Review of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) by Brendan R — 21 Oct 2013

"What's that? What's that? I hear The Great Pumpkin! There he is! There he is! It's The Great Pumpkin, rising out of the pumpkin patch!".

As a child, something I would love to do on Halloween is dress up in a certain costume, go out to neighbors, holler "TRICK OR TREAT!", and get free candy. While I've outgrown that traditional American practice, there's one Halloween tradition that I always celebrate every single year, and that's my annual viewing of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and like the beloved A Charlie Brown Christmas, is Peanuts at it's all-time best!

If you remember in A Charlie Brown Christmas, Linus reveals the true Christmas spirit by the remembrance of the birth of Christ. But now it's Halloween, and Linus has a new religion, and that's The Great Pumpkin. He believes that on every Halloween, The Great Pumpkin comes from his pumpkin patch giving toys to every good child who believes in him. But the only child he manages to convert is Sally, who has a huge crush on him. Elsewhere in Peanuts land, Charlie Brown is excited to be invited to a Halloween party, only to receive a bag full of rocks, and everyone's favorite dog Snoopy famously dresses up as a WWI flying ace, determined to take down The Red Baron.

If you haven't figured out by now, I love this short. I not only love this short, I love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love this short. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is filled with tons of humor, memorable quotes, and goes down as one of the greatest Peanuts shorts ever made, along with the even more epic Charlie Brown Christmas.

Every time I watch The Great Pumpkin, I feel refreshed with the friendly environment of the characters that I first felt with these great characters since I first watched this short when I was probably 4 or 5 (same with Charlie Brown Christmas). The quotes are so funny and memorably awesome that they feel like new again every single time I watch this short. Quotes like, "Clearly we are separated by denominational differences", and "You didn't tell me you were gonna kill it", or "This time I'm really gonna kick that football", referring to the famous scene where Charlie is tricked by Lucy to kick the football where he'll feel stupid in Lucy's eyes.

Like with any classic Peanuts special, Vince Guaraldi's score is fantastic. His use of "Linus and Lucy" continues to be awesome, the random piano-filled music is catchy, and a military-themed drum solo is pretty cool. Guaraldi is the reason why these Peanuts specials are the classics they are today, cause without his music, Peanuts would not be cool.

I might be biased in this review, but It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a Halloween Peanuts tradition in my house. Being a Peanuts special, it's family entertainment at perfection, and if you're one of those parents who fear of any cursing, violence, sex, or nudity on any show or film, then you're in luck with this one, cause this short manages to entertain any member of the family, from the age of 2 to the age of 102, it's great, awesome, Halloween gold.