Before it became the WB, then the CW, now CW PIX 11, once upon a time, channel 11 in New York was called WPIX Channel 11. And it was referred to as New York’s Movie Station. In other words, if you didn’t have cable television to watch uncut movies, then channel 11 was your next best option for watching movies of all kinds. Most of the catalogue from WPIX featured movies from the late seventies and the eighties, and on rare occasions the nineties. My apartment building wasn’t wired for cable television well into October of 1994, so until I was eleven, “New York’s Movie Station” is where I went to, to watch movies that weren’t in my mom or dad’s VHS collection.
In fact if I think really hard, I could tell you the entire catalogue from WPIX’s movie library, because I’d seen then so many times, whenever they were repeated. I had zero standards for cinematic entertainment back then, so I literally watched anything that caught my fancy. Even in the slightest. Yes, I’ve seen “Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon,” “The Principal,” and “Cobra” more times than I can count, and I’m proud of it damn it. I also changed it up once in a while by watching “Extremities,” or “Young Sherlock Holmes.” Oddly enough though I avoided “The Wiz” like the kid in class with pink eye, and two movies I never wanted to see were “Animal House” and “A Christmas Story.”
Oddly enough both were films that became some of my absolute favorite films of all time much later on in my life. In either case, every weekday night at 8pm, they’d play a movie before the 10 o’clock news, and on weekends, it was a marathon of movies that began at 12pm and stopped at 10pm. For many years I learned to love films like “They Live,” “The Last Dragon,” “Twilight Zone: The Movie,” the “Indiana Jones” series, and before that I’d watch the Godzilla marathons and Elvis movie marathons. Every October was the best because being a kid and bonafide horror fanatic, and it all led up to Halloween.
Every year until 1995, WPIX would host their Shocktober horror movie month, which meant a horror movie every weeknight at 8pm, and marathons of horror movies every weekend leading up to Halloween. Surely, it was just re-airings of horror movies from the catalogue that WPIX played every year, but it was a blast. Once you saw that extended promo for Shocktober on WPIX advertising their line up of eighties horror movies, you knew that October was here, and Halloween was right around the corner. I have so many great memories, not just of Shocktober, but of WPIX. I always made a point of carefully seeing what WPIX was playing every day and would avoid certain movies. From childhood I have had a major phobia when it comes to zombie movies, so I always made sure to avoid watching “Return of the Living Dead,” and “Return of the Living Dead II.”
And my mom always forbade us from watching any “Friday the 13th” films oddly enough. I became a hardcore Jason Voorhees fan anyway. Something about the commercial for “Jason Lives” was always so alluring to me. The creepy music, Tommy on the phone warning about how Jason is on the loose, and the eventual shots of Jason wreaking havoc. It all was so tempting to watch, even if I wasn’t allowed. However, I would always tune in to check out “The Shining.” It was such a hypnotizing movie I never cared that I didn’t really get it. There was also “The Wraith,” “Creepshow 2,” “Caty’s Eye,” and “Invaders from Mars,” which were my personal favorites. I don’t count “They Live,” since it’s mostly science fiction action, but whenever it was included in to Shocktober, I always watched with glee and enthusiasm.
Roddy Piper is still a larger than life presence, even in my thirties. Some of my favorite Halloweens involved sitting down to watch a horror marathon on WPIX, and one of my favorite years of the occasion involved sitting to watch “Creepshow” with my brother, which evidently scared the crap out of us. So to calm us down, my mom turned on “Halloween” for us. An equally scary film, but its slower pace worked for us. That and the year I watched the Horror Awards on TV shortly after trick or treating was great fun for me. A big favorite of mine was “Salem’s Lot,” but for some reason it only played during Thanksgiving or Easter. Go figure.
These days with everyone being able to afford cable, networks don’t feel the need to fill up air time with so many movies anymore. With Warner buying WPIX in 1995, the format change, and “New York’s Movie Station” aimed to compete with NBC and FOX with original programming. Plus, I guess it’s less expensive to buy up repeats of a mediocre sitcom than movies. Besides, who wants to really watch a heavily cut version of “Night of the Creeps” anyway? Me. I do. It’s part of the fun! I definitely miss the days of watching primetime movies and marathons during the weekends. When not many could afford cable, WPIX was a sound alternative. Especially for a blossoming movie buff like myself. “Shocktober” is a fun memory that was menacing, but exciting every time it rolled around every year. Much like Halloween.