It Had Tubi You
There's stuff I could write about on the more personal end of pop culture – like my increasing suspicion that (along with shame) my greatest psychological hurdle is anxiety, and my realization during a Nitehawk Theater rewatch of the original Candyman (as good as you probably remember, if not better) that my love of horror is probably a lifelong attempt to grapple with my fears. Or the great Stephen Malkmus concert I also saw this last week, and how often I forget to go out and do stuff beyond my comfortable rut, and the way doing something different felt healing, and how listening to Richard and Linda Thompson's great album I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight on the way home felt like someone cracked my head open and was caressing my brain with massage oil made of beautiful sadness.
But I wrote a very long, somewhat revealing essay last time, so to change things up and also confuse anyone who looks for any kind of consistency in this project, I'm tacking the other direction with something short and dumb.
Through a combination of professional avocation and personal inclination, the Tubi recommendations I get fed are a cavalcade of glorious trash. And that really means something, when you consider what a trash pile much of Tubi is already – no insult to Tubi, perhaps my favorite overall streaming service, simply by virtue of being the one that STILL HAS A BUNCH OF FUCKING MOVIES ON IT. Sure, it's a little jarring in the year of our lord 2025 to deal with unskippable commercials, but as someone whose career has involved writing for television, I'm all for a business model that still allows people to make money from their work. Call me a loon, if you like, but I think that's a good thing.
Anyway, there are plenty of actually-good movies on Tubi, but their model is also "Did someone make something we can call a movie, even if it's only 45 minutes long? Does it have room for a pharmacutical ad for a drug with several alarming side effects? Sure, we'll pay ten bucks to stick it in our library!"
And God bless them for that. As every other streaming channel seems to be deleting movies with genuine cultural importance from their hard drives and our cultural consciousness, Tubi's like the preservationists at the end of Fahrenheit 451, repeating memorized works of literature, except they're equally devoted to preserving classics like The Apartment and oddities like Baby Cat.
Lately I've been getting a lot of recommendations for horror anthologies. Theoretically, cheap horror anthologies could be great – horror's easier to sustain in bursts, and there are a lot of genuinely effective no-budget horror shorts on YouTube – but these feel more like fuckaround projects from a group of friends, one of whom has a camera and a back yard.
I haven't watched them, so I can't speak to whether there are any diamonds in the rough. I'm more fascinated with the way Tubi sells these things to the viewer, which is to say, they don't. Not at all – at least, not visually. You would think that, to promote a horror movie, you would choose a picture of a monster or a killer or some bloody victims. You know... horror stuff. But Tubi resolutely refuses. They may promise scares with the written descriptions, but they then pair those with random movie stills, like an Instagram reel where no one bothered to select an intriguing or flattering cover pic.
So, just because I noticed it, please enjoy a gallery of Tubi's uninspiring promo images for cheap horror anthologies:
I can only assume that this mildly-perturbed woman at a laptop is watching Tales From Pandora's Box Vol. III without having seen I and II, and is utterly lost.
"The first choice in this Book of Choices is, 'Just use a picture of someone reading a book for your book-based horror film.' That seems fine. No need to read chapter two 'Or You Could Show Something Exciting.'"
Tales From the Graveyard is judging me.
This woman looks cranky because someone reminded her that the article "an" is only used in front of words that start with a vowel sound, and it's too late to reprint the posters for her film "An Horror Anthology."
"Well, here we are in our Weird Fiction club. James, why don't you start by reading your story 'The Hot Thundercat Starts a Bikini Carwash with the 'Solo: A Star Wars Story' Junk-Trunk Robot – Part IV: A New Grope."
"I think this one's blurry. Should we grab something else?"
"You're new at Tubi, huh?"
I give this project even lower odds of making it through all 50 states than Sufjan Stevens.
Man those pictures were TOO TERRIFYING. I'm gonna go grab some chamomile tea. Hope y'all can sleep tonight!
For earlier posts, check out the archive. In my other life, I’m a podcaster. Listen to my show The Flop House, here. In my other other life, I’m an Emmy-winning comedy writer. If you’re looking to staff, get in touch! And if you love the newsletter, you can always consider tipping me, by enrolling in the paid tier!