COMMERCIAL CREEPS.

Nothing oozes more Halloween spirit than a few grainy commercials from the prime-time era of horror. Low budget and campy? You betcha. Heartfelt and sincere? Absofuckinglutely.

Uncle T is real sucker for local costume shop commercials. Watching these ads brings me back to this long-gone shop in Pawtucket, Rhode Island that my parents took me as a pint-sized demon which if memory serves me correctly was called “Morris Novelty”. I still remember the feeling of seeing all these disgusting, intimidating and amazing latex masks hanging on a wooden pitched ceiling in the shop’s upstairs area. Everything expensive and ultra creepy seemed to be displayed in that upper section of the mom and pop store. Plus it was an old mill building with creaky floors and everything covered in dust.

As you reached the summit of the stairs to the third floor, one look up and it was wall-to-wall horror masks. Seeing these grotesque faces in person for the first time was something to behold. I didn’t stop thinking about it for weeks.

Here are some of my other favorite Halloween costume shop commercials lingering around the internet thanks to uploaders like Dinosaur Dracula and other gnarly historians…

Now for something even more obscure. On October 30th, 1980 a local nighty news program decided to have a little fun with a local costume shop for their Halloween evening news “sign off”.

Yes, that’s Jean-Michel Jarre’s classic track ‘Oxygéne’ heard humming in the background. It’s hard to explain the genuinely spooky-nostalgic feeling that’s pumping through my loins as I watch this over and over again! The Halloween season is a bizarre and wonderful thing.