Forty Days of Frankenstein, Day Ten: This is kind of a cool one. On October 27, 1978, NBC aired a half-hour animated Halloween special called “Witch’s Night Out.” It was created in Toronto, Canada, with a Canadian vocal cast of comedy greats including Gilda Radner and Catherine O’Hara. The plot involves the titular witch (of course) who is annoyed about people not treating Halloween properly. In the course of the events, she uses her magic to turn the three protagonists into a werewolf, a ghost, and “a Frankenstein.” It’s all delightfully agreeable, all resolved in 28 minutes, and that’s pretty much that. What I mostly have to say about it, other than that it’s worth a watch if you can get a look at it, is that there is a real and puzzling disconnect between the background art (which is gorgeous and astounding) and the character design, which looks like it’s from a different movie entirely. All the backgrounds are stylized but realistic and lovingly detailed, all the characters are (literally) monochromatic. As in, each character is one color. I really wish I could ask some questions about that. Anyhow, here’s some framegrabs of the (all-red) Frankenstein in question, so you can get a sense of the character and how he moves.
