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Midnight Movie
A midnight movie is a low-budget genre picture or distinctly nonmainstream film programmed for late-night screening or broadcast. The term is rooted in the practice that emerged in the 1950s of local television stations around the United States airing cheap genre films late at night, often with a host delivering ironic asides. As a cinematic phenomenon, the midnight presentation of offbeat movies started toward the end of the following decade in a few urban centers, particularly New York City. The midnight run of '' El Topo'' at New York's Elgin Theater that began in December 1970 sparked a trend that eventually spread across the country. The screening of nonmainstream pictures at midnight was aimed at building a cult film audience, encouraging repeat viewing and social interaction in what was originally a countercultural setting. The national after-hours success of ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'' in the late 1970s and the changing economics of the film exhibition indust ...
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Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert (koʊlˈbɛər/ kohl-BAIR, born Émilie "Lily" Claudette Chauchoin (ʃoʃwɛ̃/ show-shwan); September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996) was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway theater, Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of Sound film, talking pictures. Initially contracted to Paramount Pictures, Colbert became one of the few major actresses of the period who worked freelance; that is to say, independently of the studio system. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Colbert the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars, 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema. With her Good American Speech, Mid-Atlantic accent, versatility, witty dialogues, aristocratic demeanor, and flair for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert became one of the most popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s. In all, Colbert acted in more than 60 movies. Among her frequent co-stars were Fred MacMurray in seven films (1935–1 ...
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Maila Nurmi
Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi (December 11, 1922 – January 10, 2008), known professionally as Maila Nurmi, was an American actress best known for creating the Camp (style), campy 1950s character Vampira. She was raised in Astoria, Oregon, where she worked in tuna and salmon canneries. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1940, with hopes of becoming an actress. After several minor film roles, she found success with her Vampira character, television's first horror host. Nurmi hosted her own series, ''The Vampira Show'', from 1954 to 1955, on KABC-TV. After the show's cancellation, she appeared in the 1959 cult film ''Plan 9 from Outer Space'', directed by Ed Wood. She is also billed as Vampira, despite not playing the character, in the 1959 films ''The Beat Generation (film), The Beat Generation'', where she plays a beatnik poet, and crime film ''The Big Operator (1959 film), The Big Operator''. She was portrayed by Lisa Marie (actress), Lisa Marie in Tim Burton's 1994 biopic, ''Ed Wo ...
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WBBZ-TV
WBBZ-TV (channel 67) is a television station licensed to Springville, New York, United States, serving the Buffalo, New York, Buffalo area. It has a primary affiliation with MeTV, but is otherwise programmed as an independent station. WBBZ-TV is owned by ITV of Buffalo, a company controlled by former news photographer Philip A. Arno. The station's studios are located at the Eastern Hills Mall in the town of Clarence (in a census-designated place called Harris Hill), and its transmitter is located near Springville in the hills of southern Erie County, New York, Erie County. History Early years The station was founded as WJTQ on March 12, 1993. Bill Smith, an amateur radio enthusiast, and his wife, Caroline Powley, daughter of late LPTV innovator John R. Powley, changed its call letters to WNGS (for "Buffalo wings") in May 1993. WNGS initially broadcast on analog UHF channel 67. Although licensed as a full-power station, it transmitted its analog signal at low power with a northw ...
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Retro Television Network
Retro TV (stylized as retrotv), formerly known as Retro Television Network, is an American broadcast television network owned by Get After It Media. The network mainly airs classic television sitcoms and drama series from the 1950s through the 1980s, although it also includes more recent programs from the 1990s and 2000s. Through its ownership by Luken, Retro TV is a sister network to several broadcast network properties that are wholly or jointly owned by the company, including the family-oriented Family Channel and country music-oriented network Heartland. At its outset, Retro TV was designed to be broadcast on the digital subchannels of television stations; however in recent years, the network's affiliate body has been drawn down to primarily low-power stations, as many station groups have replaced the network on the subchannels of their full-power major network affiliates with similarly formatted networks such as Antenna TV and MeTV, which have assumed rights to man ...
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Off Beat Cinema
''Off Beat Cinema'' is a two-hour hosted movie show that airs on television stations throughout the United States in late-night time slots. It originated from WKBW-TV in Buffalo, New York from its launch on Sunday October 31, 1993 until July 2012. It shifted to local competitor WBBZ-TV on August 4, 2012. ''Off Beat Cinema'' features a broad range of films described by the show's staff as "the Good, the Bad, the Foreign..." but mostly cult movies such as ''Night of the Living Dead'', ''Santa Claus Conquers the Martians'' and even more art house fare such as ''The Third Man'' in a format not unlike the Creature Double Feature of the 1970s and 1980s. On occasion, a clip show will air featuring themed collections of short films and episodes of film serials and television shows (the annual Christmas special follows this format, with another example being the “Night of Superheroes” that included Flash Gordon and Commando Cody serials and the Fleischer Studios ''Superman'' ...
