AMC's MonsterFest 24/7 Serves up 8-Film Fright Fest of Dracula Favorites on Tuesday, October 29.

Feature Editors/Entertainment Editors

JERICHO, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 24, 2002

When it comes to monsters, no one can make the blood drain out of your face like Dracula. Beginning Tuesday, October 29, AMC celebrates the undead as the Count from Transylvania terrifies television viewers in an 8-film, 5-decade spanning festival.

Horror's most memorable vampire bares his fangs in the movie that started it all, 1931's DRACULA, and continues to quench his thirst in the revivals and spin-offs of the 60s, 70s, and 80s during AMC's 7-day, 154-hour Halloween scare-a-thon, MonsterFest 24/7.

AMC begins the Dracula marathon with the tale of bloodsucking coffin dwellers in FRIGHT NIGHT (1985), airing at 1:00 AM (repeat 5:45 PM). In this modern screamer, a teenage boy (William Ragsdale) solicits aid from the host of a television horror movie show (Roddy McDowall), a former actor specializing in vampire slaying roles, to kill his bloodthirsty neighbor.

At 3:15 AM (repeats 4:15 PM, October 31 at 8:30) is the genre-making film starring the neck biting Count in the original Universal title, DRACULA (1931). In Tod Browning's terror masterpiece, the Transylvanian batman (Bela Lugosi) preys on unsuspecting Londoners, focusing his blood lust in particular on Mina Seward (Helen Chandler), the woman he wants to make his bride.

Following at 5:45 AM, the creature feature BLOOD OF DRACULA (1957) offers a frightening twist on the bloodsucking tale. In this stylish thriller, Dracula chooses not to nibble on a helpless victim, but instead enlists her to join the undead through hypnosis.

BLOOD OF THE VAMPIRE (1958) follows at 7:15 AM as a petrifying picture of an anemic doctor who, fresh from the coffin, takes control of an insane asylum. He treats his patients with his own version of bloodletting, forcing a doctor and a one-eyed humpback to assist him in the process.

A return to Transylvania is in order for the undead in SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES (1962), airing at 9:15 AM. Vampire Eppler, who seeks to bring bloodsucking back to its origin, searches for new companions to share his Austrian castle. The scare-fest gets spookier yet in COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE (1970) (10:45 AM), a tale of a bewitching vampire who holds seances to lure flushed young women into his control. The boyfriends of two captured women brave Yorga's malign spell, leading to a surprising twist ending.

RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE (1943) airs next at 12:45 PM. This film finds Bela Lugosi returning as the creature who made him famous, though not as Dracula but as a vampire named Armand. When a World War II bomb hits a cemetery, a worker mistakes the stake in his heart for shrapnel and removes it. Liberated, he fangs about London for some bloody fun with his werewolf assistant, played by Matt Willis.

To round out the festival is the creepy Hammer Studio's vampire hit BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960) airing at 2:15 PM. Regarded by critics as one of Hammer's best horror entries, Dracula (Peter Cushing) is kept prisoner in his own castle by his mother, to prevent him from lunching on the local villagers. Ultimately, he escapes and heads to a girls' school where he finds victims aplenty.

AMC's Dracula medley is one of five marathons petrifying viewers that make up this year's seven-decade spanning festival. The festival consists of the original horror legacies and their contemporary equivalents in the classic characters of Frankenstein, the Mummy, Godzilla, and the bloodsucker himself, and concludes with the modern movie thriller series, HALLOWEEN.

AMC's MonsterFest 24/7 is a 7-day, 154-hour-long Halloween marathon that is the ultimate television destination for monster movies and themed original programming. The October 25 - 31 event features over 40 films, spanning seven decades - from classic Universal titles like FRANKENSTEIN, MUMMY and DRACULA that launched the genre in the '30s to more modern movies like FRIGHT NIGHT, PREDATOR 2 and HALLOWEEN 2-5.

AMC is a 24-hour, movie-based network, dedicated to the American movie fan. The network, which reaches over 83,000,000 homes, offers a comprehensive library of popular movies and an increasingly visible, critically- acclaimed, slate of original programming that is a diverse, movie-based mix of original series, documentaries and specials. AMC has more than doubled its original programming over the past 3 years and garnered many of the industry's highest honors, including seven Emmy awards. AMC is "TV for movie people."

A leader in sports, news and entertainment programming, Rainbow Media Holdings, Inc. is a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corporation (NYSE:CVC) and NBC. Rainbow owns and manages AMC, WE: Women's Entertainment, Bravo, IFC (The Independent Film Channel), muchmusic usa, Mag Rack, Rainbow Sports Networks, News 12 Networks, and MetroChannels as well as the Rainbow Advertising Sales Corporation and Rainbow Network Communications. Rainbow is a fifty-percent partner in Fox Sports Net and has a strategic partnership with MGM (NYSE:MGM), which owns a 20% stake in four of Rainbow's national networks: AMC, WE: Women's Entertainment, Bravo and IFC.

--30--JP/ny csm

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    SOURCE: American Movie Classics