Svengoolie’s October Schedule is Here and It’s All Treats, No Tricks

The sun is setting earlier, a chill is in the air, your pet werewolf is shedding all over the couch … it can all only mean one thing: October is finally here! And every Saturday this month, Svengoolie is presenting a gruesome twosome — that’s right, two movies every Saturday night on MeTV‘s Svengoolie Classic Horror & Sci-Fi Movie. Every Saturday this month, Svengoolie will present a movie at 8pm EST, followed by a second film from House of Svengoolie, presented by the Sven Squad, at 10:30 pm EST.
This month, you can look forward to giant bugs, fearful Don Knotts, bloodthirsty Bette Davis, one of the original monsters of the silver screen, and…actually, more bugs. Read on to find out more!
October 4: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966) & What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

Everett Collection
If there’s something strange/In your neighborhood/Who ya gonna call? Not Don Knotts, who plays a nervous typesetter with big dreams of becoming a reporter in this classic haunted house comedy. Knotts stumbles on to the story of a lifetime — but in order to get it, he’ll have to spend the night in a haunted house.

Everett Collection
Then, Bette Davis is a child star who hasn’t quite gotten over no longer being a child or a star — which she takes out on her paraplegic sister (Joan Crawford). Baby Jane, which jump-started the “psycho-biddy” subgenre (that would be “horror movies about older women,” for you non-film nerds out there), also revived the flagging careers of its two leads — though their supposed real-life hatred of each other helped drive crowds to the box office.
October 11: Them! (1954) and Arachnophobia (1990)

Everett Collection
Atomic bomb testing in New Mexico is going great, except for one little, enormous side effect … giant ants! Them! was originally intended to be shot in 3D and color, but after camera problems meant a whole day’s shooting was lost, Warner Bros. decided black and white was good enough for these buggers.

© Buena Vista/courtesy Everett Collection
Then, almost 40 years later, Jeff Daniels starred in this update to the “evil creepy crawlers insects attempt to take over the world” genre, as a doctor who is — naturally — afraid of spiders. Which is unfortunate, because his small California hometown is about to be overridden by the things! Inspired by The Birds, the film utilized over 300 actual live spiders, who were “directed” by gusts of hot and cold air to direct their movements.
October 18: Young Frankenstein (1974) and Frankenstein (1931)

© 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy: Everett Collection.
It’s pronounced “”Fronkensteen”! Check in with the classic Mel Brooks comedy that taught us all how to “walk this way” (yes, the movie did actually inspire the Aerosmith song!). Brooks wrote this screenplay with frequent collaborator Gene Wilder, but Wilder had one condition: Brooks couldn’t appear on screen in the film (he did provide some off-screen voice, though).

Everett Collection
Then, follow-up Young Frankenstein with a screening of … old Frankenstein! James Whale’s classic was the second Universal monster movie, and was originally planned to be the second to feature Bela Lugosi. However, the Dracula star dropped out of the role of The Monster … leaving Boris Karloff to create the silver screen’s signature sensitive monster.
October 25: The Fly (1958) & Return of the Fly (1959)

(c) 20th Century Fox Film Corp. All rights reserved. Courtesy: Everett Collection
Get out your industrial-strength bug zappers for this double-header of Vincent Price sci-fi classics. In the original film, David Hedison plays a scientist who transforms into a half-man, half-fly. In the sequel, the scientist’s son attempts to clear his father’s name … and that probably turns out fine, right?