We hope you’re having a safe, fun Halloween weekend, and voting to make sure that America’s future doesn’t turn into an endless Halloween nightmare. For this week’s look back at “Huckabee” on TBN, here’s one of our “In Case You Missed It” goofy news segments featuring some Halloween stories, including costume fails, although the last two are definitely winners. Well, one is a winner and the other a sore loser.
By HP pop culture guru Pat Reeder
I love Halloween music, but let’s face it, many of the party playlists have gotten boring, with the same songs over and over (“Monster Mash,” “People are Strange,” “Godzilla,” etc.) Thousands of Halloween-adjacent songs have been cut since 1916’s “Spooky Spooks” (here’s a version from 1917 illustrated with a 1907 film clip featuring in-camera special effects that must’ve been mind-blowing for their time and are still darned impressive today.)
So here are some lesser-known Halloween songs to freshen up your playlist.
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Let’s kick it off with this silly little tune by the iconic jazz vocal group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, “Halloween Spooks.”
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Keeping with the jazz genre, here’s Louis Armstrong with 1954’s “Spooks,” perfectly illustrated with the 1929 Mickey Mouse cartoon “Haunted House.”
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Next, a hot but spooky tune from 1930 that I learned from our pal Matt Tolentino, leader of the great 1920s big band The Singapore Slingers (here’s Laura singing with them during a Halloween show on a non-Halloween song:
.) This features those young up-and-comers Tommy Dorsey on trombone and Benny Goodman on clarinet. It’s Rube Bloom and his Bayou Boys with “Mysterious Mose.”
- Turning to rock, my favorite band working today is Southern Culture on the Skids, which combines Southern rock, country, rockabilly, ‘60s garage band and surf music with hilarious lyrics about everything from cheap motels to beehive hairdos (“She’s liquored up, and lacquered down...She’s got the biggest hair in town.”) I just found out that they’re finally coming to Dallas next year, and I already have tickets.
For Halloween, I could have picked “Voodoo Cadillac” or anything from their horror-themed album “Zombified” (all tracks on YouTube), but I love this so much I wanted to share it. It’s not technically a Halloween song, but it has a menacing sound and it mentions a “bad moon rising.” And if you’re making a video playlist, this includes a skeleton and clips from cheesy creature features. Here’s SCOTS with “Run, Baby, Run.”
Finally, a few other suggestions for your Halloween playlist: “Pet Semetary” by the Ramones, “Every Day is Halloween” by Ministry, “Dead Man’s Party” by Oingo Boingo, “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” by Dave Edmunds and “The Creature With the Atom Brain” by Roky Erickson (13th Floor Elevators.) Or just play nothing but Alice Cooper.
By HP pop culture guru Pat Reeder
I hate that so much of my writing these days has to be devoted to the passing of pop culture icons, but sadly, that’s the inevitable result of the passing years. Today, we bid farewell to two more.
First, renowned actor Sir Patrick Stewart died Wednesday at home in Los Angeles at 86 after a brief battle with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia.
While he played many roles on stage and screen, he will be forever remembered in geek circles as Enterprise Captain Jean Luc Picard in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and as Professor Charles Xavier in the “X-Men” movie franchise, which earned him a Guinness World Record for the longest Marvel movie career.
Since I like to share things that other obituary writers never mention, please check out this video from Stewart’s interview on Conan O’Brien’s podcast. He tells the moving story of how, as a struggling young actor, he was taken under the protective wing of his stage co-star Vivien Leigh, who brought him with her to watch a revival of “Gone With The Wind.” Imagine what it was like to watch “Gone With The Wind” while sitting next to Scarlett O’Hara!
And this one will hit a lot of men of a certain age very hard: German actress Elke Sommer, one of the most beautiful sex symbols of the 1960s, died Wednesday at her home in Bel Air of heart failure at 85.
Sommer had memorable roles in many movies and TV shows, with highlights including the Pink Panther sequel “A Shot in the Dark” and Dean Martin’s Matt Helm movie, “The Wrecking Crew.”
