Plot: Butch tells some scary stories just in time for Halloween.
Breakdown: Alright, Recess! Yet another nostalgia bomb for me. I loved Recess. Itâs one of those shows where I think it started and ended very strongly. They even got their own movie, which I hope to review sometime. Today, however, weâll be addressing their Halloween special, Terrifying Tales of Recess.
I love a good horror anthology, as you can likely tell. But does Recess really have it in it to tell funny spooky stories?
As bookends to each story is Butch, Third Streetâs resident story teller and bearer of bad news, addressing the audience with some information on each story. The first story is Children of the Corn Chip, which is about a âmysteryâ involving a shop keeper getting attacked by a monster. TJ and the others have to determine who the monster is, what caused the transformation and stop the monster before it turns everyone else into monsters.
This wasâŠ.kinda lame. It wouldâve been better if they didnât show the monster was Corn Chip Girl at the start and that the tainted item was corn chips. They couldâve just had the shopkeeper talk about some untested food and then Galileo (Gretchenâs computer) could reveal that the item was corn chips, leading them to Corn Chip Girl. Itâs just not a mystery story with any sort of twist if you show us who and what it is at the very first scene.
Well, I guess there is a twistâŠ.Gus damn near murders Corn Chip Girl by knocking her off the roof. He tries to explain that monsters turn back to normal when theyâre up that high and falling or something (it’s very poorly explained) and that he knew Mikey would catch her, but 1) They never explain well why he figured the height or fall would turn her back and 2) thereâs no way he couldâve been entirely certain that Mikey would catch her. Geez.
The second segment is called When Bikes Attack. Itâs about Mikeyâs beloved bike, Pegasus, coming to life in a thunderstorm, angered that Mikey left it out in the rain. This is a pretty entertaining story, and it doesnât even have a happy ending like the first one basically did. The situation is more âfrighteningâ and out of control, and there are more funny moments.
I donât have much else to say about besides that, so letâs move on to the final story, which is Night of the Living Finsters. This story centers around a hole that the Diggers dug. Seeing them run out of the hole screaming, Lawson dares Vince to spend the night in the hole all alone. Unable to refuse a dare, Vince does it (though how heâd prove it, I donât know). TJ and the others arrive to support him, but since the rules of the dare were that Vince had to be alone, he triggers what is basically playground rule-breaking mojo.
The ground shakes and reveals the underground graveyard of Ms. Finster’s ancestors, who all come back to life and chase the kids through the school. It ends in that familiar âit was all a dream?â and then âdunanana, it wasnâtâ
This was an alright story. It was a tiny bit scary-ish, but it didnât really have any particularly funny moments.
All in all, this was a fairly entertaining Halloween special but I think Recess couldâve done a bit better. Maybe itâs just not suited to the anthology format and needed a full episode of just one story?
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The Anime Madhouse 