The Grinch Halloween TV Special Nobody Remembers

Everybody remembers the Grinch stealing Christmas. Almost nobody remembers what happened when he tried to take on Halloween. Dr. Seuss used the Grinch to take aim at the commercialism surrounding Christmas, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was ultimately about discovering that Christmas isn’t about presents, decorations or stuff. The Grinch steals everything from Whoville, only to discover that the holiday is still there because the Whos still have each other.

A few years later, the Grinch was back for another holiday. This time, it was Halloween. Halloween Is Grinch Night was written as a prequel to the 1966 television classic and specifically as a television teleplay, making it more of a loose, standalone spin-off than another entry in the main Grinch books. Instead of capturing the warmth and simplicity of the original, though, it takes the character into a much stranger place.

Even the title is strange. The word “Halloween” is never spoken, and the Whos don’t trick-or-treat, carve pumpkins or dress up. They simply hide from “Grinch Night.” Despite being marketed as a Halloween special, it barely resembles the Halloween traditions viewers had come to expect from television, especially after It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown had established itself as a Halloween favorite. Rather than giving viewers another warm, funny holiday tradition, Halloween Is Grinch Night takes Halloween in a much darker and decidedly stranger direction.

Young Euchariah is the unlikely Who who finds himself caught in the middle of the Grinch’s Halloween nightmare. He is a young Who with poor vision caused by astigmatism, but instead of letting that stop him, he ends up facing the Grinch when everyone else is hiding. What follows is a surreal, Daliesque nightmare filled with bizarre creatures, strange landscapes and kaleidoscopic imagery. For a children’s special, it feels less like Halloween fun and more like psychological warfare. At times, it feels like a psychedelic bad trip brought on by a sugar rush from too much cheap Halloween candy. The visuals are certainly memorable, but the story underneath them never quite holds together.

After all that buildup, the Grinch is defeated by what amounts to a technicality. Euchariah doesn’t outsmart him, teach him a lesson, or change his heart. He simply stalls him until the mysterious Sour-Sweet Wind dies down, forcing the Grinch to retreat. The Grinch doesn’t learn anything, and that is a huge problem. He isn’t redeemed, changed, or really defeated. After all that nightmare fuel, he basically has to go home because his opportunity has disappeared.

That’s a big reason the story doesn’t work nearly as well as the original. In How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, the Grinch himself changes, and that transformation gives the ending its emotional payoff. Here, Euchariah simply survives the encounter. The victory feels less like defeating the villain and more like running out the clock, which makes the whole thing strangely anticlimactic.

Then there’s Max, which creates an even stranger continuity problem. At the end of Halloween Is Grinch Night, the Grinch’s miserable dog refuses to return with his master and follows Euchariah home, where the Whos welcome him. Good for Max. He finally gets away from the guy who treats him terribly. Except when How the Grinch Stole Christmas! rolls around, Max is right back on Mount Crumpit pulling the Grinch’s sleigh as if nothing ever happened. Either somebody forgot the continuity, or they figured kids wouldn’t remember. Poor Max apparently didn’t get a permanent escape clause.

Maybe the special was simply trying to give the Grinch another holiday vehicle, but whatever the intention, it never became the Halloween tradition that It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown did. Instead of a charming holiday classic, Halloween Is Grinch Night gave viewers a bizarre nightmare, a continuity problem and an ending that never quite delivers.

The special reminds me of candy corn. You know it’s supposed to be part of Halloween, but when you actually get a handful, you’re wishing there was something better in the bag. That’s pretty much how Halloween Is Grinch Night felt to me. Even as a kid, I knew something wasn’t right about it. I couldn’t have explained the strange story, the continuity problems or why the ending felt so flat back then. I just knew this wasn’t the Grinch I wanted to spend Halloween with.

Then comes the strangest part. Boris Karloff had died in 1969, so Hans Conried took over as both narrator and the Grinch. Conried was famous-ish for voicing Captain Hook in Disney’s 1953 Peter Pan. The special aired in 1977 and somehow won the 1978 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Special. That still shocks me. It was strange when I watched it as a kid; it still feels strange now, and the fact that it won an Emmy is almost the biggest mystery of the whole thing.