Tivo Alert: Food Network’s Halloween Programming

In our continual effort to make TVgasm a better resource for the viewers, we wanted to try harder to remind people of upcoming programming with enough of lead time that you might actually have time to set your Tivos, DVRs and any other recording devices. I even created a category “Tivo Alert”, so you can easily check back here at anytime. Because we receive a lot of PR requests (and I am lazy), some of these Tivo alerts will contain little more than the press release, although we don’t intend to promote anything we believe looks completely awful, unless, of course, there is a giveaway or some methadone involved. Anyway, to stay in the spirit of the season, we thought we would highlight some Halloween themed shows from The Food Network and a few others. Why did I put a picture of Christopher Walken in Sleepy Hollow for a Food Network Post? Well, for starters, I couldn’t find any good pictures of Katrina Van Tassel’s (Christina Ricci) cleavage.

Whether you’re looking for Iron Chef America or Lesbian Vampires, check out the full list after the jump.

FOOD NETWORK:

SECRET LIFE OF… HALLOWEEN
Premieres: Saturday, October 21st at 10PM
Halloween is the one time when candy is appetizer, entrée and desert. Host Jim O’Connor discovers the trick behind making Halloween’s most famous treat those tasty, three-colored kernels of candy corn. The show also delves into more grown-up fare, including the medieval cake that was the very first Halloween treat and the tempting delights of Mexico’s feast for the Day of the Dead and offers tips for a fun but healthy holiday meal.

EMERIL LIVE: EMERIL’S HALLOWEEN CONTEST
Premieres: Sunday, October 22nd at 8PM
They’re creepy and they’re kooky….that’s the only way to describe Emeril’s Halloween Contest winners. Chef Emeril Lagasse welcomes the winners to the show and prepares their recipes.

CANDY CONVENTION
Premieres: Saturday, October 28th at 9PM
In this one-hour special, Food Network gives viewers an all-access pass into a world typically reserved only for candy professionals. Food Network goes behind-the-scenes as candy makers from around the world turn Chicago’s convention center into the sweetest eight acres in America. It looks like Candy Land, but in reality, this is serious business. Host George Duran (Ham on the Street) explores the latest and greatest in candy from chocolate to gummy bears, chili powder lollipops to extreme sour gum drops and gives viewers a glimpse of the sweet new treats in store for this year.

SWEETS AND TREATS WEEKEND COOKING BLOCKS
Airs: October 21st and October 22nd from 7AM-2PM
The top chefs of Food Network will share all their tips, tricks and treats from the perfect Halloween spread to a simple sampling of sweets with this two-day block of special programming. Featuring premiere episodes from Essence of Emeril, Tyler’s Ultimate, Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller, Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee, 30 Minute Meals, Everyday Italian, Party Line with the Hearty Boys, Boy Meets Grill and Nigella Feasts.

EMERIL LIVE: SWEETS & TREATS WEEK
Airs: October 22nd-October 29th at 8PM
Emeril is serving up a week of sweets including an all new Halloween recipe contest hour.

SWEETS & TREATS WEEKEND MARATHON
Airs: October 28th and 29th from 2PM-4AM
Food Network celebrates the sweetest holiday of the year with an all weekend salute to sugary treats, including the premiere of the Candy Convention special at 9PM on October 28th. Also includes new episodes of Iron Chef America and Food Network Challenge.

FOOD NETWORK CHALLENGE: CANDY CASTLES
Premieres: October 29th at 9 PM
Chocolate bridges over sugar moats…Ice cream cone towers rising from cake-filled castles…And that¹s just a taste of what you¹ll see when four confectionary architects joust for the Challenge crown and $10,000! But sugar and chocolate aren’t stable like steel and stone, so as walls crumble and sugar shatters, the clock becomes the enemy as the competitors race to bring their fairy-tale fortresses to life.

IRON CHEF AMERICA: HONEY BATTLE
Premieres: October 29th at 10 PM
Pastry Chef and Citizen Cake owner, Elizabeth Faulkner comes to Kitchen Stadium to face-off against Iron Chef Cat Cora in one deliciously sweet battle. See if Cat Cora can hold her own against this renowned pastry chef.

AMC :

MONSTERFEST X
Premieres: October 22nd; airs from October 22nd -31st
AMC marks the 10th year of the annual event with the most comprehensive collection of Halloween horror ever aired on TV, showcasing more than 230 hours of non-stop movies for 10 days and 10 nights, October 22-31. This year’s MonsterFest features the definitive collection of Universal Studios’ iconic monsters including Dracula, The Wolf Man and The Mummy in addition to popular contemporary franchises such as Halloween, The Exorcist and Friday the 13th.

AMC kicks off the movie marathon on Sunday, October 22 with the original Halloween, which first introduced us to Michael Myers, at 8PM ET & PT/7PM CT.

For a complete schedule, you can visit www.amctv.com/monsterfest.

SUNDANCE CHANNEL :

HALLOWEEN TRIPLE FEATURE
Premieres: October 31st beginning at 10:00 pm e/p
Sundance Channel celebrates the erotic frisson of fear on Halloween with three classic 70s European sexploitation horror films by the prolific auteur Jess Franco. All three films are new to U.S. television; all feature deliciously groovy soundtracks; and all star Franco’s muse, the gorgeous, alluring and talented Soledad Miranda, (tragically killed in a 1970 auto accident). The lineup includes their greatest collaboration, the cult favorite Vampyros Lesbos, in which Miranda portrays a seductive descendent of Count Dracula. The evening is book-ended by the U.S. television premieres of She Killed in Ecstasy, in which Miranda plays a woman slowly going mad as she seeks to avenge her husband’s death; and The Devil Came from Akasava, starring Miranda as a British spy dispatched to Africa to solve a case involving a magic stone, zombies and some creepy Europeans.

The schedule for Sundance Channel’s Halloween Triple Feature of Jess Franco films is as follows:

10:00PM She Killed In Ecstasy (U.S. Television Premiere)
(1971) Cult exploitation auteur Jess Franco reunites with Soledad Miranda, the dark-haired leading lady of Vampyros Lesbos and The Devil Came from Akasava, for a tale of obsession and revenge. Miranda plays the widow of a research scientist (Frank Williams) whose controversial experiments were condemned by a medical board. Now, using her talents for seduction, she aims to settle the score. (Franco plays one of the doomed doctors.) Vintage Eurocult, complete with an acid-rock score, groovy décor and liberal use of the zoom lens.

11:30PM Vampyros Lesbos
(1971) Take a trip back into the psychedelic era of European exploitation cinema with this rediscovered cult favorite by prolific Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco. Soledad Miranda stars as a mysterious lesbian countess and nightclub performer who tries to seduce a tortured young woman (Ewa Strömberg), whose dreams have been haunted by erotic images. Franco’s soft-core gender-bending retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula features a celebrated sitar-heavy jazz-rock score, which Quentin Tarantino quoted from three decades later in Jackie Brown.

1:00AM The Devil Came From Akasava (U.S. Television Premiere)
(1971) Spies! Avant-garde jazz strip clubs! Zombies! Eurocult filmmaker Jess Franco and star Soledad Miranda’s final collaboration was this espionage thriller, in which Miranda plays a British secret agent investigating the existence of a stone that transmutes common metals into gold and turns men into zombies. The trail brings her to the African nation of Akasava, where she takes the logical undercover job: toiling as an exotic dancer at a groovy nightclub featuring ’60s lounge music. Ewa Strömberg (VAMPIROS LESBOS) costars.