Mike K reviews Scariest Home Movies

[froodle]

The Halloween episode is maybe the weakest one so far - my main issue is that much of the first half, involving Marshall and Simon having to watch Simon’s newly-introduced bratty younger brother Harley (whose full name is revealed to be Harley Schwarzenegger Holmes, awesomely enough) feels like filler.

However, once the plot kicks in, things do get more entertaining: In a bizarre accident involving a video camera, a TV, and a bitten-into remote, Harley swaps places with the mummy from a classic horror movie. The premise initially seems a little too typically kids’ horror for the normal tone of the show (I was a little worried it was going somewhere near Are You Afraid Of The Dark territory), but they put a pretty funny twist on things: First of all, it turns out Harley is ultimately more of a menace to the world of the horror movie than the mummy is to the real world - the funniest moment of this episode is the damsel in distress cowering and screaming in a corner as a six year old runs around and breaks ancient Egyptian vases. Then it turns out that it wasn’t the mummy that was summoned out of the television, just the actor who portrayed him; Tony Jay puts in a fun, snarky appearance as obvious Boris Karloff stand-in Boris Von Orloff, who was apparently reincarnated into one of his own movies after his death. So, ultimately, while this one feels a bit more like a “kids show” than other episodes, it’s still fairly clever and entertaining. Oh, and hey, the writers remembered the fact that Marshall’s older sister Syndi existed for once.