Fans of The Golden Girls know they loved pretty much any chance to dress up in a costume. We’ve got Dorothy and Sophia as Sonny and Cher, Rose and Blanche as CATS, Rose and Blanche as nuns collecting lingerie for needy sexy people, Blanche as a cowgirl, Sophia as a 65-year-old drag queen, and of course all of the Girls in Henny Penny: Straight, No Chaser. There’s a lot more, but despite all the gags there was never an official Halloween episode of the show. But in 1989 along came an almost forgotten television special starring none other than Rue McClanahan called The Wickedest Witch. I’ll let this newspaper clip do the work of explaining the basics of the plot:

It aired exactly one time on NBC on October 30, 1989 and, like most television specials, was never released on home video. Matt, over at his always amazing Dinosaur Dracula website, has been talking about The Wickedest Witch for several years, but it’s received a lot of attention this year as more and more Golden Girls fans are learning about other projects the cast was involved in over the years.

Somehow a Dinosaur Dracula reader found a taped-off-television VHS of the special in 2016, and Matt uploaded it to his YouTube channel so we can all watch it! He also appeared on The Advent Calendar House podcast last year to chat about it. Whether you somehow remember it from the depths of your addled childhood brain or have never seen it before like most of us, thank Matt for preserving The Wickedest Witch for posterity and judge it for yourself:

Paul Fusco, the creator and puppeteer of ALF, was one of the writers of The Wickedest Witch and also played Ersatz, Avarissa’s righthand Greevil. Fusco mentioned in an interview that the special’s one-time-only status was what attracted him to the project because “it was something quick, and not a situation of doing a series.” He also noted that “ALF was on hiatus for three months, and this was a nice project to keep some people working.” (The Gazette, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Oct. 28, 1989)

I think it’s wonderful that there are other beings out there trying to meet us. They might have solutions to all our problems, cures for our diseases, new story lines for ‘ALF’

Rose, The One That Got Away (season 4, episode 3)

The whole thing has big time Pee-wee’s Playhouse vibes, from the puppets and costumes to the irreverent humor. There’s even a genie named Shtick who lives in a soda machine that’s very reminiscent of Jambi. Shows featuring puppets like this one were super popular in the 1980s and 90s, building on the success of Jim Henson’s The Muppets and Sesame Street. It also reminds me of other 80s gems like Fraggle Rock and Labyrinth. Eureka’s Castle also premiered in 1989, and of course in 1991 we got Dinosaurs.

Although the major reason that The Wickedest Witch only aired once is probably because it doesn’t actually have all that much to do with Halloween. The holiday is just a plot point for Avarissa’s attempt to escape the 300-year-old curse of being “banished to an underground kingdom somewhere beneath Ohio” to rule over the Greevils. Basically, she’s their own personal game show host, and she’s sick of it. Shtick tells Avarissa she has to get a child “to commit a cruel, evil, despicable deed” before midnight on Halloween to escape or else she’ll be cursed for another 300 years.

That’s really the extent of anything having to do with Halloween in The Wickedest Witch, other than Rue’s costumes and the set in general. Her witch get up with the long wig, flowy dress, and the fabulous glowing scepter are particularly fun. Avarissa also wears a crown, which is sort of odd, since it gives the whole costume more of a Renaissance Faire look. Honestly, it seems like the prequel to The Wickedest Witch would be the more interesting story since never find out just exactly what made the other witches fear her and why she was banished in the first place. Later in the show she looks more like Blanche when she disguises herself as a human with short hair in a dress and an apron. In the end Avarissa’s efforts fail when the boy Ersatz brought her can’t follow through with a cruel deed and accidentally shatters her scepter. Rue really shines in that scene when her character becomes angrier rather than bored.

I love that Rue took this role at the height of her Golden Girls fame. In the newspaper article above she also shares that she loved dressing up and Halloween in particular. She even describes wearing a costume in the sixth grade that reminds me of her “night hostess at Denny’s” dress, as Sophia calls it, in the “Big Daddy” episode. Years later she would again play a witch as Madame Morrible in the Broadway musical Wicked.

It’s really so much fun that this performance of Rue’s is being rediscovered and gaining a kind of cult-like following among fans of The Golden Girls and vintage television. If you love things like The Wickedest Witch and other nostalgia from the 20th century then you really should follow Dinosaur Dracula wherever you get your social media. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to put together my Avarissa costume…