31 Days of Horror - A Very 90s Halloween Themed TV Throwback

Horror isn’t just a genre; it’s an amalgamation of pop culture, cozy traditions, and things that go bump in the night. This year, we're taking our 31 Days of Horror across the entire cultural spectrum. We’ll be taking a look at movies that scare us, games that kept us paranoid, scary books we cozy up with under blankets, music that sets that spooky tone and seasonal food we’re craving–or strange food you’d have to tie us up and force feed us. Whether you’re looking for something truly terrifying or a cozy autumn haunt, come back every day this month for a new bite-sized review or spooky adjacent list.

I love a good Halloween episode of a TV show. And I love any holiday special. I think it’s because I’m a child of the late 80s, and early 90s. This was THE era for holiday themed TV, and Halloween was my favorite. Suddenly your favorite shows got a little scarier – even the sitcoms. And shows that were already scary? Well, you could count on them doubling down on the horror. 

For this list, we’re going pure nostalgia, and hopefully including a few you haven’t thought about or seen in a minute - though we’ll still throw some classics you’ll see on any 90s countdown in there.  And let’s get this out of the way right now, since I feel contractually obligated to do so by my colleagues here at Culture Combine: The Treehouse of Horror episodes of the Simpsons are ALWAYS going to be right there at the top of any Halloween TV list, but especially the 90s ones. It’s a given.

Halloween Hound: The Legend of Creepy Collars - Wishbone

Let’s start off mild, with an adorable but slightly creepy tail…er, tale. That’s right, we’re going straight to PBS for this one, and straight to Wishbone. I’m so sorry, you can’t tell me you didn’t love the little guy. And literary scares are legit. Plus, dog in elaborate costumes. This one’s a take on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow that sees Wishbone in the role of Ichabod Crane. I mean, enough said. Get out of here and watch it. It’s actually available on the tube of you, and if you haven’t seen Wishbone in a while it’s gonna warm your cold dead heart. And scare you a little, if you’re like me and the Headless Horsemen shivered your timbers.

Meatballs or Consequences - Animaniacs

For me at least, Animaniacs was a can’t miss. If I ever rushed home from school to see something, it was this show. Sure, some of the jokes went over my head until I was a little older but I had the tapes of all the famous songs and I had the reruns memorized.  Meatballs or Consequences gets us the Warner Brothers, and the Warner Sister - alone with Death/The Grim Reaper. And you know it’s gonna be his nightmare as much as it is theirs. So Wakko’s in a Swedish meatball eating contest because of course he is. And he’s attempting to outdo the largest person anyone’s ever seen. Kid packs away a lot of meatballs, but it turns out that knocks him out cold. Or dead. Which brings us to the grim reaper of it all. Wakko has perhaps binged his last.  Now, I’m told that this was a parody of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s films, but all I could think of was Bill and Ted, because it lands the Warners in a checkers game with Death for Wakko’s life. It’s ridiculous, Death gets his ass kicked by three little kids (sorta. They’re kids. They’re just…ok, it’s best not to go too deep.), and added bonus: if you didn’t know it was an Ingmar Bergman parody then, you can watch it now and probably get even more out of it. Which is the beauty of Animaniacs.

My recommendation to catch this one? Free on Tubi, with some ads.

Stevil - Family Matters

My nostalgia glasses aren’t so strong as to put this out there as a great episode in general, but my fear of ventriloquist dummies tips the scales some. Plus, it’s weird, campy and fun, and that’s a part of the fun of Halloween for me. In Stevil, Steve Urkel (look it up, you little tiny babies!) brings home a ventriloquist dummy which gets brought to life by an errant lightning strike. And y’know, the way these things happen, he decides to go on a murder spree. And honestly, it IS pretty scary. For one thing, again, ventriloquist dummies freak me out. But like, they dismember people, stuff them up chimneys, and just generally destroy the entire family.  And maybe I repressed this one til I did the research for this article, because rewatching the clips has got me feeling some type of way.

