When I think about the things I miss most about WCW, the wackiness they always brought us every October would be near the top of the list. We got goofy matches, oodles of Elvira commercials, and WrestleCrap galore. But more than anything, we got my favorite annual wrestling event ever: HALLOWEEN HAVOC! It really didn’t matter to me what the matches were, I was just psyched because I knew we’d get spooky intros and some of the best entrance sets in wrestling history. And today, I’m gonna review each and every last one of ’em.
DISCLAIMER: The bulk of this is NOT WrestleCrap. I don’t care. I’ve always wanted to cover this and I’m using this as my chance. With that out of the way, let’s drive in!
Halloween Havoc 1989
The first Halloween Havoc gave the first look at what was to come – just check out this intro! We get an honest to goodness GRAVEYARD, complete with names on the headstones. That would have been spectacular enough, but WCW ups the ante by having these guys popping up out of the ground like GHOSTS! Wiggly squiggly semi-transparent Great Muta is something I need in my trick or treat bag every year!
The set however was nothing. Look all you want, you won’t see a thing that even indicates it might be Halloween other than some orange graphics. So we still have a long way to go here. 
GRADE: We’ll go 2 Tony Schiavones dressed as the Phantom of the Opera for the first one. That intro was great, but the lack of even a pumpkin on stage knocks it down.
Halloween Havoc 1990
I wasn’t sure the graveyard was gonna be topped, but WCW quickly proved me wrong as we get a HAUNTED HOUSE with spectral visions of Stan Hansen, Sid Vicious, Sting, and Lex Luger coming down the stairs. The Jack-o’-lantern is nice, but that pales in comparison to that hideous gray GARGOYLE! LOVE IT!
Ah, now THIS is better! We get some hay bales and a skeleton or two. AND not only a Jack-o’-lantern, but one with a WCW for its mouth. Someone should carve up a pumpkin like that this year and send me a photo. I’ll be your best friend forever. Also, if you look closely, you may wonder what that metal structure with the blue curtain is over on the left. That would have been a prop for the BLACK SCORPION! Did I mention how awesome these events are?
GRADE: Three and a half Tonys dressed as the Phantom for year two! You may look at that intro and set and think that’s low, but trust me, spookier days are yet to come.
Halloween Havoc 1991
The same cartoon haunted house is back, this time with Sting and Luger downstairs, Ron Simmons and Barry Windham in the graveyard, and Abdullah the Butcher, Kevin Nash, Rick Steiner, and El Gigante out front. I’d like to think they’re out trick or treating. More importantly though we get the classic Halloween Havoc logo for the first time in all its glory. I think that’s the best logo they ever did. Scratch that – it WAS the best logo they ever had. LOVE that logo!
And the set is a masterpiece! It looks like it was created by a grade school class taught by an overenthusiastic art teacher with a $20 gift card to Hobby Lobby burning a hole in her pocket. Look closely and you’ll get some laughs at the headstones as welll, with witticisms like “Here’s Mike/He Lost it on his bike” and “Bear/He waz full of hot air”!
GRADE: Four Tonys! You may think that one is low, and I thought long and hard about going 4 and a half. I won’t argue with you if you want to go higher personally. (And yes, I like to think you’ve all printed and cut out 100 pictures of Tony and are sticking them to poster board with that old pirate paste we all used years back.)
Halloween Havoc 1992
As much as I love the animated haunted house, after three years I kinda think we deserve a bit more. Sting howling at the moon (!!!) is worth at least a Tony, as is Jake laughing as the Spin the Wheel, Make the Deal gimmick spins in the background. So far, so good, but nothing spectacular.
And “nothing spectacular” continues as we get NOTHING from the set design! Even the logo is the wrong color on the chyron. And the font looks more like a medieval one than spooky! And I say that as a certifiable font snob.
GRADE: HUGE step backwards here. Even the ghost of Masahiro Chono coming down the steps can’t save it. One and a half Tonys.
Halloween Havoc 1993
Knowing they had to redeem themselves, WCW went back to the drawing board and back to a haunted house…but not ANY haunted house, an ACTUAL HAUNTED HOUSE. Not only that, but Tony Schiavone answers the door! I loved this one and in fact inducted it a few years back!
Here’s the short version though – kids are trick or treating and Tony is making unsettling jokes like a total creep. The leader of the peewee pack gets in Tony’s face (literally!), so Tony responds the only way he can:
BY TURNING INTO A HORRIFYING WEREBEAST!
And the kids don’t escape, at least not that we ever get to see. They wind up trapped inside with him! They may be dead for all I know. We then get a quick glance at the wheel and a graphic of a pumpkin that appears to have dislocated his jaw. Trust me, pro wrestling PPV intros don’t get any better than this.
The set isn’t terrible either, as we get the wheel with giant DEVIL HORNS. Hopefully you can see that behind this unretouched picture of Harlem Heat.
GRADE: The set could have been better, but it was good. And that intro was something straight out of a horror film you’d rent at your local mom & pop shop back in the 80’s. As if I could go anything but the full fiver here!
