TCM UNDERGROUND LEAVES THE ROSTER

Ben Mankiewicz announced in his outro for The Wild Bunch last night that TCM Underground would be leaving the TCM lineup after its presentation of Plan 9 From Outer Space (and some drug shorts).

He said it had started in 2007 - I think that's what he said - with a showing of Plan 9 and would go out the way it came in (like Helen Lawson).

I think the idea started with 100% Weird - although that may have been on TNT.

Anyway - Goodbye, Millie Dicherico, and thanks for all your hard work.

Yeah, I remember the 100% Weird late nights. That's how I saw 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T for the first time. Wonder what this change means.

Booooo! Friday Underground was my favorite night

I used to love 100% Weird and Monstervision on TNT. They even let Ed Margulies and Steve Rebello host a couple of movie marathons based on their column/book "Bad Movies We Love!"

I miss the '90s.

Warner Bros Discovery strikes again!

I really enjoy TCM and hope we don’t see more changes in their roster. I missed Robert Osborne, but they did some really effective succession planning with Ben Mankiewicz. And they built a great bench with the lovely Alicia Malone, Noir Alley’s excellent Eddie Muller (transparently passionate commentator), Dave Karger (understated and telegenic) and Jaqueline Stewart. Stewart is pretty amazing, a MacArthur Fellow, head of the academy museum and top scholar of cinema and media. I watch her commentary but sometimes space out watching silent film (I wish I had more intellectual stamina for that).

We saw less of Millie De Chirico and that’s too bad because Underground was a cool concept. I thought Rob Zombie programmed it originally, but it looks like he hosted films selected by a fellow called Eric Weber. De Chirico took over the programming of Underground in 2007 (just reading on Wikipedia here, not a real expert). I only saw De Chirico in some promotional images of the TCM Festival and once promoting her book, just recently. I wish I saw more of her. In school, I was a huge admirer of the Psychotronic Encyclopedias of film, by Michael J. Weldon, and I’d love to see him comment as a guest, if he is still active in the genre. His synopses were so good! (concise/witty/funny). I hope TCM is always as good as it still is. It’s still the best, except for Criterion, but their film app is twitchy and a pain to navigate. I watch TCM on SlingTV and have a whole queue of films on that app’s DVR function (sheepishly I pay extra for 200 hours of storage and periodically delete stored films from that queue but keep my favorites spooled up to rewatch when I unwind).

Underground and films from the 80s and beyond belong on a seperate channel. With all the dead channels out there that show endless marathons of one series at a time, you'd think TCM would have a TCM 2 to allow for this. The programming mix lately has been horrible and, while I rarely enjoyed Underground myself, its programming should still be available. Good films are good films. That merger was horrible.

I guess at this point we should just be glad that TCM is still on the air at all. After the merger, I had my doubts.

This pisses me off. They show West Side Story weekly but they can’t give 4 hours at midnight to some cult films?

R6 Yes, and some are. But often they broadcast really grainy shitty prints and show the same stupid commercials for crap like denture cement and Life Alert.

Sometimes I will see a really cool film, maybe a Giallo shocker, listed on my SlingTV landing page Guide. I get all excited and record it, maybe even wake up early to watch part of it before work. Then I see it’s all muffled and garbled and the audio is out of sync, or maybe it’s a blurry old print from the Public Domain. TCM (and Criterion) are really the only reliable way I know to see the unedited content without ads and usually in a good clear print, even older films like Scarlet Street.

I tried watching a film titled Happy Birthday, Gemini, that I recorded on TCM as part of their broadcast of Rita Moreno films. I made it through almost 30 minutes, for Madeline Kahn, but watching it was so painful I almost started cutting myself. The same thing happened last week with a film called Drive, He Said. Even Karen Black couldn’t save that slop. But each was a really clear copy and unedited on TCM. When something obscure but decent shows up there late night, it’s so great. I would really miss TCM if it went away or turned to crap, or became part of a $297.00/month cable option of channels I couldn’t give a shit about but had to pay for to access it. That’s how I dropped my cable provider and went with SlingTV, still my best option.

I forgot, they once had a crazy good app called FilmStruck or something like that. When it went away, I missed it so much.

