I grew up watching movies on TV on weekday afternoons. One of the stations in our area had a good catalog of films to draw from and showed classics in their time slot from 3 until 5. Another channel in our area tried various afternoon movie strategies to varying degrees of success. The worst of these times is the focus of this story.
My earliest memories of their weekday afternoon programming included the Sherriff Big Jim Show. Groups of kids like Scout Troops would appear on the Sherriff Big Jim Show where they would drink Big Red Soda, eat McDonalds hamburgers, and watch Roy Rogers and Gene Autry westerns. After a while, they dropped Sherriff Big Jim and the kids and just showed the westerns. This was always fun to watch.
A few years later they decided to upgrade the movies for the afternoon time slot. They got the rights to a group of films from Universal Pictures from the 1960’s. This was in the 1970’s so the films were relatively new. There are 4 films that I remember seeing that were part of this package. They were not memorable because of the quality of the films, good or bad. They were memorable because they showed them all the time. I get the impression that the film package they bought didn’t include enough titles to show something every day. Their film package would have probably worked better if they were showing them once a week. The films I remember them showing from this time would sometimes air 2 or 3 times in one week. Even if you really liked a movie, this was overkill. Here are some of the titles and my memories of each one.
The Birds – This film is probably the best known from this group. I like this movie but seeing it every day can weigh on you. The image of the guy with his eyes poked out isn’t something you would expect them to show every afternoon when the kids have just gotten home from school. And the kids singing “Risselty Rosselty, now now now” can get on your nerves the first time you see this one. Imagine hearing every other day for a week.
Munster Go Home – I’m probably more familiar with the Munsters from this movie than the television show. This is a color film, so you get to see Herman Munster in green makeup. The story involves the Munsters taking a ship to England to visit a manor they have inherited. They also take a custom-built dragster called Drag-u-la which Herman uses to win a race. Not only did I see this more often, I saw it before I watched the TV series so I liked it better. It took some getting used to for me to watch the series with a laugh track.
Tammy and the Doctor – This film is the third in a series of four films about a girl from the Mississippi swamps falling in love with men from more sophisticated areas of the country. Debbie Reynolds was the star of the first film, with Sandra Dee taking over for the 2nd and 3rd installments of the series. I think I’ve seen most of this series although I don’t remember Debbie Watson, the star of the last of these films. Tammy and the Doctor also features Peter Fonda as the love interest. I don’t remember much about this film other than the circumstances around one of the times I saw it. It appeared to be a reel change in the film where Sandra Dee and Peter Fonda were talking in the hall of the hospital where the film takes place. Suddenly the screen went blank. After a short wait, a message came on the screen that said, “Technical Difficulties – Please Stand By”. Because of this message, we started paying more attention to what was happening on the screen than before. My sister and our friend Nan started taking turns “Standing By” then television set. This message stayed on the screen for at least 30 minutes. We had gone back to playing, barely paying any attention to the television when we suddenly heard the theme song from Car 54 Where Are You. They showed an entire episode of this series without commercial interruption. It’s worth noting that this is a series that was not being regularly aired on this channel at that time. When that episode was done, they went back to Tammy and the Doctor for less than 5 seconds. After another small break they came back with a black and white episode of a series called Danger Is My Business. It turns out that there are only 5 episodes of this series with the first 2 airing in 1958 and the rest in 1962. This show didn’t look like anything we wanted to see and we gave up on Tammy so we changed channels and watched Gilligan’s Island.
Out of Sight – This film was made in 1966 during the popularity explosion of the James Bond and Beach Party movies. This film tries to cash in on both of these fads with a secret agent’s butler, named Homer, covering for his injured boss to save a rock and roll show from a criminal organization called F.L.U.S.H. Homer is portrayed by Johnathan Daly, an actor that has a Don Knotts vibe. There are a lot of women in bikinis in this film as is usual in beach themed movies. But there are three female agents for F.L.U.S.H. that the butler must contend with who go by the names of Scuba, Tuff Bod and Wipe Out. One of the more memorable scenes features an encounter between Homer and Tuff Bod where he is placed in a box and speakers come in from each side next to his ears blaring annoying non-rock music. Later, Homer manages to swap places with Tuff Bod. It also features a character named Huh! because that’s all his character ever says. I think the best music in the film is performed by The Turtles but the most memorable performances are by Freddie and the Dreamers. They are treated like they were The Beatles. The shots of the crowd reacting to them is actually footage of girls reacting to The Beatles from a documentary called What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. Their song Funny Over You is a highlight. We also get to see lead singer Freddie Garrity do his trademark dance The Freddie and do zany leaps at the end of his songs. I never thought this was a good movie, but I saw it so many times that it stuck with me. It’s odd that today it is so hard to find. As far as I know, it’s never been given a home video release, and rarely plays on any channels. It’s not on any streaming services but below standard versions can be found on YouTube.
