It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
With autumn in full swing, the Peanuts gang prepares for Halloween. In the cold open, Linus and Lucy go out to the local pumpkin patch to find a pumpkin. Lucy selects the largest one they could find, and poor Linus has to be the one getting it back to the house, only to be very distraught when it turns out Lucy is going to gut it to become a jack-o-lantern. After the opening credits, Snoopy ends up helping Charlie Brown a bit while he's out raking up a pile of leaves, only to have Linus jump into it with a large lollipop. Then Lucy entices Charlie to try to kick the football...with the usual results.
Meanwhile, Linus writes his annual letter to The Great Pumpkin, despite Charlie Brown's disbelief, Snoopy's laughter, Patty's assurance that the Great Pumpkin is a fake, and even his own sister Lucy (who is watching TV and reading a TV Guide with her picture on it) making a violent threat to make her brother stop. Only Sally, Charlie Brown's younger sister, who is smitten with Linus, supports him. When Linus goes out to mail the letter but cannot reach the mailbox, Lucy refuses to help him; so he uses his blanket to open the box and throws in the letter.
On Halloween night, the gang (including Sally) goes trick-or-treating, each with their own costume. Most dress as ghosts in simple white sheet costumes; Charlie Brown botches his costume with errant scissor work, and Pig-Pen's trademark dust cloud makes him easy to identify, while Lucy opts to dress as a witch, as she perceives it as being the opposite of her real personality. On the way, they stop at the pumpkin patch to ridicule Linus for missing the festivities, just as he did the previous year. Undeterred, Linus is convinced that the Great Pumpkin will come, and tries to convince Sally to join him; Sally, against her better judgment but acting almost entirely on her infatuation with Linus, agrees to skip trick-or-treating to be with her sweet babboo.
During trick-or-treating, the kids receive various goodies (except for Charlie Brown, who gets nothing but rocks). After going back to the pumpkin patch to tease Linus and Sally, the gang goes to Violet's Halloween party. (Neither Lucy nor Charlie Brown can believe that the latter even got invited to a party hosted by the notoriously snobby Violet; Charlie Brown breaks out into a "happy dance" upon receiving the invitation as Lucy assumes it was a mistake.) Meanwhile, Snoopy, wearing his World War I flying ace costume, climbs aboard his doghouse (imagining it to be a Sopwith Camel fighter plane) to fight with the Red Baron. After a fierce but losing battle, Snoopy makes his way across "the countryside" to briefly crash the Halloween party, where he is entertained by Schroeder's playing of World War I tunes on his piano (two upbeat songs, then two slow songs, both of the latter songs make Snoopy cry) and then goes to the pumpkin patch. When Linus sees a shadowy figure rising from the moonlit patch, he assumes the Great Pumpkin has arrived and faints. When Sally sees that it is only Snoopy, she furiously yells at Linus for making her miss out on the Halloween festivities as Charlie Brown and the others come to get her. As they leave, Linus, still convinced that the Great Pumpkin will materialize, promises to put in a good word for them if he comes—an off-the-cuff remark that he fears, because of the uncertainty, will scare the Great Pumpkin away; namely, because he said if instead of when.
At four o'clock the next morning, Lucy realizes that Linus is not in his bed. She finds her brother asleep in the pumpkin patch, shivering. She brings him home, takes off his shoes, and puts him to bed. Later, Charlie Brown and Linus are leaning against a wall, commiserating about the previous night's disappointments. Charlie Brown attempts to console his friend, admitting that he has done stupid things in his life also; this only infuriates Linus, who sets off on an angry rant vowing that the Great Pumpkin will come to the pumpkin patch next year, as Charlie Brown listens with an annoyed look on his face and the credits roll.
psychedelic