"Don't make me use this!"
Somewhere along the way, movies stopped being fun.
Oh, we still had fun going to the movies. We still had fun sitting on the couch and popping in a VHS or DVD, eating homemade popcorn with real butter. But somewhere along the way, the movies stopped being fun.
Flashback to the end of the 80’s. Thanks to cable, we famously have 57 channels and nothing’s on. But I’m sitting glued to my television, tuned in not to Nickelodeon or any of the countless cable channels - not even tuned in to the Disney Channel for their free preview weekend. (Disney Channel on basic cable? What name so?) No, I’m watching the local low-powered UHF station. They’re showing Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster, and it’s my first encounter with Godzilla aside from the Raymond Burr-ized King of the Monsters.
I’m not even a pre-teen, so the movie might actually lose me - if not for the hosts who pop up between every commercial break. A mad scientist has invented an exploding kneecap replacement that he’s trying to get his assistant to try out. Every time his assistant comes close to catching on, the scientist distracts him by going back to the movie.
Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast, but I prefer dynamite.
At one time, every market had one. A mad scientist, a vampire (or, oo la la! a vampiress), or some other figure from the old days of horror movies whose job it was to entertain and ease the transition from low-budget creature feature to commercial and back again. It was local programming, and it was cheap to produce.
A handful still exist, and a handful even managed to go national. I can remember getting VHS copies of Mystery Science Theatre from my brother, who lived in a market that actually had Comedy Central. And in my teen years I eagerly collected Elvira videos (thanks to her genius combination of two of my passions at the time - cheesy movies and boobs).
Somewhere along the way, however, the creatures began to disappear from the landscape. The labs closed down. The vampires opened their shutters too early and caught a faceful of the sun. And the vampiresses tossed out their low-cut Morticia Addams classics and replaced them with turtlenecks.
"The cable channels! They're right behind me!"
Somewhere along the way, movies have to be fun again. Elvira stays afloat on the Fox Reality Channel. Joel traded the Sattelite of Love for the Cinematic Titanic, and Mike swapped his bots out for the Film Crew and an audio-only format. But the local hosts - while not extinct - have swiftly become endangered.
We want movies to be fun again. We want crowds to go to the movie theatres at midnight - not just in college towns, but everywhere. We want people to head to drive-ins while they still exist.
And we want the old movies - the weird, the wonderful, and the “My God, What Were They Thinking” - to have a life beyond the dollar DVD bin at Wal-Mart. We want them out where people can see them again.
Support your local host.
Encourage everybody you know to help bring back midnight movies.
And, if you’re so inclined, you can help us out in our own humble attempt by investing some pocket change.
Let’s make movies fun again.
"Come on, girls! Let's get this horrorshow started!"
this is brilliant writing!
yes to it all!
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Comment by Erika — April 2, 2009 @ 9:26 pm