tek's rating:

The Midnight Hour, on ABC
Badmovies.org; Halloween Specials.net; Halloween Specials Wiki; IMDb; TV Tango; Wikipedia

This is something that aired in 1985, at which point I didn't get ABC. Plus, I was only 10, so I don't know if I would have been able to watch it anyway. But I got it on DVD in 2020, from Classic Movies etc., to watch the night before Halloween.

So, this group of teenage friends, Phil, Mary (Dedee Pfeiffer), Vinnie (LeVar Burton), Mitch (Peter DeLuise), and Melissa (Shari Belafonte-Harper), steal a trunk and some costumes from a local museum about a witch named Lucinda and witch hunter named Nathaniel (Phil's ancestor), from 300 years ago, to dress up on Halloween. (Actually, only Mitch and Melissa dress in the "borrowed" costumes.) In the trunk, they find a scroll, which Melissa (the descendant of Lucinda) reads from. Unbeknownst to them, it raises the dead and other monsters, some of whom go around town killing or transforming people into zombies/werewolves/vampires/whatever. Anyway, there's a Halloween party at Melissa's house, but Phil leaves early, because he was hoping to be Mary's date, but she wasn't interested. Various zombies show up at the party, but everyone thinks they're just in costumes, and they don't actually do any harm. But Lucinda also shows up, and she's not so much a witch as a vampire, and starts turning everyone at the party into vampires. Meanwhile, Phil meets a girl named Sandy, who I think must have been a ghost or something. She was obviously dead, but also obviously not a zombie. But Phil had no idea she was dead, and they have some fun together, before Sandy realizes what's going on with all the zombies and monsters, and knows how to stop them, but that's going to be dangerous. And it has to be done by midnight.

There were a couple other familiar faces in the movie, including Kurtwood Smith as the town's police captain, and Kevin McCarthy as Mitch's father. (I can't think what I know him from but he's definitely familiar.) And Wolfman Jack was the DJ on the radio station the teens listen to throughout the movie. There's also a substitute teacher named Vicky, who is a very relaxed chaperone at the teens' party. And um... I'm not sure what else to tell you. It's all very campy, but I thought it was fun.


Halloween TV movies index