The Worst Witch (1986)

Episode 211, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: And joining us today is longtime friend of the podcast and personal friend of mine. This is Craig’s sister, Kristen. Say hello to the people, Kristen. 

Kristen: Hello, people, and happy spooky season! Yeee! Halloween! 

Todd: We’ve had you on here several times before.

Let’s see, what have we all talked about? We’ve talked about the world ending movie, the home invasion one.

Kristen: Home invasions, yes. Did I do the Monster Squad? I think I did the Monster Squad. Did you? Yeah. I’m pretty sure. 

Todd: We, we brought you in for a couple of, at least a couple that you and Craig used to watch incessantly growing up.

And because today’s episode is the long requested by many, many of our listeners over the course of probably every year, I think we’ve done this podcast practically during Halloween season, we’re doing the worst witch, uh, TV show special from 1986. You and Craig, I understand watched this a lot growing up and that’s why we’ve got you on.

Thank you. 

Kristen: Yes, probably millions of times. 

Todd: Wow. I’m not 

Kristen: even exaggerating. 

Todd: Millions of times. Well, twice 

Kristen: already in the last month. 

Todd: It’s even continuing into adulthood. I gotta admit to you guys, I’ve never seen this or heard of it before in my life. 

Craig: What now I can understand maybe not seeing it, but I can’t understand that even knowing about it.

I mean, I heard, I 

Todd: knew about it when we started doing this podcast. And every time we asked for a Halloween possibilities, somebody comes out of the woodwork. If not a half a dozen people are like, are you going to do the worst witch? I just, I just remember that so much from my childhood. It’s such a goofy movie.

And I’m like, what is that? And I had to look it up. 

Kristen: I’m so happy to hear that people have requested this because I kept telling Craig, what in the world would we do? Talk about, this is not a horror movie, only an hour long. I had such anxiety about it that I had nightmares last night. I dreamt that we were all together and that Todd was being really passive aggressive the whole time.

And you just, you kept bringing out buckets of Halloween candy. Like, I really didn’t want to get this out. I really need this for tomorrow. But you just didn’t know what else to do. So I think my subconscious was worried that this would go terribly wrong. 

Todd: I want to see that movie. This 

Kristen: No, 

Todd: I just Seriously, like, people request it all the time, and I just I guess it aired on HBO?

It was It was done in 86, but it was a British Production, or at least it was produced in Britain. And it did show at least a little bit on some television over there, but then immediately, I think it was commissioned for HBO. And so HBO was showing it every year up until the mid 90s. Yeah. And the Disney Channel as well, I think.

Did you see it? Would you guys have seen it on HBO or the Disney Channel? Or where would you guys have seen it? 

Craig: HBO for sure. And at some point we videotaped it, but I do remember that they played it every Halloween. Um, and they would like tease it. Like they would show clips from it to tease it. Oh gosh.

So exciting. 

Kristen: Yeah. I would have said that we recorded it off of like a free week trial week. Yes. Yeah. And then that’s probably right. 

Todd: We did so much of that HBO and the Disney channel, you know, you get that free preview weekend or whatever, if you are a cable subscriber and it would, it’d also be like, they’d throw their best stuff up there, you know, cause they’re trying to get you to subscribe.

So you’d have that VH. We always had a tape ready to record, like everything that was coming on. And, and you’re right. Those would be our staples. Those would be the things that my sisters and I. Would pop in whenever we wanted to watch something. And so we would, we’d watch the same things over and over again with the same commercials.

Craig: I’ve been excited about talking about this for like weeks, but I’ve been thinking about it. And Kristen and I watched this so many times, not entirely, but in part out of necessity, I wonder, and Kristen, I’m glad you’re here. Cause you have kids. You can tell us, do kids have these things anymore? Do they have these things that they watch over and over and over again?

And. 

Todd: Well, 

Craig: have like strong connections to because they’re so inundated with media from every angle They don’t they don’t have the necessity of rewatching things because there’s always something new to watch. 

Kristen: Yeah, so my kids are older now They’re 16 and 13 But we certainly my son Kai had movies when he was a kid that he wanted to watch over and over again like the spy kid Franchise he loved those and we would watch them over and over and over but Once we were like giving them iPads it kind of ends it like he will not even watch a movie these days We’ll say we want to watch it.

Like I don’t watch movies and it’s true. He watches YouTube and he watches tik tok He won’t watch movies, but they watch stuff. They’re just not interested in movies and it’s really sad This was like our whole childhood and even now it’s we really enjoy doing it 

Todd: You know, my son is seven, and we have purposely tried not to inundate him with media, you know?

And we’re very deliberate about what we, what he watches and what we let him watch. But we, but we try to be reasonable about it, you know? We don’t want to isolate this poor kid so he gets to school and, you know, nobody knows, you know, he can’t relate to anybody because he doesn’t know what anything is.

But that said, like, I’ve seen these tendencies with him too. It may be a little too early to tell cause he’s only seven, but he’s in second grade. And the other day when he was over here, he, we, we put in a movie that I thought he would like, I don’t remember what it was. And the first thing out of his mouth was, Oh, This is a real person movie.

I don’t like to watch real person movies, daddy. What he meant was live action. You know, he’s so cartoon centered, but also like YouTube centered, like he watches Minecraft videos. And again, we are very frugal, you know, with what we allow him to, we don’t give him free reign over YouTube and it’s actually a treat for him.

But I, I see that pattern, you know, I, I even see that with myself. It sounds weird, but it’s a bit of a commitment to sit down for an hour and a half when, when you’ve got little bits and snippets of things that you can watch throughout the day at your fingertips, you know? 

Kristen: Right, but then you’ll realize you’ve been looking at, like, YouTube or scrolling on something for like three hou