Idiot Box: Spook Shows

Halloween Around The Dial

\ Oct 29, 2015

4 min read

There are more productive ways to spend your Halloween than lounging on the couch eating bags of candy from Walmart and watching horror movies—but few more appropriate. So what can we look forward to watching on TV this All Hallows’ Afternoon and All Hallows’ Eve?

Travel Channel gets a jump on things by broadcasting its ghost-hunting reality show “Ghost Adventures” starting at 7am on Friday, Oct. 30. It doesn’t stop until 2am on Sunday. Somewhere in the middle of all that non-ghost-finding, viewers can tune in for a new episode of “Ghost Adventures (Travel 7pm) in which Zak Bagans and his team travel to Deadwood, S.D. That’s where Wild Bill Hickok and all those people from that HBO show were killed. With any luck we’ll get to see the ghost of potty-mouthed Ian McShane.

Turner Classic Movies is always a wise choice for the channel-changing averse. The network has been airing historic Hollywood horrors all month but they really open the vaults on Saturday. At the crack of dawn, we start with 1932’s Doctor X (TCM 5am). After that it’s nonstop chills with 1932’s White Zombie (TCM 6:30am), 1963’s Dementia 13 (TCM 7:45am), 1967’s The Fearless Vampire Killers (TCM 9:15am), 1961’s Homicidal (TCM 11:15am), 1959’s The Tingler (TCM 1pm), 1953’s House of Wax (TCM 2:30pm), 1968’s The Devil’s Bride (TCM 4:15pm), 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (TCM 6pm), 1957’s Curse of the Demon (TCM 8pm), 1945’s Dead of Night (TCM 9:30pm) and 1935’s Mark of the Vampire (TCM 11:30pm). The night closes out with a collection of experimental shorts from director David Lynch, starting with his 1966 student film “Six Men Getting Sick” (TCM 12:45am).

Manly man network Spike tries to scare us with a double feature of Stephen King-based miniseries. First up is Stephen King’s It (Spike 11:30am) from 1990. It’s got a murderous clown and is still the stuff of childhood nightmares. Then comes Stephen King’s Rose Red (Spike 3:30pm) from 2002. It’s about a haunted house and isn’t nearly as frightening.

AMC, your one-stop Michael Myers shop, returns with another highly appropriate Halloween marathon. It kicks off properly with the original 1978 slasher Halloween (AMC 2:30pm) and adds to the body count with Halloween II (AMC 4:30pm), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (AMC 6:30pm), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (AMC 8:30pm) and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (AMC 10:30pm).

But maybe you like a little less blood in your candy. For some folks the 1993 comedy Hocus Pocus starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as a trio of wacky witches has become something of a holiday tradition. If you’re one of those people, you’ve got two shots at Hocus Pocus (ABC Family 5pm and 7:15pm).

In a rare moment of kindness, Cartoon Network airs all 10 episodes of Patrick McHale’s 2014 animated miniseries “Over The Garden Wall” (Cartoon Network 5:30pm). Funny, eerie, beautiful and brilliant, this fantastical story about two stepbrothers lost in a mysterious forest may be the best thing Cartoon Network has ever aired. That’s a rock fact! Elijah Wood, Christopher Lloyd, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Isaak and John Cleese are among the voice talent.

After three decades of relative calm, a moment of stoned stupidity unleashed Deadite mayhem back into the life of horror icon Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) in the much-anticipated new TV series “Ash vs Evil Dead” (Starz 7pm). Lucy Lawless (“Xena: Warrior Princess,” “Battlestar Galactica”) is also in this, so it’s another one of the night’s must-watch events.