Forget cable, the best channel on your flatscreen can only be reached by Antenna TV, which brings you a truly wild world of movie genres known as THIS TV.
THIS TV, a Channel broadcast out of Chicago by Weigel Broadcasting and it’s President, Neal Sabin, is unlike any other network on TV, be it broadcast or cable. You can find it in Southern California and the Pacific Northwest as 5.3
The station has a respect for movies–the ending credits are allowed to roll, untruncated or interrupted by blurbs for other programming. Commercial breaks are well chosen and never jarring. Their broadcasting is eclectic–obscure gangster movies like Roger Corman’s BLOODY MAMA (with a young Robert Deniro as a drug-addicted gunsel) and DILLINGER (With a pre-JAWS Richard Dreyfuss as a gleefully psychotic Babyface Nelson), classic Three Stooges, Benny Hill, Abbott & Costello and Francis The Talking Mule, mixed with Billy Wilder and David Mamet films.
The station especially excels with horror and sci-fi. Their Halloween 2011 was a jawdropping bonanza of horror and monster epics, some not even on dvd that was led by them showing an unprecedented week of classic horror; Bela Lugosi’s DRACULA, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Julie Adams facing THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, the scary/cool British chiller CURSE OF THE DEMON (Which Sam Raimi did a recent uncredited remake of, calling it DRAG ME TO HELL!) mixed with later horror like Chucky the killer doll in CHILD’S PLAY and The Chiodo brothers’ brilliant cult movie, KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE.
For Friday The 13th today, the station is running one of their impressive horror marathons–kicking off with Nature-strikes-back chiller FROGS, Vincent Price in TOWER OF LONDON and underrated Nathaniel Hawthorne anthology TWICE-TOLD TALES, the creepy British film version of TALES FROM THE CRYPT where a hot, murderous Joan Collins does battle with an insane, serial killing Santa Claus.
It’s ironic, that this cool, obscure station does a better job handling these movies than AMC, Sy-Fy Channel and Chiller combined. The channel even runs JAWS marathons ans shows grindhouse horror like THE CAR and TINTORERA. The only thing the station is missing is a sexy horror hostess–with Elvira reviving her show on another channel, THIS should look into obtaining sexy horror upstart Ivonna Kadaver (ivonna-cadaver.com )
Seriously, any true affcianado of denre movies should give this channel a look. Find out what you’re missing at http://chicago.thistv.com/