The Great Pumpkin Is Terrifying, Charlie Brown

Charlie Brown's Buddy Linus Gorges On The Implied Horror Of The Great Pumpkin

Be honest with yourself for a few brief, shining moments. It’s thoroughly cleansing. Set aside all your childhood warmth and fuzzy memories of wishy washy Charlie Brown and his Peanuts friends. Yeah, many of us revere them. They’re a big part of our pop culture, but we still must look at our beloved things in a new lens, even our beloved comic strip creations.

Next to Christmas, the spooky trick or treat season is most identified with the creations of cartoonist, Charles Schultz. Halloween figures in mightily with the Peanuts gang. Who can forget the little nuts in costume trick or treating and Charlie Brown always getting a rock. One of them, Linus, apparently is so admiring of Halloween happenings, he spends his mischief nights outside awaiting a mythic figure.

Since its debut in 1966, It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown has been a favored seasonal perennial. Families gather around the electronic hearth to joyously celebrate the supernatural spookiness of Lucy, Sally, Snoopy and their glorious gang. T-shirts, greeting cards and action figures have all sprung from this charming cartoon special.

Regarding the mythic subject of the legendary Great Pumpkin: Isn’t a pumpkin patch - in the dead of night anyway - intrinsically frightening to us all? Who would sleep there overnight? And if an enormous flying pumpkin with flailing limbs flew out of it, wouldn’t it scare the living shit out of you?

Linus, is this the nightmare you really want?

Hellish Halloween Howls

Dressing up on Halloween is in and of itself a scary endeavor. You want to wear your gorey or giggly get up and look good for your family and friends. We dread coming up with a costume which may elicit unwanted laughs, instead of spinal chills.

So what if you took your costume into a dirty pumpkin patch and witness the flight of a supernatural vegetable. This flying gourd of giddiness is not only enormous, but sports arms with hands capable of grabbing and doling out toys and treats to kids.

Arms which are capable of unspeakable things as well no doubt.

I think we all can agree, Santa Claus this guy sure ain’t. Halloween tastes like a bitter hollow weenie with such a creature rampaging about the land. Even Michael Meyers would probably be spooked out of his Captain Kirk mask by The Great Pumpkin.

This Halloween when you settle down to watch It’s The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, keep in mind the sheer terror that such a creature would wreck upon our real world. Visualize the absolute horror of something as powerful and merciless as an enormous, flying pumpkin armed with the intelligence of a man or even far beyond. You may be thinking, I don’t offer much proof. Perhaps, however, this quote from Linus sums up the frightening power of this Halloween symbol, "There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics, and the Great Pumpkin." It’s unassailable logic, Linus, because if you revealed all the many spine tingling aspects of your orange hero, we’d all go screaming into the night and never ever stop.