Josh's Geek Cave's Halloween Special

 Hey everyone! Happy Halloween! I hope you all had a spooky night tonight. I decided to do a little Halloween special where I'll be talking about a TV show and a movie that I've watched over the last three days. It's been raining for the past two days so I stayed in and watched TV and a movie. Let's get into it!

On Wednesday and yesterday, I watched seven episodes of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on DVD. All six Halloween episodes, and then the episode of the 7th season that would've been a Halloween episode (season 7, episode 6), but wasn't for some reason. Seasons 4 and 7 are the only two seasons of the show that I'd never seen any episodes from before yesterday. While I'd watched seasons 1-3 on TGIF when they were on, I'd managed to catch a few episodes from seasons 5 and 6 when I was up at the cottage in the early 2000s. My grandparents had satellite TV up there in the late '90s, the 2000s, and the early 2010s. So, they were able to pick up the nearest broadcast of The WB in the U.S. Which means I got to watch a few shows that I either didn't get on channels available to me at home, or watch shows I did get on their original American channel. Which was cool.

Watching these seven episodes reminded me of how much fun it is to watch Sabrina. It was my favourite TGIF show of the ones I watched in the late '90s. I think it's because it never got as heavy, or as preachy, as Boy Meets World tended to do, and it lasted longer than any other TGIF show that aired between 1997 and 2000. 

Sabrina herself, played by the lovely Melissa Joan Hart, is so sarcastic, witty, and the kind of girl I wanted to be friends with at the time I watched the show originally. same with Sabrina's friend, Valerie, played by Lindsay Sloane, who was introduced in season 2. Jenny was okay in season 1, but I liked Valerie better. And of course I wished that both Aunt Hilda and Aunt Zelda were my aunts because they were also lots of fun. I don't think I'd want Salem as a pet though. He's too sarcastic. 

The Complete Series boxset is interesting because like all DVD boxsets released by Paramount Home Entertainment in 2006 and later, the modern CBS Television logo is at the end of every episode instead of the original Viacom Productions logo, so the episodes from seasons 1-3 weren't exactly how I remembered them, but they were still fun. DVDs and Blu-rays are a fun way to watch your favourite shows from the past. Particularly the cartoons us '90s kids grew up with like Batman: The Animated Series and Rugrats. They're also a great way to revisit your favourite TGIF shows like Sabrina. I'm definitely gonna do a full watch through of the show in the very near future.

  

Tonight for Halloween proper, I watched Casper on VHS. I talked about this movie in my recent post on movies we '90s kids watched growing up, but I wanted to go a bit deeper here because I didn't talk about my memories of watching it on VHS back in the '90s. 

I was probably 10 or 11 when I finally saw this movie. I think we'd already moved to the house we lived in in Greely before we moved to this house when I saw Casper for the first time. I definitely remember watching it in that particular family room, rather than in the play area that my siblings and I had at the log house, or in the basement or the family room at the house on Greely's main road. So it had to have been in our third house in Greely that I saw this movie in. So it was 1997 or 1998 when I saw it. 

We didn't always rent or buy a movie as soon as it was released on VHS. Sometimes we waited a couple of years before doing so. Especially once we moved out to Greely and the nearest video store was 30 minutes away. And it'd take a while for the local gas station or convenience store to get a copy of the movie in. Moreso with the VHS releases, but as DVDs became the dominant home video format, the gas station became faster at getting brand new releases in for rental.

My favourite scene in this movie is the end when Casper had been turned into Devon Sawa so that he and Kat, played by Christina Ricci, could dance at the Halloween party, and Dr. Harvey (Bill Pullman's character) got to see his deceased wife, Amelia one last time, ending his quest to find her ghost form. Not only are Kat and Casper dancing to "Remember Me this Way" by Jordan Hill, but all the characters got what they wanted. Casper and Kat got friends, Harvey got to see Amelia, and the Ghostly Trio got rid of Carrigan and Dibs, who are the only characters in the movie who DON'T get everything they wanted. 

I still love this movie. I said in the review I did five years ago on the Review Basement blog that this wasn't a good movie and that it's stupid kids movie, which I loved anyway. However, watching it tonight, it's the perfect Halloween movie for those of us who don't like Horror movies. And just remembering seeing the movie on VHS in either 1997 or 1998, put me back into the '90s for a night of ghostly fun. I am in love with this movie, and it's absolutely on my list of movies to not only watch on Halloween every year, but to watch all year round, because of how much fun it is.

And that my friends, concludes this year's Halloween Special. I have no idea what my next blog post is gonna be on, but it'll be something fun for sure. I got a busy week coming up next week though, so it might not be until Wednesday or Friday that I'll be back here. But, until then, have a great rest of your night, a great weekend, and I will talk to you all later. Take care!