“The Demons of Demolition Derby – we’ll sell you the whole seat, but you’re only gonna need the edge.”
Directed by Chris LaMartina and other collaborators, WNUF Halloween Special (2013) takes the form of a recorded piece of public access television, evidently a videotape being played as signified by the occasional bursts of fast-forwarding that interrupt the televisual flow of news reports and commercial breaks. Acting as found footage, I loved how committed the film was to the aesthetic, just the desaturated and crappy colours and VHS blurriness.
A low budget production that blends stock footage with produced footage aiming for a 1980s rinky-dink feel, WNUF Halloween Special inhabits this media format really well, only rarely showing its hand with broadly punctuated jokes here and there. I noticed other Letterboxd reviews complaining that there are too many ads in this film, but that’s what I loved about it. There is a complete commitment to the bit, which may occasionally sacrifice its effectiveness as a horror movie, and instead opts for a fun vibe. When the horror element kicks in, as we follow a live broadcast from a purportedly haunted house, all of the ad breaks felt accurate to the type of local access news broadcast that it is performing as, while also stretching the tension further by interrupting the action.
Good performances all around, particularly Paul Fahrenkopf playing the in-the-field reporter, Frank Stewart, a likeable middle-aged asshole who makes wisecracks to the assembled audience in Halloween costumes who are hanging outside of the haunted house. While the film doesn’t go anywhere too unexpectedly (I had also recently watched an episode of the HBO series Tales from the Crypt with Morton Downey which had the same basic premise), it’s a triumph in what it sets out to do. I laughed a lot and felt the Halloween spirit through the blur of advertisements for local establishments, anti-drug warning messages, news reports about satanic panic, and the involvement of a husband and wife psychic duo modelled on Ed and Lorraine Warren (this film came out in the same year that The Conjuring was released).
While I may not have grown up with Halloween as an annual tradition, or local news affiliate channels like WNUF, it reminded me mostly about the flow of late night television, the type of advertisements for local businesses and strange commercials you would get in the dead of night, mixed in with the kind of live cross-over infotainment you’d get on the afternoon news. WNUF Halloween Special is perfect company for the season of spooky movies, a comedy about reviving old ads and antiquated media, while a darkness vibrates underneath the static lines and pixelated vision.
Streamed on Shudder.
