Ghosts, UFOs and werewolves … Oh my! Embedded above is the very cool opening to the new Spooky Movie Television show that will be debuting on TVs in the Washington, D.C. area in early July. The opening is directed by the current king of retro-special effects, Brian Lonano, he of Attackazoids! fame. He makes the damn cutest ghosts I gotta tell ya.

Spooky Movie Television is, of course, an offshoot of the annual Spooky Movie Film Festival. It will be a one-hour program showing a selection of short films that have screened at the fest. Plus, the show will be hosted by the diabolical Dr. Sarcofiguy and his accursed stalker Boo dePest. (Actors John Dimes and Leanna Chamish respectively.)

Dr. Sarcofiguy — and John Dimes — appeared in the documentary Every Other Day Is Halloween. Dimes was inspired by the documentary’s subject, Count Gore De Vol, to carry on the tradition of horror TV hosting in an age when most local TV stations had abandoned homegrown programming. I’ve already plugged that film a ton on the Underground Film Journal and if you still haven’t seen it, I continue to recommend that you do.

Dimes created Sarcofiguy in 1995 for a public access program called, oddly enough, The Spooky Movie, that aired old public domain horror movies. However, the new Spooky Movie Television show, as I wrote above, will be all modern short films. The original The Spooky Movie ran for 10 years on D.C. TV.

The director of Every Other Day Is Halloween, C.W. Prather is also the founder of the Spooky Movie Film Festival and is responsible for bringing the Spooky Movie franchise — which I think we can start calling it that — to TV. Previously, several short films, including one by Brian Lonano, were released on the two-volume DVD Festival of Horrors.

Lastly, for those wondering where that wonderful music in the trailer comes from, it’s actually a musical number from 1929, “The (New) Call of the Freaks” by Luis Russell and his Orchestra.