Growing up there was a stack of VHS tapes that sat in the built-in cabinet beneath our 27 inch living room television. The large white clamshell cases housing Disney tapes were propped against the side to the left while my brother’s wrestling tapes were stacked to their right, as though there to keep the Disneys in line. Beside them sat my mom’s Christmas videos as well as the handful of movies my parents saw fit to own. Finally, in a messy pile at the end, were my tapes. No clamshells or box art, these cassettes bore nothing but a white label marked with the sloppy penmanship of my own hand.

Still, despite the crossed out titles and unintelligible scribbles vaguely describing the contents within, the fragmented, commercial laden videos carried a sense of discovery with them. A tangible feel of date, time and place that no other form of media seemed to bear and this sensibility became most pungent around the holidays. Particularly, Halloween. I remember the tape I used to record my favorite spooky specials, filled with Great Pumpkins, horrific treehouses and so many seasonal sitcom episodes, marked simply with large, orange letters: HALLOWEEN.

While I’m grateful for the conveniences of modern technology and quite content to have my favorite Halloween programming in pristine condition at the click of a button, there was something otherworldly about tapes like my own that added to the October experience. A notion that their contents were frozen in time, everything from the murky analog video to the regional advertisements that made the thing feel captured rather than recorded. It was an experience I had once thought impossible to replicate, unique to an era that had come and gone, but then, ten years ago, the WNUF Halloween Special (2013) appeared on a nondescript VHS tape and did just that.

Initially left abandoned at horror conventions, bathrooms and mixed into tape swaps and rummage sales, WNUF snuck into the world on VHS with an air of mystery. Opening with fragments of local television commercials, the video moves right into the WNUF TV28 Evening News where the two anchors, dressed as a vampire and a witch, host their Halloween themed public access news show back in 1987. Everything from the orange and black dollar store streamers decorating the news desk to the discolored tracking lines flickering at the bottom of the screen cements the authenticity of the segment and the tape.

The anchors promise stories on a religious collective crying Satanic panic, small town politics and even a live segment from a real-life haunted house as paper skeleton faces peer in from the back window. Its genuineness is further solidified as cheesy commercials for High Pike Farms Pumpkin Patch, the WNUF Reading Club and even a NASA themed advertisement for a soda called Orange Blast Off break up the broadcast. The WNUF Halloween Special didn’t feel like a new discovery, it felt like an old one, a relic of the past that just might hold some danger that was never supposed to be seen, recorded or, God forbid, passed along.

It’s that feeling of legitimacy, of true found footage, that director and co-writer Chris LaMartina, screenwriter Jimmy George and a crew of fiercely dedicated creatives set out to evoke when they brought the WNUF Halloween Special to life. With the goal of tapping into the found footage milieu while breaking the mold of its sometimes boorish and nonsensical trappings, LaMartina and George devised the idea of an ensemble led film that would be framed as an old program taped off local TV. The concept allowed for a slew of characters to keep the story interesting and an opportunity for commercial breaks to both cut away from the action and break up the narrative all the while providing invaluable validity to the project at large.

The core story follows investigative reporter Frank Stewart, played by Paul Fahrenkopf, as he hosts a live television special at a supposedly haunted house. Once the nightly news concludes its segments featuring a cop warning of Halloween’s dangers, a dentist’s plea for kids to donate their candy and even a little boy who was mistaken as a soldier and shot while trick-or-treating, Frank appears outside of the Webber House to advertise his upcoming special. But before the program finishes, one more package plays. Featuring Kendra North as Angela Harris, founder of a collective called H.A.R.V.E.S.T., the woman claims that Halloween is Satan’s night: a time of evils that should be destroyed, not celebrated. Her irrational rantings are exactly the kind of faux-Christian seasoning that might have been present in the late 80’s and an evocative point of view to juxtapose against the Halloween special that immediately follows.

The remainder of the news segment is peppered with yet more inspired commercials, including a pushy carpet salesman eerily reminiscent of the old Empire carpet ads I used to see growing up in the south suburbs of Chicago and a 1-900-MONSTER hotline that Freddy would’ve been proud of. While the entire film was completed from script to screen in approximately nine months, the commercials required some of the most work. More than 60 commercials were made, created from a combination of stock footage, public domain content and tape that was donated to the production by prolific genre filmmakers who had been operational at the time WNUF is set, including J.R. Bookwalter.

Aside from the authenticity the periodic two minute commercial breaks establish given the range and diversity of ideas they represent, the performances and realism of those in the program truly solidify the WNUF Halloween Special in the realm of believability. Frank’s special begins in front of a crowd of excited residents, all itching to see themselves appear on local television. Dressed as pumpkins, rabbits, gorillas and drugged up vampires, their interactions with Frank feel off the cuff and natural, crafted through a combination of scripted prompts and improvisation, something the filmmakers use to great effect consistently throughout.

