In succession, Paul (as himself) begins singing to celebrate
Christmas,
Easter and
Valentine's Day but is interrupted each time when his housekeeper Margaret (Margaret Hamilton) tells him it is none of these and prods him into admitting it is a holiday he dreads, Halloween. The opening credits roll, and Lynde gives a
stand-up monologue explaining, among other jokes, that his
childhood obesity had traumatized him into hating the holiday. In keeping with a promise to Margaret to enjoy the holiday, he sings a special version of his
signature song "
Kids" in which he actually claims to like them until a group of kids in devil costumes (among them Donny and Marie Osmond) torment him. Margaret offers to take Paul away from the kids and drives him to Gloomsbury Manor, where her sister (Billie Hayes) resides. When they arrive, Paul realizes that both are witches,
Wilhelmina Witchiepoo and the
Wicked Witch of the West. A third witch, "
good witch" Miss Halloween (Betty White) arrives, disappointed that Margaret had brought Lynde instead of the promised
Paul Newman (or, for that matter, any other person named Paul), then departs. Believing that they have been unjustly given a bad reputation, they commission Paul to serve as a
public relations expert to improve their image. To seal the deal, they offer him three wishes. In his first wish, Paul wishes to be a trucker and is reinvented as "Big Red," a crass, red-haired, CB-slang-talking, rhinestone-studded trucker engaged to waitress "Kinky Pinky" Tuscadero (Roz Kelly). He soon finds that Pinky has two-timed him and has also promised another trucker (Tim Conway) her hand in marriage; the two, along with Pinky's boss (Billy Barty), soon enter a battle to prove their worth to her, which Big Red wins with his large wad of money from a movie advance,
Deep Truck. Big Red and Pinky marry as the diner turns into a raucous
hoedown. He returns to the manor, and after Kiss performs "
Detroit Rock City" and Paul and the witches sit through a boring game of
Monopoly, Paul offhandedly wishes he were in the
Sahara Desert and is transformed into a "chic
sheik" lusting after snow queen Lady Cecily
Westinghouse (Florence Henderson). After a difficult seduction, just as he wins her over with a cockatoo, his nemesis Seymour of the foreign legion (Conway) reveals the lady was bait for a trap and takes the sheik away. He trades the cockatoo for his freedom and comes back to her, a deal Seymour accepted because "a man gets mighty lonely in the foreign legion." Pleased with his two wishes, he offers his third wish to the witches, who wish to go to a disco. With Paul as host and Henderson as guest performer ("
That Old Black Magic"), the manor turns into a swinging
discotheque. Kiss returns and performs two more songs, "
Beth" (
Peter Criss solo at the piano) and "King of the Night Time World." The show's finale has the entire cast assembling as Paul and Pinky sing Johnnie Taylor's "
Disco Lady" (gender-neutralized to "Disco Baby"). Paul thanks the audience and home viewers "for making (him) feel wanted" and implies that he might not appear in another special for a prolonged period of time, before reprising "Disco Baby" with the cast as a perplexed Kiss looks on from the rear. ==Cast==