If you want to watch it and you have Hulu, you’re in luck, since Family Matters is available to stream there. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Garfield’s Halloween Adventure

I’m cheating here, both because this is a TV special and because it’s from 1985. I was 3. However, I loved Garfield from as early as I could first read books. Maybe it was the sarcasm, the laziness - I have no idea. I just really, really loved him. Maybe we had one of those plushies you stick up in the car that stop bullets. I’m not sure.This special sees our sardonic orange tabby out trick or treating with Odie as his servant and encountering kids in costumes, which scare Odie. This of course annoys Garfield, so he reverse Scooby-Doos it. (Scooby-Does it?) and he rips off the mask to find out the kids are not kids at all and ARE actually g-g-g-ghosts. Ghost pirates, to be specific, and they’re hunting for treasure that’s buried in the very mansion they end up in. This was genuinely scary to little me, and might bring back some fond first scary memories on the rewatch for you, too.

If you’re looking to rewatch this, it’s on Paramount+ or Amazon Prime WITH Paramount+

Hush - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Before you even begin to say “But that’s not a Halloween episode” I already covered Fear Itself and Halloween last year. And they’re great. I love both of them very, very much. But they’re far and away not as scary as Hush, or as much of a TV masterpiece. Remember, Hush got an Emmy nomination, though it was robbed of the win, in  my very biased, Buffy adoring mind at least.  And if you somehow didn’t have the images burned in your mind from this one, this is the episode featuring the Gentlemen, who roll into Sunnydale and steal everyone’s ability to speak. It’s a completely silent episode for most of its run time (27 minutes of silence, to be exact) and the Gentlemen are truly horrifying. The suits, the eerie floating and scary ass hands and face.  The crazy scary straightjacketed one that flails around behind them? I mean, I’m still scared of all of this. And add to that fear that you can’t scream for help, and you can’t hear anyone else scream either. This was peak Buffy, and it’s truly amazing. Watch it over and over, because it never misses. Just…not too close to bedtime, because it is nightmare fuel.

X-Files- “Home” 

Ok, so here’s another one that is a little bit cheating. That’s because this really isn’t a Halloween episode per se, just like Hush wasn’t. However, it did air in October originally, and it was so disturbing that it was actually controversial. It earned a TV-MA rating and viewer discretion warnings and  some critics and viewers felt it went too far and was too graphic, too violent and too disturbing.  We’ve heard that one before, horror fans, but it never seems to stop you. Honestly, this one is a hard watch for me, but it’s also incredibly scary and a really great episode of a really great show.

Hulu folks, you’re able to get this straight to your nearest TV.

Home Improvement - A Night to Dismember

Say what you will about Home Improvement and its largely felonious cast. It was a powerhouse, a cornerstone of TGIF, and they had some damn good Halloween episodes. Every single year we watched the show as a family I’d look forward to them, and there’s more than one I could pick here. It’s not as corny or pranky as some of the other ones, and it actually has an emotional undercurrent that an aspiring goth girl like myself with real live teenage angst related to. 

In this one, Mark, the youngest of the boys, was making a black and white horror film with his friend Ronnie for their class. And, backing up to make my goth comment make sense, this was the era in which Mark had turned goth, with full on skinny black jeans, black nail polish, big shoes, and black hair. Me: so into this, wanting to do this too, related to the angst which would bring him to play the sad angry music and make the moody films : riveted.

Tim and Jill usually had the upper hand in the Halloween prank wars that the family was known for in these episodes, but in this one they’re helping on a school project that turns dark. See, the plot of the movie is that a neglected child seeks out a mad scientist to make a potion to turn his family into freaks so that he can kill them. Now, don’t ask me why he didn’t just, IDK, kill them without all the mad science of it all? I’m not the writer here. But it culminates in Mark with a knife scaring the actual shit out of his parents, and prompting a heart to heart that touches on the real feelings behind Mark’s story for the film and his parents reassurance that he doesn’t have to change who he is or how he dresses, and they love him just the same. Which is surprisingly progressive for a show like this one.  

