He’s a part of American childhood, Dr. Seuss is. Kids are still familiar with him. Even many decades ago, I grew up with him. (We didn’t have his books at home, but there was a library in town.) We watched the Grinch at Christmas time—when the networks, chose, of course. I never knew that Dr. Seuss had done a Grinch Halloween special as well: Halloween is Grinch Night. I just learned about this from a Halloween fan page I follow. It was released in 1977 and was subsequently acquired by Disney and shown a few times in the nineties. Once I heard about it I had to track it down and I did find it. This was a rare off moment for Dr. Seuss. Part of the problem is that Boris Karloff had died and another voice had to be found for the Grinch. The larger problem, however, is that it doesn’t scare.
Partially this is because of the songs. They don’t have any scary sounds, being more like show tunes. I don’t have the vocabulary or expertise to say why, but they are not inspired. And the story is strange: Whoville battens down the hatches when Grinch night approaches. Eucariah Who has to use the euphemism (this word for outhouse is also in a Seuss book, I don’t recall which), but the wind blows him out of the yard and he apparently gets lost and climbs Mt. Crumpet. Meanwhile, the Grinch is on his way down with his Paraphernalia Wagon (perhaps a clue). He subjects Eucariah to the frights inside, which have nothing really spooky about them. I’m not sure if Theodore Geisel was never really haunted—but his story “What Was I Scared of?” (the pale green pants with nobody inside them) is spooky until the ending.
The thing that really disappointed me was that the concept is good. The execution, however, just didn’t work. The Grinch is far more menacing when stealing Christmas. And having Sergeant Samuel McPherson giving a play-by-play really seemed to serve no purpose. Now, I’m no critic of children’s stories. Like most parents I’ve read many of them (and I’m currently going through one set again, just for fun). Not all of them work for me. This half-hour cartoon made me feel bad. I think it was perhaps the missed opportunity. I may have felt differently about it if I’d seen it when I was fifteen, but I doubt it. Sometimes we need haunted people to tell us their stories, even when we’re kids. (I discuss scary kids’ stories in my Sleepy Hollow book, just sayin’.)
