What's the best part of Halloween? The costumes? The candy? The staying inside because we're still in a pandemic and you shouldn't be going to parties?

I'd argue some of that appeal rests on those wonderfully timeless television specials. The winter holidays are certainly the most beloved, but Halloween has carved a pretty special place in the hearts of television fans, and seemingly no show seems to escape the season of scares. Beyond the classics like 'The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror" series and 'It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,' everyone has those few specials that they love beyond any sense of isolated appeal.

I'm sure there are at least a few people here who are familiar with 'The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy.' From 2001 to 2007, Maxwell Atoms' series focused on the titular Billy and Mandy and their misadventures with their new best friend, the Grim Reaper. The show became an unlikely staple of Cartoon Network in the 2000s, earning two Emmys and airing for six seasons plus two television movies...or should I say three?

The first two were 'Billy and Mandy' movies, but the third was meant to be something more; a potential spin-off of the "b-list" side characters that never made it off the group for various reasons. Because of that, a lot of fans don't even remember this special exists, let alone any recollection of quality.

But for me, that special has never left my mind. It's become my guilty pleasure every Halloween since it premiered 12 years ago, and today I finally get to talk about it: the 2008 would-be classic 'Underfist: Halloween Bash'.

One fateful Halloween night, we follow a trio of trick-or-treaters: Billy (voiced by Richard Steven Horvitz), Mandy (voiced by Tara Strong), and, most notably, Irwin (voiced by Vanessa Marshall). A side character in the original series, Irwin's character is revealed to be much more than a humble nerd. His mother was/is a mummy and his grandfather is actually the legendary Dracula (voiced by Phil LaMarr).

As such, Irwin has inherited his family's abilities, just not to the degree of impressing anyone, let alone his crush, Mandy, who leaves with Billy due to a lack of candy. Irwin runs into a bully, Mindy (voiced by Rachael McFarlane), who tells him there are giant chocolate bars at a scary-looking haunted house. But when Irwin rings the doorbell, portals begin to appear all over the city, unleashing an army of evil candy monsters led by the nefarious white chocolate bunny, Bun Bun (voiced by Dave Wittenberg).

When Bun Bun kidnaps Mindy, Irwin realizes he needs help getting to the Underworld and by chance comes to team up with others attempting to fight the candy invasion. These include the monster hunter Hoss Delgado (voiced by Diedrich Bader), the military general turned gardening enthusiast Skarr (voiced by Armin Shimerman), Billy's illegitimate spider son Jeff (voiced by Atoms himself), and the gullible elephant Fred Fredburger (voiced by C.H. Greenblatt). Together, the group journeys to the Underworld to save Mindy and the existence of Halloween itself, as the unlikely team Underfist.

'Underfist' only runs about an hour-long - it really feels like a two-part pilot in disguise - and it makes the most out of what it gets. After a great opening gag with the movie faking its own ending, Atoms, and director Shaun Cashman waste no time getting us into the main story, filled with goofy (albeit stagnant) action sequences and tons of Halloween vibes and imagery.

Plus the dialogue is just so wonderfully memorable, especially when you've got five incredibly varied characters working off of each other. Maxwell Atoms has never shied away from absurdist, dark humor in his works and this is certainly no different. It's even gotten to the point where I can quote at least half of this movie beat by beat.
(I'm not going to quote them all here because then you'd immediately click out of this article, but I will specify something that always cracks me up)
MINDY: "If you really want to beat something up, go get the spider (Jeff) and the weird green duck (Fred)."
CANDY CREATURE: "GET THE SPIDER AND THE DUCK!"
...classic.

I also really admire how stand-alone of a story to 'Billy & Mandy' this can feel, as the focus really starts to lean on Irwin and Hoss. It's a pretty simple message about the Hoss's prejudices against monsters and Irwin's reluctance to accept his own heritage, but it weirdly works. Jeff and Fred are basically the loveable idiots, with some pretty effective development in regards to growing up and taking responsibility. Even Skarr, who really doesn't have any sort of progression beyond a last-minute twist, provides a kind of straight-man foil to the antics of the others (and his Freddy Krueger costume is kind of amazing).

As for those Halloween vibes, they're all over the place, between the surprisingly varied candy army soldiers, easter eggs like the "Confectionomicon," and recurring jokes like the gang going back to Dracula's for candy, reiterating that "pennies are the worst treat of all." It's nowhere close to a deconstruction of Halloween traditions (perhaps one of the few let-downs of the film in my eyes), but I would argue it never really has to. The focus is on the piecemeal team's antics and an equal goofy/spooky aesthetic and that always remains pretty consistent.

Sadly, 'Underfist' never really took off. At that time, the network's then-president, Stuart Snyder, was beginning to shift the channel towards the "live-action period" of its history, with shows like 'Out of Jimmy's Head' and 'Destroy, Build, Destroy!' taking precedence. That lineup of shows is a whole other (rather fascinating) can of worms, but the result was that 'Underfist' became a victim of circumstance, a snapshot of what could have been at the worst possible time.

But regardless, I've never forgotten it. The characters are delightfully weird, the humor is consistently great, the story is ridiculous and it all adds up to a Halloween special that I can't help but revisit. I'm not even going to try and give this a rating because, on top of this barely being a "review," I'm also just too attached to quantify something like this.

If nothing else, I think it's a lot of fun and if there's any of you out there who found this interesting (or, dare I say, remember this existed), there are versions across the internet that are available and it's a great quick watch for the holidays. I showed it to a group of my friends a few years ago and having a pretty great time seeing them experience it; in the end, isn't that really the best part of Halloween?

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