Those who miss it might check out Cultpix.

It's small but growing slowly and has a lot of interesting underground and exploitation from around the world and they've cornered the market on Something Weird, Herschell Gordon Lewis and Doris Wishman.

The whole collection is available via browser or tablet. There's a Roku app but it doesn't have the whole collection on it -- yet.

Plus it's only $6.66 per month.

This sucks. Underground showed a number of studio films that are difficult or almost impossible to find elsewhere, at least in prints that are good. I remember watching an old Russ Meyer film called LORNA which was kinda fun, and I'm sure FASTER, PUSSYCAT was shown as well.

I recall trying to watch DRIVE, HE SAID a few years ago and yes, it's terrible (so much for Jack Nicholson as a director). I did record GEMINI and haven't watched it yet, but where else would you find it?

I like Eddie, Ben, and David......Jacqueline is pretty full of herself and I hate to watch her, it's like going to a class and listening to professor talk down to you and making EVERYTHING about race......I liked Alicia a lot before she went on that weird rant about John Wayne and The Searchers.

Now I watch the guys - but I mute the ladies.......keeps my blood pressure down.

I love Jacqueline but she does this thing with her hands that looks like she's pointing to her vagina.

I was reading a TCM website blog about this decision, and some posters brought up the point about wondering what on earth TCM might be thinking will be worth replacing into the slot vacated by Underground that their channel will think warrants being better (?). Makes me wonder if it's a cost-cutting measure, and they'll want to use the time simply to additionally rerun their same films another time or, maybe worse, start incorporating a middle-night "sign-off" period, i.e. no longer being a 24-hours channel, and Underground might be the first-example casualty of such a move??

Maybe that’s why they show the TCM Wine Club advertisement so often. Mercifully they got rid of the earlier ad, featuring a British Wine curator, but they still show the newer version between most films.

NPR has a Wine Club now, too. This must be a low entry way to raise funds, “branding” TCM wine with label printed with a logo and a picture of a film star or move poster. I cannot fault them for trying to raise money this way, but that first series of clips (particular one that began with a b-loop outtake of the wine expert deadpanning “0h, am talking now?” or a similar phrase) was really irritating because they played it so often.

I am a huge admirer of the Channel and follow it from platform to platform. I hope they can make it work into the future.it’s so good. Noir Alley is becoming my favorite, as much for Eddie Muller as for the films themselves. Also Alicia Malone, and Ben Mankiewicz. I really like them all.

Just accept that the channel is over, will probably be sold to NBC Universal next year and migrate to streaming only in some form. Be happy with what you saw and enjoyed.

R16 I’d like a link to that blog. The TCM website is handsome but doesn’t seem optimized to run on a mobile platform. It’s really slow and has some dead links and pages of random code. I am navigating on an iPad on a 5G network.

They'll recycle Discovery Channel crap in the early hours instead as a cost-cutting measure.

[quote] Just accept that the channel is over

The channel is over because 1 small programming block is being eliminated?

The media economy is changing, and unfortunately the forms of media I enjoy most, like TCM and NPR are losing out. NPR is short $30m in advertising revenue this year, and letting go of 100 employees or more. It’s a different medium and model, I know, but still.

I love TCM. It is and has always been my favorite cable channel. Love all the hosts and yes , Dave Karger is fucking adorable. I too was upset about the cancellation of TCM Underground. I looked forward to it every Friday night. I hope that’s the last big change they do for awhile. I don’t trust these Discovery dumb fuckers.

The only change I would be happy with is when TCM becomes a streaming app that’s exactly like the cable channel. That’s the only thing I’m waiting for to cancel my overpriced cable and just go total internet and streaming.

Poor Millie, the TCM Underground book she wrote just came out a few months ago. Fuck.

I read a Kindle sample of the TCM Underground book and really enjoyed what I read. I plan on buying it when I catch up on my reading.

I wonder why. That’s the sort of thing we watch TCM for. Sounds like something conservative pinheads would do.

I have a bunch of collectors of funky movies saved in my Youtube subscriptions.

