What’s on TV

HALLOWEEN (1978) 7 p.m. on AMC. “This is an evil that makes no facial expression, doesn’t have a voice, moves slowly but kills with a vengeance,” Jamie Lee Curtis said in an interview with The New York Times last year, answering a question about why the creepy killer Michael Myers has remained a compelling figure for four decades. This is the original John Carpenter slasher movie that spawned a franchise. “Halloween” introduced both Curtis (it was her film debut) and her character, Laurie Strode, a teenage babysitter who is stalked by the masked psychopath Myers (Nick Castle). “This is a universal terror that you combine with a woman representing everyone,” Curtis added, “and you have a recipe for people going to the movie over and over again.”

BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) 5:30 p.m. on BBC America. Francis Ford Coppola delivered a relatively faithful take on Bram Stoker’s classic horror novel in this Gothic drama. Gary Oldman plays Dracula, under heavy makeup; the all-star cast also includes Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves and Anthony Hopkins. This, Vincent Canby wrote in his review for The Times, is a “wild dream of a movie, which looks as if it required a special pact with the Treasury Department to finance.”

HOCUS POCUS (1993) 8:50 p.m. on Freeform. Last week, Disney confirmed that a long-rumored new “Hocus Pocus” movie is in development. It was a convenient time to generate renewed conversation about this cult classic and Halloween favorite, which stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy as sister witches, and is a good child-friendly option for Thursday night.