Friday Fright Night & Science Fiction Theater (Local market movie marathons)

I lived in Kansas from the end of '79 till summer 1983 (ages 9 to 13), that was the span of time where my movie buff mania really began.  

A lot of the credit for that mania was a local Kansas City TV station that on Friday nights played a triple-feature horror bill starting at 10:30pm.  Most of the movies were British, primarily 50s thru early 70s; all the Hammer Films, Amicus horror anthology series, etc.  It was a fantastic horror education; seeing Christopher Lee as Dracula for the first time, Peter Cushing as Dr. Frankenstein, multi-story pics like Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors, Tales From The Crypt, etc.

Here is the promo:

Friday Fright Night



After staying up very late on Friday night (thanks, Mom) I would get up late on Saturday morning and eat my cereal while watching Science Fiction Theater which started at 11am.  Same basic idea, triple feature bill of mostly 1950s thru early 70s sci-fi pictures, both US and British.  

Here is the promo for Science Fiction Theater:



Then late Sunday morning it was time to flip the channel and watch Sunday Sci-Fi.  



AND, this was also the time I discovered the BBC and the joys of Benny Hill and Monty Python's Flying Circus.  Those shows aired Saturday night on PBS, back to back starting at 10pm.  They would air 2 episodes a piece, alternating.  

It was a great time to be a kid, living in a tiny town in Kansas with nothing to do...but lots of movies to watch.  Plus I also had HBO.  

That's sick stuff, thanks for sharing. I can't find anything like that anywhere on cable except TCM and AMC on some nights. It seems there used to be a lot more reverence for those classics back when TV was fuzzy with scanlines.

I miss old TV programming. It was so influential growing up. That's where I first saw the Star Trek movies, Westworld (and Futureworld), Theater of Blood with Vincent Price, Planet of the Apes, Halloween, Dune, and especially Jaws (multiple times). Of course movies like these are aired from time to time these days, but I remember seeing them more often as a kid. Maybe I'm just being nostalgic.

There aren't a whole lot of independent TV stations left. Plus, once VCRs came into vogue the studios stopped licensing their films to TV stations because they had a new way to monetize their older titles.

I'm glad somebody responded to this post, I was like a giddy little kid when I found those promos on youtube.