It is 26 October. There are 5 days until Halloween.

Every year when the MTV Video Music Awards roll around, I usually ask, “Who won Second Best Video of the Year?” After a beat or two, I explain (even though no one ever asks for an explanation) that since Michael Jackson’s Thriller is the greatest video of all-time – and always will be – logic dictates that today’s artists are vying only for second place.

No offense to Beyoncé, Childish Gambino, or Lady Gaga, but until you folks turn into a were-cat and dance with zombies then you will always be also-rans in my eyes.

Michael Jackson was the last artist you would have expected to release a horror-themed song and video in 1983. Certainly, you would have been forgiven if KISS or Alice Cooper were the first artists to spring to mind. Yet, it was Jackson who tapped into the burgeoning popularity of horror movies in the early 1980s. After seeing An American Werewolf in London, Jackson approached director John Landis with the idea of making a music video. Intrigued, Landis took up the challenge (established, feature-length filmmakers did not direct music videos in those days). With the help of special effects maestro, Rick Baker, Jackson and Landis made a video that changed the industry.

Jackson’s record company, Epic, was unsure of the 13-minute long music video that Jackson and Landis had conceived. In order to help finance the video, which would be shot on 35mm and cost almost $1 million (far and away more expensive than any other music video at the time), a making-of documentary was shot and sold to TV stations.

That doc is what really piqued my interests. I was a young, impressionable, wanna-be monster kid. Like Michael Jackson, I’d also seen American Werewolf (on HBO, not in the theaters, mind you) and was completely blown away by what I saw. I think my real love of horror began with the scene of David Naughton turning into a werewolf. As I watched the making-of film for Thriller, I thought: “John Landis is making a video for Michael Jackson?! And Rick Baker is involved, too?! I’m there!”

And so were a lot of other people. Thriller (the video) returned Thriller (the album) to the top of the charts. It also made a whole bunch of new monster kids. Aside from Jackson’s supreme talent and the inherent catchiness of the song, it’s the spookiness of the visuals that cemented masterpiece status for the video. The movie within the movie, the cutting-edge special effects used during Jackson’s were-cat transformation, the zombies crawling out of their graves, the grainy quality that only shooting on film can give you – everything about Thriller was exciting and new.

As a bonus, Thriller is also famous – at least to me – for being the basis of one of the greatest parodies of all-time – and it isn’t by “Weird” Al Yankovic.

In his HBO special from 1984, Joe Piscopo terrorizes Jan Hooks in a pitch-perfect version of Thriller. Instead of turning into a were-cat, however, Piscopo transforms into Jerry Lewis. Classic!

Even scarier is Piscopo’s Halloween special on HBO a few years later…