Fluent in five languages, she made movies in a number of countries both before her American success and after her US career waned. Her many talents also included being an accomplished painter who had her own how-to show on PBS; performing in a number of theatrical roles; and singing in a cabaret act, which led to her recording several albums. As the co-author of a book on celebrity records, that’s of special interest to me. Here she is performing a memorable musical number in 1965 for Jack Benny.
And in 1964, she became one of the first celebrities to pose nude for Playboy, which we assume men of a certain age will also remember fondly.
RIP to them both.
By HP pop culture guru Pat Reeder
I am truly sad to have to report that the delightful comic actress Susan St. James has died of pancreatic cancer at 80.
St. James was not only a popular star of movies and TV for years, she was remembered by her family as a kind and warmhearted person who was “generous with her time and energy, which she valued more than money,” and who took time to talk to and show interest in everyone who met her.
She first came to fame in 1969 with her role as Peggy Maxwell on the NBC drama “The Name of the Game,” scoring an Emmy in its first season and nominations in the next two seasons. Six months after it ended, she joined Rock Hudson for the even more popular comedy-mystery series “McMillan & Wife.” She stayed with that for five seasons (picking up three more Emmy nominations) before leaving in 1979 to devote the rest of the decade to movies, such as “Outlaw Blues” and “Love at First Bite.” She returned to TV in 1984, joining “SNL” alum Jane Curtin in the hit sitcom “Kate & Allie,” picking up two more Emmy nominations during its six seasons.
After it ended in 1989, St. James pretty much retired from acting. She told People magazine that she was tired of being “one of those people juggling knives and melons and then (saying), ‘Toss me in a razor blade.’” She married NBC Sports head Dick Ebersol and devoted herself to her family. Tragically, their youngest child Teddy died in a plane crash in 2004 at age 14.
It was also reported that Oscar-, Emmy- and Tony-nominated actress Barbara Barrie has died in New York of terminal cancer at 95 in a “medically-assisted” procedure.
Over her long career, her many roles included the original Broadway runs of Neil Simon’s “California Suite” and “The Prisoner of Second Avenue;” the movie “Breaking Away” (for which she was Oscar-nominated); and the TV series “Barney Miller” and “Suddenly Susan.”
We extend our prayers and condolences to the families of both of these very talented ladies.
By HP pop culture guru Pat Reeder
It’s said that celebrities die in threes, and that’s true today as I sadly have three obituaries to report.
First, actor Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original “Star Trek” TV series and seven movies, has died at home in North Hollywood of old age at 90.
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/walter-koenig-dead-chekov-star-trek-1236931312/
While he will always be best known for “Star Trek,” Koenig played many other roles and even scored an indie films award as best actor for the 2026 short, “Mr. Fleishman.”
Also, Pittsburgh music legend Donnie Iris has died at 83, just weeks after announcing his retirement from performing for health reasons. He was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2023.
Iris had hits in the 1980s with “Ah! Leah!,” “Love is Like a Rock” and “My Girl.” They had middling chart success but are still well-remembered. Iris also built a strong fan base with his dynamic live shows, and he released 11 albums. Less well known is that before his solo success, he sang and wrote the only hit for The Jaggerz, who made it to #2 in 1970 with a presciently-named tune called “The Rapper.”
Finally, we wish a sad “That’s all, folks” to Eric Bauza, who has died in L.A. at 46 from hypertensive cardiovascular disease.
Bauza was a modern-day Mel Blanc. He racked up over 400 credits as a voice actor, providing the famous voices for dozens of beloved cartoon characters, including Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. He recently said, “The Looney Tunes were here before I was born and they’re definitely going to be here long after I leave this realm. I just feel like the luckiest guy.”
RIP to them all.
It’s time to catch up on the past week’s fake news from the Babylon Bee, which this week could easily be nothing but jokes about Ilhan Omar and Alaska’s Senate election.
https://babylonbee.com/news/alaska-democrats-caught-busing-in-thousands-of-dan-sullivans
