This week, as people continue to deal with the death of Tim Curry — legendary actor and, in many ways, a hero to misfits across the world — his movies and roles are naturally coming back into focus as people renew their love for everything he gave us.
Pennywise the Dancing Clown will obviously be near the top of that list.
Bill Skarsgård’s movie version is amazing in its own right, but Tim Curry created something in 1990 that simply stuck. That face. That voice. The humor mixed with menace. Curry’s Pennywise became an image burned into pop culture and helped establish the character for an entire generation.
But there’s another Tim Curry movie we’d like to celebrate right now, one that deserves just as much attention:
Clue.
Tim Curry’s performance as Wadsworth in Clue was, hands down, one of his greatest.
He was basically a real-life comic book character running around that mansion as this collection of wealthy, eccentric and increasingly suspicious people attempted to figure out who was murdering everyone around them.
And Curry never stopped moving.
Especially during that incredible final act, when Wadsworth practically reenacts the entire movie — racing from room to room, retracing everyone’s steps, changing voices, throwing himself around the mansion ..
He even a medical issue from it!
Tim Curry once described the toll this role took on him: “I actually had a sort of incident of high blood pressure towards the end, when all of the conclusions were happening, because I was running around like a mad person. They took me to the doctor and I had to take pills for a week, my blood pressure was so high. Which was very tiresome.”
Clue is one of those rare movies that remains fun across generations. Kids can watch it and laugh at the physical comedy. Adults pick up on an entirely different layer of jokes. People from completely different backgrounds and generations have discovered it, quoted it and watched it over and over again.
And I think a tremendous amount of that comes down to Tim Curry.
Go back and watch Clue sometime and mentally remove him from the movie.
Just imagine those same scenes with everyone else.
It’s still a good cast. It’s still a clever story. There are still funny performances.
But something is missing.
It doesn’t quite hit.
Tim Curry was the electricity running through that movie. There was something special about what he did with Wadsworth that elevated everyone around him and helped turn what could have been a forgotten 1980s comedy into a movie people are still watching and loving more than 40 years later.
The world lost a great actor, and for many people who grew up watching him, it almost feels like we lost an old friend.
So perhaps this weekend, or whenever you find a little spare time in life, go back and revisit some Tim Curry.
Sure, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and IT will understandably be near the top of the list.
But give Clue another watch.
And while you’re watching it, try to imagine that movie working without Tim Curry.
We’re hunting down the lost footage from Halloween II.
And we’re probably not going to find it but still try anyway..
We’ve reached out to Trancas International Films and the Akkad family, and we’re thinking about who else we could possibly reach out to in an attempt to solve a little Halloween II mystery that’s been sitting around for more than four decades.
And before we go any further, there’s an important distinction here.
We’re not talking about the deleted Halloween II scenes that are already out there. We know those exist. We’re talking about footage that was apparently shot but, as far as we can determine, has never actually surfaced publicly.
Over the last couple of years we’ve seen plenty of supposedly “lost” Halloween images floating around online that turned out to be AI generated. But there are legitimate production stills from Halloween II showing material that isn’t in the finished movie, and one particular missing sequence has fascinated us.
The made for TV movie version may have excluded the boob-shot but it definitely had in other scenes that made more sense when considering… In theatrical cut we didn’t get why Laurie was seemingly drugged and the hospital was dark.. it was the made for TV scenes that explained she was drugged by the doc and the power was cut by Mike..
These scenes, if included, would have made our favorite Halloween movie even better..
The children’s ward scene is what we’d really love to see..
In the deleted scene, Michael wandered through rooms of sleeping children before accidentally activating a cymbal-playing toy monkey. Nurse Karen heard the noise and investigated while Michael hid nearby, nearly being discovered before she walked away.
The sequence was ultimately cut as the film was tightened in editing, along with several other scenes. The children’s-ward footage has never officially resurfaced
But the photo from Warlock’s collection proves there was at least one more scene we never saw–presumably more than that..
In the behind the scenes photo, Warlock as Mike making a kid laugh, is surprisingly wholesome..
Director Rick Rosenthal has actually discussed it.
On material associated with Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, Rosenthal described a deleted sequence involving Michael Myers hiding in a closet in the hospital nursery. A nurse comes into the room and nearly opens the closet where Michael is hiding. The suspense builds because you expect her to find him but ultimately she doesn’t open it.
The scene was cut.
As far as we can determine, the actual footage has never surfaced publicly.
There’s also a sequence involving reporter Robert Mundy and a television news crew arriving at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital that was reportedly scripted and filmed. Production stills survive from that material, but again, the actual moving footage appears to have disappeared.
So where is it?
