Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts

Monday, October 18, 2021

Here's the thing about Halloween Kills...

I’ve been seeing such a discourse on social media surrounding this film, which is AMAZING! Having a healthy discussion about the merits of a movie like Halloween Kills is super important and I like seeing everyone’s opinions, both for and against the movie. In fact, REGIONFREE will be doing a live discussion tonight that you should absolutely check out!

That said, I’ve seen a lot of folks out there trashing other people’s opinions because they don’t align with their own. This movie landed on Thursday night in advanced screenings and as I’m posting this it’s Tuesday and Halloween Kills is still dominating my Twitter feed and I’m not really liking the conversations I’m seeing.

In video gaming circles, we call it “fanboy”-ism (I added the -ism). I’m not sure what to call it in the film community.

Anyway, the video says the rest.

Hope you enjoy,
R

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Halloween 2020 | The Raccoons – Monster Mania (1988)

If you’re from outside of Canada, you’ve likely never heard of The Raccoons, although it did air in the US on the Disney Channel, I think? It was a cartoon created originally as a Christmas special titled The Christmas Raccoons for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1980 by showrunner Kevin Gillis, who produced this show and more recently Atomic Betty.

After a series of TV specials, like The Raccoons on Ice and The Raccoons and the Lost Star, The Raccoons finally started airing as a regular television series in 1985 and ran until 1991.

It’s hard to describe exactly how beloved The Raccoons is up here in Canada, but I think you can liken it to something like The Smurfs. It was a wholesome, fun cartoon that anyone could enjoy. Oh, and they played hockey!

So, why am I bringing this show up now? It’s Halloween, for crying out loud!

Well, I always remembered watching an episode of The Raccoons that I thought was their Halloween special. I distinctly remembered watching TV one day and seeing a commercial that a monster episode was going to air around Halloween and that I was stoked! Well, I recently stumbled upon that promo – big thanks to the Betamax King on YouTube!

I saw this video a while ago, so I decided to add this episode of The Raccoons to my Halloween watch-list, which I curate during the off-months in preparation for September and October – yes, I’m a geek. It was just last week when I finally got to sit down to it!

And… this is most definitely not a Halloween special. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun and it definitely (kinda) had a monster in it, but it was apparent fairly quickly that this was simply aired around Halloween, but was not produced with that intent.

The Raccoons features anthropomorphic woodland animals that live in Evergreen Forest. It’s focused on three raccoons: married couple Ralph and Melissa and their live-in friend, Bert? Kind of a weird relationship there. They’re usually up against Cyril Sneer, a wealthy industrialist who is always trying to make a buck. His son Cedric is a friend to the eponymous Raccoons. It turns out the Sneers are aardvarks? I’ll be honest, when I was a kid I thought it was weird that they were the only two “monster” characters in the show, because I could never place what animal they were supposed to be. You live and you learn!

“Monster Mania!” is set during the summer. One day Bert and Melissa are hanging out by the lake (better watch out, Ralph!) and they see a fire-breathing monster emerge from the lake! Melissa grabs her trusty camera and manages to snap a blurry picture of the creature.

Ralph runs the local newspaper, The Evergreen Standard, so Melissa publishes her picture and the news story, which picks up national attention, bringing lots of news crews and monster hunters to the Evergreen Forest. This all plays perfectly into Cyril Sneers pockets as he benefits on the extra publicity.

The episode is an obvious nod to “real-life” stories about the Loch Ness monster or Ogobogo in Lake Okanagan, British Columbia. It even receives the moniker “Evie”, much like “Nessie” or “Oggy”. If you’re a regular reader, you know how much I love old paranormal TV shows, especially around Halloween, and they often prominently featured these stories, so I appreciate this premise for their “Halloween” episode.

As usual with the show, it features environmentalist motifs. Cyril Sneer wants to mow down the lake to make an amusement park to benefit from the monster’s exposure and all the news crews and thrill seekers visiting the lake are trashing the surrounding area. Guess who wins in the end? The environment!

When writing about The Raccoons you just can’t leave out the amazing music produced by Lisa Lougheed. For this particular episode, the producers featured a song called “Growin’ Up”, which plays in a hilarious scene while some of Sneer’s cronies – who were totally oblivious pigs – are trying to do a water-skiing demo. This is just one of the great songs Lougheed performed and produced for the series over the years, but the most notable song she did was without a doubt “Run With Us”, which was the outro music to every episode. Walk up to just about any Canadian in their 30s and 40s and ask them to sing “Run With Us”. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

Anyway, spoiler alert – Cyril Sneer built the monster as a hoax to drum up business and, of course, The Raccoons foil his plans once again. Ralph – who was jealous at Melissa’s success the whole episode – gets to eat a little crow, too. Happy ending!

You know what’s really cool? It looks like Kevin Gillis is trying to reboot the series! I’ve seen some concept art for The Raccoons: The New Adventures, and it looks really great and pays homage to the old show quite nicely. I’m really looking forward to it! What’s also awesome is that it looks like all of the old episodes of The Raccoons have been legitimately posted to YouTube by the production company Run With Us Productions, so you can actually kick back and watch “Monster Mania!” for yourself!

It’s admittedly not a Halloween episode – in fact, another episode that aired years later titled “The Phantom of Sneer Mansion” would be a better fit – but it did play a part in my Halloween in 1988 and it was a great trip down memory lane revisiting The Raccoons!

Happy Halloween!
R

Wednesday, October 21, 2020

REGIONFREE Episode #2 | Halloween Special

Hey everyone!

Sorry things have been so quiet around here lately! I’ve had some other projects on the go – hopefully some that I can share with you soon! – and it’s been eating up my free time. Rest assured there is more Halloween-y RETRODEF content coming in the next week or so.

That said, tonight at 8PM ET we are livestreaming REGIONFREE Episode #2, which will be about all things Halloween and horror! You can check out the stream here:


If you want to check out the stream on VOD, you’ll have to subscribe to our Patreon. Please consider trying us out! If not, we do post clips of each episode to the YouTube channel after it airs!

Our first official episode, as well as our reveal show, are available for free on YouTube right now, so please check those out, too!


We hope to see you in the chat tonight during out Halloween episode!

Cheers,
R

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Memory, Blog | Gundam Wing on YTV’s The Zone

 I want to take you back now to… THE YEAR 2000! April 24th, 2000, to be exact. I was a teenager who was into geeky things and one of those things was anime. I’d had plenty of run-ins with anime from the ’80s onward – or as we called it, “Japanimation” (still don’t know why that didn’t stick). Some of my favourite shows as a kid were Astro Boy and Tekkaman, but at the time I had no clue they were any different from G.I. Joe or He-Man.

