So for the past week I have been procrastinating from my homework by watching Halloween movies and have come across an interesting realization. I started my Halloween fix this past weekend with a viewing of Hocus Pocus on ABC Family. It had been a while since I've seen it and it was interesting to see how my perception of this film has changed as I've gotten older. The next night I ended up continuing with ABC Family's 13 Nights of Halloween and watching their presentation of Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice. I have always been a fan of Tim Burton and love both of these movies so any excuse to watch them I'll take. Monday I decided to switch over to AMC and watch some of their fright nights. I ended up watching the original Halloween and then continued to watch when 13 Ghosts came on afterwords. Halloween is one of my favorite horror films and decided to had to watch it. When I saw that 13 Ghosts was coming on next I decided I had to watch it, especially since a friend of mine had been raving about it over the summer. And tonight I finished my craze with a viewing of Scream on Encore. Scream is one of those movies that I enjoy watching because of the statement it makes on the genre.
Well after watching all of these movies I really noticed the distinct differences there are in the ideas of what makes Halloween, Halloween. With ABC Family of course you're going to get more family oriented movies but they really aren't showing movies that I would define as Halloween. Looking over the rest of their schedule for this week they're showing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Goonies, the first three Batman movies, and I honestly don't see how Edward Scissorhands is related to the holiday at all. Granted there aren't that many kid friendly scary movies out there but this list films just doesn't hit as entirely appropriate. They don't have anything to do with Halloween or even going along with the idea that Halloween is supposed to be scary. In the end it seems to me that they picked the darkest movies they had in their vault and showed it. And then on the flip side you have AMC, which is focused solely on the idea that Halloween is all about being scared. For the nine days and nights AMC is showing non-stop horror films until Halloween night. And while I enjoy a good scare here and there I think a week just filled with horror films is just ridiculous. But I will give them credit with the fact that a majority of the films they are showing are the new classics. I guess I just find this dynamic between the ideas of what Halloween is about to be an interesting thing to look at.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That's an interesting point you raised. But how many movies actually involve a plot around Halloween?
ReplyDeleteMaybe they are just showing movies that people use for Halloween costume ideas?
I know this comment is late, but I wondered the same thing about ABC Family when I was flipping through channels on Halloween. I felt like they were playing movies that were completely irrelevant to the day, too. It was borderline annoying.
ReplyDeleteAs far as AMC is concerned, I think they plan on people changing the channel after one or two horror films. I think they could've mixed it up a little bit, too. They should've added a movie like Jurassic Park or something that wasn't excessively scary for us non-thrill seekers to enjoy.