I have complained a bit about the lack of great cartoons and shows that were never aired in my area- as far back as I can remember we never got Ultraman, Speed Racer or the Hanna-Barbera World of Super Adventure. Heck, even the Batman TV series disappeared from Colorado airwaves in late 1970 (there's a story for later, I remember it clearly). We only got the 50s Superman show in the late 70s thanks to the excellent 1978 movie. It was always sort of a challenge to get up early when I was on vacation in West Virginia, since I could watch the 60s Spider-man cartoon, among other great shows.
However, we did get a
lot of monster movies. I mean, A LOT. I bet we saw a giant monster movie grace the small screen at least every 2-3 weeks out of the month. And when those weren't on, there were the Universal monsters. This was all on KWGN Channel 2. The Harryhausen movies tended to show up on the other channels, though not all of them. And then there were always the oddball peplum movies, strange things like
The Terrornauts or the various AIP b/w movies like
Teenage Caveman. I preferred the Japanese movies, but it was nice to get exposed to the various movies from all over the world. Some of them were real stinkers, even for me, like
Maneater of Hydra or
Konga. But then you'd see Atomic Rulers and discover a new superhero.
I got to see most of the Japanese movies that I knew about, though not all of them, and some not until cable showed up. Here's a list of the movies that
never aired in my area until the 80s and cable (per my memory, so take that into consideration):
- Gammera the Invincible
- Earth vs the Flying Saucers
- Gigantis, the Fire Monster
- any Hammer Frankenstein or Dracula
- Mighty Joe Young
- Son of Kong
- Latitude Zero
- The Three Worlds of Gulliver
- Terror Beneath the Sea
- the other three Starman movies
- When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
There's probably more, but overall, I got a really good selection of movies. Both Majin movies,
The Magic Serpent and most of Harryhausen's movies.
The anticipation of seeing a new movie or a favorite old one was great, as was the disappointment when it wasn't shown or you slept through the alarm and missed it completely.
2 comments:
Everything showed up here in So. Cal., though I did not see everything because some of them only played early morning - "Movies til Dawn", like "It Came from Beneath the Sea" and "Gamera vs. Barugon".
I could get up to watch anything, as long as it wasn't a school night. Boy I loved/hated my alarm clock on occasion!
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