Friday, October 2, 2015

Blogtober: The Honking

Futurama is one of the few shows that I watched new from it's premier episode, and one of the fewer that I followed to completion (all four of them).


The Honking is the closest the series comes to a Halloween episode. It takes the basic plot and tropes from the original Universal Studios The Wolf man and futures it up. Bender falls under the curse of the Were-Car and kills innocent people every night.
Were-Car
He's no Lon Chaney, but he'll do.

Bender is fated to kill Fry, unless they can murder the original Were-Car.
Shown here, attacking Calculon. It's complicated.

This episode, while not creepy, plays on all the great tropes: an eastern-European village with a secret (populated by religious robots), a gypsy fortune teller (robot), a haunted castle (again more robots). There's even a bit of Scooby Doo thrown into the mix, though that's resolved in the first act.

This is just a fun, classic episode that touches on the horror tropes of the 30's and 40's. For non-regular viewers, it can stand alone well enough.

There's another episode that feels like this in tone, but is closer to 70's/early 80's horror like An American Werewolf in London, or The Wicker Man, repleate with conspiring villages, foggy moores, and misunderstood monsters. But it's not quite as good as The Honking.

Though it does have a bone-sucking creature named "Mr. Peppy."

If you want something Halloweeny in tone, but without pumpkins everywhere, this is a prefect watch.

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