Thursday, 28 March 2024

Surfeit of Halloween programs to delight horror fans

The Peacock channel is serious this year about celebrating Halloween for every kind of fan for the spooky season, which includes running all eight “Harry Potter” movies, though I am not sure how scary the franchise is to most viewers.

A better bet is the release of “Halloween Kills,” which is probably the thirtieth or so title in the “Halloween” franchise, which stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Nick Castle reprising their respective roles of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers.

To put everything into perspective, Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode made her first appearance in “Halloween” in 1978 and was the sole survivor of Michael Myers’ killing spree. “Halloween Kills” has been released in theaters and is streaming on Peacock.

Talk about an odd couple pairing, rapper Snoop Dogg and media personality Martha Stewart host the competition special “Snoop and Martha’s Very Tasty Halloween” featuring talented bakers who face off in a delectable Halloween showdown.

Teams of three bakers, called “Scare Squads,” are tasked with baking and building a full sensory 12x12 Halloween world that people can literally explore. The catch? Their worlds must be inspired by the concept of fear. Imagine larger-than-life chocolate spiders.

New horror films to air include “Separation” from director William Brent and “You Should Have Left,” Blumhouse’s psychological thriller starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried about an isolated country home where nothing is quite as it seems.

Classic monster movies are on tap. One of them being “Dracula,” which we assume is the 1931 version starring Bela Lugosi as the County. The Peacock classic films to be aired, including “Frankenstein” and “The Invisible Man” all come from Universal Pictures’ horror collection.

Halloween-themed episodes of favorite TV series will be shown, ranging from sitcoms like “Cheers” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” to silly gags on “Saturday Night Live” to dramas like “Law & Order” that go to serious places with their Halloween tales.

Even family-friendly thrills suitable for a younger audience are to be found with “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events” television series and the “Monster High” film series.

Starting on Oct. 29, TCM will deploy its extensive library of classic films to satisfy every taste in spooky, creepy, horrifying (and sometimes humorous) entertainment over the course of 48 hours of its Halloween Marathon.

The fun starts on Friday night, two days before Halloween, as Vincent Price stars in 1971’s “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” as a highly creative madman mimicking the Biblical plagues of Egypt to exact revenge on the doctors believed responsible for his wife’s death.

Two great classics of the genre follow: the granddaddy of all zombie pictures, George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead” (1968) and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978). The last one is on late, but don’t fall asleep – you know what can happen!

The 1970s scream queen Linda Blair can be seen in 1981’s “Hell Night” and 1977’s “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” which offers the added treat of hearing the great Richard Burton utter the immortal line: “Pazuzu, king of evil spirits of the air, help me find Kokumo!”

Saturday, Oct. 30, is jam-packed with Halloween tricks and treats, including 1961’s “Creature from the Haunted Sea,” featuring an appearance by future Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne (“Chinatown”).

The most famous mad scientist/monster team of all time gets its due in three films: James Whale’s original and still unsurpassed “Frankenstein” (1931), and the Hammer Films retelling in 1957’s “The Curse of Frankenstein,” starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.

The third film of this august group has a completely different take on the zipper-necked monster. That would be Mel Brooks’ hilarious spoof “Young Frankenstein” (1974), a classic film in its own right.

Speaking of British horror legends Lee and Cushing, they are the lead characters in the classic “Horror Dracula” (1958), respectively as the vampire Count Dracula and the vampire hunter Doctor Van Helsing.

Hammer, the leading British studio for shock and gore, is represented again with 1966’s “The Devil’s Own,” released in the U.K. as “The Witches,” in which Joan Fontaine seeks to outdo big sister Olivia de Havilland’s forays into the genre in the 1960s.

No compendium of great movie horror would be complete without at least some of the films released at RKO under the aegis of producer Val Lewton.

Eschewing monsters, shock effects and obvious gore, Lewton was remarkable for a series of low budget pictures that were subtle in their approach to the genre; dark shadowy tales of psychological terror that also fit them perfectly into TCM’s Noir Alley series.

Vincent Price starred in the original version of “The Fly” (1958) and in two of the notable series of loose Edgar Allan Poe adaptations made by Roger Corman in the 1960s, “Pit and the Pendulum” (1961) and “The Tomb of Ligeia” (1964), with a screenplay by Robert Towne.

For a big screen experience, Universal Studios and Fathom Events present a double feature at local cinemas on Saturday afternoon, Oct. 30, of “The Invisible Man” starring Claude Rains and “The Wolf Man” starring Lon Chaney Jr.

Tim Riley writes film and television reviews for Lake County News.

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