As 1988’s Disney Channel original Halloweentown is my wife’s happy comfort movie, I felt compelled to check out Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb’s The Spirit of Halloweentown. Surprisingly, I came away surprised and delighted. I expected the documentary to be a look back at how the filming on the beloved family classic impacted the town and the people who live there, laced with anecdotes from the shoot, possibly with appearances from cast and crew members. But that’s not what this is. Much like Anvil! The Story of Anvil is kind of a real-life Spinal Tap, this is a lot like a real-world version of another Christopher Guest film, Waiting for Guffman.
Now, while the plot doesn’t center on a performance to mark a historic town-wide celebration, it is about how the filming of Halloweentown led to the creation of an event that began with 50 people. But over the years, the town’s Halloween festivities have drawn crowds of over 50,000 attendees, providing a boost of over a million dollars to the economy of St. Helens, Oregon. Once a brief history of the filming of Halloweentown is dusted over, the picture drifts into Christopher Guest territory as we meet a curious cadre of locals.
A man who operates a haunted house believes in aliens and operates the community’s UFO museum. The local queen of Halloween leads the children who attend the festival in various activities. The new-in-town restaurateur, who is a little like the Corky St. Clair of the piece, is the outsider who clashes with the establishment trying to realize his vision of an upmarket dining establishment. Finally, the local ghost hunters are intent on investigating and exposing the true “spirits” lurking in the vacant and abandoned areas of the town.
“…how the filming of Halloweentown led to the creation of an event that began with 50 people…[now] crowds of over 50,000 attendees…”
As the weeks leading up to Halloween peel away, we meet and share the lives of these locals for whom the season brings great joy, meaning, purpose, healing, and tragedy. While some are lost in the ceremony, others use the routine of the proceedings to busy themselves whilst coping with great loss, together with others using the event to chart a course toward personal redemption. We experience communication with the dead, Halloween-theme drag shows, a zombie cheerleader dance number, and a crisis surrounding cold mac and cheese, an under-cooked burger, and a bad review which quickly devolves into a wildfire of criticism and gossip. All of this transpires beneath the surface as the visitors flock in droves. They come to trick or treat, share nostalgia with the next generation, and, of course, create a plethora of memories.
Of course, not all the people in St. Helens are hip to Halloween. The Spirit of Halloweentown allows us to hear from a unique and alternative voice who could have so easily been plucked from some comedic mockumentary. These people stand so perfectly as a whimsical protestor to the holiday they say celebrates the birth of the Devil.
These elements fused together make The Spirit of Halloweentown an unusually funny and moving experience as the eclectic and eccentric collide in a town where generations have to be born and bred, and sometimes have never been out of town. When the spotlight of the spooky seasons comes calling to commemorate a magical movie memory on the second-most-popular holiday on the calendar, there are plenty of tricks and treats in the story to make it a must-see.
"…there are plenty of tricks and treats in the story to make it a must-see."