In my teenage years I had more of an understanding of the anime scene and would start to seek out some of the best stuff available, like Bubblegum Crisis, Akira, and Galaxy Express 999.

Most of the stuff that I wanted to get my hands on was hard sci-fi that just had a completely different look-and-feel that we didn’t get in the West. I was certainly drawn to that. The thing is, I wouldn’t say I was or am an “anime fan”. There are plenty of shows and movies that I absolutely love, which – although they certainly are anime – I don’t even really care to put in that “bucket”. I just enjoy them, because they’re awesome!

One of those shows – if not the show – is Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.

I stumbled upon Gundam Wing one night while doing my usual thing – channel surfing. I was a TV junkie as a kid and even into early adulthood. Honestly, it’s something I miss. It was totally normal for me to eat dinner and then spend the next six hours glued to the tube. On this particular day, which was Easter Monday in my neck-of-the-woods, I would’ve had a whole lazy day in front of the TV. Good times!

I watched just about anything and everything, but YTV (stood for Youth Television, maybe?) was definitely a station of choice. It was the place to watch cartoons in Canada, although Fox Kids certainly gave it a run for its money in the Saturday morning market during the ’90s. I want desperately to gush about YTV and its evening programming block called The Zone, but I’ll keep it brief for this post and just say that it contained slightly more “adultish” shows for the nighttime crowd and was a place a teenager could still safely watch cartoons without losing their self-perceived edge.

At the time, the phenomenon that was Dragon Ball Z was syndicating in Canada and the US. It wasn’t the show’s first kick at the cat, but in late-1999 and onto the early-2000s the show was being re-aired uncut for the first time, so the fervor for it was reaching new heights. I had seen an episode here and there of its predecessor, Dragon Ball, which aired a few years earlier on Saturday mornings and… it wasn’t really my thing. A friend of mine was all about Dragon Ball Z and kept recommending it, so I thought I’d give it a shot – heck, what did I have to lose? I had all the time in the world back then!

On the evening in question, however, Dragon Ball Z was not being aired. In its stead was Gundam Wing. I’m assuming that after seeing the resurging interest in DBZ that Gundam Wing was a bit of a safe bet to bring to North America. Unlike DBZ, which ran for over 150 episodes, Gundam Wing only had 49 and a sequel OVA (original video animation), which is geekspeak for an “anime movie”. Producing English dubs for the whole series was likely less of a scary investment and good way to see if more of this kind of thing would stick during primetime TV blocks in North America. But what do I know!?


In an effort to give the show a foothold, on its first night airing on YTV they played it in place of Dragon Ball Z, so all the fans of that show could give Gundam Wing their undivided attention. Even better was that instead of showing one half-hour episode, they aired three whole shows back-to-back! You could even vote for the show on The Zone’s website to let the station know if it was a hit or not. This was an event night and, boy, let me tell you, event nights on TV were absolutely my thing.

I’d give you a really cerebral description about Gundam Wing and it’s incredibly nuanced story, but at the end of the day it’s a show about giant robots. Awesome giant robots. Like, giant robots with laser swords and machine guns. That’s all I really need, if I’m being honest with myself. It didn’t hurt that it had a really excellent dub, which could always be hit-or-miss with anime. In a brilliant move, Ocean Productions – the company that dubbed this series as well as earlier iterations of Dragon Ball Z – brought in Peter Cullen to narrate some promos for the show. Not only was he Optimus Freakin’ Prime, but he did the same style of narration for Voltron, so it was a really nice throwback for kids like myself who grew up on those shows.

Anime or not, Gundam Wing is just a really great dramatic action show. Sure, the backdrop is a war between Earth and colonized space structures that circle the globe where giant robots are the primary weapon, but don’t let all that get you hung up. I really think it’s a show that anyone can enjoy if they just put aside the trappings of “anime” and give it a shot.

So, why have I written 1000 words about this TV show from my youth, you ask? Well, because recently I came across a VHS tape with a recording of this very night in question! It was amazing to sit back and relive those exact moments again 20 years later and I just wanted to share some of that.

As you can see, I’ve uploaded The Zone segments that aired during the show to the VHyesterdayS YouTube channel and I plan to upload some of the commercials that aired as well, but I think that will be a post on its own. There’s some really good stuff in there! I’ve also uploaded the theme songs for Gundam Wing in all their glory. As much as I’d like to upload the episodes in their entirety, we all know how that’d end. At the very least you can get a taste for the show’s look-and-feel to see if it’s something you’d like to seek out. Sorry for the hum on the audio – it’s an artifact of the tape. I did my best to clean it up, but it still a little buzzy.


I hope you enjoyed this little walk down memory lane!
R

P.S. This tape also has the Gundam Wing OVA I mentioned called Endless Waltz: Special Edition. This did air on YTV as well, but during the later block at night so the commercials aren’t for cartoons and cereal, but ads for adult stuff like toothpaste and the upcoming Sydney Olympics. If I find anything actually interesting, maybe I’ll post some clips from this block, too.

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

REGIONFREE Episode 0 | Conventions, Scream Factory Friday the 13th Box Set, and more!

If you’ve been following me for a while now you’ll know that since 2013 I’ve been a member of a livestream movie discussion show called The Sausage Factory on YouTube.

We a lot of fun over the years, but the group decided it was time for a change. Not only in format and structure, but it was time to change the name and make a fresh start.

The show is now called REGIONFREE! If you’ve been following The Sausage Factory then you should already be in the know. We’ve migrated the social media and YouTube channels over already! If you weren’t following, REGIONFREE is a genre discussion show without borders. Any topic is up for grabs, but the panelists are certainly big time film buffs and horror fans, so that is often topic du jour.

We recently dropped our first show entitled Episode 0. In it we revealed the new name and some of the details on how content will continue go forward. You can watch the new episode on YouTube right now! Also, if you subscribe to the channel or follow us on Twitter and Facebook you’ll get smaller snippets of the live show dropped right into your feed.

Check us out! If you’re a fan of movies, I think you’ll dig it. There are more exciting improvements and changes coming when the show official starts on October 1st, 2020, just in time for Halloween!


Where to follow us!
YouTube: REGIONFREE
Twitter: @REGIONFREEYT
Facebook: REGIONFREEYT

Cheers,
R

Friday, January 31, 2020

Memory, Blog: The Sunday Night Ritual Revisited (Sorta?)

A little under a year ago I wrote an article about my old Sunday Night Ritual, which I pretty well never missed from 1996 right up until 2002!

The Coles Notes: I'd settle in to enjoy the last dregs of my weekend and watch The Simpsons, typically whatever other show Fox chose to air in between, and my favourite show of all time, The X-Files.

