More Movies for Your Spooky Season Weekend

It’s Frightful Weekend #2 of October, and if you’re a fan of horror movies in search of something to watch, here’s a sampling of what will be stalking your cable-TV screens:

AMC FearFeast has nothing scheduled for Friday, but dedicates Saturday to a Stephen King Marathon, starting at 6:45 a.m. (on the East Coast) with the rabid-dog thriller Cujo, followed by Graveyard Shift; the original Children of the Corn; the classic Sissy Spacek/Brian DePalma collaboration Carrie; the Kathy Bates/James Caan chiller Misery; the weight-loss terror of Thinner; the 2013 remake of Carrie; the Gary Busey–starring Silver Bullet, based on the illustrated novella Cycle of the Werewolf by King and master artist Bernie Wrightson; and John Carpenter’s haunted-car classic, Christine.

Sunday is a Fear the’80s Marathon: At 7:45 a.m., it begins with another Carpenter classic, The Thing (starring Kurt Russell), followed by the original Child’s Play; Friday the 13th, Part II; the Tobe Hooper–helmed Poltergeist; A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge; and the original Nightmare on Elm Street, all leading up to the broadcast of the latest episode of their zombie series The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon—The Book of Carol.

Max (formerly HBO Max) continues its “No Sleep October” Halloween celebration with the premiere of the thriller Carro Lake, produced by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Dylan O’Brien (Teen Wolf, The Maze Runner).

The Movies! Channel’s expanded Friday Night Frights schedule starts with Boris Karloff starring in 1958’s The Haunted Strangler, followed by 1940’s The Devil Bat (starring Bela Lugosi), Marla English as the monstrous She-Creature (1956), and Beverly Garland battling The Alligator People (1959). Then comes a four-piece full moon marathon: the lycanthropic-bikers weirdness of 1971’s Werewolves on Wheels; Peter Cushing playing “which of you is a real werewolf?” at a party in 1974’s The Beast Must Die; the 1996 thriller Bad Moon, and Angela Lansbury and David Warner starring in Neil Jordan’s critically acclaimed The Company of Wolves (1984). 1958’s The Fly (the original, starring David Heddison and Vincent Price), its 1959 sequel The Return of the Fly, and 1978’s rampaging monster Slithis round out the schedule

And Turner Classic Movies continues their Friday midnight-to-morning overnight schedule, with Poltergeist at 11:59 p.m., followed by The Haunting, director Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting of Hill House; 1968’s Spirits of the Dead, and ending the night with 1962’s Carnival of Souls. Unfortunately, there are no horror movies on Saturday and only a couple minor-leaguers early Sunday morning Sunday.

Still, not a bad way to spend a horror weekend, right?

Spooky Season Weekends Are Here!

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!