Those wanting to look back on this one can turn to Disney+

Good Will Haunting - Sabrina the Teenage Witch

It’s a show about witches. The whole entire show could count for Halloween if you wanted it to. But this in particular episode is a lot of fun, both for the costumes the cast wears (Harvey as Frankenstein’s monster is great) and for the creepiness of it all. Because that’s right, we’ve got another creepy doll. This one summons monsters to a calm night of horror movie watching with friends/boyfriends, and has the added b-plot of Hilda and Zelda avoiding a witches Halloween party. It’s really goofy, and a little bit spooky, with a ton of amazing guest stars up to and including Ringo Starr (for real though. He’s the mummy!)  and that’s a perfect reason to be reacquainted with this this Halloween.

If you’re hunting for Good Will Haunting, you’ll find it on Hulu.

The Scare - Dawson’s Creek

Speaking of teenage angst as we have, let’s revisit Dawson’s Creek, the soapy teen drama girls my age were absolutely absorbed in en masse. Pacey, Dawson, Jen, Joey - I mean, pick one and tell me you didn’t have a crush. In this episode, Dawson being Dawson is trying to prank his friends. It starts with stupid practical jokes and escalates into a seance, all the while in the background a news report is warning of an actual IRL serial killer who’s heading straight for Capeside. What are the odds?

Well, it’s the only town they ever seem to be in in the show, so pretty high. Still, no one’s super worried until Jen starts getting phone calls and notes. But psych! (do you like the use of 90s vernacular there?) it was just her boyfriend. So there’s no REAL killer, right? RIGHT? We get another red herring somewhere along the way only to find out Joey was RIGHT THERE WITH THE KILLER way earlier. I mean, is it terrifying? Sure, I guess. But it’s also a fun romp in how horror and romance go hand in hand. I recommend.

This is available widely, including on Tubi, Disney+, Hulu and Apple TV.

And Then There was Shawn - Boy Meets World

This one has to be on this list, and if I had been counting down to number one, this would be tied with Hush for top honors. Here’s the thing - I love when a theme episode can do double duty and pull huge plot moments for the entire episode/season/series – the way that Once More With Feeling did for Buffy. Sure, that was a musical episode, and that’s a sort of “theme” or some say “gimmick” episode, but it revealed one of the most important plot points of not only that season, but the rest of the series.

And Then There Was Shawn is a scary, sometimes funny, really well done Halloween Episode of a show I already adored. This was in the Scream era, and they got Jennifer Love Hewitt for it, who plays Eric’s love interest and became a love interest for Will Friedle as well.

We’re in the middle of an emotional breakup between Cory and Topanga and after a fight, everyone gets detention. They didn’t really reveal this as what it would be until they all get into detention and stuff starts to get really weird, really fast.  Feeny kicks it off when he pulls up a map screen and “ No One Gets Out Alive” is written on the chalkboard, but it gets even worse from there. They’re locked in the classroom, the lights go out, there’s a shadowy figure outside, and people get stabbed by pencils pretty quickly. Feeny dies, the janitor dies. People are dropping like flies, and for a series that LOVES a silly joke or a catchphrase, there’s way fewer laughs than there are actual freaky moments.

This was a slasher parody done to great effect with a cast of really talented people and a great writer’s room, and it shows. But what it also shows is depth, as the killer is revealed and the reasons that things went that way become clear. I don’t even want to spoiler it now, because it’s brilliant, and so scary that the episode director, Jeff McCracken stated that the network was apprehensive to put it out there, and feared it could be too scary for the audience. 

I’m really glad this one made it to air, because it’s still the one I hold up as one of the greatest Halloween episodes of any show of all time, for its careful parody of slasher films, emotional undercurrent, total genre shakeup and great acting.

Disney+ is where to park it to watch this classic.

We hope you enjoyed this list, and that you’ll bookmark it to revisit some 90s classics for spooky season alone or with friends.