So, why are we talking about this crap again? Well, ever since I wrote that post I've had an unyielding urge to try and recreate that Sunday Night Ritual and I finally did it (kinda, sorta)!

I figured if I was going to attempt this, it made the most sense to start at the beginning, so let's travel back to the first night The X-Files aired on Sunday night, which was October 27th, 1996. What was on that night? Well, it being so close to Halloween, Fox decided to air back-to-back episodes of The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror", with a re-run of the prior year's special (VI) followed by the latest edition (VII). Then The X-Files slid into their new slot with "Unruhe", one of the most well-remembered "Monster-of-the-Week" episodes from the series.

It was actually a full night of The Simpsons. Before airing the latest Halloween episodes, there were repeats of "22 Short Films About Springfield" and the "138th Episode Spectacular". "22 Short Films..." is one of my all-time favourite episodes and features a peak into the lives of some of the lesser-known residents of Springfield, including Bumblebee Man. The "138th Episode Spectacular" is the third clip show of the series, but the one everyone remembers, because it had early clips from The Tracey Ullman Show.


I have no idea if I watched these re-runs or not, honestly, but I thought it was too interesting not to note!

If I'm being honest, I probably didn't start out my night watching The Simpsons on this particular evening. At the time I was an avid watcher of 3rd Rock From The Sun, which was on at 9 o'clock AT on NBC. Luckily in 1996 this didn't rub against The Simpsons, because Fox would air the newest episode at 9:30. This would change the following year, however, when The Simpsons would lock in at 9PM followed by King of the Hill at 9:30. 3rd Rock From The Sun, however, moved to Wednesdays in 1997, so it all worked out!

I didn't particularly feel like revisiting 3rd Rock From The Sun for this Sunday Night Ritual, however. When I saw that Fox kicked off their new big Sunday flagship line-up with back-to-back editions of "Treehouse of Horror" I couldn't resist to watch that instead.

The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror VI"



Although a re-run, this is probably one of my favourite Simpsons Halloween specials. If you're unfamiliar with the specials, they would feature three non-canon spooky stories set in Springfield. Let's examine each of them!

As good as "Attack of the 50 Foot Eyesores" is - its basically The Simpsons take on kaiju films - it isn't a stand-out for me. Still a lot of fun, though!

"Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" is exactly what it sounds like; a spoof on A Nightmare on Elm Street. This one features Groundskeeper Willy as a Freddy-like character who is hunting down the children of Springfield because their parents were lazy and negligent, resulting in his death. The nightmare sequences in this episode are just such a great copy of what you would find in an ANOES film and the crazy colour palette of The Simpsons makes them that much more opulent to look at.


"Homer3" might be one of my most well-remembered segments from the entire series. This was the episode where The Simpsons went 3D. Homer, in an attempt to avoid his sisters-in-law Patty and Selma accidentally enters The 3rd Dimension. Ultimately Bart tries to save him, but Homer ends up sucked into our world, which he's quickly okay with after finding an Erotic Cakes store. I can recall the ads for this episode showing Homer in the "real world" and him being in 3D and I couldn't wait to see it. You have to remember that Toy Story had come out the year prior and 3D animation was all the rage, so it made sense for The Simpsons to have some fun with it.

The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror VII"



The latest edition of the long-running Simpsons Halloween specials was great and contained some classic shorts even if they weren't quite as memorable as those in the prior special.

It starts out with "The Thing and I", in which we find out that Bart was actually a conjoined twin, but that his brother, Hugo, was so evil he had to be surgically disconnected and hidden away in the attic. It features some great lines from Dr. Hibbert.


Second up was "The Genesis Tub". Lisa accidentally creates a tiny society while working on her science fair project, which becomes much more advanced than our own society and comes to see her as their god and Bart as their devil. It's an okay segment, but nothing to write home about. It does have one of my favouite quotes that I still use to this day: "Why am I so fat?" You'll have to watch to understand!

"Citizen Kang" is probably the strongest short from the episode. The popular aliens Kang and Kodos, who first appeared in the original "Treehouse of Horror", return - this time abducting then-President Bill Clinton and Senator Bob Dole so they can impersonate them in a bid to take over the planet. It's a great dive into the foolishness of that election and has some really funny lines.

The X-Files "Unruhe"



This episode has all the trappings of an unmemorable MotW episode. It follows a serial killer, which was pretty routine for the show, but I guess it did add the paranormal element of "phantom photograpy". Oh, and Scully gets kidnapped! Real original! The thing is despite it looking weak on paper it's a really great show.

That said, I think the fact that it was the first Sunday episode, was basically their "Halloween" episode for the year, and had Pruitt Taylor Vince in a lead role make it memorable.

If you're not familiar with the name, Vince appeared in many different television and film roles through out the 90s and early 2000s, most famously Identity (2003), and has a very distinct feature that makes him stand out: an eye condition known as nystagmus, in which his eyes sort of vibrate back-and-forth.

It all comes together in a great episode that kicked off the shows Sunday night run, which lasted right up until the finale episode in 2002.


Now, I have to be honest with you... this was all a bit of a cheat. You see, I originally planned to re-create this ritual in October of last year. I wanted it to be a feature for my Halloween 2019 stuff, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't squirrel away the time on a Sunday to make it happen. I was initially going to wait until next year to try again, but like I said before this has been on my brain since last February. I've tried repeatedly to make it happen and with my hectic life and busy work schedule it just kept slipping through the cracks.

So, I did what I had to and I just waited for the opportunity to present itself, which finally happened the past Tuesday. I know, I know. How can you have a Sunday Night Ritual on a Tuesday!? Finding two hours to sit down and relax just doesn't happen for me right now and I had to run with it.

Beside the fact that it was on the wrong night, it also wasn't very relaxing. After a long day at work, a quick supper, taking my eldest to swim class, and finally getting all the kids to bed I decided to shoe-horn this in and I just couldn't wind-down. Revisiting the episodes were all great fun, but when I used to watch these shows I would practically fall asleep it was so chill and that just wasn't the case this time around.

It also didn't help that I had to stream The Simpsons from Disney+, which meant I had to sit at my desk and watch these shows. That just doesn't jive. I have to be firmly ensconced in my couch or bed for true authenticity.

So this particular attempt at The Sunday Night Ritual was a bit of a failure. But I don't think I'm done there. I have to give this another try and really make it as authentic as possible, so instead of trying to cram the event in because I'm hankering to do it, I'm going to just take my time and make it work on a rare quiet Sunday, when (hopefully) the kids are all sound asleep and I can really enjoy it. Even if that happens in like 13 years...

Anyway, I hope you had fun with this trip down memory lane, if only to enjoy reading about the TV shows that aired that night.

