Late Night Chills and Afternoon Thrills...

Son of Terrible Movies Promo: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter
from The Cinema 4 Pylon on Vimeo.

The first great wave of concentrated film interest in my life was between the ages of 12 and 16 – before the VCR, Elvira, and cable television came to rule my existence – through the latter half of the 1970s. Left with few outside resources such as having a local movie theatre in our hamlet of Eagle River, Alaska (we had to drive fifteen-plus miles to see one on a big screen in "big city" Anchorage), my burgeoning film hunger was fed largely by four movie programs that aired on local network affiliates broadcasting from Anchorage.

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Monster Matinees

First was a weekday matinee show that ran at 3:00 pm on CBS affiliate KTVA-11. I don't remember the name of the program or if it even had a title. This is strange because the films it showed were never to be forgotten by me. The program aired classic (or non-classic, depending on your viewpoint) horror and science-fiction movies, and chiefly from Universal, AIP and Toho. As a result, this is where I got my basic education on the films from those studios. It's where I finally got to see those Dracula, Frankenstein, Mummy, Wolf Man and Creature from the Black Lagoon films I was reading about in the then-waning days of the original run of Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine. I also was able to catch the bulk of the original Showa period of Godzilla and other kaiju films from Toho. Other favorites which I would first see on this program were The Manster, The Werewolf, The Monster that Challenged the World, Fiend Without a Face, Son of Kong, The Green Slime, This Island Earth, and most importantly, The Thing from Another World. And yeah, this is where The War of the Gargantuas became such a thing for me. 

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The CBS Late Movie

Found on YouTube.

Late nights (post 11 p.m.) on KTVA-11 during weekdays and weekends was The CBS Late Movie program. The name was something of a misnomer, because in later years, the programming mostly consisted of television series episodes. But some of those series were profoundly influential to me, such as The Avengers (oh, Emma Peel...), The New Avengers (I was likewise in love with Joanna Lumley as "Purdy"), The Saint (starring Roger Moore, who was by then the current James Bond), Return of the Saint (starring Ian Ogilvy, whom I didn't like nearly as much as Roger Moore), and best of all, the super-scary (for then) Kolchak the Night Stalker. 

But it was the movies that I saw occasionally in this time slot that had me staying far too late in my early years. Some of my favorites were Killdozer, Help!, A Hard Day's Night, Night of the Lepus, Head, Mako: Jaws of Death, Willard, Frogs, The Giant Spider Invasion, Ben, Yellow Submarine, Sssssss!, Who's Minding the Store?, The Disorderly Orderly, and Tarzan and the Great River.

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The Lucky 13 Movie

Running in matinee form on another channel, ABC affiliate KIMO-13, was The Lucky 13 Movie, which I could only watch on summers off from school (or when I was sick or faking sick), since it aired at noon. I remember two separate hosts of the show mainly: Lois Blessington and Beverly Michaels. (I had a sort of puppy love crush on Ms. Michaels, even though she was decades older than me.) The run of films was decidedly more pedestrian on this program; there were few science fiction films, though the ones they showed stuck with me, and zero horror films, at least as I can recall. Still, this matinee show played a rather secretive part in my development, as I was yet to realize that I was a film fan. 

Because I started watching this show much younger than the other programs, I often saw it due to the kindness of assorted babysitters (including the great Mrs. B) in my younger years. As I mentioned, the films were more mainstream at times (they showed a lot of melodramas, and there were many that I never cared for, which would inevitably cause me to wander off to play instead). But the ones that caught my attention did so in a magical way. 

My main introduction to the films of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope, and a lot of westerns was due to The Lucky 13 Movie. Favorites for me included Stanley and Livingstone, The Crimson Pirate, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, When Worlds Collide, The Naked Jungle (with those scary army ants!), The Court Jester, Irwin Allen's version of The Lost World, Five Weeks in a Balloon, Boy's Town, Jim Thorpe: All-American, A High Wind in Jamaica, and the movie version of the Batman TV series, a show which had been my favorite series since I was toddler. (Not joking -- the proof is in my baby book...)

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And, finally...

The World's Most Terrible Movies

The World's Most Terrible Movies: Back to the Movie interstitial from The Cinema 4 Pylon on Vimeo.

But the greatest show in the world for me in those days, also on KIMO-13, was The World's Most Terrible Movies. KIMO had surprisingly incredible movies showing on Saturday nights beginning at 10:00 p.m. It's where I met up with the incredible Professor Fate and his henchman Max squaring of against the Great Leslie in The Great Race time and again. It was where I first saw The Birds (my first Hitchcock), War of the Worlds, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Jason and the Argonauts, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and The Valley of Gwangi. 