We all know the complicated history of Halloween II. John Carpenter didn’t particularly want to make another Halloween and has certainly never hidden his feelings about the sequel. The second movie also became considerably more violent and gory than the original .. although compared with today’s standards, it’s really not very gory at all.
Then television came calling.
When Halloween II was prepared for TV, some of the nudity and gore couldn’t exactly make the trip to network television, so material had to be removed and other footage was used to fill out the running time.
That’s where things sometimes get confusing when people talk about “deleted scenes” from Halloween II, because some deleted footage absolutely does exist and has been released.
There are additional hospital scenes, Michael cutting the power and, most memorably, the alternate ending.
Laurie is being taken away in the ambulance when suddenly somebody under a sheet behind her starts moving.
One last scare!
Except it’s just good old Jimmy.
So calling all Carpenters and Akkads.. we are searching and want the nursery scene.. and that television crew arriving a the hospital.. Maybe there is another Dana Carvey hidden gem somewhere in the pile of deletions..
Is there a reel sitting on some film rack somewhere or an unmarked box in a studio archive that nobody has opened since Ronald Reagan was president?
Is something sitting in a basement or storage facility belonging to the Akkad family?
Did Donald Pleasence take the film to the grave?
We’re not claiming that these reels still exist. We’re not claiming that somebody secretly has them. We’re just acknowledging something that makes this mystery worth pursuing: there is evidence and testimony that scenes were filmed that, more than 40 years later, apparently nobody in the general public has ever seen.
And that’s fascinating.
This goes in phases.. right now this is in an active phase again with fans talking about this deleted scene on social media..
We’ve sent out some messages, including reaching out to Trancas International Films, and we’re thinking about who else might be worth contacting. If we get responses, we’ll let everyone know what we find — even if the eventual answer is simply, “Sorry, that footage is gone.” We anticipate no responses.. but if there was some miracle, maybe someone out there will get lucky.
But we’d also love to hear from everyone out there in Internet Land.
Has anyone else ever gone hunting for this footage?
Did anyone contact people involved with Halloween II years ago and get an answer?
Has anyone ever claimed to actually see the nursery footage?
Was something shown at a convention decades ago? Did somebody have an old workprint? Is there an obscure interview, photograph, VHS tape or story from someone involved with the production that we’ve somehow missed?
Maybe they’re resting in that strange final resting place of lost cinema.. existing only in production stills, scripts and the increasingly distant memories of the people who were actually there.
Because now we’re left with a very Halloween version of an old philosophical question:
If Michael Myers hid in the children’s ward at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, but the scene was cut and nobody ever saw it… did Michael Myers actually hide there at all?
Every now and then there’s a good find on social media that’s worth sharing and we found one tonight.
A creator on tiktok is giving us an old Yamaha playing music from the Friday the 13th Nintendo game. Music from outside the cabin music from inside the cabin, it’s glorious.
Well some people may say this is not the greatest game ever created I will guarantee you this if you did play it you remember all of the idiosyncrasies, you remember all the shortcuts and secrets and all the hidden doors and forests and caves.
You had to get the pitch fork in order to get the torch and after three tries Jason’s dead we think.
Everyone talks about that magical year when Stranger Things 4 arrived and completely took over pop culture, but I want to go back a little further. I want to talk about Stranger Things 3 and the summer of 2019, because for a lot of us, that was the summer that changed everything.
Think about the build-up. The excitement.. the freshness of what was coming.
This was Stranger Things embracing something completely different. Gone was the darker isolation of previous seasons and in came bright neon colors, the Great American mall, summer romance, arcades, and a season built around the idea that the kids of Hawkins thought they had already defeated the evil… without realizing something even worse was quietly waiting beneath the surface.
It gave us Starcourt Mall, one of the great fictional monuments to 1980s Americana. It gave us Fourth of July fireworks exploding over Hawkins while chaos unfolded underneath it all. It gave us a corrupt mayor bought and paid for, secret Russian experiments hidden underground, and finally let Murray become something more than just comic relief as his character began to fully develop.
Even the monsters felt fresh. And then it happened.
July 4th, 2019.
The day Stranger Things 3 was released, right in the middle of summer, and somehow everything about that moment just felt perfect.
There was something magical about that summer. Maybe it was where we all were in life. Maybe it was the anticipation of a huge cultural event landing at exactly the right moment.. the posters, the fireworks, that unforgettable trailer, the colors, the music, the atmosphere. It all clicked.
Even if you think Stranger Things 3 was not the strongest season, and many fans will argue the other seasons were better, there is something undeniably nostalgic about that summer and what it represented.
It embedded itself in our brains. Hard to believe now, but it has been ten years since Stranger Things first premiered.
And seven summers since the summer that changed everything. The truth is simple.
We will probably never experience something quite like that again.
I would genuinely love to know what it felt like for people who lived through major celebrations of this country in decades past, because celebrations right now feel a bit… off.