A shoddy reenactment akin to what might have been seen in the early hours of the Sci-Fi channel decades ago tells the story of Donald Webber. Claiming he murdered his parents because demons commanded him to do so via Ouija board, the house is revealed to have been cursed ever since. An anonymous police officer recalls his haunting experience investigating the crime and the segment leads to Frank’s clear dismissal of the mythology in lieu of exploiting people’s superstitions for ratings. Frank introduces Claire and Louis Berger shortly thereafter, famed paranormal investigators who are clearly inspired, or perhaps conjured, from two real life proxies.

Helenmary Ball and Brian St. August play the Bergers with ego and gravitas, inflating meaning into every syllable and truly selling their otherworldly convictions. Clutching to their cat Shadow who helps Claire commune with the beyond, they play their parts as spirit-hunting travelers that have a lifetime of adventures behind them with just the right amount of pompousness and unease. In contrast, Paul Fahrenkoph presents Frank as smug, arrogant and willing to do whatever it takes to get his story of choice, providing an entertaining through line to his interactions with the Bergers regardless of whether he’s being overtly condescending or playfully irreverent. Together, the three keep the simple, low-fi narrative on its toes.

The look of the film is key to its credibility. Shot on VHS, SVHS and MiniDV, LaMartina took every precaution to avoid the look of digital film. Once the footage was compiled, they took the tape and ran three passes through a VCR, ensuring a degraded analog look that gave the impression the tape had been swapped and bootlegged countless times over. As a result, the WNUF Halloween Special exudes the feel of a dusty, forgotten cassette one might find in their distant relative’s closet years removed from its creation, its relevance restored by the strange specificity of what lies within.

In between commercial breaks chronicling the mud-slinging governor’s race and extolling the virtues of tarot card readings, Frank cracks the doors of the long dormant Webber House. Inside, he introduces Father Joseph Matheson. Played by Robert Long II, he wears his clear, crescendoing discomfort with hilarious certainty. Talks of an exorcism and an elaborate EVP reading lead to the destruction of the Berger’s expensive equipment and a live call-in seance. Distraught about their equipment and their now missing cat, the Bergers, along with Frank and Father Matheson, play off of unscripted phone calls creating a further sense of uncomfortable realism. Based on stories of a real televised seance from the 70s that took place in Edgar Allan Poe’s home, the sequence feels as silly as it does eerie and something that may be better left not broadcast.

As Frank’s special deteriorates with the advent of Shadow the cat’s demise and an ill-advised exorcism, the special is forced to cut to commercial more and more. But after pet store advertisements and the promise of wax museum invading monsters on Dr. Bloodwrench’s late night horror show, the WNUF Halloween Special returns to reveal the dark fate of Frank Stewart, his guests and his crew. The exorcism breaks down when Father Matheson reveals that he’s an actor and not a priest, cowering in fear as those in the house are attacked— not by ghosts but by H.A.R.V.E.S.T. A Technical Difficulties sign interrupts the attack and then one final sequence reveals the bodies of the Bergers and an incapacitated Frank. Angela Harris is there with a knife and she severs Frank’s tongue, before one of her cohorts wishes all a Happy Halloween.

The anchors from the film’s start greet us once more in a brief clip of the news post-Halloween. They explain that Frank and his crew are still missing and then go on to continue reading their prompters as they do every evening. The image cuts out and the tape is done. No credits greet the viewer. Nothing to suggest anyone worked to create the strange analog artifact, just the emptiness of a cassette ready to be rewound and watched again.

Like my tape with the large, orange letters, the WNUF Halloween Special seems preordained to be one of those movies. An annual tradition, non-negotiable viewing during October’s crisp embrace that feels more and more a part of the fabric of stuck-in-time 1980s television fare the more immersed one becomes in it, regardless of whether or not you know it was made in 2013. The lore only strengthens and grows, evolving with things like the spoken word album Frank Stewart Investigates: Halloween which features Frank’s investigations into a haunted laundromat, a terrifying Sheepsquatch and the infamous Phantom of the Roller Rink. With a B-side featuring more of the Berger’s investigations, it’s an essential WNUF companion, all proceeds for which go to the “Find Frank” Fund that appears to need all the help it can get.

A movie like WNUF Halloween Special is more than a seasonal favorite, it’s a historical testament to the prowess, capacity and potential of physical media. How something can be a record of more than just the frames flickering on the screen and what it is that we once mindlessly harnessed for fleeting entertainment. What remains is not only a document of an oft forgotten exercise but a refreshed perspective for those too young to know or too old to remember. Halloween lives in the WNUF Halloween Special, out of time and out of place, ready to be passed, traded, copied and bootlegged again and again so that generation after generation might be lucky enough to stumble upon the unique wonder that process presents.

You can grab the WNUF Halloween Special Blu-ray from Terror Vision now.

You can also purchase Chris LaMartina’s sequel Out There Halloween Mega Tape here!