But somewhere between midnight and 1:00 a.m., depending on the length of the 10:00 p.m. feature, The World's Most Terrible Movies would start. I have written about The World's Most Terrible Movies at length on this website. Doing so put me in the acquaintance of an individual who was responsible for the show back in that time, Richard Gay, who contacted me and eventually sent to me a disc full of old promotional clips from TWMTM and some others (such as The Lucky 13 Movie) with which he had responsibility on the station at the time.

To read my full ongoing articles about this show, click on the following titles:

• Return of the Son of Terrible Movies Promo Blowout! [Pt. 1]
• Return of the Son of Terrible Movies Promo Blowout! [Pt. 2]
• Holiday Remix of the Return of the Son of Terrible Movies Promo Blowout! [Pt. 3]

Holiday Remix of the Return of the Son of Terrible Movies Promo Blowout! [Pt. 3]

[To read Pt. 1 of this series, click here, and for Pt. 2, click here.]

Having established the importance of the late night horror movie programs, The World's Most Terrible Movies and Son of Terrible Movies, in my personal development as a movie fanatic, I still have some unfinished business to impart to you. Namely, I have just a few more promos from these programs that I have not shared yet, and a couple of them tie rather coincidentally to both the time of year and to a recent major release currently in movie theatres at this moment.

Promos for local television tend to be rather bland, but every once in a while, you see something different and special. In the late '70s, Richard Gay and his fellow staffers at KIMO-TV were clearly having fun with a phenomenon that was still pretty fresh back then, but which is having a massive, worldwide resurgence right now: Star Wars. Perhaps you have heard of it. In the promo above, film reels have a laser battle in space with a microphone or a stack of dixie cups on top of a microphone, or something like that. Sure, it is about as cheap as cheap can be, and is all the more wonderful for it. Seeing something like this on late night TV was what utter joy was all about for a kid, especially one who was already stoked from dreams of joining the rebellion thanks to Star Wars mania.

The World's Most Terrible Movies programs weren't always relegated to late night, however. They also sometimes moved around on the KIMO-TV Channel 13 schedule depending on the situation; for example, Christmas. The promo above for Santa Claus Conquers the Martians was for an afternoon showing on Christmas Day. I was introduced to this film on a similar showing, though not the one being promoted, a few years earlier on one of the local channels (my memory has it as Channel 2, the NBC affiliate, KTUU). It was probably the first truly awful film that I saw where I realized it was awful but was enjoying it tremendously at the same time. For kids, you either love or hate something, and watching something purposefully because you are aware that it is bad really wasn't a thing back then for the junior set. I'm still not sure it is, though as an adult, I do it almost weekly.

Some films that were shown on the programs didn't really stick with me, at least in my accessible memory. The promo above for 1974's The Night of the Sorcerers, from Tombs of the Blind Dead auteur Amando de Ossorio, is one that I do not remember seeing, though it is likely that I may have. If I had seen it on one of the Terrible Movies shows, however, I can't imagine I would have forgotten it for a very certain reason. If you watch the promo about two-thirds of the way through, there is what is popularly known as a "nipslip," in this case, it seems that when they were editing the promo, they either accidentally (or purposely) left in a quick shot of a nipple. Since one of the reasons I loved to stay up to watch the early Hammers and other '60s and '70s horrors was for the ladies, I am mad that I can't remember this one. I wonder if they showed the film unedited as well?

Going in the opposite direction, they also occasionally showed much older classic horror films too. The promo above for 1932's The Mystery of the Wax Museum is an example. By no means a "terrible" movie, unless you just outright hate horror films, Mystery would be remade in 1953 in 3D as House of Wax with Vincent Price. I love both versions, but this one has its stamp on history as well. A daring picture that has "pre-code" elements such as drug use and language, Mystery was one of two Warners' pictures released (Doctor X being the other) that were the last narrative films made using the two-strip Technicolor process. Definitely worth a visit for a variety of reasons, but my main one is the lovely Fay Wray. I can never get enough of her.

One more bit for this go-around. The promo I remember most from The World's Most Terrible Movies show was the one above where a long-haired guy goes fishing in what I believe is Ship Creek in Anchorage and catches a movie reel. He even clubs it after catching it, and then has another passing fisherman take a picture of him with his catch. This clip definitely has the most Alaskan flair to it out of all the promos, not something I normally take pride in, but I will say this particular one always stuck with me the most. It may be that now I am down in Southern California that I have became more protective of my Alaskan status. I have never cared for the thought of belonging to a particular culture or group, but I will admit that growing up in a certain environment does color how you approach or perceive every other thing you encounter in your life.

I hope you enjoyed the third part of my ongoing feature on The World's Most Terrible Movies program. I would once again like to thank Richard Gay, who created and produced the show, for contacting me a few years ago and allowing me to use his catalog of clips online. And if you have not read the first two parts, links to each article are at the top of this post.