Hopefully there are more to come!
R


Friday, January 10, 2020

Memory, Blog: Before The Blair Witch Project There Was UFO Abduction



In a previous post, I wrote about the fateful night I came across Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County on a TV station I did not frequent: UPN.

In that article, I dropped the "shocking" revelation that the film was a television production by filmmaker Dean Alioto and not a real alien abduction, but I also mentioned this wasn't Mr. Alioto's first brush with this sort of conspiracy.

Rewind to 1989 and Dean Alioto's first film foray, UFO Abduction.

This is where the plot really thickens, like a good pot of Kraft Dinner.

You see, Dean Alioto wanted to make a small indie film in the late '80s and decided on the hot topic of alien visitation. The story is told through a perspective of one character, who is recording a family event with a camcorder. Although it was released almost a decade after Cannibal Holocaust, the film predates The Blair Witch Project and The Last Broadcast by ten years, as well. In a way, it's like the grand daddy of the Found Footage genre (I guess that makes Cannibal Holocaust the great grandpa). That said, UFO Abduction doesn't really stack up on the quality front.

This is a very small budget movie. Shot entirely on a VHS camcorder in essentially one location, the film's run-time is a little over an hour.

Tell me if you recognize this setup: A man decides to videotape his niece's 5th birthday party with the whole family. During the dinner the power goes out and when the cause is investigated it's found that a UFO and aliens have landed near the family home. The film documents the family's last moments as they are attacked by visitors not of this world and eventually abducted.

Yeah, Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County is a remake!

Here's the crazy part: There is a huge contingent of people out there who believe that UFO Abduction is the real deal and not a staged event and that the UPN remake/special is all part of a clever cover-up. There was even a segment on Encounters, the Fox paranormal "news" show (we'll get to it eventually), which featured UFO Abduction in a segment about hoaxes. From what I can tell the producers of Encounters certainly didn't think the tape was authentic, but they interviewed several individuals who did believe in it.


Now, the moment you start watching UPN's Alien Abduction you get the vibe that you're watching actors. The set looks pretty authentic, but the special effects and the wooden acting make it a dead-ringer for a film production. Although UFO Abduction is on a smaller scale, you can tell these people are actors pretty much right away, too.

And the special effects are basically a laser pointer. No cats on the set, please!

You don't get a really great or clear look at the aliens in the TV cut of Alien Abduction, but you get some pretty good looks at them in UFO Abduction and you can clearly tell they're kids in black jumpsuits with expensive alien gloves and masks on. In fact, Dean Alioto has even shared production photos from the set showing the children that made up the "alien" threat in his film. That's not enough to deter the believers, however.

All that conspiracy stuff aside, UFO Abduction isn't nearly as good as Alien Abduction, which I'm aware isn't saying much. It's mostly just people running around screaming in a poorly lit house. The set design on the UFO is pretty good, but they definitely took it to a new level when they did the remake. I didn't get near the chills watching the original movie as I did from the TV show.

That said, it's an interesting film in that it predates The Blair Witch Project and most of the Found Footage genre, so fans of those types of movies might want to check it out. Director Dean Alioto has DVDs available on his website for $20 USD and a Digital option for $15, which is much more cost effective than trying to track down one of the original VHS copies of this film that were sold around UFO conventions in the early 90s. You can also search it out online for pirated uploads, but the quality is abysmal. Up to you!

Another cool tidbit: Dean Alioto started a YouTube channel a few years back and from what I can tell he's trying to fund another film in his Alien Abduction trilogy, which would essentially be another remake of the same story. His Patreon launched over a year ago, though, and things aren't looking good. I wouldn't hold my breath.

Well that's enough about UFO Abduction in all its incarnations. It's time to move onto some cooler paranormal TV shows in this walk down memory lane, but it I thought it was important to cover all the bases on this one.

Hope you enjoyed!
R

Friday, November 8, 2019

Memory, Blog: The MacPherson Tape


A while back I wrote about an alien TV show that scared the pants off me as a kid, Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County. In that post I mentioned that in the UPN special the producers featured "experts" in the fields of Ufology - as well as skeptics - to speak about the as-presented "real" UFO abduction tape.

The interesting thing is that the so-called "experts" weren't really talking about the video that was aired that night.

You see, Paramount (UPN stands for United Paramount Network, by the way) did indeed pay to have Alien Abduction made, but it started out as a movie by filmmaker Dean Alioto under the title The MacPherson Tape and had a fairly different story than what was aired on television.

The basics were there: it featured a family get-together for Thanksgiving, in which the MacPhersons are beset by creatures from another planet, but the producers of the UPN special changed things up.

I actually had no idea about The MacPherson Tape until a few years ago. I was searching for a way to watch Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County on the web, because my folks either taped over or threw out my old recording. I found a copy to download, but when I started watching I realized fairly quickly that it wasn't the show I remembered. There were no title bumpers and no announcer. It looked nothing like a TV show! This was a legit shot-on-video movie.

The original cut runs for an hour and a half, so it's really a feature-length film. The hour long special had a runtime of 45 minutes, which was cut with interviews and recaps, so you can tell that a lot hit the cutting room floor.


Oddly enough, it wasn't just dissected for time, but the beats of the film were all changed, as well. The "ending" of Alien Abduction (seen above), where Tommy is abducted by a dimly lit creature in his bedroom (/me shudders), is actually a scene from the middle of The MacPherson Tape, where he runs to his room to change his pants, is frozen by an alien for a few moments, and then returns to his family unaware of what just transpired.

So, it would appear that this film, The MacPherson Tape, is actually what was presented to the "experts", which makes sense as this version is a fully-fledged found footage film (take that, aliteration!). It's much more impressive than the clips you see hodge-podged together for the TV cut. It sort of seems like an under-handed thing. Some of the individuals that spoke to the film on the TV special were highly-lauded scientists and debunkers. They likely wouldn't have involved themselves with the tape if they knew for certain that it was an out-and-out scam, so it kind of makes the whole thing seem greasy, but who knows? Maybe everyone made a nice cut of the profits and all was well!

I actually still prefer the TV version over the film. It's not just the nostalgia talking, but the ending with Tommy getting abducted in his bedroom is the better edit, in my opinion.

What's also interesting is that The MacPherson Tape predates The Blair Witch Project by a whole year! I know the found footage concept wasn't entirely new when The Blair Witch Project came out, but it's cool to note. The MacPherson Tape doesn't even come close to the quality of The Blair Witch Project, by the way. We're talkin' two different leagues.

Even more interesting is that the film's creator, Dean Alioto, actually got the UPN gig because of a very similar film he made way back in 1989 called UFO Abduction, which predates The Blair Witch Project by a full ten years! But that story is for another time (I promise, I'll at least try to stop typing that).

