-good mediocrity — there are even more lousy songs. So, if you’re the morbidly curious type, join young Fairuza Balk and veteran actresses Diana Rigg and Charlotte Rae on an odyssey of regret and humiliation. You can watch all of The Worst Witch on YouTube, or simply take in a distilled experience through the firm but tender hands of X-Entertainment. As for Tim Curry, this little foray into the cheesier side of Halloween can’t make a dent in his supervillain rep. Skeletor and Osama Bin Laden still shit bricks at the mention of his name, and this video gives them nightmares. You have a mission, dear reader: Halloween mirthmaking demands that you post this clip everywhere. Think of it as digitally T.P.ing someone’s soul. Go forth, and wreak havoc.
