Will Vinton Sends A Pig To Castle Frankenswine

After the assault from the past few days of Kidding Around, I felt like you all would appreciate something... better. Will Vinton's Claymation Comedy of Horrors is a claymation Halloween special that aired in the early 90's. I didn't see this on Halloween though. My first exposure to it came from a random re-airing of it in the middle of the summer. On a local CBS affiliate no less! Back in those days I'd regularly look through the TV Guide for something cool and usually tape it.

I was always nuts for Halloween, so I had started a Halloween special tape that summer. Most sitcoms would rerun holiday episodes regardless of the time of year. This doubled for shows that had went to syndication. TV Guide was pretty dependable for a brief synopsis of what episode was coming on, so I was able to curate a tape full of specials pretty easily. 

From summer break to the actual season, I somehow made a full 8 hr VHS of Halloween specials that year. The tape is still in my Mom's possession, but I have no clue if it's even watchable. It was on regular rotation in my bedroom throughout the years. Last time I watched it the auto tracking couldn't keep up and it kept making weird squiggly noises. If you lived through the VHS days, you know the ones I'm talking about.

On it is this little show that I saw listed on a random summer evening on CBS. It's pretty fun. Basically a pig and his snail employee find a treasure map which leads to Frankenswine's (pigs, get it?) Castle on Halloween night. They encounter all sorts of monsters in a pretty great looking production. It's pretty obscure, I don't think it has much of a fan following like other Halloween specials. That's ok, not everything has to be a cult classic. I suppose anyway.