Tuesday, October 10, 2006

31 Days of Halloween - Day 10



AMC's Monsterfest turns 10 this year. Here's an ad from when monsterfest, and the channel that no longer deserves to call itself "American Movie Classics" were still great. Now that most of the movies are second rate, and like the stock at Blockbuster, are no older than the past several years, five minutes of commercials occur after every five minutes of movie, and the hosts are gone, it's unbearable to watch.

In the past I used to live for Monsterfest. The movies were great, and commercial free, and there were also plenty of cool original documentaries, as well as Monsterfest hosts like Roger Corman, and Tim Burton. A lot of planning went on so that I could tape the movies I didn't already own, and also capture the gems showing on Turner Classic Movies at the same time. Now, well I don't have any tv reception, so it's a moot point, but I always look to see what's showing, but AMC doesn't get more than a cursory glance.

This ad is from 1998. I remember that this same artwork, though reconfigured for a horizontal space, was also featured on a huge billboard on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles.

Here's what's playing this year on Monsterfest.

Here's what's showing this month on the still excellent Turner Classic Movies.

3 comments:

Todd Franklin said...

I miss the old AMC and their old Monsterfests! I always enjoyed their magazine and I loved their original show Remember WENN.

Stephen said...

I completely agree with your assessment of AMC. I try to watch TCM instead, since they're commercial-free, they offer insightful commentary on the films AND they show them in letterbox. They actually care about the films they show, unlike AMC.

Anonymous said...

What the heck happened to AMC? I remember noticing this when I still had cable.

This is why I've ditched TV altogether and now I just add to my personal movie library and make my own monsterfests and stuff. My fiancee and I are working on a 40 movie list this october culled mostly from te Universal Legacy collection releases and those 50 movie public domain sets.