Beast wishes for a safe and spooky All Hallows’ Eve! I’m partial to Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins and chocolate Twizzlers—hope you get all the favorite candies you’re looking for!
Happy Halloween!
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Spooky Season: The Final Movie Weekend
Today starts the final weekend of October, with the Big Day only a week away. So, here’s a sampling of what’s coming up for your viewing pleasure this weekend, as you make your final plans for Halloween:
Max (formerly HBO Max) continues “No Sleep October” with the broadcast debut of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller Trap, starring Josh Harnett as a concertgoer caught up in a law enforcement scheme to corner a serial killer who’s a member of the audience.
Netflix presents Don’t Move, from producer Sam Raimi, best known for his directorial work in the Evil Dead and Spider-Man movie franchises, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. According to the press material, Kelsey Asbille stars as “a grieving woman” who’s injected with a paralytic agent by a serial killer and must find some way to survive before her body shuts down.
AMC FearFeast goes full Jason Voorhees on Friday for its all-day Friday the 13th Marathon, with Parts VI–VIII followed by Freddy vs. Jason (admittedly, my favorite of both franchises), then Parts III, I, and II, and concluding with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.
Saturday is a Creature Feature Marathon, with a lineup of The Mist, Gremlins, David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly, John Carpenter’s The Thing, Gary Busey vs. a werewolf in Silver Bullet, John Carpenter’s Christine, Jeepers Creepers, and Child’s Play, with Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (1999, starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci) and Eight Legged Freaks (2002; David Arquette and Scarlet Johansson exterminating giant spiders) carrying you through the overnight hours. And then Sunday is AMC’s Michael vs. Everyone Marathon, with Michael Myers wreaking havoc in Haddonfield, Illinois, through Halloween 5, Halloween 4, Halloween II, the original John Carpenter’s Halloween, Halloween H2O, and Halloween: Resurrection.
The Movies! Channel’s expanded Friday Night Frights schedule starts with Forrest Tucker battling The Crawling Eye (1958), followed by Devil Doll (1964); Anthony Hopkins versus his ventriloquist’s dummy in the thriller Magic (1978); Puppet Master (1989) and the 1990 sequel Puppet Master II; Night of the Demons (1988); Tawny Kitaen contending with the supernatural threats of the Witchboard (1986); Adrienne Barbeau fighting off ghostly, bloodthirsty pirates in John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980); and the 1986 anthology Deadtime Stories.
Last but not least, on Saturday, TBS is hosting The 24 Hours of Beetlejuice, in case there’s a rare chance you’ve ever missed seeing the famous Tim Burton-Michael Keaton-Winona Ryder collaboration in the past 36 years. Shamelessly taking advantage of the box office success of its sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Absolutely. Overkill? For sure. But what else would you expect from the same station (as well as its sister, TNT) that has been running The 24 Hours of A Christmas Story every year since 1997?
Seems like a good way to pass the time while you’re putting together those little trick-or-treat bags for the little monsters that will soon come knocking at your door!
Spooky Season Movie Weekend 3
Halloween creeps ever closer as we enter Frightful Weekend #3 of October, and if you’re a horror fan who couldn’t make it to New York Comic Con this week, here’s a sampling of what you can watch to help keep you occupied while you’re perhaps conventioneering at home (all times listed are on the East Coast):
AMC FearFeast kicks things into gear with a 3-day weekend of movie programming: Friday is a House of Horrors Marathon, starting at 9:00 a.m. with Virginia Madsen (Candyman) starring in 2009’s The Haunting in Connecticut, followed by a pair of Stephen King adaptations: director Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 cult classic The Shining (starring Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duval), and director Rob Reiner’s 1990 bone-shattering thriller Misery (starring James Caan and Kathy Bates, whose performance won her an Academy Award for Best Actress). The evening closes out with a trio of visits to the 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left, 2005’s remake of House of Wax, and the 2001 remake of Thirteen Ghosts. Be sure to bring a housewarming gift!
Saturday is a Final Destination Marathon, with FD2 starting at 4:00 p.m., followed by FD5, the original Final Destination, and wrapping up with FD3. Why show them out of order? I have no idea.
(Fun fact: Back in 2005, I wrote an original FD novel, for publisher Games Workshop’s Black Library imprint. Final Destination: Dead Man’s Hand had Death going on a rampage along the Las Vegas Strip after a group of unfortunates narrowly escape the doom of an elevator disaster. The book’s long out of print, but you can always track down a copy in the wild—or, if you’ve got some free time, you could listen to the Slash Trax Network’s unofficial unabridged audiobook reading of it!)
Ending the weekend is Slasher Sunday: At 6:45 a.m., it begins with Jordana Brewster (The Fast and the Furious) and R. Lee Ermey (The Frighteners) in the 2006 gorefest The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, followed by Tony Todd as the hook-handed, lovelorn Candyman (1992); 1989’s Friday the 13th, Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, in which the hockey-masked killer rampaging through New York City (well, mostly Vancouver, British Columbia); the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (also starring R. Lee Ermey); the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street; the original Halloween (1978), by writer/director John Carpenter; the original Friday the 13th; and finally Robert Englund’s iconic turn as Freddy Krueger in writer/director Wes Craven’s original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
Max (formerly HBO Max) continues “No Sleep October” with the broadcast debut of writer/director Ti West’s hard-core thriller MaXXXine and its prequel X (both starring Mia Goth). And don’t forget ’Salem’s Lot (adapting the famous Stephen King vampire novel) and the thriller Caddo Lake, which both premiered earlier this month.