Queue the Patriotic Charlie Brown voice: It seems like everyone is supposed to be excited. Mattress companies and car dealerships are running their America 250 specials, Walmart has their made in other countries red white and blue products out, and yet there just seems to be something missing surrounding this enormous anniversary for the United States.
Maybe it is just me? If you are feeling it too, maybe it is just you! Of course, for every person feeling that way, there are probably plenty of others proudly hanging decorations and embracing the American 250 celebration with excitement and genuine patriotism. But something feels different.
When you look back through old fishwrappers and faded pieces of history from previous eras, it always feels like celebrations were bigger. Communities seemed more connected. The pride looked more visible. Maybe nostalgia distorts things, but history often paints that picture, with the Bicentennial seemingly being the most brilliant of all celebrations.. even black and white newspapers seemingly are filled with the patriotic colors..
We are fond of these old videos.. and there are plenty more still to be found.. Imagine the hidden videos still tucked away in basements or attics that we don’t even know exist yet!
But all of the images equally give a shock to the senses.. how much things have changed.. progress led to problems. Not all boats were lifted in rising tides and when the water levels are low, we all feel trapped in a daze of old glory mixed with a sense of patriotism in a past sense.. nostalgia has been replaced with anger..
Or maybe this is part of something larger. Perhaps it is simply the slow decline of small town America. Here in northeastern Pennsylvania, many towns have become hollow versions of what they once were. Industry faded. Populations shrank. Traditions quietly disappeared. There was a time when school bands filled long parade routes, floats moved through packed streets, and celebrations felt like the heartbeat of entire communities. That is not necessarily a reflection on the people living there today, but more the changing atmosphere that happens when communities slowly lose population, industry, and identity.
It was a huge deal. I graduated HS in 1976 and my memory of it is that it was mostly just a huge commercialization ploy. There was Bicentennial everything. From toothpaste to special edition cars if they could paint it red, white, and blue, they did. I have no idea the amount of “special edition” Bicentennial crap that was sold with the idea that it would someday become collectible. I suppose some of it actually did but most of it ended up in a landfill.
Another noted the interesting juxtaposition of the bicentennial right after traumatic national events.. After Vietnam and Watergate, the USA was feeling pretty down and the Spirit of 76 made people overall just feel a little better..
One more post from the Ask Old People thread:
It was pretty huge. It wasn’t just the actual birthday, but there was a big wave of subtle/not-so-subtle patriotism leading up to and continuing after 1976. It may have been fueled in part by people desperate to feel good after the turbulent 60s and getting out of Vietnam. There was certainly a lot of Red White and Blue branding going on – for example, Wonder Woman premiered in April 1976.
I’m a little concerned about 2026 – Waving a flag seems to mean something different today than it did in 1976 and it’s hard for me to picture a unified celebration.
That part rings true.. 2026, waving a flag seems to have a whole new meaning.. It seems divisive when it should not be.. It just all feels strange at the moment..
One of the scenes in television history has always been the final episode of The Wonder Years, where Kevin Arnold reflects on the closing chapter of his life in the 1960s and 1970s, including the death of his father, all while beautiful melancholy music plays against scenes of a Fourth of July celebration in his hometown. Fireworks. Americana. Family. Nostalgia. It captures it all:
I think that nostalgic view dominates how people imagine pride itself or great American celebrations. Maybe those moments really were bigger than life.
Maybe these moments never existed quite the way we imagine them, and we were simply led to believe they did. Or perhaps the truth is stranger…. those celebrations once existed exactly as we remember them, but somehow they do not exist in the same way anymore.
So how are you feeling, America?
Soaring with pride?
Or quietly drifting somewhere between nostalgia and sadness at 250?
It’s been months now since the series finale of Stranger Things, and fans are forgetting… they’re forgetting quickly.
Not just the friendships we made with each other, or the rekindled family moments watching the show and talking about theories together… but the friends we had on the show too. They were ours. We cried for Max Mayfield when she faced Vecna. We cheered for Murray Bauman. We stood against the Soviets. We were wrapped in nostalgia.
And now… we just have nostalgia for the nostalgia.
There’s a dullness to it now, like a blunted edge. The new animated series is coming, and no one really seems to care. The fading light of the The Duffer Brothers has cast a shadow over their newest project, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. And maybe that title says more than it should about what happened when we saw the show!
Because something very bad did happen. The fading star of Stranger Things.
It was with us for nearly a decade… and then it was gone in an instant. So fast. Quietly slipping away with that closing credit scene, carried out by the haunting echo of a David Bowie song. It didn’t leave with a thud… it left with a whimper.
Remember the days leading up to the finale? When we were all hoping like hell that Conformity Gate was real… that there was a secret episode coming. One more piece. One more answer. One more night in Hawkins. It never came.
