At Halloween time, audiences seem to look high and low for scares on every type of platform they can access. It might be a quest for an upcoming horror movie, or a classic thriller you’ve seen 1,000 times before. And on television, it seems like so many of our favorite programs try a Halloween-themed episode during October, which can be hit or miss. Those of you with a Hulu subscription probably have picked up on the fact that the streaming platform has adopted a Hulu-ween atmosphere, offering up original and classic horror fare in time for the holiday. And one of the shows featured at the moment might include the final performance by the late Gilbert Gottfried, who died in April.
Comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who lent his distinct voice to numerous animated characters in movies like Aladdin (which he thought was going to be terrible) and Animal Crackers, shows up in The Paloni Show! Halloween Special, the brainchild of Justin Roiland (co-creator and the voices of Rick and Morty). The Halloween special essentially is an anthology series where the Panloni family stands on the street and introduces animated shorts that cover all angels of the season. In Gottfried’s skit, he voices an apartment manager who doesn’t want to deal with his tenants. But because of when The Paloni Show! came out, I assumed that someone on staff was doing a Gottfried impression. Until Roiland told CinemaBlend:
That’s him! That’s Gilbert. We’re trying to figure out if it is his last voiceover role. But two weeks later is when we found out that he passed. That’s my buddy Brian Wysol’s short. It was funny, because I was like, ‘Oh man, yeah! Fuck, I’m going to try to weave (Gottfried) into more projects. He’s so great.’ And he did such a good job. The guy could fucking act, you know? Of course, obviously. You just forget. And then two weeks later, it’s like, ‘What?’ It came out of so far left field. I wasn’t aware that he was ill or anything like that.
Gilbert Gottfried was only 67 when he died in April. His family said he passed after suffering “a long illness,” but as Justin Roiland points out, few people in the industry knew that he was sick and probably expected him to keep working for several more years. At the time of his passing, so many who loved him paid tribute to his work, and we even assembled a list of our favorite Gottfried films and television shows to stream when you want to catch back up with his talent.
One of those is The Paloni Show! Halloween Special, which co-stars Emma Chamberlain, Olivia DeLaurentis, and Pamela Adlon as Cheruce. It’s yet another idea born from the brilliant Justin Roiland, who had the good sense to cast Gottfried as a manager who gets the upper hand on zombies that are plaguing his establishment. Watch it now on Hulu!