You can also watch all of the clips on The Cinema 4 Pylon YouTube channel.

[Note: The fourth and final part of this series will be posted in October 2016.]

Return of the Son of Terrible Movies Promo Blowout! [Pt. 2]

[To read Pt. 1 of this article, click here.]

As I mentioned in Part 1 of the Return of the Son of Terrible Movies Promo Blowout, I had basically cut my eyeteeth on the catalogue of films that aired after midnight on The World's Most Terrible Movies and its followup, Son of Terrible Movies, in Anchorage, Alaska back in the late '70s. And, as such things tend to go, it would have been relegated to a dim but delightful memory for the rest of my life had I not written about in a passing way on The Cinema 4 Pylon a decade ago.

When I first created The Cinema 4 Pylon in 2005, I naturally started writing about the things that had influenced me the most in my youth, and chief amongst them was The World's Most Terrible Movies. A couple of years later after posting that reference, it was found online by Richard Gay, who turned out to not only be the fellow in charge of promoting the The World's Most Terrible Movies when he lived in Anchorage in those days, but he was also the one responsible for the concept and content of the show.

Richard (who had relocated to Seattle in the intervening years) emailed me and we struck up a wonderful conversation, filled with his reminisces of those bygone days. The conversation eventually led to Richard sending me a disc filled with the old promotional clips and intros used for the show when it aired.

Some of the clips were separate, but most were included in a huge hour-plus block of clips and short films Richard had produced in his time at KIMO-TV. Not all of them were useful for my purposes (though interesting to anyone who grew up watching television in Alaska in those times), so I went through the block and edited out the pieces I needed for the website. Richard had given me permission to use them as I might online, since I had the particular obsession with the show.

I initially threw a few of The World's Most Terrible Movies promos up on Vimeo (though most of the individual film promos themselves were actually for Son of Terrible Movies), but somewhere in the midst of completing the project, that old demon Depression took hold of me and I stopped working on the blog almost totally for the next few years.

To be continued...

Return of the Son of Terrible Movies Promo Blowout! [Pt. 1]

In the beginning there was The World's Most Terrible Movies...

If you lived in Anchorage, Alaska and its environs in the 1970s and liked to stay up super late on Saturday nights, then you might remember the above clip. You also may well remember The World's Most Terrible Movies (and its spinoff, Son of Terrible Movies) which ran late nights on weekends on Anchorage, Alaska's ABC affiliate, KIMO-TV (Channel 13) in the 1970s.

The clip above is one of the opening segments used for the show, which ran older horror and sci-fi films, including many Hammer horror classics and Ray Harryhausen adventures, when I was a teenager. While I had many influences in my youth, The World's Most Terrible Movies is probably the #1 reason I became a fan of fantastic films of all types. [To learn more about the show and how I obtained these clips, click here.]

My interest in fantastic films was already apparent when I was relatively young, but seeing those Hammer and Harryhausen flicks on Saturday evenings blew it up huge for me. The World's Most Terrible Movies is where I met Christopher Lee's Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, and Fu Manchu, where I first watch cowboys attempt to snare Gwangi in their lassoes, where I saw Sinbad and Jason fight animated skeletons, and where I learned who Peter Cushing, Barbara Steele, and Paul Naschy were. Most importantly, it's also where I fell head over heels for Raquel Welch in a fur bikini.

I guess we all have those moments in our youth where the mind expands after we have discovered something that perhaps we probably shouldn't have. For some people, that might be drugs, alcohol, or adolescent sexual stirrings that get taken farther than they should at the time. And for some of us, we find the cinema of the bizarre, of cult directors, under-appreciated actors, and twisted genres. I think we are the smarter and luckier group.

Vampires, giant monsters, wolfmen, robots, go-go girls, mad scientists... they act interchangeably as our priests and our demons. Movies move far beyond a mere entertainment for our kind. We recognize early on that, when the rest of the world denies us, the movie theatre is where we can go to submerse ourselves in other worlds for comfort. (But not guidance... no, that is probably not the wisest thing.) And once we have walked through those doors, we can't go back. The mind changes immeasurably. Things cannot be unseen. Or as Pauline Kael put it, "I lost it at the movies."

More than anything, movie showcases like The World's Most Terrible Movies held open those doors for me. And I have never gone back, nor have I tried. And through horrid jobs, a bad first marriage, moves across the country, and frustration at nearly every turn in my life (like all of us have), I know that I can make the pain go away by the simple push of a button or the purchase of a ticket. And when I hear the sounds of the opening fanfare that announce the film is starting, I might just as well be back in my living room in the pitch darkness at age 12, covering every inch of my body with a giant blanket except a small slit in front of my eyes through which I can watch the television screen, waiting for The World's Most Terrible Movies to begin.

To be continued later this month...