Back in the days before youtube and video on demand, you turned on your TV at midnight and took what you were given. And you liked it! You had values back then!
Anyway, there was something about staying up as a kid after everyone else had gone to bed, turning on the CBS Late Movie or NBC Mystery Movie, or even something on UHF, and finding yourself absorbed in whatever offbeat B flick they might be showing until 2 in the morning. Good or bad, the movie made an impact on you in a way that it never would by popping it into a DVD player or pulling it up on a computer.
For me, a perfect example would be Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man. In any other context it would probably be silly, but late at night in a quiet house, with nothing else to distract me, it sure was spooky and has stuck with me ever since.
Oh, yeah! In Indianapolis in my pre-teen/teen years we had Sammy Terry’s Nightmare Theatre. Double features on Friday nights of less-than-scary movies that, given my youth and eagerness to be delightfully scared, still had me hiding under the covers. Sammy Terry was the local host, but he was good enough to be ranked with those in larger cities. Bob Carter (who performed the character) just passed away this last month, to the sadness of all who knew him.
I remember one night … the first day of summer vacation I think … staying up and watching TV until the test pattern. (Look it up, youngsters.) The final movie was about the trials and tribulations of a boy who had green skin. He finally fell in with some hippies who accepted, and even admired him, waxing poetic about how he was the color of leaves and grass. That was the end, but I always imagined his real troubles began from there.
I can still hardly believe that such a movie actually existed. The alternative is that I fell asleep and it all came from my own brain though, so I cling to the hope that it was real. If so, I’m sure it was directed by Alan Smithee.
I was fortunate enough to grow up with the original Creature Feature hosted by Bob Wilkins. I remember staying up way past my bedtime and watching some creeper while my mother slept on the couch; despite the thrill of breaking the rules I ended up waking her up so I could go to bed. (I still cherish the small, anonymous favor Bob did me later in my early teens.)
We also had an excellent Charlie Chan late-night program, hosted by a very dry and witty Chinese-ancestry law student who later became a well-respected lawyer in town. I still recall his pained but gentle commentary about the over-the-top racism, especially that of the wartime movies with their eeeeevilllll Japanese characters.
My B-movie center, though, was the daytime theater shows I watched while home sick or playing hooky. Some truly awful/classic stuff from the 1950s was the usual fare - Town Without Pity comes to mind, and some hidden-horrors-of-suburbia one whose title I can’t recall. (It was a bookended script, with the murdering wife driven out of town in the back seat of a cop car, passing the sign from the beginning that read “Welcome to Rolling Acres - a HAPPY place to live!” or some such. Gah. Wonderful.)
Would that have been in the era when it ran as filler because the copyright had lapsed? (Which, as I understand it, is how it went from obscurity to icon.)
Oh yes, growing up when I did [born in 1961] I have very fond memories of Saturdays - starting the morning with cartoons, and then the afternoon doing stuff, and late night with the overnight horror and SF movies.
Though Sunday mornings were frustrating for a few years, until I hit 12 and started refusing to do sunday school/church - the morning started with Kukla, Fran and Ollie,[fond memories of strange foreign kids film, what was it with the russian kid and the bear?] and segued into some show that did old movies. I must have seen the beginning of Jason and the Argonauts a dozen times, because midpoint was the time we needed to leave to get to church. When I finally got old enough to make my refusal stick, I managed to finally see the ending of the movie
I remember watching a movie when I stayed up late one night as a kid - it was about a children’s summer camp for handicapped kids, but the manager was a drill sergeant-type played by George C. Scott who figured that the kids should be able to do everything that able-bodied kids can. So the counsellors built ramps, etc. and the manager tore them all out in a fit of rage, long story short the kids & counsellors prevailed and succeeded despite their limits. I think Cloris Leachman was in it too.
I also channel-surfed onto *“Little Darlings” * when I was a teenager and could identify myself and all my friends in the characters.
I have a perfect example: In the late '80s and early '90s I was, let’s say, fond of recreational chemistry. I still am, but I was then, too. [/Mitch]
On several occasions, I would find myself flipping channels late at night when I stumbled across an odd movie about a bald man in a white endless room, with robot policemen zapping him with sticks.
This was George Lucas’ movie THX-1138, back before he ruined it with ‘improved’ CGI.
Trippy as hell, so to speak, especially considering the circumstances.
About a decade ago I bought it on DVD. The ‘ruined all to shit’ version, thank you George (may you rot in hell.)
The Son of Svengoolie (now just Svengoolie) has been hosting bad movies in Chicago for many years now and I remember as a kid, they had a big deal over showing the Creature From the Black Lagoon in 3D. You had to get the special glasses at participating 7-11s and then when they aired the movie, you had to adjust your TV so it would show the 3D effects. We really couldn’t get ours set right and got a little bit of the 3D but I assume we got about what everyone else got because they didn’t try this again.
I also saw Videodrome on late night cable at my cousins’ house and that movie blew my mind.
Do I have any fond memories of late night B movies on television? Hell yeah; all my memories of watching Night Owl Movies with “Big” Wilson are fond memories. Mr. Wilson was cool as hell and the movies he showed were always fun to watch.
Dammit, this is exactly what I was thinking–but I’d never read the poem. I’m thinking this one was left out of Where the Sidewalk Ends. Thanks, though–good for a chuckle.
I love late movies. That’s where I first discovered Quatermass 2 (then called Enemy from Space. I had no idea what it was supposed to be, but it blew me away. It wasn’t until later that I realized it was a sequel to The Creeping Unknown (AKA The Quatermass Xperiment) that was a staple on Chiller Theater.
I also first saw Dr. Strangeove on Late night TV, and had to watch the whole thing.
There are plenty of weird “B” movies that I saw on Monster Movie shows in prime time, but I restrict myself here to the real late-night movies.
I remember thinking how cool I was when I was old enough to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live. Then I realized the next step of coolness was staying up to watch Chiller Theater with Ned the Dead after SNL on WLUK in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Sadly, the show ended its initial run in 1989. Just found this page with a listing of all the movies that were shown. Somewhere around 1987 or so was when I started watching it. There were a couple of Christopher Lee movies that made the biggest impression on me, but I’d have to do a lot of research to figure out the names. The Japanese monster movies weren’t much fun until MST3K came along.