On Friday, Netflix presents Woman of the Hour, starring and directed by Anna Kendrick. In 1978, real-life serial killer Rodney Alcala was Bachelor #3 on the popular TV game show The Dating Game, and the “winner” picked by contestant Cheryl Bradshaw. She soon discovered just how bad a choice she made… It’s “based on a true story,” which means a number of liberties were taken with the true events of that encounter—specifically, in real life, Bradshaw canceled the date after meeting Alcala because he creeped her out, and that was the end of that. So, the movie is really a fictionalized what-if-they’d-gone-on-that-date scenario, but it should be suspenseful, anyway!
Also on Friday, the Hallmark Channel begins its annual Reign of Holiday Terror with its Countdown to Christmas (“Good Lord! Choke!” gasped horror fans everywhere): around-the-clock programming that starts bright and early at 6:00 a.m. But even horror fans have been found to enjoy the…er, cookie-cutter template of Hallmark’s Christmas movies—especially when they have horror connections!
Take, for example, Friday’s Let It Snow (2013), starring Candace Cameron Bure. It’s directed by the appropriately named Harvey Frost, whose credits include episodes of the 1980s’ Friday the 13th: The Series, the 1990s’ The New Addams Family, and Grimm. Or Saturday’s On the 12th Date of Christmas (2020), a comforting romance from Gary Yates, the director of Eye of the Beast (2007; starring James Van Der Beek and a monster octopus) and Maneater (2007; Gary Busey vs. a hungry tiger). A lot of Hallmark directors and writers have a literal skeleton lurking in their closets…if you look closely enough…
And it’s not just horror directors who offset their terror tales with family-friendly films. There are two Hallmark movies—One December Night and My Southern Family Christmas—starring none other than living legend Bruce Campbell, star of the Evil Dead franchise. And Michael Ironside—of V, Starship Troopers, and the recent Late Night with the Devil fame—plays a friendly old gent in Hallmark’s Pumpkin Everything.
In addition, I just discovered there’s a yuletide romance currently in preproduction called Christmas in Transylvania, set in Dracula’s Castle and no doubt planned for the 2025 bingeathon. So, yes, the horror connections are strong, even when it comes to Santa Claus.
Keep in mind, there’s also Letters to Satan Claus, which you can catch on streaming services like Hulu and SyFy. This 2020 horror movie, starring Karen Knox, parodies the Hallmark format with the tale of a TV anchorwoman returning to her hometown, only to learn that a typo-ridden letter she wrote as a young girl to “Satan Claus”—instead of Santa—might lead to a monstrous killing spree by the bad man himself.
Finally, The Movies! Channel’s expanded Friday Night Frights schedule goes toe-to-toe with the Hallmark Channel, unleashing 1958’s Earth vs. the Spider (no, it’s not a court case—although it could be!) at 6:00 a.m., followed by 1943’s The Leopard Man. And then it becomes all-vampire programming for the rest of the day!
First up is the teenaged vampire-girl of 1957’s Blood of Dracula, followed by Christopher Lee as the lord of vampires in 1958’s Horror of Dracula and 1969’s Dracula Has Risen from the Grave; Darren McGavin as reporter Carl Kolchak in 1972’s The Night Stalker; the 1974 adaptation of Dracula, starring Jack Palance, written by Richard Matheson, and directed by Night Stalker producer Dan Curtis; and Sylvia Krystal stalking 1980s Hollywood as Dracula’s Widow (1988; the directorial debut of Christopher Coppola—brother of Nicolas Cage, and nephew of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola). Then comes 1970’s House of Dark Shadows, a spin-off from Dark Shadows, the classic gothic TV soap opera created by Dan Curtis. 1971’s Lust for a Vampire, 1979’s Nosferatu the Vampyre—starring Klaus Kinski as the rat-faced Count Orloff—and the original Nosferatu (1922) round out the programming. (Perfect timing for those last two entries, because this Christmas brings the cinematic terror of writer/director Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu remake!)
Start making your horror weekend plans now!
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!
Horror Comics for the Spooky Season from StarWarp Concepts
With Halloween only a couple of weeks away, are you looking for illustrated tales of the supernatural to enjoy—as in comic books and graphic novels? Well, it just so happens that Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, has a few titles that are perfect for horror-comic fans!
