'SNL' Hamms it up this Saturday
With the “Mad Men” season over, Jon Hamm returns to play host to NBC's “Saturday Night Live” for the third time this weekend at 10:30 on WMAQ Channel 5. Rihanna returns for the second time as the musical guest. NBC tosses in the prime-time compilation special “The Women of SNL” at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 1, on Channel 5.
Storming Castle
The Documentary Channel salutes the career of a '50s and '60s horrormeister and movie showman with “Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story,” which debuts at 7 p.m. Sunday, Halloween. Filmmakers John Waters, Roger Corman and Joe Dante are among those testifying on Castle's lasting influence.
TCM skis moguls
Turner Classic Movies begins a seven-part series on “Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood” by returning to the origins of film with works by Thomas Edison, D.W. Griffith and Georges Melies. The documentary “Peepshow Pioneers” debuts at 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 1, followed at 8 by Edison shorts, at 11 by early Griffith silent movies and at 1 by a Melies marathon, including his famous “A Trip to the Moon.”
Save the scenery!
Turner Classic Movies runs a horror-movie marathon this weekend, including Tod Browning's “Freaks” at 5:15 a.m. Sunday, Oct. 31, but the real freak show might be “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” The trashy '60s melodrama stars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in an art-imitates-life story as they attempt late-career comebacks, both in fright wigs and chewing whatever scenery is in range. It's at 9:15 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30.