1997’s Elmo Says BOO! is one of the weirdest Sesame Street productions ever made. On the surface, it contains a typical Sesame mix of segments – songs, animations, the terrifying old Ernie & Bert sketch where they’re in a pyramid and a living statue drives Ernie insane – but mostly it’s just an excuse to tell jokes.
Specifically, the heart of the special is a series of fifteen “funny, scary jokes.” Most of these are delivered by Elmo and The Count, because the entire outline for this VHS release was “throw Jerry Nelson and Kevin Clash onto a castle set and have them say funny, scary jokes.” To spice things up, occasionally we cut away to a different castle set, where our other Muppet friends are boring children with funny, scary jokes.
Does it feel like I’m saying “funny, scary jokes” a lot? Imagine how it feels in the special itself, where that phrase accounts for 90% of the dialogue. But how true is it? Are these jokes both funny and scary?
Today, we’re going to rate them (on a scale of 1-10) by both scariness and funniness, to determine which is the funniest, scariest joke of all.
1.
Scariness rating: 7/10. Elmo is threatening to use a battering ram to get inside and shower the Count with jokes!
Funniness rating: 10/10. “Batter” kind of sounds like “better.” Wordplay!
2. 
Scariness rating: 1/10. Eating pie is one of the least threatening things a ghost can do.
Funniness rating: 10/10. It’s a pie made from cereal! Funny *and* delicious!
3.
Scariness rating: 2/10. Bats gotta practice personal hygiene too. No shame in that.
Funniness rating: 11/10. It’s a tub of bats, like you’d buy at the spooky state fair!
4.
Scariness rating 9/10: This is an accurate description of how ghosts attack people.
Funniness rating: 14/10. It might be scary to us mortals, but for a ghost, this is a blast. Hidin’ and shriekin’, shriekin’ and hidin’ all night long.
5. 
Scariness rating: 1/10. Rosita is just trying to cheer this poor kid up. It isn’t even related to Halloween.
Funniness rating: 17/10. Rosita takes this moldy chestnut of a joke and gives it a sparkling, shiny new polish. And that polish is called “enthusiastic delivery.”
6. 
Scariness rating: 10/10! It’s a roller coaster that kills all of its riders!
Funniness rating: 26/10. A ghost who plays roller derby?! Hysterical!
7.
Scariness rating: 4/10. This is a friendly ghost who shares bananas.
Funniness rating: 42/10. Turns out “What did the ghost give the monkeys to eat?” is the question for Life, the Universe, and Everything.
8.
Scariness rating: 9/10. Sand in your lunch is spookily unsanitary.
Funniness rating: 112/10. You can’t tell this from the subtitles, but the suit of armor has a low stentorian voice until the words “a seeeeand-witch!” Here, he suddenly switches to Joey Mazzarino’s usual squeaky delivery. It’s inexplicable and actually made me laugh out loud.
9.
Scariness rating: 5/10. Talking animals are always kind of scary, even in that one Kevin James movie.
Funniness rating: 1,334/10. That kid looks directly at Kevin Clash through the whole set-up, which is so much fun.
10.
Scariness rating: 2/10. The Count’s just making pancakes for the players. That’s nice of him.
Funniess rating: 2,112/10. The Count is not only a vampire, he’s an umpire! What an amazing pun!
11.
Scariness rating: 6/10. It’s moderately scary that a circus expects the audience to be able to see a tiny little flying mammal without opera glasses. But it’s not *that* scary.
Funniness rating: 2,287/10. Telly is so excited that he inserts extra enthusiasm between the set-up and punchline, and then he tells the same joke twice, which makes it precisely twice as funny. Also, this little girl really throws herself into laughing uproariously at the joke both times. The audience can’t help but follow suit.
12.
Scariness rating: 9/10. Ghosts who value personal safety over wanton recklessness?! It’ll keep you up all night just wondering if they’re going to drop the charade and attack you like a regular ghost.
Funniness rating: 9,876/10. Sheets don’t need belts to hold them up! The very idea!
13.
Scariness rating: 10/10. These ghosts can bottle the screams of people they’ve whipped.
Funniness rating: 37,000/10. A ghost at the chok’lit shoppe?!
14.
Scariness rating: 7/10. It’s scary how little Elmo understands about ghost procreation.
Funniness rating: 8,243,721/10. Cute li’l baby ghost, flying around playing Peek-a-Boo with humans! Just picture it, and you’re laughing already.
15.
Scariness rating: 10/10. The pipe organ made a dessert out of TV’s Dustin Diamond. Who’s to say it won’t do the same to you?
Funniness rating: ?/10. A COBBLER MADE OUT OF SCREECH!
So, in conclusion, most of these jokes are scary and all of them are hilarious. But science shows us that #15 is the scariest, funniest joke. Well done, Elmo Says BOO! You went out on a high note!
Click here to die from laughing so hard at all those funny, scary jokes on the Tough Pigs forum!
by Anthony Strand