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WKBW-TV
WKBW-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Buffalo, New York, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios at 7 Broadcast Plaza in downtown Buffalo and a transmitter on Center Street in Colden. WKBW-TV is one of a number of local Buffalo television stations that are available over-the-air and on cable television in Canada, particularly in Southern Ontario. For years, it was carried via microwave to cable systems in such areas as Corning and Horseheads; this ended when WENY-TV signed on as the ABC affiliate for the Elmira market. History Clinton Churchill/CapCities ownership (1957–1986) The Channel 7 frequency was hotly contested during the 1950s; the ''Buffalo Courier-Express'' and former WBUF-TV owner Sherwin Grossman tried several times to gain rights to the channel allocation (to compete with ''The Buffalo News''s WBEN-TV), but was unable to secure a license. The competition for the channel 7 allocation ...
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Sexploitation
A sexploitation film (or sex-exploitation film) is a class of independently produced, Low-budget film, low-budget feature film that is generally associated with the 1960s and early 1970s, and that serves largely as a vehicle for the exhibition of non-explicit sexual situations and Nudity in film, gratuitous nudity. The genre is a subgenre of exploitation films. The term "sexploitation" has been used since the 1940s. In the United States, exploitation films were generally exhibited in urban grindhouse, grindhouse theatres, which were the precursors to the Adult theater, adult movie theaters of the 1970s and 1980s that featured hardcore pornography content. In Latin American cinema, Latin America (most notably in Argentina), exploitation and sexploitation films had meandering and complex relations with both moviegoers and government institutions: they were sometimes censored by democratic (but socially conservative) administrations and/or authoritarian dictatorships (Operation Cond ...
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USA Up All Night
''USA Up All Night'' (also known as ''Up All Night'' and ''Up All Night with Rhonda Shear'') is an American cable television series that aired weekly on Friday and Saturday nights on the USA Network. The show aired from 1989 to 1998. Throughout its run, the program was hosted by Gilbert Gottfried, Caroline Schlitt, and finally Rhonda Shear. Synopsis The program consisted primarily of low-budget films, bookended by in-studio or on-location comedy skits featuring the show's hosts. In addition to skits, the hosts would also provide sardonic comments about the featured film(s), and observations on various Hollywood- and/or New York City-area clubs and attractions (when the series was shooting out of studio). Including commercials, the program typically ran from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. The films aired ranged from cult classics, to B movies, to other fare not appearing on television frequently. ''Up All Night'' would regularly show sexploitation films, with the explicit content edited out. ...
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USA Network
USA Network (or simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Media Group division of Comcast's NBCUniversal. It was launched in 1977 as Madison Square Garden Sports Network, one of the first national sports cable television channels. It was relaunched under its current name on April 9, 1980, and in the years since then, USA steadily gained popularity through its original programming, a long-established partnership with WWF/ WWE and, for many years, limited sports programming. USA increased its sports coverage significantly in 2022, after the shutdown of NBCSN, and now serves as the main cable component of NBC Sports. , USA Network is available to approximately 70 million pay television households in the United States, down from its 2011 peak of 100 million households. History Madison Square Garden Sports Network (1977–1980) USA Network was launched on September 22, 1977, as the Madison Square Garden Sports Network (not to be confused ...
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Prime Time
Prime time, or peak time, is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for television shows. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to broadcast their season's nightly programming. The term ''prime-time'' is often defined in terms of a fixed time period—for example (in the United States), from 8:00p.m. to 11:00p.m. ( Eastern and Pacific Time) or 7:00p.m. to 10:00p.m. ( Central and Mountain Time). In India and some Middle Eastern countries, prime time consists of programmes that are aired on television between 8:00p.m. and 10:00p.m. local time. Asia Bangladesh In Bangladesh, the 19:00-to-22:00 time slot is known as prime time. Several national broadcasters, like Maasranga Television, Gazi TV, Channel 9, and Channel i, broadcast their prime-time shows from 20:00 to 23:00 after their primetime news at 19:00. During Islamic holidays, most of the television station ...
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KCAL-TV
KCAL-TV (channel 9) is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS West Coast flagship KCBS-TV (channel 2). The two stations share studios at the Radford Studio Center on Radford Avenue in the Studio City section of Los Angeles; KCAL-TV's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson. History KFI-TV (1948–1951) Channel 9 signed on the air as commercial station KFI-TV on August 25, 1948, owned by Earle C. Anthony alongside KFI radio (640 AM). However, the station was originally licensed as experimental W6XEA about 1940, and in 1944 applied for the call letters KSEE (which are now used by the NBC affiliate in Fresno, California). It is unknown whether any transmissions occurred under either call sign. The station initially broadcast a limited schedule with six hours weekly, and formally began operations on October 6, 1948, with hours that day. Though KFI had long been affiliated w ...
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Cassandra Peterson
Cassandra Gay Peterson (born September 17, 1951) is an American actress best known for her portrayal of the horror hostess character Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. Peterson gained fame on Los Angeles television station KHJ-TV in her stage persona as Elvira, hosting '' Elvira's Movie Macabre'', a weekly B movie presentation. A member of the Los Angeles-based improvisational and sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings, Peterson based her Elvira persona in part on a " Valley girl"-type character she created while a member of the troupe. The popularity of ''Elvira's Movie Macabre'' led to the 1988 film '' Elvira: Mistress of the Dark'', and later the 2001 film '' Elvira's Haunted Hills'', both starring Peterson as Elvira. The television show was revived in 2010, featuring Elvira hosting public domain films, and airing on This TV until 2011. Elvira returned as a horror hostess in 2014 with ''13 Nights of Elvira'', a 13-episode series produced by Hulu, and again in 2021 for a one-night ...
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