As a kid, I loved rushing home from school to settle in for the night with a spooky horror film or Halloween TV special. This totally set the mood of the season for me. As the years went on, it seemed the quality of Halloween programming got worse each year…at least on network TV stations anyway. We may not be able to totally rely on the networks to provide us the same quality as the “good ol’ days”, but we can set that programming up for ourselves now. Hundreds of cable channels, Netflix queues, Youtube channels, DVD movies, are just some of the ways we can access great programming. In a future post I’ll be building a queue of my favorite Halloween season movies to help you rediscover. And hey, TV is not totally dead. Check out this website for all of this year’s Halloween Television Programming.
If your a Gen Xer or older, remember the old TV guides? I remember my grandmother going through them and highlighting shows she wanted to see. Still works today! Since I don’t have a DVR yet, I copied the TV listings from the website above and pasted into an Evernote note ( If you don’t know what this is, check out Evernote. It’s the best desktop/mobile note-taking application period ). Then I went through each day and highlighted any show I think I will want to watch. That way, when I’m at work, I can quickly open my note on my phone, and see the scary movies I can expect to watch that evening. This will help prevent me from the inefficient and mindless TV surfing that I tend to do so often.
Here’s a snapshot of what you can expect on TV this season. First of all, every Wednesday is Night of Classic Horror on TCM. An example of the listings for Wednesday, October 24th include: 8pm: THE RAVEN (1963); 9:45pm MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1932); 11pm: THE BLACK CAT (1934); 12:30am: THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1949); 1:45am: TELL-TALE HEART (1941); 2:15am: SPIRITS OF THE DEAD (1960); 4:30am: DEAD MEN WALK (1943). Some great black & white classics there. If you have a sweet tooth, you’ll surely be tempted on October 13th by Food Network (1 – 2pm): HALLOWEEN SWEETS UNWRAPPED. The big excitement this season is for the return of AMC’s The Walking Dead set to premiere season 3 on Sunday October 14th. The Travel Channel is heating up the competition by lining up some great shows on the same night: Weekends to Die For (4pm: WORLD’S CREEPIEST DESTINATIONS; 5pm: WORLD’S CREEPIEST DESTINATIONS 2; 6pm: AMERICA’S SCARIEST HALLOWEEN ATTRACTIONS 3; 7pm: HALLOWEEN CRAZY; 8pm: MAKING MONSTERS. Anyhow, this should keep you pretty busy and give you a head start on some good TV to get you in that wonderful Halloween spirit.