The first weekend of October is about to arrive, but on cable TV the countdown to Halloween has already begun! And if you’re a fan of horror movies, here’s a sampling of what will be available for your viewing terror!
Cable station AMC FearFeast is underway, and Friday’s festivities begin at 1:20 a.m. (on the East Coast) with the Michael Meyers-less (but still entertaining!) Halloween III: Season of the Witch, followed by 1957’s Voodoo Woman, 1958’s Corridors of Blood (starring Boris Karloff), and 1962’s The Creation of the Humanoids before hosting a trio of marathons. Friday is dedicated to “A Nightmare of Freddy,” starring the legendary Robert Englund as razor-clawed dream-monster (and pop culture icon!) Freddy Krueger, and it kicks off at 9:30 a.m. (on the East Coast) with Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, then continues through the day in ascending order with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5–2 before reaching the original NoES, followed by the 2010 remake starring Jackie Earle Haley.
Then on Saturday, it’s the hockey-masked, machete-wielding Jason Voorhees’s turn to rule AMC in an all-day Friday the 13th marathon, starting at 8:00 a.m. (EST) with Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, followed by A New Beginning, Part VI: Jason Lives, Part VII: The New Blood, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, before looping around to Friday the 13th I–III. And for Sunday, after showings of Jason X, Freddy vs. Jason, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, it’s a marathon of Final Destination 1, 2, 3, and 5, leading up to the broadcast of the latest episode of their popular zombie series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.
On Max (formerly HBO Max), it’s the start of “No Sleep October,” a monthlong Halloween celebration that launches with the premiere of writer/director Gary Dauberman’s ’Salem’s Lot, the latest movie adaptation of the awesome Stephen King novel about a vampiric outbreak in the small Maine town of Jerusalem’s Lot.
Over at MeTV, movie host Svengoolie kicks off his annual Halloween BOO-Nanza on Saturday with a double feature. Up first is Son of Frankenstein, the 1939 monster classic starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Basil Rathbone. Following it is 1957’s The Monster That Challenged the World, a creature feature about a giant, murderous mollusk(!) on a rampage.
The Movies! Channel leans heavily on old-school horror (mostly black-and-white flicks). They welcome Spooky Season by expanding their Friday Night Frights schedule, beginning early with 1960’s The Lost World—starring Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still) and Jill St. John—at 6:15 a.m., followed by 1943’s The Leopard Man, 1957’s Curse of the Demon, the George Romero classics Night of the Living Dead and Day of the Dead, David Cronenberg’s Rabid, Neil Marshall’s soldiers-versus-werewolves action horror Dog Soldiers, and the Peter Cushing–starring anthologies From Beyond the Grave, Asylum (written by Robert Bloch), and The House That Dripped Blood (costarring Christopher Lee).
And Turner Classic Movies—which has named Bela (Dracula) Lugosi as their Star of the Month for October and has already started celebrating Halloween—gets a jump on everyone’s weekend with their Friday midnight-to-morning overnight schedule, with the Vincent Price 1953 classic House of Wax at 12:15 a.m., followed by 1932’s Frederic March–starring Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1935’s Mad Love (starring Peter Lorre), and greeting the dawn with 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. No horror movies on Saturday, but the chills return Sunday morning with a pair of Roger Corman classics, The Little Shop of Horrors and Bucket of Blood, along with 1962’s The Brain That Wouldn’t Die, and the creepy Bette Davis and Joan Crawford thriller What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
So, if you’re looking for a spooky feature to watch this weekend, or to just have something playing in the background while you’re putting your Halloween plans together, catch a movie (or ten!) and get into the Horror Mood!