Right. I think part of the problem is commercial deals in TV nowadays. For
example, I once in my late 20s' realized that I had seen at least one ep of the
original Star Trek weekly for the previous two decades non-stop! No matter what
city I was in, I could find Star Trek airing on a local VHF or UHF channel.
Back then, even cash strapped local stations could pay whatever fees were
required to re-air shows like that--and Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, great
movies like Creature from the Black Lagoon, etc. Nowadays, a lot of classic TV
and movie scifi and horror isn't nearly as ubiquitous, despite an explosion in
the number of cable channels in those very genres. I think there's been a lot
of deals where companies have bought exclusive rights to air programming,
or--such as the case with TCM--own the films outright. So, I haven't seen the
OS Trek on TV in ages, other than when the local ABC affiliate aired the
digital enhanced version at 3 am on Sundays. I haven't seen DS9 in ages,
Voyager seems to be Spike TV's thing, and they air it at 2 am. Classic horror
movies starring the likes of Cushing and Lee only get pulled out of the TCM or
AMC vaults during Halloween. We get subjected to horrible SyFy Originals, but
don't get to see at least entertaining camp like "Attack of the Killer
Tomatoes", "Gator", or even the "Evil Dead" movies much at all.
Honestly, back in the days of Elvira, Kung Fu Theatre, and pre-cable, the
scifi/horror watching was much better than it is today.
I think that's why so many people are turning to the likes of NetFlix and the
Internet, so that they can find all the programs that the cables stations seem
to have locked up in exclusivity deals.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mr. Worf" <hellomahog...@gmail.com>
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 3:42:48 AM
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] "Genesis II" is the Movie with the Bullet Train
That's true! Every now and then Spike will show a bunch of martial art movies
(also IFC) but that is only a couple of times a year. SCIFI is impossible to
catch unless Will Smith is in the movie.
One thing that I loved about old tv stations was that they all had their own
collection of films. One of the local stations that was sold to WB was bought
back by the original owner and now he is running old tv shows, and movies
again. On Saturday nights they show old horror movies! Just like the good old
days! :)
Check out this list:
Perry Mason, Streets of San Francisco, The Flying Nun etc.
On Fri, Aug 27, 2010 at 12:21 AM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net >
wrote:
I used to love watching those movies when I was a kid in the '70s. Back then, I
had several sources to watch scifi movies:
ABC used to do a movie every day at 3 pm CST, after the soaps (and maybe after
Dark Shadows). Each week had a theme, such as an Elvis week. There was always a
scifi week around the corner, so I'd be treated to stuff like "When Worlds
Collide" or "The Angry Read Planet" in the afternoon for five days in a row.
CBS used to have a Friday night program called CBS Late Night, that came on
after the talk shows at around 12:30 am CST. Late Night would air scifi and
horror programs. That's where I saw stuff like "Demon Seed", "Colussus the
Forbin Project", "The Manitou", "Fall of the House of Usher", "The Raven", "The
Pit and the Pendulum", etc.
The local NBC affiliate used to air scifi and horror at around midnight on
Saturdays. i saw a lot of obscure horror, like one starring teen idol Frankie
Avalon about a bunch of teens getting offed by a serial killer in a house in
which they were spending the night. I remember watching a lot of movies about
devil worshippers, witches, vampires, and the like. It was on this NBC segment
that I saw both of those two-head transplant movies I was mentioning the other
day. NBC also aired a series called "Thriller", I believe, hosted by Boris
Karloff. That aired around 1 or 2 am on Sunday mornings, after the late night
horror/scifi movie.
A local station--Channel 11 in Fort Worth--had a scifi/horror slot on Sundays
around 1 pm. I remember settling in to watch movies as Mom fried chicken and
cooked peach cobbler for Sunday dinner. on that station i saw movies like "The
deadly Mantis", "Them", the original "The thing", "The Blob", and a lot of
obscure fare, such as one in which a vampire was menacing a town in teh Old
West, and was killed by a gunslinger who used a bullet with a Crucifix
inscribed on it.
Even later, in the '80s, another local station in DFW started airing
scifi/horror on Saturday afternoons. A lot of them were forgettable, whose
names escape me, but many later ended up on MST3K. Elvira's show was aired on
this station as well, along with Kung Fu Theatre later in the day!
