Wrapping up our overview of U.S. cable-TV Halloween programming, this time we focus the spotlight on the mother lode of classic horror flicks: the schedule for TCM, Turner Classic Movies. Halloween’s a major event for TCM—they dedicate the entire month of October to it! This year’s marathon is hosted by Ron Perlman (Hellboy himself!).
Halloween weekend is especially busy for the network, and a must-see for horror fans; this past Friday night’s lineup alone boasted Bela Lugosi in 1931’s Dracula, Boris Karloff in 1932’s The Mummy, Claude Rains in 1933’s The Invisible Man, and Lon Chaney in 1941’s The Wolfman! And the classic shocks continued all day Saturday and Sunday, leading up to tonight’s and tomorrow’s schedules:
Starting at 8:00 p.m. (ET) on October 30, it’s Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Madeline Kahn, and Peter Boyle in the Mel Brooks–directed 1974 comedy Young Frankenstein, followed by another horror-comedy classic, with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello on the run from Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, Lon Chaney’s Wolfman, and Glenn Strange’s Frankenstein monster in 1941’s Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (one of my all-time-favorite movies).
At midnight (Halloween!), it’s Lon Chaney making an immediate return to the movie schedule in 1925’s silent horror-comedy The Monster, followed by 1955’s French psychological thriller Diabolique. Charles Boyer tries to drive wife Ingrid Bergman crazy in 1944’s Gaslight. Bela Lugosi and on-screen daughter Carroll Borland rise from the grave in 1935’s Mark of the Vampire. Producer Val Lewton springs were-panther Simone Simon on audiences in 1942’s Cat People. Another Lewton production, 1943’s I Walked With a Zombie, has nurse Frances Dee encounter one of the walking dead. Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather, Apocalypse Now) makes his proper directorial debut in 1963’s Dementia 13, produced by B-movie master Roger Corman.
Then Vincent Price stalks the halls of 1953’s House of Wax. Boris Karloff introduces the three tales of director Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath, from 1963. It’s followed by another anthology: 1945’s Dead of Night. Vincent Price returns in 1958’s House on Haunted Hill, produced by B-movie-gimmick king William Castle. The Haunting is director Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation of author Shirley Jackson’s acclaimed novel The Haunting of Hill House. Then it’s a Christopher Lee triple feature, with 1968’s The Devil’s Bride (aka The Devil Rides Out), 1959’s The Mummy—with Lee as the title character and his longtime friend (and Dracula film series nemesis) Peter Cushing as the hero—and the 1959 adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, with Cushing as Holmes and Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville.
The Halloween celebration winds down in the wee hours of November 1’s morning, with three final Lee entries: 1961’s Scream of Fear, 1960’s The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, and 1976’s To the Devil…a Daughter. Six Christopher Lee films in a row—that’s one hell of a way to close out the holiday!
And then Halloween 2016 is over. But don’t fret, horror fans, it’s a good bet that TCM is already making plans for next year’s countdown!