For my second turn in the kitchen for the Meatloaf I thought I'd have myself and the rest of the Meatloaf chefs compile together a list of perfect Halloween movies. I chose this ABC TV movie for the one reason that I saw it when I was kid, during Halloween, and it has never left me. Call it nostalgia if you must, but I call it the power of perfect film making. This movie alone inspired my choice for the Meatloaf, and also because we would be serving it up on October of all months. But regardless, there is no other movie I can think of that manages to successfully capture the spirit of Halloween while taking the kitchen-sink approach to plotting. I mean they manage to cram zombies, ghosts, vampires and werewolves, and they do it with kitschy 80s style!

Phil Grenville (played sympathetically by Lee Montgomery, who should have done more work, but also appeared in the excellent Burnt Offerings) is the high school nerd who never has any luck with the girls, especially Mary (played by Michelle's sister, DeeDee Pfeiffer), who he has a big crush on. But Phil still manages to have a bunch of cool friends filled with some sort-of notable faces. There's Vinnie, the town black guy, played by none other than Reading Rainbow's LeVar Burton. You might also know him as Geordi "Mutha fuckin" La Forge from Star Trek: Next Gen. Then there's Mitch, played by Peter DeLuise, son of the Dom himself. And last we have Melissa, played by Shari Belafonte, daughter to singer Harry Belafonte, and in the movie she is a direct descendant to the evil witch Lucinda Cavendar that made waves back in the day in their small town of Pitchford. Anyway, this wacky gang of kids decide to break into the local witch history museum and steal some costumes off of the mannequins to wear them tonight...which so happens to be Halloween, baby! While snooping around and stealing stuff, they find themselves in the basement and steal an old trunk with some dusty, cobwebbed junk inside. They are worried that their parents will find out so they decide to look through their loot at the local cemetery. Big mistake of course, it is Halloween night after all.

At the cemetery the kids try on their "borrowed" costumes while the rest open up the old trunk. Phil digs in and finds an old, rolled parchment sealed in wax by his family's crest. Old man Grenville, his great, great, great, great ancestor was a big man in the day. Vinnie breaks the seal despite Phil's protests and Melissa decides to read out loud the spell that is written on the parchment because after all witchcraft runs in her family. Unbeknownst to them this unleashes the demons of hell and pretty soon zombies, vampires, werewolves and ghosts are wandering through the streets of Pitchford. The kids go off to party at Melissa's house, which used to belong to the witch Lucinda, and wouldn't you know it Lucinda returns to reclaim her house and turns Melissa, her great, great, great, great grandchild into a vampire. Melissa proceeds to do the same to the rest of her friends at the party and pretty soon, no one is left alive. Meanwhile, Phil has left the party disappointed because Mary wouldn't talk to him and he runs into a cutie named Sandy, who is dressed in an old school cheerleading outfit and seems lost. We know that she has risen from the grave and appears to be a ghost because she is certainly not a zombie and doesn't want to suck blood like the vamps, but Phil just sees her as a cute girl who is willing to spend time with him. They go off and get to know each other and instantly fall in love on this magical Halloween night. However, their love was never meant to be because the demons of hell are loose and only Sandy knows how to stop them.

Shit starts to hit the fan quickly and Phil realizes that something has gone wrong when the town judge (played by sci-fi staple Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Innerspace) crashes into his car, recently turned into a zombie. The police won't listen, thinking that all of it is a prank, and so it is up to Sandy and Phil to stop the Halloween madness. Phil explains to Sandy what they did at the cemetery with the scroll, and she says that the only way to stop it is to find the scroll and reseal it with Grenville's ring and some wax mixed with the long-dead founding father's bones. Easier said than done, right? They head to Phil's home and get the scroll, which he kept for himself, and run into his father (played by Dick Van Patten, who was the town's dentist, but has now become a zombie dentist). They escape and get to Melissa's house where the party has stopped and the evil has begun. Phil needs to find Mitch, who was wearing the Grenville ring they found in the stolen chest, and he finds Mitch and the others, except they are all vampires now. Phil and Sandy manage to escape and rip the ring off of Mitch's hand at the same time. They haul ass to the cemetery and break into Grenville's tomb (who didn't rise to the occasion for some reason). They pry off the lid, scoop out some bone dust, and run back to Phil's car where they left the candle. The cemetery is instantly swarmed by zombies and vampires and Phil and Sandy manage to seal the parchment in the nick of time before the dead flood into the car and stop them. Sandy whispers "I love you, Phil" and in the blink of a blinding light Sandy and the rest of the ghouls vanish to the hereafter. Phil is left alone. He steps outside and wanders around and finds his jacket, the one he leant to Sandy when she was cold, on a tombstone. He picks it up and finds that it's Sandy's tombstone. She had been dead all along and he never knew it. He lost the love of his life years and years ago. He gets back into his car and the DJ (played by famed disc jockey Wolfman Jack, who makes the film ten times more Halloween-y) says that the first request coming in after midnight is from a girl named Sandy to a boy named Phil. Somehow (yes, illogically, but it doesn't matter) she managed to send him a final message and the song is "Baby I'm Yours".

Let me explain how much this movie affected me. When I got married to my wife (now of five years), I chose "Baby I'm Yours" as our first song to dance to. I don't want to get all gay here, but ever since I saw this movie that beautifully sweet, and heartbreaking ending has never left me and that song has meant a lot to me. Thankfully, my wife agreed and loved it just as much I did. This is by far not a perfect movie, there are many plot holes, but I love it so much that even though I see the flaws, I look past them to what is essentially a perfect Halloween tale. This movie has it all, young love, lost love, vampires, werewolves, zombies, Halloween, cemeteries, and it's even a musical at one point! Directed by Jack Bender (Child's Play 3, Lost) and written by William Bleich (The Hearse, The Stepford Children), this movie works on so many levels and leaves you with that glorious heartbreak feeling you want to feel at the end of every movie, the feeling that makes you want to revisit that world over and over again. It worked on me and this little TV movie has been a Halloween season staple for me for a long while. There is not much blood, obviously no boobs, but the beasts are all cool. The film gets 5 coffins because of the power it has over me. If you want to capture that Halloween spirit throughout the year or want to end your Halloween party movie marathon the right way, watch this film, it is truly a Halloween masterpiece.

- Jose Prendes