Sunday, October 16, 2011

The 31 Days of Halloween: Day 16

Halloween is the best time of the year. It's a wonderfully indulgent time, where your inner ghoul is given societal license to be put on display. To celebrate it to it's wicked fullest, the Midnight Cheese will be posting every day in October with excellent ways to enjoy the season. Whether it's horror films, video games, books or activities, check back every day for some new Halloween fun.

The Midnight Hour

Oh yes, it has begun! The temperature has finally gone from closer to summer-esk to delightful fall chill. The TV channels have begun their heavy horror film rotations. I should point out that SyFy, despite how much I hate the name and their normally terrible choice in programing, has done what most channels should have been; that is dedicate the whole month to horror flicks. Nevertheless, it's that time of year, so check your TV Guide cable menu and tag those flicks you love to your DVR.

One of those movie experiences you need to check out is The Midnight Hour, which is especially important to record since it isn't currently available to the home video market. I'd heard a rumor that dream fulfilling Shout! Factory is working on a release of it but until then my Anchor Bay VHS is apparently worth over $100 bucks on EBay. It must be the LaVar Burton star power.

This made for TV movie isn't going to make your gore-o-meter twitch from it's start position but that's no reason not to give it a fair shake. It contain zombies, ghosts, vampires and witches though I wouldn't call it a kitchen sink approach since it all makes sense in context. A group of high schoolers break into their small New England town's museum to steal historical clothing to wear as costumes to their Halloween party, which is later that night. As fate would have it, one of the teens is the great-grand daughter of a witch who cursed the town 300 years earlier. They find a strange scroll in among the possession and she then reads it, in a graveyard, unleashing both zombies and ghosts, along with the witch, who is seemingly now a vampire.

As is par for the course in these situations, no one notices there is a problem early on because it's Halloween. Before you know it, we have a vampire dance number on our hands and this shit just gets real. Built into all of this is an innocent love story and as I mentioned LaVar Burton, of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Reading Rainbow fame. The Midnight Hour is a fun, innocent, Halloween themed romp that you can share with the whole family. Make sure you DVR it if it's gracing your programming line up.

I give The Midnight Hour four LaVar Burtons....out of Five.

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