Kirk (nkl) wrote, @ 2009-01-09 13:51:00

Can you feature that awful creature...
Bob Wilkins died. This will only have meaning to people who lived in the Bay Area in the '70s, and watched late night TV. [article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/01/09/DDQS15665F.DTL&type=entertainment] He was the host of Creature Features, which showed mostly very bad horror movies on Saturday nights throughout the '70s. (I later came to realize that similar shows existed all across the country, but back in those pre-internets days Chicago might as well have been Kuala Lumpur, and we all thought we were unique.) Mr. Wilkins was distinguished by very dry wit, a phenomenally understated manner, a huge cigar, and brutal honesty. Week after week, he would tell us just how bad tonight's movie was. It was part of the appeal, plus, on the rare occasions when he had a good movie and said so, you knew it wasn't b.s. He sometimes had guests on the breaks, and while most of these were forgettable, he once did an extended interview with John Carradine about his career which was just amazing. He quit the show in 1979, which continued for several more years with a different host. One thing I took from all those late nights was that somehow a bad horror movie has inherently more interest than a bad movie of almost any other genre. I still think that's so. Also, the opening theme was killer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MrQYSNYLVc&feature=related


So we're back, and apparently Majel Barrett died. (I think this is the first time I've found out about a death from a blog comment--but thanks, Katherine. The Brit papers were all over Harold Pinter, but somehow I didn't see any mention of the most famous computer voice ever.) We've finally succumbed and become Netflix kids, though the problem of finding the time to watch many movies at home remains unchanged. I'm thinking of tallying here what we do watch on Netflix, which shouldn't be hard since we'll be lucky to watch much more than one a month. I'm becoming convinced that P@ is a cyborg. I mean, three kids, a job, all the usual modern hassles, and you still watched 199 movies in a year (more than one every two days)? But if P@ doesn't require sleep, then maybe it makes sense..

	pshift2 2009-01-11 11:31 (link)
	Since part of my job requires watching movies on occasion, that certainly helped me reach that (admirable?) goal. somehow a bad horror movie has inherently more interest than a bad movie of almost any other genre. As someone who has seen a lot of bad movies from all sorts of genres, I will definitely agree with this. -P@ (Reply to this) (Thread)