It was never going to. But even now, months later, sitting with it… I still feel like Vecna won.
I know it was just fiction. I know that. But in this world that felt so real… it didn’t feel like a victory. We saw conformity through Mike’s eyes, and the ending felt bleak in a way that lingers longer than it should.
Maybe one day we’ll get that reunion. Maybe the cast comes back, set in the 90s. Maybe we see who stayed friends… and who didn’t. Just like life.
Because that’s the part that hits the hardest… they move on. And so do we. But every now and then, I catch myself. I have to snap out of it… out of that nostalgic fog where I’m thinking about a show that was never real, about people who never existed.
The eulogy-like sendoff… it just lingers there as a reminder. Time moves on and things that feel massive today become memories tomorrow. And eventually they become something we almost forget.
On Friday, August 21, 2026, I’ll be screening “H4” right next to the former Vincent Drug building featured in the film – at The Bambino restaurant on their outdoor patio, located directly beside Vincent Drug. The restaurant will be serving pizza and desserts all evening and as the sun goes down over Midvale, Halloween music will echo through the night… and The Shape returns!
This is the hottest nostalgic Halloween ticket of thr summer!
If it was 1971 and you really liked clowns, chances are you could have filled every room in your house with these amazingly frightening lamps straight from the JCPenney catalog.
Don’t be too scared .. it’s just a little taste of John Wayne Gacy in every room… or Pennywise the Dancing Clown… or even that infamous clown from Poltergeist, though that one hadn’t yet terrorized anyone because this was 1971.
Maybe clowns were more simple and less sinister back then. Maybe all the clown-related events that have unfolded in the decades since have slowly morphed our collective clown repertoire into something darker. Because when I look at this picture, I don’t just see playful décor. I get a little heebie-jeebie feeling. There’s something about that blank, wide-eyed stare that hints at carnage rather than comfort.
I can’t help but wonder how many kids had one of these glowing in the corner of their bedroom. And I wonder if any are still around today.. tucked away in the back of an antique shop, or sitting quietly on some auction block.
Not that we’d buy one.
But we’d definitely like to see it… preferably displayed in someone else’s house.
This morning when I woke up, I noticed that Netflix added a new category to its main page called Let’s Pretend It’s 2016. It features movies and television shows like the Ghostbusters remake, The OA, and of course Stranger Things, since Season 1 appeared ten years ago.
Seeing that listing was a reminder of just how many things have come and gone on Netflix… and, honestly, how much better things used to feel. Over the last decade, everything seems to have gone downhill. So much of what’s released now feels rushed, made without much care or concern, with lackluster scripts and very few fresh ideas. But go back just ten years, to 2016, and we kind of had it made. We just didn’t know it.
Back then we were probably complaining that Netflix had already dumbed things down, that there wasn’t much to watch, and that the best entertainment was from ten or twenty years earlier. Little did we realize that here in 2026 we’d be decrying the bad writing of Stranger Things Season 5 and missing shows that were genuinely binge-worthy, not ones you casually glance at on a boring snowy weekend.
It’s nice to see this category, but it’s also bittersweet. Nostalgia can be one of the most dangerous things… it has a way of creating unrealistic memories of the past. Things weren’t always that great, and tomorrow isn’t always as bad as it seems. But when it comes to entertainment, movies, and television shows on Netflix, things really might be as bad as they feel right now.
So I guess this weekend, as the snow falls outside, I’ll watch what I watched ten years ago… and maybe it’ll feel new again.
Picture it: Christmas 1990. You’re sitting there playing Zelda, and you just can’t figure out what to do next. You’re stuck, it’s ruining Christmas, your family’s angry, you’re angry, and you don’t want to throw the controller at the TV. What do you do? Well, this is 1990. We didn’t have Google, we didn’t have AI, we only had the word of mouth of others. And in this case, your friend circle has no idea what you should do next.
Who are you going to call? You’re going to call the Nintendo phone number helpline.
Yes, there was a Nintendo helpline where you, as a gamer, could call up and not speak to a computer, but actually talk to a real person. You’d describe the scene you were in, the level you were stuck on, and that person.. who might literally be playing Nintendo games while on the line.. would give you the advice you needed.
Talk about an amazing snapshot in time, right? I think back to it and realize that as a kid, I learned to find secrets or figure out glitches in games through pure perseverance or maybe a tip from another kid at school. There was no internet walkthrough; you either figured it out yourself or called someone who could walk you through it like a gaming therapist. And that was part of the challenge and the fun.
You know, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: if I ever end up with Alzheimer’s and find myself in a nursing home, I want someone to bring me a Nintendo. Because no matter what happens to my brain, I guarantee I can still beat Mario 3.
