Wednesday, June 27, 2007

1970s TV Nostalgia...

YouTube is an amazing place. You can truly find ANYTHING there. Any relic from your youth is just there for the remembering and sampling...and it's amazing. Like E-Bay, YouTube offers the opportunity for us to waste hour upon hour reliving nostalgic remembrances from days and productions long forgotten.

My latest two YouTube finds are included in this post because they have some personal meaning for me; growing up a kid in the 1970s. I feel like these clips represent memories hidden deep in the recesses of my twisted brain. So proceed at your own peril.

The first clip (below) is the intro for "The 4:30 PM Movie," which aired every weekday in the late 1970s on WABC, Channel 7 in New York. Without exaggeration, this is the place where I first fell in love with movies. I remember being in kindergarten and being excited about Planet of the Apes week. The 4:30 movie aired Planet of the Apes (in two parts) on Monday and Tuesday, and then Beneath the Planet of the Apes on Wednesday, then Escape on Thursday, and Conquest on Friday. Other movies I saw for the first time on the 4:30 movie: Soylent Green, The Omega Man and The Green Slime. And every movie viewing experience- every wondrous movie viewing experience - was preceded by this very disco-decade intro clip. I don't know that it will mean much of anything to people who didn't grow up with it. But for me, it's like visiting an old friend.





The second clip (below) is from "Chiller" the WPIX 11 (out of New York) horror movie night that aired every weekend. If the 4:30 Movie introduced me to many movies in general, then Chiller introduced me to the world of horror. I'll never forget watching some terrifying black-and-white movie (and I still don't know what it is...) about invisible pterodactyl eggs hatching and the monsters killing people. This and other horrors awakened my youthful interest in the macabre. Just the very sight of this "intro" or header had me - at five years old - scurrying to the sofa and hiding my eyes behind my hands. It still freaks me out...




Funny how these clips just bring back a world of memories.

2 comments:

  1. I'm having nostalgia for a decade for which I wasn't even alive. If you go to Veoh and type "Rutland," you can watch every episode of Eric Idle and Neil Inness' brilliant show Rutland Weekend Television. Sketch slightly in the vein of Monty Python, which tons of Idle's signature self-depreciation and penchant for playing excruciatingly annoying characters.

    This is not, and probably will not, make it to DVD.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous4:47 AM

    Thanks for the tip about Rutland Weekend Television! Great stuff! I work a lot with Yorkshire Television - so right up my alley!

    ReplyDelete

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