films of the week

THE BIG MOVIE HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA (2012) U n Saturday, 5.30pm, ITV2 ★★★

Children love a good scare and, while it wouldn’t be wise to sit them in front of Brian Viner’s selection of classic horror films on page 12, there are plenty of films this Halloween that have just the right amount of fiendishly family-friendly frights. Dracula is the star of this softly spooky animation, running a hotel for monsters as a sanctuary from the humans who keep trying to get rid of them with fire and pitchforks. The hotel is as warm and welcoming as it is chaotic and creepy, and Drac is a loving father to his daughter, Mavis (above). He is as nervous as any dad would be when his daughter wants to break free of his protective cloak and venture out into the world – but his ruse to keep her safe backfires, with hilarious results.

CLASSIC FILM CHOICE KING KONG (1933) PG ● Thursday, 2.55pm, BBC2

★★★★★

A classic monster movie for Halloween, contemporary audiences loved this tale of a jungle Goliath who is captured and shipped to New York City to be a Broadway star. Generations of film-makers fell for its charms and made monsters the stars of their own pictures (among them Lord Of The Rings director Peter Jackson, who remade King Kong in 2005). Fay Wray is on damsel-in-distress duty, but the real star is the man in the gorilla suit (above), who takes turns with the rubbery stop-motion version. The film belongs to Kong, and as clunky as he may be, the trick this film pulled was to make audiences first frightened and then sympathetic towards the huge, plane-swatting beast who is far from home.