It’s sad really. Before the advent of infomercials, late night TV turned me on to all sorts of movies and shows I would have never seen otherwise. I guess this is something our children will never know.
My ritual over the summer time when I didn’t have to get up for school was:
Sanford and Son. (Loved it when the old man would get into it with aunt Ester.)
Death Valley.
Martial arts movies (Always horribly dubbed and acted)
Monster movie hosts. Elvira started out as a parody of an already ancient TV genre, but morphed into the real thing because the real thing was already pretty air-tight.
I didn’t live close to the large cities, so I can’t cite the big names of monster movie hosts. Out of Madison Wisconsin we received Mephisto, who opened with “Night on Bald Mountain,” had a disembodied voice in a box on his desk as a sidekick, and wore Alice Cooper makeup. And he was half-drunk most nights.
And the movies themselves were old B&W Universal classics, disdained elsewhere on the schedule in the era when color TV was the shiny new thing. Or British (Hammer), Italian and Japanese horror films.
History Channel and National Geographic documentaries
Some of the infos start earlier than others and The Military Channel doesn’t show ANY, but they get on my last nerve when they play the same series of commercials/promos one right after another every 10 minutes!
One other nitpick, if I may: Doesn’t that channel show movies other than “Kelly’s Heroes” on the weekends??? Holeeee Crap!!! It’s like they’re playing some cruel joke on their viewing audience.
What limits you even more is the fact that most of those channels will repeat a block of shows from the morning again in the evening/night.
I lived near Pittsburgh, whose Channel 11 had “Chiller Theater,” hosted by “Chilly Billy” Cardille. He had a cast of supporting characters that included “Terminal Stare,” a Gothic-looking woman who never spoke, always maintained a deadpan expression, and bumped and ground her way around the set. His show was so popular in the mid-70s that the station, an NBC affiliate, did not air Saturday Night Live for its first four seasons. The show had many big-name guest stars during its run, such as Phyllis Diller, Barbara Feldon, Vincent Price, Lorne Greene, and Jerry Lewis.
The show was the inspiration for SCTV’s “Monster Chiller Horror Theater” and Cardille inspired Joe Flaherty’s character, Count Floyd. Cardille was so prominent, he appeared in both versions of George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.”
Anybody remember “USA Up All Night” with Rhonda… somebody? This was late 80s/early 90s I guess.
Before that, my middle-of-the-night fare was old sitcom reruns and b&w movies. I want to say the first time I saw “Casablanca” was on late late night TV.
ETA: Rhonda Shear (and, how could I forget, Gilbert Godfried)
Late night movies were my first introduction to the illustrious acting career of Rowdy Roddy Piper, having seen both *They Live* and Hell Comes to Frogtown at about 2 AM. The sequel Frogtown II, skammer might be interested to know, had the host of Up All Night that he was trying to remember, Rhonda Shear, playing the role of “Fuzzy”.
The WWF syndicated show aired really late in my area (11:30 I think–late for an 8 year old). The War of the Worlds tv series I think was on at midnight on Fridays.
For me it was the local PBS station (St. Louis, late 70’s / early 80’s). After a couple of Twilight Zone episodes I’d tough it out to watch some planet show with Jack Horkheimer.
“Greetings, fellow Stargazers!” He was such an enthusiastic goofball, with his kooky voice. Then he’d end each bit with “Keep looking up!” and wander off superimposed (poorly) on some moonbeam while some ethereal whistling space tune played him out.
I often wonder how much those Twilight Zone / Jack Horkeimer nights formed my personality.
A bizarre show actually called “Tabloid TV” hosted by a man named Jan something-or-other. Had the same crazy Batboy-esque stories you’d see in the Weekly World News. Hilarious.
Twilight Zone, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Biography (with Mike Wallace). Also Tonight and Tomorrow, and David Susskind’s show, and Cavett when I could get him, Charlie Rose’s Nightwatch and Linda Ellerbee and the other guy’s News Overnight. My favorite slate ever, though, was circa 2000, when Nickolodeon or maybe probably TV Land ran Bob Newhart, Superman, Batman, Charlie’s Angels, and Gunsmoke consecutively.
The All-Night Show, hosted by Chuck the Security Guard. He showed old reruns (Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Mr. Lucky, etc.), music videos, and suchlike.
Otherwise, it was Stardust Theatre, which showed old classic movies from the 30s and 40s.
Me too. It was around the same time line as yours also. I remember seeing a lot of British sitcoms. What was that one where they had the couple that lived in the suburbs but they found all kinds of wacky ways to live off the land?
High school (late 70’s) - The Three Stooges. One of the independent stations in St Louis would show the Stooges late at night on weekends. I’d often come home after being out on a Friday or Saturday night and watch about an hour of Stooges before heading off to bed.
College (early to mid 80’s) - the NBC affiliate in Topeka, after the Tonight Show and Letterman, would broadcast Dr. Gene Scott every night. What an oddly fascinating dude.