The Contraband

Issue date: 10/27/04 Section: Entertainment

Jack Nicholson in "The Shining"

Some Halloween specials are best viewed with the lights on. Others are more foolish than ghoulish, like the late, great "SCTV's" show-within-a-show, "Monster Chiller Horror Theatre," where Joe Flaherty's Count Floyd would get to the end of some awful fake thriller - say, "Dr. Tongue's 3D House of Cats" - and intone, utterly without conviction: "Ooh, that's scary!"

Some viewers might put "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments" (9 p.m. Tuesday through Oct. 30, Bravo) in the don't-turn-out-the- lights category, though even the most unnerving scenes - those from "Carrie," "The Shining" and "Wait Until Dark" come to mind - are easier to take when they're between quotation marks, so to speak.

The talking heads - which would be a decent title for a spooky movie if a band hadn't taken it - include old horror hands Stephen King, Wes Craven, John Carpenter and Clive Barker. At 10 hours, it's a bit much, so be advised that the special counts down from least to most scary, with the Oct. 30 installment reserved for the truly hair-raising.

AMC's "Monsterfest," now in its eighth year, offers eight days of horror movies and original programming from Sunday through Oct. 31. (See www.amctv.com for the complete schedule.) One of the highlights is the Halloween-themed premiere of a weekly reality series, "FilmFakers" (10 p.m. Wednesday, repeated 1:30 a.m. & 7 p.m. Oct. 28 and 10:45 a.m. Oct. 31, AMC).

Each hourlong episode follows three aspiring actors through their first movie, a low-budget genre film. The twist is that - say it with me - the flick is a fake, with everyone else on the set, from the director to the other actors and lighting guys, in on the joke.

Fittingly, the "Monster-fest" edition is "Croc Park," a hilariously awful pseudo-indie film about four attractive twentysomethings who encounter man-eating crocodiles in the north woods. Crafty, those crocs: Who'd expect them in hip-deep snow?

Like vampires, these evil reptiles recruit as they chomp, converting each new gore-splattered human victim into another bloodthirsty crocodile. As one of the actress-victims puts it: "You can bite into my body, but you'll never bite into my soul!"

The deception is both pretty funny and less mean than it sounds.

Once they learn the truth, the novice actors quickly realize that a cable reality show might actually get them wider exposure than the straight-to-video cheapie they thought they were making.

Continued...

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