Amazing: we had maybe five or six or seven VHF/UHF channels back then, no cable
of course, no VCRs or DVDs, and no movie rentals. Yet those few stations
somehow managed to air more scifi, horror, animation,and kung fu on a regular
basis than I can get even know with dozens and dozens of cable channels to
watch.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mr. Worf" < hellomahog...@gmail.com >
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2010 3:01:29 AM
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] "Genesis II" is the Movie with the Bullet Train
I forgot to mention that Genesis II is out on DVD.
On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 11:30 PM, Keith Johnson < keithbjohn...@comcast.net >
wrote:
Got it. The movie in which I saw the system of high speed underground bullet
trains ("vactrains") was "Genesis II", starring Alex Cord. It also had Mariette
Hartley, who had a guest spot on an ep of Star Trek (the one where Spock and
McCoy go back in time to a planet's ice age, and Spock loses emotional control
and gets the hots for Hartley's character). I remember thinking those trains
were freakin' awesome when I first saw the movie. Here's a blurb about the
movie from Wikipedia.
Note that Cord's character is named "Dylan Hunt", the name that would later be
lifted from Roddenberry's notes, and then applied to the TV series "Andromeda".
**********************************************
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_II_%28film%29
Plot summary
In 1979, NASA scientist Dylan Hunt ( Cord ) is working on "Project Ganymede", a
suspended animation system for astronauts on long-duration space flights . As
chief of the project he volunteers for the first multi-day test. He places
himself in chemically-induced hibernation deep inside Carlsbad Caverns ; while
there, his lab is buried in an earthquake . The monitoring equipment is damaged
and fails to awake him at the intended end of the test. He awakens instead in
2133 A.D., emerging into a chaotic post-apocalyptic world. An event called "The
Great Conflict" (a third and final World War ) destroyed the civilization of
Hunt's time. Various new civilizations have emerged in a struggle for control
of available resources. Those with the greatest military might and the will to
use it have the greatest advantage.
Dylan Hunt is accidentally found and rescued by an organization calling
themselves "PAX", which stood for peace (from the Latin). PAX members are the
descendants of the NASA personnel who worked and lived at the Carlsbad
Installation in Dylan's time. They are explorers and "scientists" who preserve
what little information and technology survive from before the Conflict, and
who seek to learn and acquire more in an effort to build a new civilization.
Members of PAX find Dylan Hunt still sealed in the hibernation chamber. They
revive him, and are thrilled to meet a survivor from before the Conflict.
An elaborate Subshuttle transit system was constructed during the 1970's due to
air transportation becoming too vulnerable to air attack. The Subshuttles were
a rapid transport system that utilized magnetic levitation transports . They
operated inside vactrain tunnels and ran at hundreds of miles per hour. The
tunnels were comprehensive enough to cover the entire globe. The PAX
organization has inherited the still working system and used it to dispatch
their teams of troubleshooters.
In the area once known as Arizona and New Mexico a totalitarian regime known as
Tyranians rule the area. The Tyranians are mutants who possess greater prowess
than average humans (they can be identified as possessing two navels ). Their
leader discovers that Hunt has knowledge of nuclear power systems, and they
offer him great rewards if he can repair their failing nuclear power generator.
However, once under their power they attempt to force him to reactivate a
nuclear missile system in their possession, with which they intend to destroy
their enemies and dominate the region. Hunt is appalled by this small-scale
replay of the events that must have led to the Conflict. He leads a revolt of
the enslaved citizenry, sabotages the nuclear device, and destroys the reactor.
To Hunt's dismay, the PAX leaders assert their pacifist nature and intentions.
They are attempting to rebuild an idealistic society using all that was deemed
"good" from Earth's past, and they regard Hunt's interference with a rival
civilization and his destructive tactics as antithetical to this end. However,
they also see great good in him and value his knowledge of the past. They ask
Hunt to join PAX permanently but only if he can agree to never again take human
lives. Hunt half-heartedly agrees. Security Chief Yuloff states that the
rationale of taking lives to justify the saving of lives was what allowed "The
Great Conflict" to happen in the first place.
