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The ABC Sunday Night Movie

Amasov

Amasov

Rear Admiral
Rear Admiral
Remember when it was a big deal when a motion picture had its network television premiere? Especially on the old ABC Sunday Night Movie.

Since this is a Trek message board, here are two highlights!

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I87lwWzSlM[/yt]

Network premiere of TMP.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwQbkMxQqKA&feature=related[/yt]

Network premiere of TWOK. I get chills listening to the late-great Ernie Anderson, my voice-over idol, narrating this promo. "The deadliest criminial in the galaxy is on the loose and the battle lines are drawwwwwwwwn!"
 
Good old Ernie Anderson. Nobody can say "Love Boat" the way he did.

One well-known ABC SNM story is how they had a new intro shot for A Fistfull of Dollars to set it up that The Man With No Name was sent by the governor to clean up the town. They couldn't just have a bunch of violence happening for no good purpose.

When I was a kid ABC was not my favorite network but I recall watching a lot of Sunday night movies with my family. Which reminds me: When I was young ABC always seemed to have a kind of dimmed, unsaturated color. CBS was the most vibrantly colored and NBC was in between. If you had shown me a clip of a network show I had never seen and I could probably have told you which network it came from just by the "look." It may just have been my local stations, though; did anyone have a comparable experience with the Big 3?

Justin
 
J.T.B. said:
One well-known ABC SNM story is how they had a new intro shot for A Fistfull of Dollars to set it up that The Man With No Name was sent by the governor to clean up the town. They couldn't just have a bunch of violence happening for no good purpose.
Click to expand...

I've heard about that story. Clint Eastwood did not play The Man With No Name in this new footage, instead it was some schlub whose face you don't ever see. Harry Dean Stanton plays the warden of the jail who gives him his "assignment".

I bet it was stuff like this, and the editing jobs on movies like Blazing Saddles and Animal House, that made people grateful for cable movie channels like HBO when they came around.
 
Not every ABC movie edit was a winner.

The butchery of On Her Majesty's Secret Service is legendary; the ABC opening starts with the nighttime ski chase, then goes back to the casino at the beginning, with someone (as Bond) narrating the film.
 
One special treat of the Star Trek movie premieres were they included deleted scenes,like the one that revealed Midshipman Preston was Scotty's nephew.
 
For several years I had a VHS copy of SNM's premiere of "Big." I was surprised to watch an actual copy of the movie when I was around ten or eleven and discover that the movie had swearing in it.

I'll also always remember that copy of SNM for the RIDICULOUSLY CREEPY commercial of the TV-movie remake of "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"
 
This also reminds me of the original movies of the week on Sundays--which were a staple for years. I was addicted to those.

And when CBS had holiday specials and they had that nifty rainbow logo that introduced the shows.

Or remember when there were actually Saturday morning cartoons. Or when MTV played videos. Or all those wonderful game shows on network daytime like Concentration, Sale of the Century, Scrabble, Press Your Luck etc.

Ah...the good 'ol days
 
Allyn Gibson said:
Not every ABC movie edit was a winner.

The butchery of On Her Majesty's Secret Service is legendary; the ABC opening starts with the nighttime ski chase, then goes back to the casino at the beginning, with someone (as Bond) narrating the film.
Click to expand...

I remember that. When I finally saw it on VHS years later, I was wondering why the movie started out in the beginning instead of the middle!
 
J.T.B. said:
Which reminds me: When I was young ABC always seemed to have a kind of dimmed, unsaturated color. CBS was the most vibrantly colored and NBC was in between. If you had shown me a clip of a network show I had never seen and I could probably have told you which network it came from just by the "look." It may just have been my local stations, though; did anyone have a comparable experience with the Big 3?
Click to expand...
Comparable, but different. For me, ABC had the best color and saturation. CBS was bright, but cheap and plastic looking. NBC was dismal, with very muted color.
 
startrekwatcher said:
This also reminds me of the original movies of the week on Sundays--which were a staple for years. I was addicted to those.

And when CBS had holiday specials and they had that nifty rainbow logo that introduced the shows.

Or remember when there were actually Saturday morning cartoons. Or when MTV played videos. Or all those wonderful game shows on network daytime like Concentration, Sale of the Century, Scrabble, Press Your Luck etc.

Ah...the good 'ol days
Click to expand...

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W9V9SZPHAY[/yt]

Is that the one?
 
^ I remember that one! And... Animaniacs spoofed it!

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNAq8Jyp9oI[/yt] The res sucks on this.
 
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