Tubi TV is the gift that keeps giving as far as streaming services are concerned. There are online channels I subscribe to and for which I pay a monthly fee, but I keep on drifting back to the free Tubi. Of course, Tubi does show commercials, but so does Hulu which double dips with a lot of advertising and an onerous subscription cost.
Tubi seems to be an endless well and unlike the other streaming channels, they seem to get me and offer me an endless smorgasbord of suggestions that I actually want to watch.
Of course, your mileage may vary.
I watch stuff that doesn’t require my strict attention so I can doodle. Usually it’s a lot of trash like Girl in Trouble (1963) where Tammy Clarke who’s lone credit is playing THE GIRL named Judy Collins who tires of the tedium of country living with her widower father and seeks the excitement of New Orleans. Naturally things don’t go her way as she goes from waitressing to modeling to stripping. The picture is called Girl in Trouble after all.
I followed up one tale of woe which Tubi suggested with another titled Damaged Goods (1961). This is a scare film about venereal disease, but unlike the battered 16mm films that used to be wheeled from classroom to classroom in high school, this one has decent actors and a catchy instrumental theme song by The Ventures!
That was quite a coup because The Ventures were very popular at that time. This was well before the British Invasion and the beach sound dominated the juke boxes of America. Watching this film feels like the space of time between cuts on a Beach Boys album. High school guys working on cars, going to school, pondering college, going on dates and winding up in that one club where one thing leads to another and they get a dose.
What is interesting is that these trash movies become a travelogue through time. The budgets were too low to build seats or shoot on backlots so they were shot on location. A time and a place that are long gone are shown how they were. They can be enjoyed as trash or as a time traveling tourist would if such things existed.
There are some ‘strange’ things on Tubi… sigh
There is a lot of good stuff on there as well, and maybe I’ll chase it down in a future post.