Grab your pumpkins and pour your ciders, kids, because the most wonderful time of the year is finally upon us: HOME FOR THE HORRORDAYS!
Home For The Horrordays is our annual tradition of watching Christmas-themed horror flicks. There are more of them than you’d imagine, and this year we’ve picked some real oddballs! On this episode, we dig into the 1984 cult classic Night of the Comet!
It’s 11 days until Christmas and a passing comet has vaporized most of Los Angeles. Survivors Regina and Sam find themselves besieged by mutant stockboys, nefarious scientists, and zombified cops. Will they escape with their lives? Can they find a way to save Christmas? There’s only one way to find out…
Greetings spooky pals! Home For The Horrordays is just around the corner, which means it’s also time for all things creepy, kooky and altogether spooky. (Or however that goes…) That includes the return of Freeform’s 31 Nights of Halloween!
Last year we ran a full breakdown of their programming block and how it’s changed over the past few years. We’ll refer you back to that post if you’d like to read up on how it all got started. The short version is that Hocus Pocus has grown exponentially in popularity in the past decade, and the good folks at Disney and Freeform has been more than happy to build an entire month-long TV block dedicated to shoving it down your throats.
Anyway, we’re back to add this year’s lineup to the chart and compare this year’s block with years past!
It’s no secret that there’s a new Hocus Pocus sequel premiering on Disney+ this week. With that in mind, one has to wonder how much of this year’s 31 Nights block will be dedicated to advertising it.
The original Hocus Pocus has seen a precipitous drop in its presence on the schedule, from 30 showings at its peak in 2019 to a mere 10 showings this year. This is likely due both to the wide array of features on offer this year, as well as a desire to not oversaturate the market with all things Hocus Pocus. Freeform is showing remarkable restraint in only airing the original three times in the first week alone.
One also has to wonder how long before Hocus Pocus 2 appears in the 31 Nights rotation. Five years? Never? Both seem equally plausible.
THE CREEPY AND THE KOOKY
The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel, Addams Family Values, were once staples of the 31 Nights rotation. This year, they’re nowhere to be found!
Licensing probably has something to do with this, as we not only now have two animated Addams films from Sony, but an entire new Netflix series from Tim Burton competing for cultural space. It’s a shame to see the Sonnenfeld films disappear, but from a business standpoint it makes sense. It’s probably a smart move to give those films a year or two off. I’m sure they’ll return.
And speaking of Tim Burton, Beetlejuice reappears on this year’s schedule. In 2020, the film aired twelve times, then disappeared completely in 2021. This year we’re getting only four showings, so I don’t know that I’d call his return triumphant.
Still, Burton is hands down the most well represented filmmaker in the 31 Nights lineup. This year, Burton’s films make up 14% of the total schedule (eight films out of the month’s 57 timeslots). This is up from 5% in 2021, though the record so far is 2020, when Burton’s films accounted for nearly one-fifth of the entire schedule!
NEW ARRIVALS TO THE ROTATION: – A Quiet Place – Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1992) – Get Out – Halloween (2018) – Happy Death Day – Happy Death Day 2 U
GONE FROM THE SCHEDULE (RIP): – The Addams Family (1991) – Addams Family Values – Casper (1995) – The Goonies – Matilda – Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:
No doubt the addition of more adult horror films is an attempt to lure in older viewers, or maybe simply catering to the changing tastes of current ones. Halloween (2018) seems like a pretty big get, what with Halloween Ends coming out soon and all. Either way, it’s nice to see Freeform branching out into actual horror movies.
For reasons known only to God and the programming director at Freeform, HalloweenTown II will see twice as many showings as the original this year. Last year saw the original get four showings, and none for the sequel. Is there a reason for this? Who’s to say?
Not seen since 2018, Maleficent roars back to the schedule with five showings, while the sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil gets a single showing on October 8th.
For the first time ever, Ghostbusters (2016) will get more showings than the two originals. If I were a betting man, I’d say next year will see the premiere of Ghostbusters Afterlife and I’m gonna guess with a grand total of four showings. It’s just as likely that the two original Ghostbusters films will go the way of The Addams Family, leaving the spooky rotation to make room for more modern tastes.
Finally, with the loss of Addams Family, Willy Wonka and Toy Story of Terror, only three films have appeared every year since 2018: Hocus Pocus, Nightmare Before Christmas, and Monsters, Inc. The first two probably aren’t going anywhere, but the way things are going, Monsters might not be long for this schedule…
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What do you think of 31 Nights of Halloween? Any trends you find curious? Let us know in the comments!
