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Sinister Cinema

 


Last week I reviewed Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It stirred up memories from my childhood when I, like the characters in the book, was hooked on horror movies. I may have mentioned this before, but I was a bit of a nerd as a kid. One of the ways this nerdom expressed itself was in the watching of old sci-fi or horror films. Not the newer ones with blood and gore splashed all over the screen, but we are talking about the films of the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and even some of the 60’s. Frankenstein, the Wolfman, The Mummy, Godzilla, the Hammer films, etal.

Every Saturday night at 11:30, I would watch a broadcast from Portland called Sinister Cinema. There you would find such classic old movies, along with not-so-classic movies, some of which were so bad that they were good. The show was hosted by Victor Ives, with an assist from a character named Ravenscroft who never spoke but looked like some sort of Igor inspired thing. Also, there was a character called Head, who was literally a disembodied head that floated around the set with the kind of special effects that a 1970’s local TV production could afford. Head did not speak, but he mouthed words, and once or twice I could almost swear that he mouthed a word that would not be allowed on broadcast TV.

The format of the show was that they showed two movies and sandwiched in-between the two would be a serial (Sinister Serial). The serial would be one of those old 15-minute-long episodes of a larger story. They were from the 30’s or 40’s, or 50’s: Flash Gordon, Radar men from the Moon, Zombies from the Stratosphere (yes, these are real titles. In fact, Zombies from the Stratosphere featured a very young Leonard Nimoy. I think he was a pointed-eared alien in that one too).

I watched it every Saturday night. I usually made it to the serial. To watch the second feature would mean staying up until about 3:00 AM, and I usually wasn’t up for that. Victor Ives was fun. He told us trivia about the movies and would make sarcastic jibes and funny comments about the lower quality offerings. I remember watching a Japanese Godzilla type film called Invasion of Astro-Monster, and Vic, reading the cast list rolled his eyes and shook his head as he read “. . .  Nick Adams?”

My viewership of Sinister Cinema lasted until I discovered a new obsession. In 1975 Saturday Night Live began. Once I discovered it, that was it for Sinister Cinema, because Saturday Night Live also started at 11:30 and I was hooked. It seems like Sinister Cinema went off the air not long after, so I was not the only one. There were only so many TV viewers watching anything at that hour. My guess is, that was the nail in the coffin for Sinister Cinema. Also, I was growing up. I was less enamored with the old horror films (I had seen them all anyway). But looking back, I still remember fondly those old films, even the bad ones.

Star Liner

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