WSTX HAS DONE IT AGAIN: TWO MOVIES, ONE MONTH, NO ESCAPE

By Dax Silver

There are months when television merely happens.

And then there is August on WSTX.

Somewhere, in some low-ceilinged programming office illuminated by the cold celestial glow of three aging monitors and a vending machine that has not accepted dollar bills since 1998, a decision was made.

Not a cautious decision.

Not a tasteful decision.

A great decision.

For the entire month, WSTX will be presenting what can only reasonably be described as the most audacious repertory-film event currently available to anyone with an antenna, cable package, loose coaxial wire, or sufficiently powerful spiritual connection to Channel 29:

RETURN TO HORROR HIGH.

And:

KILLER TOMATOES STRIKE BACK!

Again.

And again.

And again.

Every night.

All month.

This is not programming. This is installation art.

The first evening, you watch Return to Horror High because you vaguely remember it, or because the title looks good sitting there in the electronic program guide between a rerun of Barney Miller and an advertisement for commemorative coins.

By the fourth evening, you begin recognizing extras.

By the ninth, you have opinions about hallway geography.

By the fifteenth, the movie no longer begins at 11:30 PM. It simply resumes.

And then comes Killer Tomatoes Strike Back!, rolling in at approximately 1:15 in the morning with the dignity of a shopping cart going downhill.

What a picture.

What a tomato.

What a civilization.

There is something profoundly reassuring about a television station committing this hard to something nobody asked for.

Modern streaming services spend billions of dollars constructing recommendation engines capable of determining that because you once watched a documentary about submarines, you may enjoy a Scandinavian murder drama involving a depressed architect.

WSTX has developed a more elegant system.

YOU LIKE THESE TWO MOVIES NOW.

That is the algorithm.

No menus.

No profiles.

No “continue watching?”

You will continue watching because WSTX has already continued watching for you.

The schedule itself achieves poetry.

11:30 PM: RETURN TO HORROR HIGH

1:15 AM: KILLER TOMATOES STRIKE BACK!

3:00 AM: WHICHEVER ONE FINISHED RENDERING FIRST AT THE STATION

That last slot is where television becomes jazz.

Nobody quite knows what will happen.

Perhaps Return to Horror High again.

Perhaps the tomatoes.

Perhaps twenty-seven minutes of a weather radar followed by the tomatoes.

Maybe somebody in master control drops a sandwich onto the switcher and we receive six minutes of a 1987 carpet-commercial reel.

This is live broadcasting, ladies and gentlemen.

This is danger.

And what a pairing!

One picture offers movie-set murder, teenage horror, show-business grime, cheap blood, institutional decay, and the eternal mystery of why schools in horror films apparently contain approximately forty-seven miles of corridors.

The other contains killer tomatoes.

Perfect.

One is architecture.

The other is produce.

Together they form a complete cosmology.

I have already heard complaints.

“Dax, why would anyone want to watch the same two movies every night?”

Incorrect question.

Why would anyone want different movies every night?

Difference creates uncertainty.

Uncertainty creates anxiety.

WSTX provides stability.

At 11:30, Horror High.

At 1:15, Tomato.

The moon crosses the sky.

The tides rise and fall.

Civilizations collapse.

Tomato remains.

There is even something faintly luxurious about the repetition. Movies change when you repeat them. Jokes migrate. Minor characters become major characters. A line you ignored twelve times suddenly becomes the funniest sentence ever spoken by a human being.

Eventually you stop watching the plot.

You begin studying the upholstery.

You notice lamps.

You develop relationships with background automobiles.

By August 27, somebody in Return to Horror High will open a locker and you will say, “Here comes the locker,” with the deep satisfaction normally reserved for the opening bars of a favorite song.

This is how cult cinema is supposed to work.

Not through prestige restoration.

Not through a limited-edition eighty-seven-dollar box set containing six lobby-card reproductions and an essay entitled Vegetal Anxiety in Reagan-Era Parody.

No.

Cult cinema should arrive uninvited through your television at 1:15 AM until your brain finally gives up and says:

Fine. This is part of me now.

And WSTX understands.

The station's slogan for the event is:

WE BOUGHT THE RIGHTS. YOU'RE WATCHING THEM.

Magnificent.

No marketing department could improve it.

It contains economics, threat, invitation, despair, and civic responsibility in seven words.

I want it embroidered on a pillow.

I want it carved above the entrance to the Museum of Television.

I want Walter Cronkite to rise from the earth, look directly into Camera One, and read it aloud.

So cancel your August plans.

Tell your relatives you have entered a period of study.

Turn down the lights.

Move the television six inches closer to the couch.

At 11:29 PM, prepare yourself.

Because WSTX Channel 29 is about to do what television once did best:

Put something weird on.

Then put it on again tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

Until repetition becomes ritual.

Until ritual becomes tradition.

Until sometime around Labor Day you switch on the television at 11:30, discover that WSTX has replaced Return to Horror High with an episode of The Rockford Files, and experience the inexplicable sensation that somebody has moved out of your house.

Five stars.

Ten tomatoes.

Thirty-one nights.

No attempt at balance.

See you at 11:30.