I remember back in 1993, sitting in my dark basement in the glow of the TV staying up all night watching TNT's MonsterVision marathons. By the end of the night, I would be in a zombified trance.

Horror/Sci-fi, Monster B-movies were what I grew up on and firsthand inspired me to become a filmmaker.

Here is what I believe is the original intro to the show featuring a claymation moonface reminiscent of the 1902 classic "Voyage to the Moon".
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This is the later intro featuring a mad doctor working in a lab:
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Every once in a while, they played this extended monster montage which began with "Should you be afraid of the dark? TNT thinks so, and we got the monsters to prove it." This was always a bonus treat as I loved the monster clips that they showed. I would be excited everytime it came on. To this day, I still enjoy trying to name all the movies which they're from. If you're going to watch only one thing on this page, WATCH THIS!
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At the end of the marathon, they would sometimes play a movie that TNT considered "100% Weird". Usually by this time, I would nearly be asleep as it would be like around 6:00 AM. One of these movies I remember being "Plan 9 From Outer Space".
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One night, they had a Japanese monster movie marathon:
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One night, they dedicated the marathon to movies that dealt with outer space such as "Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers", "First Men in the Moon", "The Green Slime" and "Marooned". They called this marathon MOONsterVision:
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Another night, the theme was "Small Titles, Big Screams". The marathon included "The Blob", "The Thing" "Gog" and "Them":
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One time, the marathon was hosted by Penn & Teller. They were very entertaining as this clip demonstrates:
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One time, seeing them perform a magic show live, I went up to Teller (mute during his act, but not in real life) and I told him "I loved MonsterVision. Do you Remember doing that?" He replied "Oh yeah! You must have been 13 years old." And oh my God, he was right!

Another night, the theme was movies with stop-motion special effects by the master, Ray Harryhausen. The line up went something like "Mysterious Island", "Clash of the Titans", "Jason and the Argonauts", "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger", "It Came from Beneath the Sea", and "20 Million Miles to Earth." These were all great choices.
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Mysterious island was hosted by Bob Denver (Gilligan). He made comparisons between the movie and Gilligan's Island.
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This here is just when they'd tell you what movies are coming up. I would always enjoy how they described the movies, it would always get me hyped up. Couldn't wait.
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The last Saturday of every month, TNT used to play Godzilla marathons all night as part of MonsterVision. It was awesome! Check out this Godzilla montage that they used to play inbetween movies using the song "Godzilla" by Blue Oyster Cult!
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This particular year, I think it was like 1994, TNT didn't have their MonsterVision marathon for a while, not even during Halloween, but they did manage to bring it back for CHRISTMAS!! They called it a "Christmas nightmare", designed to "scare the ornaments off you." Movies included only really bad ones. The line up went something like: "The Giant Claw", "The Cyclops", "The Wasp Woman", "The Werewolf" & "From Hell it Came".
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After a while, MonsterVision faded away, but in the late 90's it came back with a new host Joe Bob Briggs who most people remember. His drive-in totals are still infamous. The movies being aired were now slasher flicks like "Friday the 13th" and zombie movies like "Return of the Living Dead" Joe Bob would always complain about TNT censoring out the breasts and the gore which was really funny

The sad part was that Joe Bob was right. It really was a shame to see movies that depend on violence to be censored the way it did, which is why I think it was pointless to show movies like that. That was the good thing about the classics, you didn't need to censor anything. There was no point in watching censored slasher movies on TV other than just to see Joe Bob Briggs.

While he was a fantastic host, he couldn't save the fact that the movies weren't worth watching and I think that is why MonsterVision eventually bit the dust.





I hope I brought back some memories and helped preserve the nostalgia of this great time.

TNT? Sci-Fi Channel? Anyone? Bring back MONSTERVISION!!!!

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