I hope you got some kind of enjoyment out of all this silly alien TV stuff!
R

Monday, September 2, 2019

The Future of VHyesterdayS

Hi everyone,

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I had some issues a while back with Lionsgate and my Terminator 2 video for VHyesterdayS. It was flagged and removed from public viewing, because they claimed it contained too much footage from the film.

I tried to fight it and countered their strike, citing that the footage in the video was of a trailer, which is widely available on YouTube itself, and contains no audio, but my motion was denied and the video won't be back.

I'll be honest, I'm not heartbroken about it.

I got really into YouTube when it first launched even though I didn't partake in making videos right away. I started by posting a "vlog" sporadically, but in 2008 I decided to give it a real whirl and started posting a lot of videos and it was a ton of fun.

The thing is, I never put any production value in whatsoever. It was me and a webcam. I'd slap a title card on it and post the thing. These days, you have to have production values up the yin yang to be relevant and I'm not really enjoying it.

My aim with the VHyesterdayS video series was to quickly highlight some of the tapes in my collection in five minutes or less, but to produce those five minutes was taking me way too long. I would watch the movie, take a ton of notes, and then try to jam all those thoughts into the video, which resulted in me jumbling everything up more times than not. I also "tried" to give it a-go and make the videos look at least a little bit more presentable, by lighting myself and running some content on my many monitors in the background, which is why we're now here.

I think I'm done with the videos.

With my current lifestyle - #IveGot3Kids - its nearly impossible to get the time to even watch a movie let alone write out my notes and record the video. The whole thing was taking up too much time and I think the output was sub-par.

I've heavily gotten into writing for Retro-Def again and now Pixel Elixir, as well, and it just makes sense for me to convert VHyesterdayS into a written article. I squirrel away time during my day to sneak off and write - which I love - and since that's where the passion lies, that's where the content goes!

So, if you're new to Retro-Def, you've stumbled upon VHyesterdayS, and you're wondering why it started out as a video series and morphed into a written one, you've got the whole story. Capeesh?

Now with that out of the way, I've got another edition of VHyesterdayS on deck and it should be out later this week. I've changed things a bit - I'll no longer just talk about the tape, but give a little background into the film, too. You know, flesh things out a bit. I'll still try and post any trailers or cool ephemera that might be on the tape to my VHyesterdayS YouTube channel, which hopefully won't get flagged, but we'll see!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy reading the musings of a 30-something as he taps away at his keyboard about old dusty video tapes. If that's your thing, then boy have you hit the jackpot!

Cheers,
R

Friday, July 12, 2019

The Blair Witch Project: 20 Years Later

I noticed that there was a sudden resurgence of Blair Witch-related "stuff" lately and I didn't key into why until just this morning. A few weeks ago, at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), a new Blair Witch video game was announced to be launching this August, and today Fright-Rags will be launching a licensed collection for the original film. My caffeine-ridden brain didn't even realize that this Sunday, July 14th, 2019 will mark the 20th anniversary of The Blair Witch Project!


Once I realized that, I knew I had to write about it for a bit. It's hard for me to understate the importance of the film. I have rarely been as hyped for a movie as I was for TBP.

I spoke recently about the VHS release on VHyesterdayS. I mentioned that I had talked about The Blair Witch Project in a video a long time ago on my YouTube channel, but upon further inspection it appears that I must've deleted my content on The Blair Witch Project and its sequel at some point.


So all the more reason for me to jaw-on here for a bit!

It's been stated over-and-over again how effective the marketing was for it at the time, but I'll take a moment to talk about it again. There was nothing like it before. The very nature of the film being a faux-documentary lent itself so perfectly to a viral marketing campaign and it just took over the Internet. The website was top-of-the-line for its time and it was chock-full of Easter Eggs and information about the "case" of the Blair Witch and the missing students lost in the Burkittsville woods.

People believed it was real. I believed it could be real.

Then you add the element of the TV special! Airing a few days before the film's release, on July 11th 1999, Curse of the Blair Witch was itself a half-hour documentary about the legends of Burkittsville and the missing filmmakers. It completely doubled-down on the "authenticity" that the marketing campaign created. Was it real? Was it fake? Everyone had to go see the movie just to find out!


And it worked. People went to this movie in droves. I was there opening night to a completely packed theatre. I had found all the Easter Eggs on the site. I had piled through the Internet bulletin boards trying to glean every bit of information I could find out about the film. I had to know if it was real or not!

It was an experience I hadn't had before and haven't had since. Once you let this genie out of the bottle, you can never do it again. Film-goers now are too skeptical, likely because of TBP, to ever let this sort of marketing fool them again. But I was one of the lucky ones who got to experience this whole thing firsthand and it's had a lasting impression.

It didn't hurt that the acting was excellent. There are points where you get the "actor" vibe from the main cast, but for the most part their fear just seems so genuine. This is, of course, due in part to the nature of how the film was made, in which the filmmakers Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick really put actors Heather Donahue, Michael Williams, and Joshua Leondard through a course of psychological terrors in the dead of night, while the actors themselves filmed.

With all the "found footage" films this movie spurned, I'm surprised that I've never heard of any other filmmakers taking this specific aspect away from TBP; the idea of actually subduing the actors to unknown, unscripted scares. My guess is the unions don't allow for that! I didn't know about all this until well after seeing the film for the first time, but I think it's safe to say that their fear feels very real and tangible.


One thing I will note is that seeing The Blair Witch Project on the big screen was a double-edge sword. I was both so excited to see it, but absolutely sickened by it... literally.

The movie is shot on 16MM and Digital 8 from the perspective of the filmmakers. Save for the few scenes that are setup to be parts of their "documentary" its all handheld. Sitting in the lower bowl of my movie theatre, munching on my then new Crispy M&Ms caused my guts to lurch. I barely made it through the film, honestly. I had to run to the washroom at least once and when I got there, someone had beat me to it. To this day I can't eat Crispy M&Ms.

I try to recapture the experience a little each year around Halloween. That's when the VHS and DVD were first released, around October 25th, 1999 if my memory serves me right. I make the pilgrimage back to Maryland and the haunted Burkittsville forest and in absolute honesty I get chills every time.

The movie is a time capsule. Haxan Films managed to bottle up 1999 for me and I love them for it.

Say what you want about the franchise after, The Blair Witch Project manages to hold up, old technology and all. I'll keep up my tradition and take in my yearly viewing this October, but why not give it a watch this weekend?

The whole thing may have been an elaborate hoax, but what if it wasn't? What if the witch is out there, waiting in the dark? Hiding in an old abandoned house, deep in the forest, where the light of mankind has winked out of existence.

Dare you take a walk in the woods after!

Cheers,
R

Friday, May 31, 2019

Memory, Blog: The Fake Alien Abduction Show



Although my family had Cable TV when I was a kid we didn't always have all those really cool Cable channels. You know, the ones you still had to pay extra for? Do you remember that magic little black box the Cable company would provide you with to de-scramble the premium stuff? Yeah, we didn't have that. That is until I was in my teens.

Pure magic!

That glorious box provided me with more channels than I could even imagine. Sure, compared to today's standards it was a paltry serving, but to teenage me I was mind-blown. I now had access to a wide assortment of channels including TBS, which was chock-full of movies and all the Saved By The Bell re-runs I could handle, Family Channel, with loads of great Disney cartoons, Kids' WB, which fed my already unhealthy Batman: The Animated Series obsession, and UPN, which had pretty much nothing that I cared about.

On one fateful evening in the winter of 1998 I was channel surfing (man, I miss that) and I came across this schlocky "news report"-style show on UPN called Real Vampires... Exposed! It was basically a walk through the underground vampire scene in the 90s, where those so inclined wore a lot of black leather, drank each other's blood in neon-lit bars, and listened to industrial techno. I was half-interested in this show, but it was during this broadcast that an ad appeared for a new alien show that would be on within the hour!


You see UPN was claiming that they had acquired footage of a real-life alien abduction caught on home video and that they had experts analyze the tape. They were going to show the whole thing that night (January 20th, 1998 to be exact) and let you, the viewer, be the judge if it was real or not. The show was called Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County.

I was a pretty TV savvy kid and I had my finger on the pulse of the comings-and-goings of the all the major networks, but I had always just passed by UPN, which in my mind only had episode after episode of Moesha. As my luck would have it I landed on the channel just before it began airing Alien Abduction and my excitement (and trepidation) was brimming.

I grabbed a blank tape out of the entertainment console, popped it into the VCR, and set the show to record, even though I had no intent on waiting until the next day to watch it. I was glued to the TV set for what would become one of the most spine-tingling television events I ever witnessed.

I just want to start by saying that airing Alien Abduction with Real Vampires... Exposed! (which aired in lieu of an episode of Moesha, I kid you not) one after the other could not have been an accident. The network execs were trying to create the illusion to the viewer that this alien video was the real deal without coming right out and saying it.


There was a lot of controversy surrounding this little one hour special. There are those who would compare it to the War of the Worlds radio broadcast by Orson Welles in 1938, although I think that's rather extreme. This was some seriously campy TV on a cable specialty channel.

That said, the presentation was setup to lead the viewer in the belief that this tape was legitimate. The producers had actual "experts" in the fields of ufology, like physicist Stanton Friedman* and famous skeptic Michael Shermer, speak to the tape (or "a" tape, more on that at a later date) to lend credence to its authenticity. Couple that with it airing back-to-back with a show exposing "real life vampires" and there were all sorts of folks who thought this tape was the real deal.

One viewing of the segments of the tape, however, and your innate "these are actors" Spidey-sense will tingle. It also didn't help that actress Emmanuelle Chriqui, who at this point had at least one film and several TV acting credits under her belt, was clearly one of the members of the "family". Then at the end of the show the credits roll and you can see that the MacPherson family were casted and the whole thing was a film by director Dean Alioto.

I never thought the tape or the show was real, of course, but I will be damned if I didn't love it. Like most alien shows, I watched this for the scares and it delivered! For me it was like a little mini horror movie. Even to this day the scenes with the aliens in them raise the hairs on the back of my neck. I used to watch that tape recording I made of the show every year or so and it always had the same affect. Unfortunately, that tape is lost to time. *sniff*

Now you would think with the bad acting and credit roll that anyone watching this show would immediately understand that this was just a TV ratings stunt, but the controversy surrounding Alien Abduction actually started long before this UPN special. This was not Dean Alioto's first brush with alien conspiracy, but I think I'll save that story for another day.

Hope you enjoyed!,
R

*Stanton Friedman sadly passed away May 13th, 2019 at the age of 84. He lent his research and opinions to countless UFO-related features of the years, so I just wanted to say rest in peace, Dr. Friedman.


Saturday, May 4, 2019

Halfway To Halloween 2019


That's right, May 1st (or April 30th, depending on how you look at it) marked the halfway mark between Halloween 2018 and Halloween 2019, so all of us horror junkies are starting to get that spooky feeling!

I wasn't really sure how to best mark the occasion this year, so I started to think of some fun things to do to drag Halloween kicking and screaming into the cool Spring breeze.

Here are my findings!

A Scary Halloween Movie



There's no reason you have to wait until Halloween to enjoy some of your favourite freaky flicks. If you're a horror hound, like myself, then you've likely been watching horror movies all year anyway, but the focus here needs to be on the upcoming season. So while taking in your 57th viewing of A Nightmare on Elm Street might seem like a good idea (and on any other day it is, good on you) maybe try something more autumnal? Night of the Demons, perhaps? It's tied to the season, but not so much as, say, Trick 'r Treat or Halloween 1 and 2, which are probably best left for September or October.

I typically find myself mostly interested in classic movie monsters during the Halloween season, so I think to get me into that festive mood I'll be taking in Dracula or The Mummy this weekend.


The big thing here is to make sure you do you. Whatever movies make you wish you were stuffing your face with fun size candy bars and washing it down with a pumpkin spice latte are key, even if it's Hocus Pocus.

Video Games Featuring Classic Monsters



I'll admit this one is a little more personal, but I've definitely noticed a correlation between horror movies fans and video gamers. I think it's a timing thing. If you can name a kid that didn't have a Nintendo or Sega hooked up to their TV at the same time they were pushing scary movies into their VCRs, I think they're in the minority.

For me, horror-themed video games are an essential piece to the Halloween puzzle. September and October are usually the months that I take in my yearly playthrough of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or Resident Evil, for instance.

These days horror games abound, but much like those classic creature flicks I crave around Halloween, I find myself thirsting (see what I did there?) for old chilling NES games during Halfway to Halloween. I think this year I'll play some Monster Party. It is chock-full of awesome little horror tidbits and crazy monster designs. I mean look at the cover art. It absolutely screams Halloween! That would be my kinda party!


Spooky Snacks



It's kind of tough to get your hands on Halloween candy in May, unless your local pharmacy is just exceedingly bad and clearing off their holiday shelves, but you don't need bite size Mars bars to get that Halloween spirit.

Pumpkin spice may still be lying in wait for Autumn, but for me anything green, orange, or black can set the scene. Maybe some black tortilla chips and guac with orange soda? Too much? NEVER.

Heck, all it takes for me is breaking out the finest Halloween dinnerware and firing those everyday chips into a big orange bowl. Sometimes it's the little things, guys!


Halloween Decorations



This one is a little out there, but bear with me. One great way to get in the Halloween mood is the simplest: dig up (I kill me) some of your favourite decs!

Now, don't go too overboard here. Maybe just one of your spookiest and simplest pieces will do the trick. For me, I almost always have a little skull candle-holder on my desk, so that can do the trick (or treat), but I might break out a light-up jack-o-lantern, just for the night. If you over-do it you'll find yourself getting sick of Halloween and no one wants that (if it's even really possibly, I have my doubts).


So that's it! If you're celebrating Halfway to Halloween this weekend, let me know in the comments or on Twitter how you're marking the occasion!

Happy (Halfway to) Halloween!
R

p.s. I noticed the typo, too, but I don't have my laptop with Photoshop handy, so it stands... for now. Consider it an Easter egg!

p.p.s Nothing to see here. Move along...

Friday, April 5, 2019

Memory, Blog: The Unsolved Mysteries Book Cover



Since I know you've been waiting on baited breath for this, let's get nuts and dig even deeper into my sleep-shattering fear of those junky alien TV shows from yesteryear. This next one is a doozy (do the kids still say doozy?).

I don't know where I got the gumption (do the kids still say gumption? damnit...) but one night I decided it was a great idea to try and watch an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. I had an idea of what I was getting into - everyone was talking about the show - but I had no clue just how much of an effect it would have on me personally to this day.

Perhaps you can solve a mystery...

I'm still not sure how I made it through Robert Stack's introduction or the theme music (likely judicious use of hiding under the blankets), but I can still remember the content of the episode like it was yesterday. Much like with E.T. several years before, I think my pulse dropped to zero, like I was in some kind of TV-induced hibernation. I stared at the set in rapt fear.

Although I was initially creeped out, it wasn't until Robert Stack presented the story of Bob Matthews that things really went south. Matthews was in the United States Air Force and in 1966, while en route to a posting in Massachusetts, was dropped off at a local market at night. He called the base for someone to come pick him up when he realized he was in the middle of nowhere. It's at this time that he claims he saw a strange ship flying through the night sky. When his ride came to get him he was totally AWOL, before calling back hours later asking where his ride was. Matthews claims that he experienced missing time and later, through hypnosis, recalled that the ship he saw in the night sky touched down outside the market and that he was abducted by the beings inside.

Trrrrrraumatized!

This story on its own was enough to raise my hackles, but it was during this clip that I was disturbed even further than seeing Elliot's squat little alien buddy with the glowy fingers (I'm not gonna drop it, ET's still creepy). As Matthews recounted his story, he spoke about finding a paperback book at a supermarket aisle by author Budd Hopkins called Missing Time. In the clip on Unsolved Mysteries the book he actually picks up is entitled Intruders. Here's a close-up:


From the moment I saw this clip my greatest fears had a new visage. Whatever creature this was on the cover of this book would haunt me for years and years to come, but also drive me to face those fears and watch any and all paranormal films and TV programs I could lock my eyeballs onto.

What's interesting is that I always considered Unsolved Mysteries to be a show about the paranormal, but as I've been re-watching it recently on Amazon Prime (I've recently discovered it's on YouTube, as well) I've realized that it rarely featured segments about the topics of aliens or UFOs, and usually with a few derisive words from Robert Stack, who seemingly didn't want to report on it at all. The show was mostly about true crime and helping people find their long-lost loved ones, with a smattering of ghost stories or aliens here and there for us weirdos.

All it took was this one episode, however, and I was forever changed. The thing is, I was bound to see the image of the "grey" alien at some point. It's ubiquitous in our culture now, much like the Bela Lugosi-inspired vampire or a bed sheet ghost. I kind of believe that no matter where I first saw it that those huge black eyes and enormous great skull would have the same affect, but it certainly didn't hurt that I saw it while watching Unsolved Mysteries in my parent's basement with no lights on that sealed the deal.

As an adult, I want to say that I'm mostly over it, but if I'm being honest grey aliens still give me the heebie-jeebies (do the kids... ah, nevermind) I remember when the found footage film The Fourth Kind came out back in 2009 I was immediately engaged and wanted to see the movie, but the only way I could bring myself to watch it alone in my apartment was in the middle of the day with all the lights on. As it turns out, it wasn't so bad, but those scenes with the owl eyes? Uuuuugh.

I'll try and summon up the courage to write another one of these soon, but from now on I don't think this will be a chronological account. I'll just jump back and forth to different shows and films on the subject. Ya know, for the whole one of you that actually reads this stuff! (Thank you by the way, you're the best!)


Cheers,
R

Friday, March 22, 2019

Memory, Blog: Those Creepy Alien Shows



For one reason or another throughout my life I've found myself drawn to TV shows and films about the paranormal and I'm not talking about those reality shows, like Ghost Hunters. Specifically, for me, it is anything to do with aliens and UFOs. It's a contributing reason for my obsession with The X-Files, but it goes much deeper than that.

I want to preface this by saying that I don't believe in aliens. I don't think there's some grand conspiracy that a group of intergalactic beings from another planet/dimension/reality/whatever are visiting earth in ships, abducting people for experimentation, and screwing around with livestock.

I think my fascination with the subject is three-fold.

One reason is that I'm captivated with the idea that there are people out there that whole-heartedly believe in it all. And I don't mean this as a condescension, like, "How could someone believe in this crap!?" It's more akin to wanting to understand why they believe what they believe. It's probably like a secular philosopher trying to better understand religion.

The second reason is that I find alien and UFO stories to be like the ghost stories of our generation. We live in a world driven by science, so of course our fireside stories are that of science fiction. It kind of just makes sense.

The third and most major reason is that the idea of aliens scares the ever-loving shit out of me.

I have zero context to offer you as to why, but when I was really little I had nightmares that the Martians from Sesame Street were going to take me from my bed at night. I had to be the only kid on the planet petrified of Muppets.

They're still creepy.

This fear was exacerbated one fateful day by my unwitting mother who picked up a new video for me to watch: E.T.: The Extraterrestrial. And why woudn't she? It was an international family-friendly hit! As soon as I saw E.T. for the first time, plodding around the forest with his freaky glowing heart, I was instantly traumatized. I can't recall so much as breathing throughout the rest of the viewing, but I somehow survived it. I had a new face for my fear and it was the dough-eyed alien that every other kid at school had on their bed sheets.

See, it's petrifying!

Considering I was so afraid of the subject I have no idea why, but I would try and watch anything that featured aliens, which in the late-80s and early-90s was no problem. The paranormal was a hot topic and one could simply flip to any channel on a Friday night and find a program featuring unexplained phenomena.

