Actor Tim Curry has demonstrated a unique ability to bring equal energy and enthusiasm to roles ranging from children’s television to adult musicals. One writer recalls first encountering Curry in the 1980s British television adaptation of “The Worst Witch,” where he played the Grand Wizard Egbert Hellibore, performing a song called “Anything Can Happen on Halloween.”
In the series, Curry delivered the song with “Broadway-scale theatricality and cabaret wit,” despite it being a children’s program. The writer notes the performance as an early exposure to “camp” – a balance of artifice, earnestness, and irony. This theatrical style, the writer argues, foreshadowed Curry’s later, iconic role as Dr. Frank N. Furter in “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
While “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” aimed for outrage and cult status, Curry brought the same energy to both it and the children’s program. The writer notes that Curry’s performance of “Anything Can Happen on Halloween” included him crooning, “Anything can happen on Halloween/A dog can turn into a cat,” over “clunky mid-’80s synths” while swirling a “voluminous pink satin cape” and displaying his “famously, fabulously imperfect pearly whites.” He barely suppressed a wink at his young audience, promising them that, on October 31st, “your blood begins to run.” The writer also recalls that some Gen-X viewers may consider Curry’s original Pennywise in the TV miniseries “It” as his defining role.
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