It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) is Bill Melendez's animated short, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Twenty-five minutes of Halloween mood with the Peanuts gang, straight from Charles Schulz's comic strip.

While the other kids put on costumes, go trick-or-treating and head to a party, Linus plants himself in the pumpkin patch and waits for the Great Pumpkin, a benevolent spirit he believes rises on Halloween night to visit the most sincere patch of all. Sally stays with him, more smitten with Linus than with any candy. Poor Charlie Brown keeps pulling rocks out of his trick-or-treat bag, and Snoopy, as a World War I flying ace, dogfights the imaginary Red Baron over the French countryside.

This was the franchise's second holiday special after the Christmas one, and it remains a fixture of American TV, aired almost every year since 1966. Jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi supplies the score, as he did across the Peanuts specials. A warm, gently melancholy Halloween classic for the whole family. Stream It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966) online on iFILM.