215. 31 Days of Halloween 2025 - Day 10: IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN (1966) dir. Bill Melendez

We're 10 days into the 31 Days of Halloween and I feel like we need a palate cleanser. Recently, we've been talking about reanimating dead bodies, torturous twins, eating warm pizza off of cold corpses. I think it's time we take the holiday back to a more innocent, nostalgic time, where we only concern ourselves with what costume we're gonna wear and how much candy we can score. IT'S THE GREAT PUMPKIN, CHARLIE BROWN is a 1966 TV special directed by José Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Melendez starring Charles M. Schulz' gallery of PEANUTS characters: Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy, Sally, Snoopy, the works. Linus, in lieu of trick-or-treating, elects to spend his Halloween night sitting in the pumpkin patch, waiting for The Great Pumpkin to arrive and give him a pile of presents. It's a reward for sincerity. Most of the others think Linus is crazy for believing in a C-grade Santa, but there's something admirable in Linus' valuing honesty of one's motives rather than the transactional element of trading "goodness" for material wealth. The movie operates more like a hodge-podge of PEANUTS strips and gags than as its own singular narrative but much like the ways in which memory flashes through our heads, the mosaic of musings about Halloween and the fall season leads to a highly emotional, nostalgic appreciation for the good times. Though if anyone were to ever give my kid a rock instead of candy, I'd slingshot that fucker through their teeth. --- Follow The Movies on Instagram & Letterboxd Throw a couple dollars in the tip jar!