For years, internet sleuths have tried to identify a cartoon based on nothing but an old family Christmas photo. In an amazing turn of events, not only was the cartoon identified, but it turned out to be an obscure Christmas special titled The Christmas Gift of Light. So you know we had to watch that thing ASAP!
And watch it we did. On this Stocking Stuffer, Joe and Johnny-5 break down this odd little relic, spending entirely too long looking into the IMDb profiles of most of the voice cast, pondering the cartoon’s purpose, and asking the big questions like “Why did we even want to watch this in the first place?”
There’s a reason we don’t often go to the made-for-TV well, and it’s because we fear falling into that abyss never to be seen again. But sometimes a project intrigues you so much that you can’t help but gaze into it anyway.
This week we discuss the 1990 made-for-TV Disney film A Mom For Christmas! Directed by George Miller—”Zeus & Roxanne” George Miller, not “Happy Feet” George Miller—this film frequently verges on becoming a weird bit of body horror involving mannequins, alive and otherwise.
We weren’t sure what to expect here, but we wound up talking about soup for breakfast, mannequins on film, speculation on the forthcoming Christmas Story sequel, and a whole lot more!
This edition of Stocking Stuffers is unique, in that the episode of TV we’re covering is only about 7 minutes long. “All Through The House” is the lone Christmas episode of Netflix’s animated anthology series Love Death & Robots. It’s also a perfect fit for our show’s often macabre and off-kilter grasp of the holidays.
But since the episode is so short, Joe and Bradford take it as an opportunity to discuss a wide array of subjects. Bradford’s experiments with DIY salsa, Brach’s latest attempt to ruin candy corn forever, and the recent news of HBO Max’s impending demise. We cover a lot of ground on this episode, and we hope you’re okay with that!
Happy Christmas in July! On this episode, we’re still knee deep in summer action season as we take a look at the Wesley Snipes/Woody Harrelson buddy cop flick Money Train!
They’re two cops who also happen to be brothers, or is it two brothers who also happen to be cops? Either way, it’s Christmastime in the Big Apple and Charlie owes a large gambling debt to a local mobster. What’s a transit cop in need of cash to do? Why rob the money train, of course!
We’re back with more holiday action hijinks! This week, in honor of the recently departed Ray Liotta, we take a look at his 1997 airplane thriller Turbulence!
It’s Christmas Eve and the feds need to escort a number of criminals, including the Lonely Hearts Strangler, from New York to Los Angeles. When all hell breaks loose on the flight and every officer and pilot onboard have been killed, it’s up to flight attendant Lauren Holly to fend off the killer and safely land the plane.
Turbulence is more of a Christmas movie that we honestly expected. Join us as we examine all of its holiday trappings, as well as how it relates to It’s A Wonderful Life, the other 1997 “criminals take over a plane” movie Con Air, and basic cable programming of yesteryear…
This Memorial Day, we’re kicking off our Summer Holiday Movie Season! All summer long we’ll be highlighting ridiculous summer action movies with a holiday bent!
On this episode we’re taking the modern surveillance state to task with Tony Scott’s 1998 mistaken identity thriller Enemy of the State! Will Smith is on the run from the NSA, who believe he’s in possession of a videotape with incriminating evidence on it. In a shocking twist, he actually does have the tape, but he’s still completely innocent. And all this because the guy just wanted to buy some Christmas gifts for his wife…
Our pals Niall Flanagan and Dwayne Moloney, co-hosts of the Secret of the Sailor Madness podcast, join us this week to try and make sense of Rankin/Bass’ 1967 Christmas special The Cricket on the Hearth!
Based on Charles Dickens’ other holiday novella, Cricket plays fast and loose with its source material to mold it into something suitable for television. Certain characters get cut out, new ones invented out of whole cloth, and no less than NINE musical numbers thrown in to stretch this to an hour for your holiday viewing pleasure.
It’s nonsensical, it’s absurd, but it’s also 100% pure-strain Rankin/Bass. There’s a charm to the madness on display here, and honestly? We wouldn’t have it any other way.
When we discussed A Karate Christmas Miracle last year, we swore that we wouldn’t touch its follow-up unless we had no other choice. Ladies and gentlemen, that day came far sooner than we expected…
A Wrestling Christmas Miracle has the distinction of being the only Christmas movie to feature the late, great Gilbert Gottfried. Going into this, that was all we knew. Only now can we say that we have been well and truly bamboozled. Gottfried is only in this movie because it recycles footage from a completely different movie, one that actually does feature Gilbert Gottfried. None of it makes any sense, but we’ll do our best to explain it all on this week’s episode!
Christmas Creeps 