HULU is the New Late Night Movie Destination

I again am becoming a talking walking advertisement for the power that is Hulu. Go to the site and watch television and movies for free. They will have a few ads throughout the viewing of the program but they are short and really not that bad of a sacrifice for a relatively good quality online video viewer.

With that in mind the movies on here are largely crappy. For a variety of licensing issues most "GOOD" movies are put up on Hulu but then are only on there for maybe a month or two and then are taken down. In the past movies like The Big Lebowski, The Karate Kid Trilogy, The Thing, 28 Days Later, and many other average to good films have been on Hulu. They are all down now. The good news is most really shitty movies get thrown up on Hulu and stay there for a long time. Did you say you wanted to watch Kickboxer 3 starring that dude who played Cody in Step By Step? Well you're in luck because its there! How about The Substitute 2:School's Out...can't afford Tom Berenger for the sequel...well good news, we have Treat Williams.

The entire point I'm getting at though is that I grew up in what can only be described as an amazing time for television and cable in general. By the early to mid 90's cable was entering a stage where the product itself was maturing beyond a ramshackle group of channels that were still trying to figure out what the hell to put on at all hours of the day. There was a time where USA, TBS, TNT, and the like all had various night and late night movie programming blocks. Films like Judgment Night, Surviving The Game, and The People Under the Stairs became staples of the late night movie rotation.

USA Up All Night was fucking awesome. Gilbert Gottfried introducing me to Critters 2: The Main Course was a great time in my life. On top of that cable has become a lot more refined which means they cater far less to the lowest common denominator. What I can tell you is that the show Silk Stalkings was a show I didn't personally watch/enjoy but I do remember the lead ins to every episode was someone was having sex and then they got killed. Not exactly sure if my 12 year old brain knew exactly what was going on.

Tragically the way these channels fill the late night hours now is around midnight to one they just immediately flip it to the same 4 informercials (they don't even have any good informericals anymore but that is an entirely different topic) and let them run on repeat until 5 or 6 am and the regular programming schedule resumes. The children of today then are left with Hulu. It lacks the charm of the cheap ass programming ethos of cable programming but at least they can watch The Substitute 2 without censorship.

P.S. TNT allowed me to watch The Shawshank Redemption about 823 times.