The 4:30 Movie vs. The Million Dollar Movie

It's time for a walk down memory lane as those of us who remember compare the "4:30 Movie" to the "Million Dollar Movie".

I have many memories as well as some questions.
And for you younger folks, it will be like when you talk to us about your Smart Phones... you won't know what the #$%& we're talking about!

vs.

Do you remember this opening? It gave me nightmares when I was a kid.

You read my mind, gbg!
Thanks!

Yes! I was thinking about Chiller Theater on this site recently... recalling how I usually ignored the movies it aired (I think they were on Saturday morning) because I'd already had my fill of cartoons and it was time to go outside. I'd start watching them, then get bored or distracted and lose interest. Now, the movies Chiller showed are the same ones I want to re-watch and have a hard time finding.

When I was really little, that opening scared me also, but later, the six-fingered hand became the cool thing to imitate at school.

My version of horror movies when I was a kid was the Abbott & Costello movies where they met The Mummy, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, etc. Those were fun horror movies.

They sure were. And they probably weren't "Chiller" fare.
That's what I loved about the 4:30 movie - they'd show weekly (5 day) marathons. I'm sure they had an "Abbott & Costello Meet..." week.

That's what I love about DVDs. I can have an Abbott & Costello Meet... week whenever I want to.

It is nice. I wonder if we appreciate it more because we can remember when there were only 12 channels (or the movie theater - which wasn't a regular or common occurrence in my family).

It wasn't even 12 channels because some of the channel numbers were skipped. I remember when we only had channels 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 21.

You're right!

Although I remember channel 12 showing up as a Public Broadcasting channel long before cable. And, in NJ, I think I remember channel 52 showing up as a local access channel - although tuning in to a UHF channel was like receiving alien contact or something. I just mean it was a very foreign feeling to ever go beyond 13 on the dial. In fact I don't remember how we even got to the UHF channels when we had an actual dial for selecting channels that had 1 to 13 on it!

I think there was a "U" in place of channel "1". So you set the dial on "U," and then there was another dial that had higher numbers on it!

I had to do a search to remember how this worked!

I remember those two-knob TVs, more recently than I'd like to admit to. Believe it or not, I still have a 13-inch, two-knob, black & white, TV somewhere up in the attic. My father saved everything, and he left it behind when my parents moved out of the house. I didn't feel like it was "mine" to throw it out, so I just put it up in the attic. That's where it's been ever since then, and it's still there. It might even still work if it could get a signal somehow. (Although it's in a back corner of the attic, so I'll probably never be able to find it.)

the UHF knob ALWAYS broke because we would spin it hard to get from Channel 20 To Channel 50 and then we'd have a pair of pliars on it to turn it. Never failed.
My dad got a really good antenna on the roof with a small box to point it in different directions and we'd get channels from Toledo and even Chicago. We lived 2 miles north of the Detroit city border.

And for horror movies, one of the ones we had was this one: