St. Remedius Events: “The March of the Watching Parties”

A New Option For St. Remedius Enthusiasts From the Comfort Of Your Own Device

(Who was St. Remedius? And why is a medical college named after him?)

And there we were, gazing over the edge of the crevasse, wondering if we’d have the chance to escape before it crawled out of the gap, when the phone rang…

Oh,. Sorry. I’ll clean up the mess later. (I’ve put it away, Mother, I’ve put it away.) Where were we? Oh, yeah. I have a proposition for you.

Anyone reading the St. Remedius installments so far might notice that I have a thing for weird movies. These days, weird movies are easily accessible at any hour. Back in the 1970s, though, there was a tradition to watching them, at least there was for suburban kids in the States. In the days before informercials took over every available free second of broadcast time not allocated to standard programming, television stations didn’t actually shut down, because turning off and turning back on the actual transmitter tube was so stressful that it kept broadcasting a signal day and night. If the station couldn’t wrangle advertising, the station signed off after midnight and sent a generic station ID notice until programming started again in the morning. If the station could, then the space was usually filled with late-night movies, sometimes running until dawn. Monday through Thursday, the selection was the same: Westerns, crime dramas, romantic comedies. Friday nights, though, were where the Nightbreed learned who we were. Friday nights were when the monsters came through the TV screen and stayed for a while.

Oh, sometimes they’d come on Saturdays, too, but Fridays were the magic time. Get home from school, go through all of the normal average family things, sit through the evening local news reports, and then wait for the Late Movie. Some areas of the States had their own shows with hosts introducing movies and making commentary between commercial breaks. Most at least had national programs like the CBS Late Movie, full of relatively recent horror films both domestic and foreign, usually edited to keep everything family-friendly, that ran after the evening news. If you wanted, you could go through the local newspaper TV guides to learn what the next movie was going to be, but most of us didn’t care: if it was on, it was fair game. If you were really lucky, you got friends to spend the night, so four or five of you would keep each other awake while waiting for the promised monster to show up, chugging soda and popcorn until the end credits ran. If you were REALLY lucky, the hits kept coming, with movies going until the sun came up. That was half of the draw, too: many stations would have more monster and weird science movies all through Saturday, but the real fun was sitting in front of the TV, one lamp offering the only available light in the house, at 1 in the morning, always wondering “If the thing got me tonight, would anyone know tonight, or would they only know if find my body in the morning?”

Well, the days of orchestrated and curated late-night TV movies went away for a while. In Texas, informercials gave an excuse for the Southern Baptists to make sure that “inappropriate material” wasn’t accessible to kids or anyone else. The big regional late-night movie shows gradually died off from ratings issues or because their core audiences went to other things. By about 2000, a few cable channels still offered blocks of monster movies at Halloween, but otherwise the closest alternative were movie crawls with video rentals from Blockbuster Video or whatever little local video shop managed to survive Blockbuster’s depredations. By the time Netflix killed off the last of Blockbuster, the movies were there, but getting friends together for a weekend movie bout was increasingly improbable.

During COVID lockdown, Twitch offered an alternative for a while. For those with Amazon Prime, it was possible to come in on a Twitch feed and watch a movie communally. After COVID, Twitch removed that option, and copyright holders cracked down on anyone trying to share a movie or TV show on Twitch feeds. That’s when wiseacres realized that there was still an option for the community experience: give the particulars of a chosen movie, such as which services offered it via streaming, and get everyone to load it their own way, then chat with each other via the Twitch interface. And that’s what’s going to happen with the St. Remedius Bromley Contingent.

Starting April 25, 2026, we’re going international. Want to join in?

Number one, go to the Campus and Off-Campus Activities page and see the selected movie for the next showing. By default, the movie in question will be available on Tubi: if you have issues with Tubi, search your chosen streaming services for it, or even plug a DVD into your player, if you still have one, and follow along with the Twitch app on your phone or tablet. In some cases, the movies might run on other services, and the page will give details on where to watch.

Number two, get on the official St. Remedius Watch Party page. If all you want to do is listen to commentary, you don’t have to set up your own account, but if you want to add to the chat, get an account set up.

Number three, tune in at the advertised time (I’m trying to keep times that allow folks outside of the US to participate as well), and when you hear “Punch it!”, start your viewing and hang on. It’s going to get weird.

And if this one works out? Expect a lot of others, and possibly some TV watching parties during the week. (I haven’t had a Max Headroom viewing party since the 1980s, and there’s all sorts of other St. Remedius influences all over the internet.) But for now, check in at 2:00 pm Central Time for The Land That Time Forgot (the original 1974 version with Doug McClure and dinosaur puppets), the chance to see and hear your host in person, as I rattle on with movie trivia and interesting sidequests during commercial breaks, and the chance to chat with other St. Remedius readers, and best of all is that you don’t need to put your phone down. If you can’t make it, there’s next time. See you there.

Want to get caught up on the St. Remedius story so far? Check out the main archive. Want more hints as to the history of St. Remedius Medical College? Check out Backstories and Fragments. Want to forget all of that and look at cat pictures from a beast who dreams of his own OnlyFans for his birthday? Check out Mandatory Parker. Questions, concerns, and disgust over generative AI? Check out Contact, Privacy Policy, and AI Policy. And feel free to visit the St. Remedius Medical College Redbubble shop for all of your Mandatory Parker needs.

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