The wonderful and forever spooky Halloweentober is upon us! Welcome to the 31 days (and nights especially) of Halloween! Here it's dark and rainy, just the way I like it! I started dia uno with WNUF Halloween Special! This still is one of the most unique horror films I've ever had the pleasure of watching.
Sticking with the local flavor I put in AGFA + Bleeding Skulls Vinegar Syndrome release of Doug Ulrich's shot on video anthology Scary Tales. Yes, yes, yes this is cheesy horror but that does not mean it's not enjoyable. Now for me personally, like WNUF and Nightbeast, I like this film mostly because it's filmed where I live. There's just something about seeing your home on the big screen. Scary Tales is charming and fun if you like homemade movies.
The rest of the night was pumpkin carving with Hubie Halloween in the background... And read some short stories from A Newberry Halloween book.
Hubie Halloween came out during the pandemic. It was a pretty rough time for a lot of us. I was feeling the depression and anxiety of not knowing just what the future was going to do to us all. There was a point where life felt bleak as hell, and I wondered if we weren't all going to dip an early toe into the pool of the afterlife. So when this film came out - filmed in Salem, Massachusetts the year before the pandemic - I was feeling down. Watching the film for the first time had raised my spirits considerably! I watched it again and again that Halloweentober. I was feeling...happiness again. Hubie Halloween is a love letter to the Witch City, to Halloween, and to the people like me and you who keep this holiday alive each and every year. This film was immediately added in strong rotation every Halloween and will be forever.
The film is ridiculous at times as only an Adam Sandler flick will be, but that's a big part of its appeal. I grew up with Adam in SNL and movies like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. Hubie is not as outrageously hilarious as those films, or Zohan and others, but it doesn't have to be. The movie has heart and treats Halloween in the city of Salem as almost a religious experience.
Salem is obviously famous for its Witch Trails. That's what put this small town on the map forever. But it's become so much more, with folks making a pilgrimage every October to enjoy the Witch City and All Hollows Eve. Salem has become the US's Halloween capital the past couple of decades. It doesn't shy away from this history; rather, unlike Danvers, or Old Salem, it embraces it with a friendly hug.
So, some spoilers.
Like all Happy Madison Productions HH has a familiar cast including Kevin James, who plays the Sheriff or a walking Muppet - you decide. Rob Schneider plays a wonderful, unexpected role alongside Steve Buscemi, a maybe-maybe not werewolf. These two are partners who have escaped their asylum and wreck shit in Salem before they kind of voluntarily return home. Steve Buscemi's Walter Lambert is a character who chooses to ignore the awkwardness of Hubie and instead sees him for the kind, noble person Hubie is. And Ben Stiller's Hal L returns, working in the same asylum Walter escaped from.
Michael Mundi (Karan Brar) plays the unlikable bully alongside the late, great Ray Liotta. Ray plays the bigger bully here with Michael and makes Hubie's life sadder than it is. Like the city of Salem, the characters here just work so well. They are all likable, even the bad guys. Tim Meadows plays a (probably) cuckholded limp-wrist of a manchild who also bullies Hubie. You see the way his wife, played by Mya Rudolph, treats him and you kind of begin to understand why. The cast is as magical as the story.
It's easy to see why the town destroys Hubie every chance they get, when during the funeral for Peter Landolfa's (Ray Liotta) father, Hubie compliments Ray's mom on her beautiful witch costume. The old Italian widow was defending him only a moment earlier. Hubie makes it incredibly easy to pick on him. The only one to defend Hubie (besides his mother) is Violet Valentine, played by Baltimore's own Julie Bowen, another Happy Madison Productions alum. She has a crush on Hubie that rivals my own of her in Happy Gilmore. It's the way that Violet views the silly if noble Hubie throughout the story that makes this crush so adorable. She sees past all of his faults and wants the town to see what she sees - she wants even Hubie to see what she sees in him.
It's hard to believe that this film has been out now for four years. I've probably watched it a dozen times since its debut on Netflix. The atmosphere, the characters and the heartfelt story make this such an easy movie to watch again and again each Halloweentober. There's room at the top of the best Halloween films set in Salem list alongside Hocus Pocus, and Hubie Halloween sits there proudly. This movie is my comfort food for the soul.
Netflix. You're really pissing me off by not offering a Blu-ray release of Hubie Halloween. For now I have to settle with a Blu-ray rip of the movie.
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