WNUF Halloween Special

In week three of our Halloween series, we finally tackle the long-requested 2013 analog horror/comedy WNUF Halloween Special, framed as a found VHS tape recording of a 1987 local newscast and a live call-in seance.

We dig into how convincingly it recreates the era—VHS degradation, nonstop regional commercials, and corny local-news Halloween coverage—and why it works best as nostalgic “party atmosphere” rather than a sit-down scare.

We break down the funniest bits in the opening news segments, the repetitive ad structure that undercuts tension, and the ultimately chaotic haunted-house special involving a rude host, paranormal investigators (and their psychic cat), an exorcist, and a cult-driven finale.

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WNUF Halloween Special (2013)

Episode 510, 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: Week three of Halloween. Spooky season here on Two Guys and a Chainsaw with our specific Halloween episodes. Just when we think we’ve found about all the Halloweeny themed episodes that we can, we’ve been doing this for what?

Six, e- t- 11 years? Is this our 11th year? Yeah, I

Craig: I don’t know.

Todd: It is. It’s our, it’s our 11th year, man. We, we try to do this every year, and we always find something. This one is the WNUF Halloween special from 2013. This one has been on our list for quite a while. I think every year somebody recommends it for us to do, and we came really close to doing it last year, but we swapped it out last minute, and this year we’re able to, to get to it.

Y- you know, I hadn’t really heard about this before. Honestly, this was something that our listeners had clued me into And aside from that, this isn’t like a thing that ever popped up for me on Netflix or anything like that. It’s not something that was coming through on lists for me. It’s listed in Wikipedia anyway as a comedy horror, analog horror film produced basically by one guy.

One guy directed it and enlisted a bunch of people to also direct little bits and pieces. And when I first saw this, I thought, “Oh, this will be fun to do,” because it looks surprisingly like, uh, the concept maybe anyway. It’s like found footage mixed with, um, maybe Ghost Watch. So we sat down to watch it.

It’s my first time seeing it. Craig, had you seen this before?

Craig: No. I remember you bringing it up several times, and like you said, we just, it, it didn’t make the cut for whatever reason. But this was really kind of the first time that I looked into it. And you said found footage. It, it’s… I mean, I think it’s kind of meant to literally be like a found VHS tape.

Todd: Mm-hmm.

Craig: We talk about this all the time, I mean, not all the time, but regularly, about how in our homes growing up, VHS was our media, and you would have tapes that would have multiple movies on them or tapes that you had taped off TV or whatever. And this appears to be that, like something that would be from somebody’s home media library.

A- and, and it happens to be a recording of the nightly news followed by a s- a special both on Halloween night.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I thought that that concept was really clever. And so even going into it, I was kind of excited about that concept, and still am to some extent. I, I don’t know. I, I don’t, I… I’m not sure what I expected and, and I like, ultimately my verdict on the movie, I’m not really sure, ’cause it depends on what you’re looking for, and I, it almost, it depends on like how you approach it, like…

Right.

So I’m interested to hear what your thoughts were.

Todd: I’m gonna go off of what you just said earlier about this being an actual tape that was found more or less. Uh, the… Did you ever go to garage sales and just buy random, like, VHS tapes that people had- No … just to take them home and see what was on them?

Clip: No.

Todd: No? I, I did that every now and then. I was, I think, you know, if it was like a quarter or something like that. And, you know, people would just sell stuff in garage sales, and you’d just kind of secretly hope that you could take it home and maybe there’d be some porn on there or something. Never was, but it was always stuff like this, which you’re right, was s- this is e- exactly like something my sisters and I would have popped in because it’s got commercials and everything.

It’s something taped off a TV. In fact, the producers, I say his name, Chris LaMartina, they actually went to a VHS, like, they have these little conventions or something. And they dropped tapes of this just unceremoniously, just l- left them on tables and tossed them out of windows onto the street and stuff, trying to create a little whisper campaign about it, hoping that people would find it and check it out and w- and wonder about it and talk about it online or something.

Craig: And I like that.

Todd: It’s such a great idea.

Craig: I know. I think it’s a great idea, and if I found something like that, I, I would think it was really cool. I, so yeah, I like that whole concept of it. And honestly One of the things that I’m gonna give this movie a lot of credit for is if I did find a VH tape, VHS tape like that, and I popped it in, I, for the most part, like for most of the duration of this movie, I don’t think that I would question its authenticity-

Todd: Right

Craig: at all. That is why the movie appeals to me on a certain level because it is so familiar. Now, I don’t know how familiar-

Todd: Mm …

Craig: this is gonna be to a wider audience or, you know, not, you know anybody outside of the United States. I have no idea. I live in rural America. The commercials and stuff are so authentic.

Like- Yeah.

Todd: They really are.

Craig: I, I, I never would’ve questioned… It, it, towards the end things start to get a little crazy, but up to a certain point it just feels very real. So that’s what I’m saying. Like, if you’re approaching it as, you know, like, “Ooh, I’m excited for a fun Halloween movie,” well- Mm … bad news.

Todd: It’s gonna be a lot of, uh, Bill’s Carpet Barn- Yeah. … or Token’s Arcade and Chesterfield Shopping Mall ads that you’re gonna be watching instead.

Craig: A lot. A lot.

Todd: Tons. Tons.

Craig: But if you’re looking at it like they approached a project and they wanted to do it really well, they did. Like- They did … they did a really, really good job of doing, I think, what they were trying to do.

Todd: Yeah.

Craig: And I may as well just get it out of the way now. I actually think that this is excellent as atmosphere. Like, again, at your Halloween party- I

Todd: was just gonna say that … put it on. I was gonna preempt you and you fricking did it anyway. Yeah. I was literally, like one comment before your comment I was gonna say, “Craig, I’m gonna preempt you and I’m just gonna be like, if you wanna have this on during your Halloween party, it’s the perfect thing.”

Yeah. God. It is. It’s atmosphere. The whole movie’s just atmosphere, and that’s the atmosphere it is. It’s a tape that you just popped in that had been recorded off the TV in 1987. It’s not really spooky Halloween atmosphere.

Craig: I mean, it gets a little spooky sometimes. Yeah. But honestly, like, like what the whole movie, I don’t even know how long it is, an hour and 23 minutes, so it’s short anyway, but like the actual footage of the special.

Like, I actually think that the newscast in the first 10 or 15 minutes or whatever is kind of the funniest part of the movie. Yeah. We can come back to it. But like the, like after that is this special, like this live special that they’re doing, and if you were to cut the movie so that it was really just the footage from the special without commercials …