AMC Celebrates Halloween Day with Halloween Movie Marathon During MonsterFest 24/7.

Feature Editors/Entertainment Editors

JERICHO, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2002

Festival includes 4 films from HALLOWEEN film series & AMC's new Backstory: HALLOWEEN

It all began when six-year-old Michael Myers donned a grotesque Halloween mask, picked up an enormous butcher knife, and committed bloody murder... Since the premiere of HALLOWEEN in 1978, the suspense, scares, and ensuing screams have continued - from HALLOWEEN II to this summer's big screen blockbuster, HALLOWEEN RESURRECTION. For the most frightening Halloween on television, AMC presents a full onslaught of HALLOWEEN madness beginning with the AMC original, Backstory: HALLOWEEN. AMC's HALLOWEEN marathon is one of five festivals dedicated to monsters past and present to air during its 7-day, 154-hour Halloween scarefest, MonsterFest 24/7.

The festival begins on Halloween day, October 31 at 1 PM (Premiere October 26 @ 10 PM, repeats October 27 @ 7 AM and October 28 @ 10 PM, October 29 @ 4:45 AM) with the encore presentation of Backstory: HALLOWEEN, the latest installment of AMC's weekly series about popular movies. Tune in to learn all the gory and gruesome details behind the making of HALLOWEEN, the 1978 film that created one of the longest-running horror franchises in movie history. Through exclusive interviews and never-before-seen footage, the one-hour show will detail how this low-budget movie launched the careers of actress Jamie Lee Curtis and director John Carpenter.

The ultimate scare-a-thon continues at 2 PM (repeats October 31 @ 10 PM, October 26 @ 12 PM, 8 PM) with HALLOWEEN II (1981). Filled with gory helpings of stalk-and-slash, the film's director John Carpenter brings Myers (Donald Pleasance), the homicidal maniac of HALLOWEEN (1978), back into the picture, this time to strew corpses around the hospital where the heroine, Jamie Lee Curtis returning to the role, is receiving treatment. Curtis once again survives, having at last learned that the killer is her little brother who killed their elder sister.

The blood lust continues at AMC with HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1983) at 4 PM (repeats October 26 @ 2 PM, October 27 @ 3 AM and November 1 @ 12:30 AM). In this rendition, Carpenter introduces a new maniac obsessed with All Hallow's Eve. In this film, a mad Irish toy maker (Dan O'Herlihy) intends to restore Halloween to its witch-cult origin by creating deadly destructive toy masks that children clamor for at Halloween. His diabolical revenge on the crass commercialization of Halloween offers high chills and mega screams.

Massacre and madness ensue at 6 PM with HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS (1988) (repeats October 26 @ 4 PM and 11 PM, October 27 @ 8 AM, October 28 @ 8 PM, and November 1 @ 2:30 AM). Returning to the plot of the original two films in the franchise, psychotic Michael (George P. Wilbur) emerges from a ten-year coma and returns to his killing spree, beginning with his niece (Danielle Harris). In the end, his un-hinged niece takes over, adding a new twist to an old theme.

The marathon continues with HALLOWEEN 5 (1989) at 8 PM (repeats October 26 @ 6 PM, October 27 @ 1 AM & 10 AM, October 28 @ 11 PM and November 1 @ 4:30 AM). Bearing the sub-title The Revenge of Michael Myers, the film opens by revealing that Michael's 9-year-old niece, again played by Danielle Harris, has not followed in his footsteps and killed her stepmother as implied at the end of HALLOWEEN 4. Harris has psychic flashes whenever Michael (Donald Pleasence) is about to kill - and inevitably his masked eye turns to her, with the murderer unsuccessfully trying to carve up his niece. Filled with the mandatory slaughter, make-out and practical joke scenes, HALLOWEEN 5 again is a guarantee to keep you on the edge of your seat.

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.

All times Eastern/Pacific.

--30--JP/ny csm

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    SOURCE: American Movie Classics