By Luaine Lee
Tribune News Service
While trick-or-treating may be curtailed this year, you won’t have to go far to have your timbers shivered this Halloween. Television is all set to do the job with scores of scary morsels in the bag.
Disney+ is the proud possessor of 30 of “The Simpsons”’ “Treehouse of Horror” specials, which usually kicks off the season.
This year Fox has postponed “Treehouse of Horror XXXI” till Sunday (blame it on baseball). Not to worry, the 30 previous episodes will offer plenty of scary Simpsons shenanigans, and FXX continues to air all the complete series.
Disney+ will be steaming all kinds of eerie movies, including “Hocus Pocus” with Bette Midler and Tim Burton’s classic “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Burton says he was always inspired by holiday seasons.
“Things like Christmas and Halloween and holidays give you a sense of place,” he says. “You can go to Thrifty’s, walk down the aisles, and see all sorts of stuff. It gives a sense of placement because it’s middle class … generic. You go for any kind of visual things you can get. It’s like what else is there? There’s nothing else.”
Shudder is streaming “A Creepshow Animated Special” on Thursday featuring two chilling tales. One stars Kiefer Sutherland as a man lost on a deserted island.
From the guys who brought us “Shaun of the Dead” comes “Truth Seekers,” a horror film with a split personality about a team of hapless ghost hunters who uncover a conspiracy so dreadful it could end the world as we know it. Part-comedy, part-terror tale, the premiere is set to stream Friday on Amazon Prime.
TCM plans a 24-hour marathon on All Hallows’ Eve with a spectacular array of frightening flicks, including “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” with the versatile Spencer Tracy, “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (this 1945 version sports a featured part by Angela Lansbury), Lon Chaney Jr.’s now classic performance as “The Wolf Man,” and 1943’s “I Walked with a Zombie.”
Speaking of zombies, PBS will, of course, play it straight with a one-hour special Friday, “Exhumed: A History of Zombies.” Dr. Emily Zarka, an expert on all things monster, will examine the popular cultural obsession and explain why we are so enamored by the moldy monstrosities.
The late Wes Craven, who brought us some of the definitive horror flicks like “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “The Hills Have Eyes” and “Scream” thought terrifying tales served as escape valves.
“Societal nightmares function the way nightmares function within us,” he said. “Bizarre dreams lie outside rationality. Mind and body feel that need to be expressed — seeking images that come out in poetry, dreaming, etc.”
Ovation TV will air Episode 4 of “The Fall” starring Gillian Anderson as an intrepid police investigator hot on the heels of a sly serial killer on Halloween.
Jamie Dornan (fresh from his infinitely scarier role in “Fifty Shades of Grey”) plays the killer with such menace you’ll be tempted to call 911. You can catch Episodes 1-3 on demand or on the Ovation Now app.
“The Fall” begins at 7 p.m. Eastern followed by two miniseries based on books by that Dean of deviltry, Dean Koontz. “Intensity” begins at 8:30 p.m. Eastern, followed by “Sole Survivor.”
Koontz, who seems to have the magic elixir to making people quake in their boots, says he starts out like any “normal” writer.
“When I go in in the morning and sit down, I’m telling a story to ME. I don’t do outlines. I generally have a premise and the character. The premise may be just a few lines about what this is about. Then I have the character, and they drive the story. If that character comes alive very early and starts driving that story, they pretty quickly seize it, and I have no idea where it’s going. And it evolves. When a story’s really cooking it’s because of the character. And it’s real.”
Netflix is uprooting the evergreens with a new version of Daphne du Maurier’s unnerving “Rebecca.” This one stars Lily James (the ingenue of “Downton Abbey”) as the blushing bride who moves to her husband’s palatial estate only to find it haunted by the ghost of his late wife.
GILBERT HELPS STEER ‘THE CONNERS’
“The Conners” have returned to their disorganized blue-collar life in Lanford for another season on ABC. The usual suspects are in the lineup (minus Roseanne, of course). The show stars John Goodman as the patriarch, Lecy Goranson as daughter Becky, and Sara Gilbert as her saucy sister, Darlene.
Gilbert is also an executive producer on the show, which means she has some say in the way it’s run, cast and written. She should. Gilbert has been acting since she was a child. She says she saw her brother and sister doing it and thought it might be a cool endeavor for her, too.
She thinks the fictional character on screen is often colored by the person playing him.
“I think a lot of times, especially with sitcoms because you’re working on them every day and every week, they end up reflecting your personality — probably more than movies do,” she says. “I think the writers take cues from who you are and integrate that into the character.”
KENDRA PHELPS, THE REAL BAT GIRL
Dr. Kendra Phelps is batty about bats. In fact, she’s huddling in a small cave in Turkey trying to identify which species may be hanging out there. It’s all part of National Geographic’s special “Virus Hunters,” arriving Sunday.
Phelps is one of the scientists hoping to unravel the chain of events that led to COVID-19 and to find ways to prevent the next outbreak.
Phelps and her fellow researchers say it has as much to do with humans as it does with wildlife.
“We’re learning that there’s several different species that are coexisting in this cave together, which … is (encircled by) an entirely human-modified landscape,” she says.
“We’re surrounded by agriculture, houses. There’s an interstate just less than a kilometer from this cave. So, we’re finding a diversity of bats that are coexisting quite closely with humans.”
Chris Golden, an epidemiologist on the project, explains, “What they’re hoping to discover is by taking biological samples and looking at the types of viruses and pathogens that are caught within the bat community, how the potential exposures or risks could impact the human population.”
The trick, says Phelps, is how we interact with the environment and how we treat other species that thrive there with us.
“So, a healthy environment equals healthy animals equals healthy humans. So, by taking care of the environment and wildlife species and keeping those separate from human populations is how we can prevent the next spillover or transfer of bats into human populations,” she says.
LAURIE STARS IN POLITICAL DRAMA
Hugh Laurie is out of his hospital scrubs and into his Saville Row suit for PBS’ new political drama “Roadkill,” arriving Sunday.
Laurie, famous for his acerbic physician in “House,” plays it cool this time, unfolding his character like a fan.
“It may actually be in my nature anyways not to reveal too much or not reveal too much too soon,” he says.
“I think it has become a sort of necessity nowadays, not just in the telling of a story, but in the selling of a story. It seems to me that you have to declare to the audience what your story’s going to be. I mean sometimes in the form of a trailer, you have to say: good guy, bad guy, traitor, existential threat, whatever it is. You have to do that. And each one gets three seconds, and you have to lay out your wares, so to speak, very, very quickly.
But not so with “Roadkill.” “It was both a challenge but also a luxury to have the four hours, the sort of two features’ worth in which to gradually reveal all of these characters.”
