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TV Commerical

 Here's an interesting late night tv curio: A TV Spot for Tales from the Dark Side in Divx 5.05. I recorded this from Cable's WGN a few years ago when they started airing Dark Side episodes among a block of sci-fi shows that included stuff like Xena: Warrior Princess. The episodes were in great shape with little or no WGN "bug" present. Presumably this nice big of claymation was done for the original syndication of the show. Now if only I could find some of those incredible promos for Monsters series.

 

 

Clip #1 - Opening (Incomplete)
Clip #2 - Gilbert Gottfried

 USA Up All Night was one of the cable channel's longest-running late-night programs with the highest profile and funniest host segments of any other series of it's kind. Originally hosted by comedian Caroline Schlitt, the series went into high-gear when Gilbert Gottfried took over the show. Up All Night literally ran through the entire every popular Troma films numerous times as well as showing everything from Return of the Living Dead to Eating Raoul to Flesh Eating Mothers!

 

 

TV Commerical
(Syndicated Vers., Fragment)

Night Flight, is one show that any seasoned late-night veteran can get behind. Even though it's been off the air for nearly a decade, it's eclectic mix of animation, music video and underground sensibilites still have an effect on those lucky enough to have caught it in the heyday.

Here's a windows media commerical for the early 90's syndicated version of Flight.

 

 

"Spooky House" Opening

 

Bumper #1

 

Bumper #2

USA Network's Saturday Nightmares was an interesting programming block of b-films and b-television series which ran in the light 1980's up into the early 90's. The clip above is excerpted from a tape recorded in 1991. The schedule that day ran as follows: first off, a showing the horror film Forever Evil, then an episode of The Hitchiker tv series and then finally an episode of the (new and updated) Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But the fun didn't stop there of course since "Up All Night" brought you through into wee hours of the morning that weekend with two more films! Quite a packed schedule of programming when compared to the black hole that exists in the current schedules of USA and The SciFi channel on a saturday night.

January 2004: I found a partial tape of an early Saturday Nightmares showing of Fulci's The Black Cat with these two interesting new bumpers that I haven't seen in a long time.

 

 

Clip #1 - Intro
Clip #2 - Commander Plays Hangman
Clip #3 - A Superhero's Farewell

 Another great old USA Network program was Commander USA's Groovy Movies. Hosted by Commander USA, an older Superhero retired from the Legion of Decency, would descend into the bowels of the video vault every saturday afternoon and present us with some of the most craziest and wackiest films available on USA's meager cable budget. There was a fair amount of cheapo dubbed Spanish horror as well as a few films from Al Adamson's Independent International such as In Search of Dracula and Horror of the Zombies. Commander would entertain us in between commercial breaks with his specialized brand of humor which included playing with his pal "Lefty" (a hand-puppet which he created by drawing a smiley face on his hand with cigar ash), goofing around some cardboard props and reading letter from his mostly adolescent audience. The Commander may have been no different from the hundreds of other spooky horror hosts across the country but his late-afternoon timespot, odd superhero persona and national Cable exposure definitely set him apart from the crowd. His presence and humor certainly left a lasting impression on thousands of people with nothing to do on Saturdays and his loss will be forever felt by his hundreds of devoted followers. A true original.

 

 

Clip #1
Clip #2

 Nite Flix was the banner under which cable superstation TBS broadcast cult and horror films on late friday/saturday nights. Nite Flix had no real host or vision; essentially it was simply the movies TBS showed every late night of the week a couple neat logos scattered throughout. I included this one because I thought the intro with the lava lamp was appropriately groovy.

 

 

100% Weird!

 TNT's late-night Saturday schedule often included a bizarre early Sunday morning film under the title 100% Weird. The films programmed in this slot were anything from straight horror like Dr. Blood's Coffin or the rare Ballerina and the Vampire all the way into obscure cult fare such as The Christine Jorgenson Story. 100% survived numerous programming changes within TNT and lasted into the late 1990's and early 2000's. Who knows if the logo and attitude have been retired forever even though it looks that way given the current state of TNT's late night.

 

 

"Man in the Moon" Sequence

 


Promo Clip

TNT's Monstervision began as a series of unrelated special programs throughout the year, mostly consisting of large movie marathons of fantasy films culled from Turner's enormous movie catalog. All of the noteworthy Hammer films were shown, many of them presented with new video transfers and containing footage never seen by American audiences. The video sequence shown here eature some interesting stop-motion animation and was used as the generic Monstervision opening for some time, with clips of whatever films shown placed in the "spinning" eyes segment of the promo.

Also presented here is another typical promo for TNT, This one advertising a series of Japanese Sci-Fi films showing on January 25th. Drag those time machines out of the closet and get ready for it.

 

 

Bumper #1

Bumper #2

Featurette

 On Oct 31, 1991, TNT ran a festival of Hammer Dracula films which included Taste the Blood of Dracula, Dracula A.D. 1972 and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. Included here are two of the bumpers created for this great night and a short Christopher Lee Featurette which ran before every film.

 

Clip #1 - Intro
Clip #2 - Outro

Fright Night Theater appears to have been another saturday night syndicated series of horror films which ran in the early 1990s. I believe this program was broadcast mainly on ABC affiliates since that's where I viewed it and I've read other scattered reports of people finding it in the same place. Fright Night's films were almost all exclusively from the Vestron Television Catalog with a heavy emphasis on Charles Band's Empire Pictures product. Everything from Re-Animator to Trancers was on display in all their heavily edited and commercial-filled glory.

As you can see from these clips, Fright Night Theater's opening and closing might have been the most amateurish of any on this page but there's something charming about the cliched "haunted house" feel that makes it one of my favorites.

 

 

The Lost Drive-In

 

One of the more recent late-night cable shows was the Speed Channel's Lost Drive-In. Hosted by actor Bruce Dern, this series showcased a wild assortment of films from biker fare like Chrome and Hot Leather to Deathrace 2000 (uncut!) and even showing of Dern's own film The Driver. There was an emphasis on AIP product but they'd often show very odd stuff I've never even heard of before. The show was slotted late at night on the weekends and Dern really didn't put much into his host segments beyond his infrequent mumbling about "the old days" and some very hard-to-understand anecdotes. The show always began with one of three or four stock host segments where Dern would wander around the "Lost Drive-In" while rambling about concession stands and Drive-In Speakers or some other foolish thing. When Speed Channel changed it's named to simply Speed they also made the unfortunate decision of dropping this series.

 

 

CBS Special Movie

While it's not exactly late-night fare, the cool animated 1980's opening which the CBS Special Movie utilized is of interest simply because it falls in line with the trend of big opening titles sequences full of optical effects that were heavily influenced by Douglas Trumbull's "Stargate" sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Nearly two decades after the revolutionary Stanley Kubrick film we can still see a touch of it in this video. This particular clip was shown before the network premiere of Aliens.

 

 

 

 
©2002 John Hand