December
20
A Charlie Brown Christmas, 1965
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown ! Dion and Blake are back for a surprise episode to close out 2023, and thought what perfect way than to tackle the holiday classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, from 1965. The lads talk about Charles M. Schultz and his iconc strip, and the forces that came together to produce this seemingly unlike Christmas Special which has gone on to become a seasonal tradition. So grab your eggnog or your Coca-cola, and sit back as the boys unpack this last year’s installment of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!
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The fellas reminisce about this often lost art, the major network horror movie, and how unique these forgotten templates were for this once-popular format on the small screen. A forgotten classic and a great example of a comeuppance tale, Dion and Blake plot the origins of Scarecrow and try to confirm if this the first example of a scarecrow character as an antagonist (or protagonist?) in a horror film. They also go into the backstory of the players involved, like the great Charles Durning and the story’s director, Frank De Felitta. The boys also discuss the differences of a story like this, where less is more and implication is the name of the game at a time when the slasher genre was in full swing, and how a movie with no gore but instead relies on terror and suspense, can holdup within that time period when blood and guts were the norm. So how does this TV movie hold up 35 years later? How does Ray Bradbury have a connection to this work? And how good is Charles Durning in this demented role? And why did they make him a mailman? Well come on down and check out our final installment of 2016’s October-horror Halloween binge here on an all new episode of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!