Midnight Cinephile's Halloween Movie Primer - AMC's FearFest 2012

It's almost time kiddies.  Almost time for all that candy, candy, candy.....steady old boy!  I am a complete Halloween Junkie and fanboy.  I love everything about it.  I love the kiddie stuff and I love the more adult themed stuff.  You'll find a certain twinkle in my eye this time of year. Everything is pumpkin flavored.  The leaves are starting to turn brilliant shades of red, orange and yellow.  It's finally starting to cool off and soon it will be crisp and wonderful with the smell of autumn.  I wait all year for this.

One of the things I love most is the almost non-stop Halloween and horror related programming that will be stalking the airways.  Halloween themed episodes of all the sitcoms will run in heavy rotation, including my beloved Simpson Treehouse of Horror episodes, even cooking shows and reality shows put a spooky spin on things.  And of course there is the movie fests that air throughout October.

First up, we'll take a look at AMC's FearFest, which used to be called MonsterFest (which I liked better.....but hey, who am I?).  This used to be my favorite of the Halloween-time movie fests.  They would show awesome films like Island of the Burning Damned, Curse of the Werewolf and The Brain That Wouldn't Die.  I would tune in and see these and other great classic horror movies....some that were pretty obscure (such as Island of the Burning Damned) and some that I had never even heard of before.  You could always count on a good mix of films.  These days, it's become more of the same movies repeated over and over again.  Let's break it down:   FearFest is showing 57 different films over the course of 19 days.  I can hear what you're saying now "Hold on there, Mr. Man.  That's alot of films!  You should be happy with that!"  Yes, 57 is a good number of films.  However, while some films get shown only once or twice, other films get shown four or five times!  For instance Corridors of Blood gets shown twice.  The House on Haunted Hill 1999 remake gets four showings.  Bride of Frankenstein gets ONE measly showing (and NO other Universal classic monsters films are shown!  WTF!) yet Pet Sematary II nets FIVE showings?  Now come on....there has got to be something wrong here.  I KNOW that there are far more films in AMC's arsenal that this.  Why can't they show more Universal classics?  Where the hell are the Hammer films?   Where's the oldies but goodies like The Beast With Five Fingers?  I don't want to sound like an ingrate, but where are all the really cool films you used to show, AMC?  I love you AMC and of course I'm going to tune in and watch, but throw a cinephile a bone here and toss me a little more variety!

Okay, now that I got that bit off my chest, we can continue!  This year, all ten of the original Friday the 13th movies will play, which is very cool.  Apparently no love for Freddy vs. Jason though.  Funny thing about the F13 movies.  I have them on VHS, Betamax, DVD, BluRay, Netflixed, Viewmaster, etc, etc.....I've seen them all approximately eight gazillion times.  Still have to tune and and watch them whenever they're on TV though.  It's a disease....I can't help myself.  I love that hockey mask wearing, machete wielding maniac!   He just tugs at my black little heartstrings.

Of course there will also be the prerequisite Halloween films as well.  Oddly the schedule only shows up to October 29th on AMC's official site, but I'm fairly certain that October 31st will yield most of the series shown throughout the day.  So if you are a slasher fan, you are gonna be in gorehound heaven.  Okay.....well.....basic cable gorehound heaven......AMC actually shows a fair amount of the red stuff though, so you'll be all set!

Also let's not forget that The Walking Dead Season 3 premiers on Sunday, October 14th @ 9pm(EST) following a Season 2 marathon to get you pumped up and ready for more zombie action!  This is followed by the obligatory encore episode and then Talking Dead (which I love as much as the main show!) hosted by The Nerdist himself, Chris Hardwick.  THEN at 11:30, it's the return of Comic Book Men!  Coincidentally, Kevin Smith is hosting FearFest this year as well!  So that is definitely a good reason to tune in too!

So what's the line-up look like this year you ask?   Check out the FearFest Schedule and plan accordingly.....or set your DVR's accordingly.  Then make sure you've got a sack full of sweets, some candy apples, candy corn and popcorn (gotta have the popcorn!) and hunker down for some spooky goodness.

Well kiddies there you have it.  AMC offers up some solid programming (if a bit overkill on some of the films) this season.  Next up we'll take a look at what Turner Classic Movies has to offer us!