Sunday, October 23, 2011

Honourable Mention: Halloweentown

Directed by Duwayne Dunham and released in 1998, this is a Disney Halloween film and with that I guess you know what you are going to get. Caring mother, Gwen (Judith Hoag), is a witch who has left Halloweentown (the place where the monsters live), married a mortal (who has now died) and is bringing up her kids in ignorance of their heritage.

Said kids are Dylan (Joey Zimmerman), Sophie (Emily Roeske) and Marnie (Kimberley J Brown) and Halloween is always a bust for them as their mum won’t let them celebrate it. Grandmother Aggie (Debbie Reynolds) comes to visit, wanting Marnie’s training to begin (at thirteen she should have finished training as a witch and, should her training fail to start she’ll lose her powers) and with a warning that something is off in Halloweentown. Gwen doesn’t believe the warning and wants Marnie to lose her powers and become human but Marnie has listened in and the three kids follow Grandma (on a magic bus) back to Halloweentown. The stage is set for the family to battle the evil that is afoot and for a bit of family redemption.

vampire fair
Halloweentown itself is full of various monster denizens and vampires do make an appearance. We see a coffin dwelling vampire bat who is the PA for the mayor (Robin Thomas, Moonlight). A person in a beauty parlour reads ‘Vampire Fair’ and the Halloweentown book that Grandma gives the kids has a picture of a vampire in it. However the main vampire moment is when Marnie needs a vampire fang as an ingredient for a potion. She heads to the Dentist’s and swipes a vampire’s fang as it is removed.

in the chair
Not a huge amount of vampiric activity, though vampires are mentioned several times through the flick.

The imdb page is here.

2 comments:

Clark49 said...

any particular reason why the character Dylan was played by someone with the surname Zimmerman? Nothing to do with the storyline I admit, but still.............lol

Taliesin_ttlg said...

good spot :)