Review of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) by Jenn S — 08 Oct 2004

There are few sounds I enjoy as much as hearing Vince Guaraldi's wonderful "Linus and Lucy". The music, which was introduced to the world in 1965's "A Charlie Brown Christmas", was recycled the following year for "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown".

Hearing that music and seeing the familiar characters again takes me back to a time when my entire world would be scheduled around holiday specials such as this. The story is simple: On Halloween night, Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang go trick-or-treating and to a party, while Linus waits in his pumpkin patch for the arrival of the Great Pumpkin.

This special contains a number of Schulz' classic bits, from Charlie Brown again attempting to kick that football to an extended sequence featuring World War I Flying Ace Snoopy fighting the Red Baron and being shot down behind enemy lines.

The gags are classic. Charlie Brown had some trouble with the scissors, and his Halloween costume is a ghost with somewhere in the area of a dozen eyeholes. While trick-or-treating, the gang compares the candy they get.

Everyone winds up with all sorts of wonderful treats and goodies. Except, of course, good ol' Charlie Brown: "I got a rock." I love the idea that the Great Pumpkin appears in, of all places, "the most sincere pumpkin patch.

" It makes one wonder where Linus got his information. There's actually very little dialogue in the Peanuts specials. That always worked to their advantage. Young children were traditionally used to do the voices, and the silences make their words all the more profound and smart.

And the Peanuts gang was always smart. Take the moral of the story, delivered to us by Linus Van Pelt: "I've learned there are three things you don't discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin.

" I couldn't agree more.