When I grew up in the 80s, a particularly life changing event was when my family subscribed to HBO.
There were no parental controls in those days. If you had parents like mine that put a TV in your room with HBO on it, you could watch all sorts of stuff that you had no business seeing. HBO's always had loads of cheap crappy movies to round out the expensive good stuff and original series. HBO would play those crappy movies over and over, I'd watch'em over and over again. The later at night the better, especially if it was some horror or mind fuck flick. Past midnight, I'd watch stuff that I'd never give time during the day. Nightmare on Elm Street 4? Why not, I've got time. Swamp Thing? I've only seen it 15 times, what's one more viewing.
It hit me tonight that Netflix is my new HBO. Insomnia at 3 AM? Why not Don't Look Back, subtitled because it's French, starring The Matrix Reloaded's Monica Bellucci and The World Is Not Enough's Sophie Marceau? I've got nothing better to do.
The perfect kind of late night crappy movie is the one you:
- Can fall asleep to if you get tired again
- Don't mind turning off at any point because you really don't care about the story
- Might show you a bit of skin, no matter how fleeting
- Is unintentionally funny, so you laugh at it not with it
- You can watch in the background while you do something else (like write this post)
Plus, Netflix has mostly crappy content and it's getting worse as movie studios refuse to cut deals for newer better streaming content in reasonable timeframes. Which makes Netflix kind of perversely perfect for my late night insomnia needs. I won't be turning it off again if it stays anywhere close to $8/month and keeps the obscure content and/or bad content. And to think, I haven't even entered the time wasteland of TV-MA rated Japanese anime yet!