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Comment by ghostDancer | Hacker News Reader

In preinternet times it took me years to know the name of the movie, I watched it on TV when I was a child and years later I could recall scenes but no one knew which was the title of the movie. It's a strange movie one of those that can induce nightmares and/or boredom in a child.

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I finally figured out what I watched as a kid when it was on Svengoolie:

https://svengoolie.com/blog/the-seuss-is-loose-and-somewhat-...

I think it was the US TNT cable tv network that used to run a late night “100% Weird” movie block on Saturday nights that used a lot of clip art from this movie in their promo spots and actuality showed this movie one night - it was the first and only time I’ve ever seen it. It mostly triggers flashbacks to my own parents obsession with trying to get me to play the piano.

It’s really hard to find movies like this anymore, nobody bothers to stream them. If you know about them you can sometimes find them on Amazon but if you don’t know them I don’t know how you’d ever discover them.

There was one movie called Night Patrol which was a standard police farce movie except the main character (credited as “the unknown comic”) wore a paper bag over his head in every scene.

And all of the Trama Team movies from the 80s - Toxic Avenger, Surf Nazis Must Die, Rock ‘N Roll High School.

And the worst horror film ever -Student Bodies - which had an on-screen body count, helpful pointers to the fatal mistakes each character made before they died, and the main bad guy “The Breather” who would lose all his footwear every time he went up stairs because he’d constantly step in gum.

Even NetFlix doesn’t roll out gems like those.

Some of these types of films are available through Kanopy, which you might be able to use if you have a US library card. If your library participates, it’s free, but limited to 10 movies or episodes per month. It was a great day when I found it, owing to a comment here on HN. Far better catalog than Netflix.

Kanopy is the best! I used to use a service called Juststreamit, to find what streaming service something was on, now there's an app called Justwatch. I'd signed up for a Kanopy account years ago and was able to put it good use. It has so many indie films that I'd been waiting to watch and you can also sort by language which is great for learning.

Hoopla and Pluto.tv have a lot of these cult films too.

I recorded this in April when it was shown on TCM (in the U.S.). Haven't seen it yet!

I miss Night Flight on USA Network. Probably ruined my GPA from staying up so late but it was worth it. It's kind of back in streaming form, now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Flight_%28TV_series%29

https://www.nightflightplus.com/

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