Halloween Havoc 1994
You’d think that Uncle Tony’s Demon-Infested Mansion would be a new annual tradition, but sadly no! Instead we get some promos from old shows with Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, and others. BOOOOO! And not the good kind of “boo” you’d expect this time of year. I do appreciate the moon graphic and the witch clip art flying around pooping out graphics but this is a far cry from what we were all now expecting.
The set is improving here, as we get a couple of mausoleums, with one having a giant screen and the other being the actual tunnel the guys came out of from the back. Look closely and you’ll also see the graveyard has returned…with the word “CROCKETT” on one of the tombstones! WOW!
GRADE: I still can’t believe they didn’t move forward with Demon Tony! So much money left on the table!
Halloween Havoc 1995
WCW went back into the video vault and brought the cartoon spook house back, this time with a new gate and bat graphics. Plus we get skeleton versions of The Giant (Paul Wight) and a very rare shot of a clean shaven Hulk Hogan! You may not remember that, but it was from his DARKSIDE OF HULKAMANIA days. And yes, of course that’s been inducted.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention we also got graphics of monster trucks smashing into each other in the most rudimentary animation possible. The wheels don’t even move! On the plus side, you might see Broomhilda again…if you crank the brightness on your monitor to the absolute max.
The set is virtually identical to last year. Like I said, that was an okay set, but Halloween Havoc definitely deserves better than “okay”.
GRADE: Not much better than the year before, but a little better I suppose. Give it another half Tony.
You know, for this.
Halloween Havoc 1996
Another year of video clips to guide us in, with no haunted houses, no ghostly wrestlers, nothing. I like the new official Halloween Havoc ghoul holding up the Slim Jim logo, and happy to see the witch flying around more clearly, but seriously, come on.
And another year of the same basic set. And the tombstones don’t even have funny epitaths! No, “Elvis Lives” doesn’t count.
GRADE: Going two Tonys, and honestly, I am not even sure why. I must be feeling generous.
Halloween Havoc 1997
ENOUGH WITH THE VIDEO INTROS! And what on EARTH is that LOGO?! That’s not only ugly, it’s hardly legible!
But…but but but…we got us a NEW set with the ghoul head taking stage front and center. I like it – those orange eyes look positively EVIL. Plus we get a giant graveyard and it has a bench if you’d like to have a seat and just look around. How courteous!
GRADE: If it weren’t for the new set, this may have been the lowest rating yet. But that is a really nice set. Having said that however…
Halloween Havoc 1998
We get ANOTHER video clip intro, but at least this time they made it look a bit creepy with some wacky filtering effects. As if Warrior needed THAT. We also get a slightly modified version of the Halloween Havoc logo (with WCW/nWo on it!) carved into an incredible looking pumpkin. And is that pumpkin that held by some claws? What are we seeing there? Well, let me tell you and you’d best buckle up for it. Because what you are about to see is WCW’s official…
HALLOWEEN HAVOC DRAGON DEMON WITH SMOKE SNORTING ACTION!
Seriously, look at the GLORIOUS madness on display here!! It looks like the set is literally exploding with fire and smoke kicked into absolute overdrive, two enormous mausoleum pillars, tombstones, and more! And that freaking pumpkin bouncing around!! Then…THEN…there’s that demon. Not only is he SNORTING SMOKE, he’s moving back and forth, looking like he’s ready to destroy the world. And don’t forget his GIANT WINGS!
This is the greatest pro wrestling set ever created and I will not hear any arguments to the contrary. I LOVE THIS WITH ALL MY HEART.
GRADE: Six and a half Tonys for the set alone! Probably should have been more!
Halloween Havoc 1999
After the greatness of 1998, you’d hope at best they could just maintain the same. But seeing that horrific new WCW logo already put me in a bad mood, and the dumb graphics overlaying the promos just make it worse. The witch is off to the retirement home apparently, replaced by a spider that had to have come off a clip art CD-ROM someone picked up at Circuit City. Terrible. But…
…the demon is back and he’s still smoking and bouncing a NEW pumpkin like a flippin’ basketball! Look closely and you’ll see this is NOT THE SAME PUMPKIN as last year – they modified it so it would have the crappy new WCW logo on it. I don’t like that but I do like that the Halloween Havoc logo is MUCH larger on it, so I’ll call it a wash.
GRADE: Even that stupid logo can’t ruin this set, which may be the highest compliment I can possibly give. FIVE TONYS!
Halloween Havoc 2000
No haunted houses. No spooky graphics. Just video clips overlaid with a red graphic. I know that was kinda the horror style at the time but this looks like utter crap. And that Halloween Havoc logo is ATROCIOUS! Even that stupid Havoc logo they did back in ’97 was better than this. But as long as you bring back that demon it’s all good!
So OF COURSE we don’t get that! In fact, we get NO spooky stuff at all, just the blandest set ever. I am appalled in every way imaginable.
RATING: Negative five stars Tonys! I know I wrote two books about why WCW died, but I really need to write a third and dedicate at least 78 pages to how they ruined Halloween Havoc in its final ever outing.
So yeah, here we are. And you know, WCW may have screwed it all up in the end (as the company was wont to do), but no one can take away all the awesome stuff they brought us each and every October in the 1990s. I hope you feel the same.
Also, I have to believe this thing still exists in a warehouse somewhere…and I NEED it in my front yard!!! Happy Halloween, fellow Crappers!!!