If you are a youngster there’s a curious aspect to cable TV you may have never been exposed to; Movies Until Dawn. Back in the pre-history ages, 1980’s, local television stations ran movies all night long, generally starting about midnight and running until the morning shows the next day. These early morning hours were hard to sell to advertisers and so cheap programing was needed. after de-regulation got rid of the requirement that only so many minutes our of each hour could be advertisements, these movies until dawn were replaced by the dreaded infomercials. (No programming ALL advertisement, what an advance.)
In 1987, just before they were to vanish from the screen, Movie Until Dawn were immortalized in the movie, Amazon Women On The Moon. The premise of the film is simple. It is a sketch comedy movie, and the frame that ties the sketches together as if channel surfing. There is a blast of distorted video and audio between the sketches as you are surfed from one channel to another.
The sketches in this film ranges from the freaking hilarious, the titled sketch ‘Amazon Women On The Moon,” is a lovable lampoon of those late 50’s early 60’s low-budget Sc-Fi pictures, to the truly bizarre, “Did you know every seven minutes that is a black person born without soul?” (I swear that’s Herman Cain in that sketch. And if you think I’m serious you need to get your sarcasm detector fixed.) I had not watched the film for a few years and I was concerned that the humor might have become dated, or simply lost its punch from too many viewing, but such fears were misplaced. Video Pirates, though dated in the technology it references, was still funny, and the cast of stars doing small insane bits were just as pleasing.
This is a movie worth seeing, but like all comedies I think it plays better with groups than with a single viewer. Though it did lift my spirits and gave me the exact mood I was looking for Sunday night.