It’s hard to describe the emotion of going through old tapes and seeing artifacts from a world that doesn’t exist anymore. And that’s why this recent video took awhile to make.
Because I was having a hard time getting through it – to be honest.
Every little thing triggers some memory.
Terrorvision was a big part of my life. And it was a big part of my life at a time where I really needed a connection to something that felt weird like me. For people who don’t remember, Candy was the original female co-host, but she didn’t last that long.
It’s hard to find information about what exactly happened behind the scenes – it wasn’t an issue between her and Jimmy James – it was some network executive who felt that blondes got better ratings and that Jimmy and Candy didn’t have good chemistry onscreen.
That being said, I think “Heather the Horror Girl” helped Terrorvision bridge the gap from being a late night program that you sometimes caught if you had insomnia to being a Friday night legend that you HAD to catch every week. Heather was sexy and funny and you could tell she really liked horror movies and she and Jimmy definitely had chemistry.
I think the biggest difference between Candy and Heather was that Heather was very comfortable being eye candy on the show. And in the 90s that was a pretty big fucking deal because your options for seeing pretty girls naked was pretty limited, especially if you only had basic cable.
And you can see how the network really got behind the show once Heather was on board, because they were running these really highly produced TV bumpers to promote the show – and thankfully a few of these made it into my tape collection.
The clips from 69 Minutes are from an interesting time period as VTV started to make the transition from just music videos to more “reality-based” programming as well as some original animated series. Unfortunately for 69 Minutes, it didn’t really fit into this new era of programming, since it was a niche program to start with. And Claire Westfield always pushed the boundaries of how close she could get to being naked on television – but actually seeing her take everyting off for the first time was honestly breathtaking. Even more so because I remember her being interviwed around this time and saying, “If they would let me I’d be naked all the time on my show.”
And so 69 Minutes kind of transitioned into this indie music version of “Naked News.” And for awhile that did revive interest – but as the 90s came to a close so did that era of niche programming in telvision and unfortunately we’re never getting it back.
The police procedural drama was from a TV series called “VICE: Deadman Wonderland.” It was basically a ficitonalized version of San Francisco’s VICE squad in the 1970s, which was sometimes referred to as the “Pussy Posse.” VICE recontextualized it in a modern setting and it was one of the few major network shows that would show nudity. The subtitle, “Deadman Wonderland” was derived from the fact that the overarching story for the first two seasons was about a hooker serial killer.
The sitcom clips are from a show called “Friends and Neighbors” which was probably the biggest sitcom of the 1990s. It’s comiplicated to explain but the two guys in sweater vests are brothers named Ben and Jerry who share an apartment in New York City. Ben is an archaelogist who occasionally goes on Indiana Jones type adventures and Jerry is part of a marketing team at a computer software company that makes video games. Things get complicated when Ben’s old high school crush, Rose, moves into the apartment across the hall from Ben and Jerry. Jerry immediately develops a crush on Roses’s sister, Monique [the brunette] while Ben struggles to confess his feelings to Rose [the readhead]. This is further complicated when Ben’s old college roommate, Tony [now a famous actor on a TV police drama where he plays Detective Edward Blackhand] re-connects with Ben and is constantly flirting with Rose.
This episode, which was called, “Take Another Little Pizza My Heart,” was the culmination of a long running plotline where Monique realizes that she has a crush on Jerry and was engineering increasingly contrived and sexual situations to try and get him to “make the first move.” The final scene where she asks him to watch might be the first time someone ever used the word “cum” on nationl TV.
The fantasy film set in a Labyrinth is a 1980s cult classic called “In a Dark Place.” It’s a bit of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Lolita and was pretty controversial at the time, as it’s about a young woman dealing with her maturing body and the way in which her interactions with men become both complex and toxic. As a sign of how times have changed, despite the nudity it was only rated PG.
The commercials are a really interesting set of time capusles.
The cereal commercial is from the 1980s and the joke is obviously that nobody would ever choose the ceral over her “for breakfast” but the cereal is just that good.
Just Soda was an upstart soda brand in the 1990s that was one of the first “craft” soda brands that marketed towards Gen-X with edgy and sexy marketing – the soda featured in the ad was a flavor simply called “Blue” which surprisingly was a type of carbonated lemonade.
Tiger Heart gum rebranded to the more ominous “X” [pronounced 10] in 2002, but goddamn was it a better product when it was caleld Tiger Heart back in the 90s. It was basically like if someone combined Juicy Fruit and Big League Chew and then threw in some Pop Rocks with the promise that it would make women really want to fuck you.
Silvertonuge was a “spiced”chewing gum that was not around for that long, but it had a very interesting gimmick. The idea was that you chewed the gum and it coated your tongue with “spices” that would linger on your tongue and “stimulate” your wife or girlfriend or whoever you were putting your mouth on. I never got a chance to see if this worked, but the gum tasted terrible so I can’t imagine it was that much fun for the other person either.
Mad City was an huge hit in the arcades back in the early 90s and when it finally got ported to home consoles it was a big deal. Most of the home ports had some kind of censhorship and the Super16 was one of the few conosoles that faithfully recreated the nudity and violence in all its pixelated glory. The basic plot was about 2 strippers who take the fight to the streets after their boyfriends are kidnapped by the infamous “Red Horse” gang.
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