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0: A free, downloadable comic that serves as an introduction to the adventures of Pandora Zwieback and her monster-hunting mentor, Sebastienne “Annie” Mazarin, with an 8-page story written by me and illustrated by Eliseu Gouveia (Vengeance of the Mummy, Stargate Universe), and a preview of Pan’s first novel, Blood Feud: The Saga of Pandora Zwieback, Book 1. Pan is a 16-year-old Goth girl who’s spent the last decade being treated for mental health problems because she can see monsters. It’s only after she meets Annie that Pan discovers she’s never been ill—her so-called “monstervision” is actually a supernatural gift that allows her to see into Gothopolis, the not-so-mythical shadow world that exists right alongside the human world.
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1: A 56-page, full-color comic special that features cover art by award-winning artist Henar Torinos (Mala Estrella) and contains three original stories. In “Song of the Siren,” by writer Steven A. Roman and artist Eliseu Gouveia, the teenaged Goth adventuress matches wits with a man-stealing enchantress who’s set her sights on Pan’s boyfriend, Javier. It’s followed by “After Hours,” by writer Sholly Fisch (The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries), and comic-art legend Ernie Colon (Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld), in which a demon walks into a bar to unwind after a long day of scarifying. And rounding out the issue is “Shopping Maul,” a short story by Roman with title-page art by Elizabeth Watasin (Charm School), in which Pan and Annie, along with Javier and Pan’s best friend, Sheena, run into a group of Gothic Lolita vampires out to do more than a little window shopping.
Troubleshooters, Incorporated: Night Stalkings: A graphic novel about a group of supernatural-superheroes-for-hire taking on their first case. The team consists of a wizard, a female ninja, a sorceress, a werewolf, and a rock ’n’ roll lighting designer wearing high-tech armor. Sure, they might not be on a power level with the Avengers or Justice League of America—they’re more like superpowered Ghostbusters, or along the lines of the JLA’s supernatural spin-off, Justice League Dark—but they get the job done. The graphic novel is written by the husband-and-white team of Richard C. White (Chasing Danger: The Case Files of Theron Chase) and Joni M. White, and illustrated by Reggie Golden and Randy Zimmerman.
The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual and Troubleshooters Incorporated are available in print and digital formats. Pandora Zwieback #0 is a digital exclusive. Visit their respective product pages at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information, as well as sample pages.
Classic Horror for the Spooky Season from StarWarp Concepts
With the Spooky Season in full swing this month (although, really, it started in August, when the decorations started popping up in stores), are you looking for chilling tales of the supernatural to enjoy, as you anxiously wait for Halloween? Then look no further than the backlist of titles produced by Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, that are perfect for horror fans young and old!
Carmilla: J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th-century classic vampiric tale of love gone wrong. Laura is so desperate for a friend that when a young woman named Carmilla practically turns up on the doorstep of the castle owned by Laura’s father, she thinks her prayers for companionship have been answered. But as she comes to realize, Carmilla isn’t as interested in making friends as she is in spilling blood.
Regarded as the one of the earliest female vampire tales—if not the first—Carmilla was an influence on author Bram Stoker in the creation of the vampire brides in his seminal novel, Dracula, and remains a popular character in fiction to this day. The SWC edition contains six original illustrations done especially for StarWarp Concepts by super-talented comic artist Eliseu Gouveia, whose work you’re familiar with if you’ve downloaded The Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0, or read The Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual #1.
King Kong: SWC’s e-book-exclusive Illustrated Classics edition of the official novelization of the renowned motion picture, first published in 1932. Written by Delos W. Lovelace, based on the story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper and the screenplay by James A. Creelman and Ruth Rose, the SWC edition of King Kong features scenes that didn’t appear in the final cut of the film—including the notorious “spider pit” sequence in which Kong’s human pursuers are attacked by horrific arachnids and insects. What makes this version special is that it contains six exclusive, original black-and-white illustrations by comics artist Paul Tuma, whose pulp-influenced style has appeared in the pages of The Twilight Avenger, Flare, and Dan Turner: Hollywood Detective.
Snow White: The classic story by the Brothers Grimm. Featuring full-color illustrations first published in 1883 (and they really are beautiful drawings), this digital-exclusive titleis available for immediate download for the wickedly low price of just 99¢!
White Fell—The Werewolf: Originally published in 1896 as The Were-wolf, it was written by renowned author, artist, and suffragette Clemence Annie Housman, and is regarded by scholars as perhaps the first feminist werewolf story. In it, twin brothers encounter a beautiful, mysterious woman known only as White Fell—a woman one brother believes is a murderous werewolf. Complications arise when his twin falls in love with White Fell. Can he save his brother before he falls completely under her spell?
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Washington Irving’s legendary tale of the Headless Horseman has captivated readers ever since its first publication in 1820, in Irving’s collection The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., and in the 200+ years since it’s become the quintessential Halloween story, as well as the basis for countless movies, TV shows, comic books, and other pop-culture adaptations. When schoolteacher Ichabod Crane arrived in Sleepy Hollow, New York, he had dreams of marrying beautiful socialite Katrina of the wealthy Van Tassel family, only to lose his head (both figuratively and literally!) when he encountered the horrific Headless Horseman one fateful night!
Carmilla is available in print and digital formats; King Kong, Snow White, White Fell: The Werewolf, and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow are digital exclusives. Visit their respective product pages at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.