Buffy Week: Classic Monsters Buffy Style

Sunnydale, California is home to a cornucopia of demons and other-worldly things that go bump in the night. Given the title of the show and our heroine's job title, there is most noticeably an unending horde of one of the most classic monsters in horror history - the vampire. But we soon learn that the Hellmouth attracts many different kinds of beasts, those both made up by the show's writers and those which have been made famous by Hollywood. So here I give a list of these classic monsters, represented in true Buffy style.

Classic Monster: Dracula

Buffy Style Dracula

The King of Vampires gets a bad ass update in the first episode of season five, titled "Buffy vs. Dracula." However, the show stays steadfast to Dracula's classic story, including all the elements of the original film. Dracula arrives to his mansion in Sunnydale in a coffin of dirt; he has his vampiric female concubines (or as Riley refers to them, "Dracu-babes"); he makes Xander his "spider-eating man bitch"; he can turn into a bat ("showy Gypsy stuff"); and he majestically enters Buffy's room one night to bite her and she lets him. The Buffy Dracula has all the mystique and charm that you would expect him to have, made all the more entertaining when you add in the classic Buffy wit.

Classic Monster: The Mummy

Buffy Style Mummy

For most of this season 2 episode, "Inca Mummy Girl," the mummy known as Ampata actually looks human and is not a corpse wrapped in bandages. The story is that she can keep her human form for a while until she starts to revert back to a mummy so she has to suck out other people's life force or soul or whatever. She almost kills one of the show's best characters, Jonathan (this is his first appearance on the show), but thankfully is interrupted and he lives on.

Classic Monster: Frankenstein/

Bride of Frankenstein

Buffy Style Frankenstein

"Some Assembly Required" (season 2) gives a modern spin on the tale of Frankenstein's monster and also the Bride of Frankenstein. Two teenage boys at Sunnydale High use the body parts of recently dead girls in order to create a mate for one boy's dead brother (the Frankenstein monster) who is very lonely being all dead and stuff. They plan to use Cordelia's head to complete the Bride, whom we sadly never get to see, but everybody comes in to save the day at the end, and the Frankenstein and his Bride go up in a fiery blaze.  

Classic Monster: Creature from the Black Lagoon

Buffy Style Creature from the Black Lagoon

We're back in season 2 again with the episode "Go Fish," where members of the high school swim team start turning into horrific sea monsters after being given drugs by the coach to make them better swimmers. The creature that was created for the show bears a very strong resemblance to the original Creature from the Black Lagoon, so it's more than obvious that that was the inspiration for the episode.

Classic Monster: The Invisible Man

Buffy Syle Invisible (Wo)Man

I've always loved the concept for this episode. In season one's "Out of Mind, Out of Sight," teenager Marci Ross (played by Clea Duvall, whom I LOVE) is a loner who after probably years of not being noticed by others actually becomes completely invisible. Letting the power of her new condition warp her mind, she starts to attack the people at Sunnydale High who were mean to her; namely, Cordelia and her friends. The ending to this episode is great, as well.

Classic Monster: Werewolf

Buffy Style Werewolf

The werewolf shows up several times throughout the seasons on Buffy, seeing as how one of the main characters, Oz, is a werewolf. The first appearance is in season 2 (noticing a pattern here?) in "Phases" when Oz's transformation takes place. The werewolf lore in the Buffyverse is pretty much the same standard fare we all know, so nothing new here. There's also a great episode in season 5 of Angel, when newly turned werewolf Nina almost becomes a meal for people who like to dine on werewolf meat. 

Classic Monster: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Buffy Style Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Okay, we're out of season 2 now. This Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde spinoff is featured in the season 3 episode "Beauty and the Beasts." A high school boy takes a potion to make him more manly for his girlfriend. But soon the potion turns him into the animal seen above, and he's unable to control his rage. There's some nice makeup and effects work in this episode. 

Classic Monster: Witches

Buffy Style Witch

In season 2 Willow starts to dabble in witchcraft and the rest is history. She uses her powers throughout the show on the side of the good guys (well, except when she goes evil and kills people) but witches weren't always that way on Buffy. The season 1 episode "The Witch" introduces us to Amy, whom Buffy and the others suspect of using witchcraft to attack the girls on the cheerleading squad. It is later learned that Amy's mother is the real witch, who switched her body with Amy's in order to relive her glory days as a high school student.

Classic Monster: Zombies

Buffy Style Zombies

During Buffy's not-so-welcome welcome home party in the season 3 episode "Dead Man's Party," a Nigerian mask that Joyce brings home from her art gallery causes the dead to rise from their graves. They crash the party at Buffy's home and chaos ensues. Very funny episode and quite emotional, as well. Another form of the zombie monster also appears in the season 3 episode "The Zeppo."

There's always a way to put a new spin on a classic story and I think Buffy, the Vampire Slayer succeeded in that task with these and many other episodes during the show's seven-year run.

