Simple Tricks and Nonsense

You can credit this enlightened attitude -- if that's how you choose to see it, and I do -- on the hours that I spent parked in front of the tube as a small boy, back in those nearly forgotten days before cable or home video. You see, kids, way back in the Pleistocene, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and small furry creatures like myself huddled in the cool blue glow of giant console TVs with manual knobs on the front and no remote controls, local TV channels often filled their schedules with "back-catalog" (i.e., old) movies that they bought or rented for cheap. The time slots that are now dominated by those mind-numbing, soul-sucking, Satan-spawned infomercials were instead given over to "movie shows," which were frequently hosted by regional "celebrities" of dubious ability. For instance, I very fondly remember KSL's Big Money Movie, an afternoon broadcast that featured a Salt Lake media personality with the improbable name of Bernie Calderwood. The title derived from the show's gimmick, in which Bernie would pull a name and phone number from the spinning drum on his podium and make a call; if the lucky person was home and watching the show, he or she won some cold, hard cash. I clearly remember watching the 1953 version of The War of the Worlds and a fun little comedy called Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (among many, many others), waiting and hoping that Bernie would call me. Somehow, the fact that you had to submit your name and number, and that you no doubt had to be a grown-up to get your cash, never quite made it into my youthful head. No matter. The movie was the important thing.

Later, when I got a little older, I got my genre fix from KSTU's Sci-Fi Theater on Saturday afternoons and KTVX's Nightmare Theater late on Saturday nights. And on PBS, there was Matinee at the Bijou.

Bijou was a little different than the others -- it was syndicated, for one thing, instead of being locally produced. It was also a much longer show, lasting, as I recall, four or five hours. That was because it sought to recreate the pre-television matinee experience, when you could spend all day at your neighborhood cinema watching cartoons, newsreels, shorts, serials, and, finally, a double-feature of a small "B" picture and the full-blown, high-budget A-feature. I rarely watched an episode all the way through; just like the real matinees of yore, I ducked in and out at will, just catching segments before going on about my business. I always liked the serials best, both because I just liked the cheesy damn things and because there wasn't any other place to see them in those days.

In time, the local movie shows vanished from the airwaves. I suspect they were done in by video-rental stores and specialized cable channels. The same things probably killed off Matinee at the Bijou as well. But on television, as in science fiction and comic books, nothing is ever truly dead, is it?

Bernie Calderwood may be long gone, but I got the word earlier today that Matinee at the Bijou is coming back. The producers of the new Bijou have a blog and are promising to be back on the airwaves by fall of next year, with Debbie Reynolds (Princess Leia's mom!) as host. The show will be broadcast in hi-def, and they're planning to run the 12-part serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (which was the third of the three Flash serials), one chapter per Bijou episode.

This news has really put a smile on my face today... I'll be watching for this one.