The result was a fascination with those hokey paranormal TV shows that used to cover the pages of the TV Guide. For me, it all started in the early 90s when A&E began airing re-runs of In Search Of..., which was one of my favourite TV shows ever. The ideas and topics were so interesting and they would often feature the crazy stories of aliens or UFOs that I was craving, but presented in a way that wasn't all that scary.


Okay, that's BS, I was still scared to death, but I could make it through an episode, so long as all the lights were on. I think this is why I found the courage one night to watch a relatively new show called Unsolved Mysteries, which although it wasn't strictly a paranormal show had the occasional alien/UFO-related topics. In fact, it was an episode of Unsolved Mysteries that spurred on my fear in a big way, but we'll feature that story another time.

There were all sorts of paranormal shows that cropped up in the wake of Unsolved Mysteries, like Sightings and Encounters, both of which tried to employ the trappings of a real news magazine show to make the topics at hand seem that much more credible. And lets not forget the myriad of one-off specials, like Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction or Alien Abduction: Incident in Lake County.


My obsession continues to this day, so this is just the beginning for this topic on the site. I already have some related posts in the works, but I thought it made sense that I outline my fear and fascination with aliens and UFOs in films and television before we really begin to scan these starry skis... I mean skies.


Cheers,
R

Friday, February 22, 2019

Memory, Blog - The Sunday Night Ritual


I've found myself turning more inward lately and my obsession with nostalgia has hit an all-time high. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or... no, you know what? I'm not old, you're old! Whatever!

Ahem, excuse me.

Anyway, I find myself more interested with watching films on VHS than on Blu-ray, with playing the Nintendo Entertainment System than the Nintendo Switch, and eating kid's cereals over a nice steak dinner.

Okay, that last one might be a bit extreme... maybe.

I thought it might be fun to start writing about some of this nostalgia as a way of bottling it, so here goes!

In 1993 my favourite TV show aired for the first time on Friday, September 10th. You guessed it, it's The X-Files. I haven't hidden my love for this show, have I? It dominated the air waves on Friday nights for three years, but in 1996 Fox made the bold move to air it on Sundays and man, did it work!

You see, the 9 o'clock timeslot (10PM for me in Atlantic Canada) was previously known for the Sunday Night Movie on other networks, like CBS, ABC, and NBC. This is when many TV stations would fight for a hot "new to TV" film to air, so viewers could wind down their weekend and just veg in front of the TV. The ABC Sunday Night Movie actually aired from 1962 until 1998.

Viewership began to wain, however, and this is when you started to see a lot of big made-for-TV movie events, like NBC's The Beast, which aired in two parts on Sundays in April 1996, or ABC's Storm of the Century, which was broken into three installments starting on Sunday, February 14th, 1999.

NBC promo for Peter Benchley's The Beast from April 28th, 1996 courtesy of Dinosaur Dracula

Fox decided to waste no time in finding a viable alternative to steal your attention during those precious couch potato hours before the school/work week began anew, so they moved their most popular drama into that timeslot, where it lived until its (not so) final episode in 2002.

At the time, even series creator Chris Carter didn't like the move. Fox executives were putting a lot of stock in Carter's next big thing, Millenium, which took the coveted Friday night space from The X-Files, but with a feature film in the works and more and more accolades rolling in, The X-Files was no worse for the wear.

Promo for The X-Files move to Sundays, circa October 1996 (sorry for the suggestive thumbnail)

Now, Fox already had my attention on Sunday nights with The Simpsons. What a great foothold to launch The X-Files new timeslot on? You already had millions of viewers watching the station anyway, so if you slap TVs hottest show after it, you've got people locked for hours.

The only thing that Fox varied was the meat in this delicious TV sandwich. The 8:30 ET slot had a variety of content over the years and there were several delicious fillers, but for one reason or another none of the shows stayed on the menu (I'll stop now with the sandwich puns). There was King of the Hill, Futurama, and even Family Guy, all of which used this slot as a launching pad before moving to another day and time, but the show that finally stuck was the unlikely Malcolm in the Middle, which I believe (and don't quote me on this) stayed on Sunday nights even after the glory years were well and done with, in 2006.

Sunday nights were a very bittersweet time. It sounds crazy, because I didn't dislike school or anything like that. In fact I liked it for the most part. I just looked forward to and enjoyed my weekend so much, that I started lamenting their end starting on Saturday night, while I typically watched whatever late night movie aired on TV (which we'll talk about in the future, I'm sure). By the time Sunday night came,  I was in full despair!

In our house Sundays were for family. My folks and I would pilgrimage to both of my parents' sides to see relatives for dinner; one in the afternoon and the other in the evening. I didn't see much of my friends and there wasn't any time to play my video games, but it was always good to eat great food and see my cousins.

When the evening came, it was "me time" and I took full advantage of it.

I would rustle up a snack - provided I was still hungry after all the food we had that day - and cozy into my bed with all the lights off, save for the glow of the fuzzy old TV screen, complete with tin-foil encrusted rabbit ears to catch the over-the-air signal.

And there I'd stay until 11 o'clock. The opening acts of The Simpsons and whatever second comedy show that followed it were a nice way to relax before the creepfest of The X-Files hit the screen, but also not the best way to close out and get a good night's rest!

This time period was The Simpsons apex for me. The show was coming off the highs of the Conan O'Brien years (1991 to 1993), which is when I was cemented as a fan. Around 1998, however, my interest started to slip. I did continue to watch until 2002, but if I missed it for whatever reason, it wasn't the end of the world. For as many times as I've watched The X-Files, I've never really gone out of my way to revisit The Simpsons chronologically from this era (I have caught lots of classic episodes in syndication). If only that Simpsons World service would launch here in Canada!

I kept my little Sunday night tradition up starting in junior high right until my first year of university, which is crazy to think of looking back now. I remember I wasn't as into it after I left high school. The X-Files without Mulder and Scully didn't interest me as much and (as I mentioned) I wasn't getting the same laughs from The Simpsons anymore, but I can still recall how I felt watching the finale to The X-Files to this day. It was a somber moment - an end of an era - and I knew it.

I still reminisce about those Sunday nights (clearly). In my hectic lifestyle these days I almost never get a quiet relaxing two hours to myself and I have no real "rituals" that I can always bank on each week. And that's fine! I love my time with my wife and kids and things may be nuts right now, but I know I'll be looking back on these very days in 10 years wishing I could have them back, as well. Possibly I'll be reminiscing while I'm kicking back and watching some primetime television on a Sunday night... you know, if that sort of thing even exists anymore.

Hope you enjoyed,
R