Buffy Week: Halloween Episodes

Living on the Hellmouth with hordes of the undead and other monsters and demons, every day can seem like Halloween in the Buffyverse. But in seven seasons of the show, there have only been three episodes that specifically take place on Halloween. Two of them are pretty good, one... maybe not so much.

"Halloween"

Season 2, Episode 6

The first season of Buffy was a mid-season replacement for another show, so no room for a special Halloween episode there. But that was quickly rectified the next season in the episode "Halloween," which is sadly overlooked as a standout show.

Buffy, Willow and Xander all go to a new costume shop to purchase their various Halloween attire, ready for a fun night taking kids trick-or-treating because Halloween is supposed to be a quiet night for the undead. However, the owner of the costume shop, Ethan Rayne, has a love for chaos and casts a spell that causes everyone who bought his costumes to actually turn into whatever they are dressed up as. Willow becomes a ghost (and a sexy one at that), Xander becomes a soldier, and Buffy becomes a flighty 18th century girl; all of them losing the memories of who they really are.

This is a fantastic idea for a Halloween story: what if you could actually become your Halloween costume, when you get to dress up as anything you want? Now, this episode only shows the little devils and demons that the kids turn into but what about the girls who dressed up as princesses or the boys who donned Superman's outfit? Would the kid really have become Superman?! It's not really relevant to this story, but it's what always goes through my mind when I watch the episode.

"Halloween" is not only a genius concept episode, it's pretty freaking funny too (like almost all the episodes on the show). I really love Alyson Hannigan and Charisma Carpenter's performances in this, as Willow and Cordelia respectively. Willow is funny because she has to spend the whole time very much out of her comfort zone in a sexy outfit, and Cordelia's hilarity comes from her inability to believe that Angel is actually a vampire.

All in all, "Halloween" is a pretty solid episode in the world of Buffy, and it also gets props for the introduction of Ethan Rayne, an old "friend" of Giles who comes back to cause problems in two subsequent episodes.

"Fear, Itself"

Season 4, Episode 4

Most of the fourth season of Buffy sucks. That's harsh, I know, but it's a commonly held belief amongst Buffy fans that season 4 as a whole is just not up to par with the rest of the show. The season does boast some pretty good stand alone episodes, with "Fear, Itself" being a fun little throwback to the lighter episodes of seasons past.

So in this episode, Buffy's feeling down after being ditched by Jerky Parker; Xander and Anya's relationship is slowly budding; Willow and Buffy are pulling away from each other; and Oz is still having problems dealing with his status as a werewolf. They all go to a frat party on Halloween night where, as luck would have it, the frat boys have inadvertently summoned a fear demon that keeps them all trapped inside the house.

This episode is nothing special, but it's not all that bad either. It helps advance the story arc of the main characters (a little) and is presented as a kind of haunted house tale with a different edge. The fear demon, Gachnar, separates the friends from each other in the house and taunts and torments them in different ways, manifesting their deepest fears about themselves.

There are some nice gags in this episode that would be more than welcome in any haunted house movie, just for the creep factor: the missing doorway and stairs; the Halloween decorations that come to life and then suddenly turn back again; and the disoriented feeling from not being able to find a way out.

Probably the best part about this episode - other than the appearance and destruction of wee little Gachnar and Giles's final line - is that it starts a hilarious in-joke about how Anya, a former wrathful vengeance demon, is terrified of bunnies. Also, Giles with a chain saw is kinda sexy.

"All the Way"

Season 6, Episode 6

This episode is not so much my favorite because although it takes place on Halloween, the point of the episode is not focused on Halloween itself. I only started to like Dawn as a character in season 7, when she became way less whiny and far more useful, and "All the Way" is most definitely a "Dawn episode."

So it's Halloween, obviously, and while the rest of the gang has an impromptu party to celebrate Xander and Anya's engagement, Dawn sneaks off with a friend - the as yet unseen girl known as Janice - to go galavanting about town like kids do on Halloween. They meet up with two dudes who turn out to be vampires who then want to turn the girls into vampires.

This episode also sets up a fun little side story of the kids getting involved with the crazy old man down the street but that's almost immediately disposed of when the boy vamps are revealed to be the real threat.  And they are so lame.

I mean, I guess I just don't really get the point of this episode and what it is supposed to say about Dawn's character. I'm thinking it's about how she finally finds a guy that she likes and who likes her back and that makes her feel special in a world where she is fairly useless compared to the people around her. However, "All the Way" mostly helps progress the stories of Willow and Tara and Willow's overuse of magic, and also Xander's fear of his impending marriage to Anya, more than any story about Dawn. It also gives more hints to the sexual tension between Buffy and Spike.

Highlights of the episode, though, include the cute little girl dressed as a witch in the Magic Box (credited as "Witchy Poo"), Giles finally getting to show some bad ass vampire slayage, and the performance of the old guy at the beginning. Maybe if he had been the real villain of the episode, things would have been a lot more interesting. But this one is kind of a dud for me.