I used to stay up all night on the weekends and watch "Monstervision" on TNT, followed by "100% Weird," followed by reruns of a Japanese show called "Ultra 7" which ended at 6:00 a.m. I believe. That was when a kids' show called "Rudy and Gogo" would come on, and I can't imagine the audience was actually kids.

When TCM finally came to our cable lineup I was surprised by how many classic 1930s horror movies had been on "100% Weird," things that were indeed weird, like "Mad Love," but which are considered classics.

[quote]I did record GEMINI and haven't watched it yet, but where else would you find it?

The beginning is very manic introducing all the characters. Just get past the courtroom scene and the move calms down to a nice time.

When "Underground" first started, Rob Zombie was the host and was very involved in the show, but he was reportedly impossible to work with. He'd write his own copy (or his hangers-on would write it for him) and it would contain errors, and if they tried to correct him, he'd pitch a fit. Eventually they quietly parted ways.

There were rumors that he chose some of the films for the show because they tied into his movies. For example, there was a rumor that they were going to show the Carol Channing impossibility SKIDOO because there was an extended mention of it in Zombie's movie THE DEVIL'S REJECTS, and after he left, the rumor was that they weren't going to bother to get the rights. A bunch of forum posts, Usenet posts, and even blogs basically begged TCM to show it, and eventually they did, I think maybe a year after Zombie left.

It seems impossible these days but back then a movie like SKIDOO could only be seen on a terrible bootleg of an old pan-and-scan cable showing. Now it's out on DVD and Blu.

R24, if by streaming you mean a regular streaming channel, where you can choose what to watch whenever you want and not have to constantly check the schedule and record to DVR, then I would be happy with that. There are too many streaming channels already, but that's one I would subscribe to.

r33, I would still want the hosts’ commentaries, interviews, and special guests.

I was glad that they showed SKIDOO as it was one of those legendary bad movies that never got shown with a decent print. Otto Preminger sure made some real stinkers in the 60s (HURRY SUNDOWN is almost hilarious).

[quote]I was a huge admirer of the Psychotronic Encyclopedias of film, by Michael J. Weldon, and I’d love to see him comment as a guest, if he is still active in the genre. His synopses were so good! (concise/witty/funny)

Oh man I still have both of those books and keep them close at hand to this day! Weldon would have been a fantastic guest host for TCM Underground

Thank goodness some kind soul has put "The Baby" on YouTube.

Probably the nuttiestthing I remember watching on Underground.

I also loved Danny Peary's CULT MOVIES - I think there are three of them......

Where I first heard about The First Nudie Musical:

Cindy Williams: Your stunt cock is here.

R13 Gemini is on YouTube.com......for free.

This sucks. I love TCM Underground. I even loved their promo of it which ran quite frequently. Makes sense now why the promo hadn’t been on for some time.

Loved watching cult films like Heavenly Bodies or He Knows You’re Alone.

I guess no more screenings of Hard Ticket to Hawaii.

What a loss for TCM.

The promo for TCM Underground was one of TCM’s best. It perfectly describes the programming, especially when the hostess would talk about coming home at night from partying looking at the TV and going “WHAAT!” 😂

Ben said the movies would still be on the schedule. I guess they just wanted to get rid of the Underground staff and curators......

More money for Jacqueline Stewart and her "woke" "black is everything" agenda.

R42, please take your garbage racism elsewhere.

Watch her show and visit the Academy Museum and then tell me it's not true.

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if they got rid of Dr. Stewart, Karger, & Malone too.

On top of all this, I don't know if Millie is family or not, but she definitely programmed some of the gayest stuff to be shown on TCM. It's a loss for us.

Gemini was a Broadway play I saw a long time ago. I don't think the movie was successful.

I kept cable for a while because of TCM (which I had to pay extra for) but untimately I cut cable and just have streaming (actaully from the same cable company) - save over 100 bucks a month. I have kind of a large collection of DVDs with a lot of the films TCM used to show. Surprisingly, YouTube (which I watch on TV) has hundreds or thousands of old movies in excellent prints, ad-free. I do miss the TCM hosts but TCM itself was not what it used to be and I got tired of them re-running the same films over and over - something they didn't do as much once upon a time.

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