I had nearly forgotten about this, a half-hour TV special from '91, one of Hanna-Barbera's few live-action productions. The story involves a brother and sister pair of trick r' treaters, a candy factory closing and putting everyone in town out of the job, visiting aliens looking for fuel, and an old woman studying bugs in order to become immortal.That's a lot of ground to cover in twenty-some minutes and some of those plot lines don't get much development. The old woman, played by Rhea Perlman in a fright wig, is mostly a plot device to endanger our protagonists. She hangs out in a creepy Victorian mansion on a hill, has a laboratory full of bubbling chemicals, and a bumbling, monosyllabic henchman. (Who somehow isn't a hunchback.) These are all nice horror-lite elements, even if they don't add much.The main attraction is the aliens. Considering this is a television production from a faltering studio in 1991, the special effects are extremely good. The Martians are brought to life with CGI and, while it's primitive, it's impressive for the time. The fact that the aliens are blatantly cartoons helps a lot. There's not much to them and they're even color-coded. The blue one is the captain, the red one is the science experts, there's the gold, hopping, child-like one that contributes nothing to the team, and finally a rainbow colored Mogwai looking guy (voiced by Paul Williams, who I guess didn't have anything better to do that day) spends most of the movie digging the spaceship out of the ground. With the help of a dog who is conveniently named Digger, for those not paying attention.The fuel the aliens are looking for turns out to be, ah, candy. So brother and sister take them trick r' treating. This leads to the scene you're probably expecting, of the aliens hiding in plain sight, pretending to be kids in costumes. The really arbitrary plot detail about the mean old woman needing special bugs leads to the two plot threads awkwardly fusing together. That plot line is resolved very quickly. I'm not sure if it was needed at all.There's some sap. The kids have a dead mom and discussions about that take up too much time. There's a literal magical conclusion. Luckily, there's almost no lame kid-friendly humor or no bad slapstick. "The Last Halloween" is super obscure. I only remember it airing once when it was new. It was heavily advertised at the time, including a promotional comic in Disney Adventure Magazine. I only vaguely remembered something about CGI aliens sucking up candy, and then something about a guy in a barn with a vat of green liquid? It was nice to finally find this and confirm I'm not crazy. It's not half bad, as far as these things go.

I have always been a huge fan of this movie! By all means it is not perfect, but it is timeless. As technology progresses I can't help but go back to this family favorite. Way back when it was airing on TV I taped it on VHS. I have watched it every year during October since I can remember. I recently went off to college and as October came around all I could do was think about watching The Last Halloween. Well my wishes were answered when I decided to dig up the VHS and turn it into a DVD. It even has the old time commercials in it, and the quality isn't half bad. If anyone is looking a copy I might be able to make that happen. Email me at [email protected] DVD Copy Machine has been in repair for sometime now. I will be getting it back around Christmas time. I'm sorry that I cannot have a copy to all of you by Halloween, but keep in contact with me and I will do my best to get you a copy for next Halloween.

I know everyone tends to get nostalgic over The Last Holloween; it aired back when I was a kid too. A recent viewing of this film revealed the sad truth: things from your childhood are generally awful.It's not even worthwhile to bother with the plot. This thing is over in 20 minutes, with 15 additional minutes devoted to Mars candy advertisements. The film follows two ugly moppets who are still bemoaning the untimely death of their mother several years ago. Life sure sucks for these two. Dad's candy factory, which employs the entire town (!), has gone belly up due to the mysterious disappearance of the lake (plot point). Meanwhile, Rhea Pearlman and Richard Moll earn their 50 dollars by playing a batty old hag and her retarded henchmen, respectively, and their lame plot to find the elixir of eternal youth by sucking out bug extract provides the film with its climatic action scene. Geez, I hope someone can stop those madmen. Perhaps....a couple of CGI Martians??? A couple of cutesy Martians crash land on earth. Their mission? Get Kobi, a beloved substance whose supply has lone been depleted. The cute children decide to help out the aliens and, after about 2 minutes of thinking, figure out what Kobi is. I don't want to spoil anything for the five of you who may actually want to watch this film, but let's just say that arriving on Halloween night proves to be a boon for those dumb aliens. Oh, and this was sponsored by the Mars corporation.That's pretty much the plot. At 22 minutes or so, the film barely even registers, which is probably why most people don't even remember it. However, for fans of god-awful special effects, the aliens are well worth a look. As fake as Gollum might look in Lord of the Rings, he's a model of Realism compared to these fellas. Geez...

i REALLY wish they'd start playing this movie again every halloween. every halloween i look for it & i haven't seen it on tv in several years. i miss watching it. if it was released on video i'd buy it too! i really feel like kids now are missing out on a really neat movie that wanders a little from the traditional halloween plots but is very entertaining and has really cool characters (creatures).