Indy and Hitch

I believe it was Star Wars in 1977 that started the trend of blockbuster movies opening on or near Memorial Day weekend. In 1984, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom continued the tradition. I saw the movie at the Continent multiplex in Columbus on opening day (actually the Wednesday before Memorial Day) at a special 6 a.m. showing with free donuts. I was pretty near the front row and I remember how much fun the opening musical number was.

That weekend, a reissue of Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much opened in Columbus. A handful of Hitchcock's mid-career movies (including Vertigo, Rope, and Rear Window) had been out of circulation for some time and they were re-released in theaters in the mid-80s. I saw all of them at the Drexel, Columbus's thriving art house theater, and crowds always showed up. Notice how the Drexel cleverly co-opted the Indiana Jones tagline for Hitch's movie!

Memorial Day weekend, 1941

Memorial Day weekend in New York City, 1941. Fantasia was in its final weeks (the roadshow version had been playing since the end of December 1940) and the Cary Grant/Irene Dunne tearjerker Penny Serenade was at Radio City, with a Rodgers and Hart live revue on stage.

Valentino was making a comeback in a silent movie double bill (above) and a more-or-less forgotten Fox musical, The Great American Broadcast, was at the Roxy, also with a live stage show (below).

But most importantly, one of American cinema's masterpieces, Citizen Kane, was premiering at the RKO Palace, apparently without a live chorus line.

Yellow Submarine

I saw Yellow Submarine in early 1969 in Columbus, though the above ad is from its Los Angeles premiere in December '68. My mom took me to a rather grungy theater pretty far from home. I remember it was packed with kids and I asked my mom if I could sit alone without her--there were very few other parents there. Mom was very understanding and sat in the back (bored out of her mind, I'm sure).

My movie viewing 43 years ago this month

Some things I found digging through movie ads from May of 1976. First, an overview from General Cinema whose Columbus theaters I probably attended the most (Great Western, University Flick, University City, and several mall locations). I like the double feature midnight show of Blood of Dracula's Castle (a grade-Z Al Adamson epic but fairly painless) and Nightmare in Wax, a remake of House of Wax. And notice that the 1939 Baskervilles which had been reissued the previous summer was still hanging around town

Mother Jugs and Speed was a fairly unpleasant dark comedy. I knew as a college-aged lad that I was supposed to like it but I didn't really, though as I recall, I did see it twice.

Inserts was a X-rated (though not pornographic) movie about porn movie makers in the 1930s. It was big news because newly-minted star Richard Dreyfuss, fresh off Jaws, was in it. The X was titillating, but wasn't that eXciting.

As a good English major who was interested in foreign language films, I found the 70s a great time for exploring world cinema. Not only did we have several campus-area theaters that occasionally showed these movies, as well as a couple of art houses, but even some of the mall theaters did on occasion. I vividly remember Seven Beauties--I became a Lina Wertmuller fan for a while.

My Beatles holiday without the Beatles

 

Let It Be opened in Columbus in May 1970. It's a depressing movie. It was intended as a behind-the-scenes documentary of the four of them recording the Let It Be album, but what it really shows are the tensions that led to the group's breakup. I was 13 and a big Beatles fan, and my dad agreed to drive me up to Loews' Morse Road (about half an hour away from Grove City where I lived) to see it on Memorial Day which was a school holiday. Unfortunately, I was using the Sunday newspaper ad for the movie times, and on Monday, when we drove up, the theater was closed until the evening. My dad had a bit of a temper, but he was surprisingly mellow about the mix-up, and even drove me back up the next weekend to see it.

Robur the Conqueror in Hawaii

Master of the World (1961) with Vincent Price as Jules Verne's Robur the Conquerer. This was a relatively low-budget affair that couldn't do justice to Verne's sprawling adventures. It was American International's biggest budget movie to that point, but it couldn't compare to Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or Fox's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Still, Honolulu was proud to host the world premiere of the film 58 years ago this week.

Gatsbys

The Great Gatsby (1974), the second of three talkie versions of the Fitzgerald novel (a silent version is considered a lost film), playing in Columbus 45 years ago this month. Though this is one of my favorite novels, the movies have yet to do it justice. You'd think that Robert Redford and Mia Farrow would have been just right as Gatsby and Daisy, but they were disappointing. Below is an ad for the 1949 version with Alan Ladd and Betty Field. At times, it's better than the '74 film but has a "happy-ish" ending that goes completely against the spirit of the novel. You can find my full review of this hard-to-find movie here.

The Baz Luhrmann version with Leonardo DiCaprio (below) has its moments, mostly when it's luxuriating in the surface glitter of Gatsby's house and persona, and DiCaprio is a better Gatsby than Redford, but it still doesn't get the novel right. The 3D aspect is wretched excess, but it was effective during the big party scene.

Quick, Watson, the needle!

In August 1975, the 1939 Hound of the Baskervilles had a theatrical re-release after having been out of circulation for years. It ran for two months in Columbus at the World Theatre, near the OSU campus. The ad above is from early August which is when I went to see it. Notice, in clever programming, the second feature was Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr.

Above is a second ad from late August and below, a third ad from mid-September. That ad shows how they were selling the movie--well enough to keep holding it over for weeks--based on its brief final line, "Quick, Watson, the needle!" which had been cut by censors in previous releases. Shades of "Play it again, Sam," it turns out that the line is actually, "Oh, Watson, the needle," but "Quick" sounds so much better.

Chiller Theater Friday

When I remember, I hope to post horror and sci-fi movie ads and such on Fridays, as I grew up watching these kinds of movies late Friday nights on Chiller Theater. The below double bill played in Atlanta Georgia in late December 1956. I haven't see Curucu (but as it stars B-movie beefcake guy John Bromfield, I'd like to) but The Mole People is pretty slow going.

Irony and feminism at the age of 11

In elementary school, I tried to read Shakespeare but couldn't get past the first act of Macbeth (the witches were cool, though). Then around Christmas 1967 I saw the Taylor/ Burton version of Taming of the Shrew. I'm sure I didn't "get" it all, but I remember how mad I was at how Petruchio treated Kate. At the end Kate was tamed, but this 11-year-old was convinced that somehow Kate had come out on top, though I couldn't quite into words why. The first stirrings of feminism and irony were happening in me. This poster is from its engagement at the Drexel in Columbus, Ohio in August of '67 (I saw it during a second run in Sandusky, Ohio)

The Lion in Winter..in Spring

Two ads for The Lion in Winter playing in Columbus. The first is for a reserved seat engagement in spring of 1969. I assume this was its first Columbus run, though it premiered in New York back in the fall of '68. Maybe this was a return engagement after it won some Oscars.

Second is an ad for a major revival in May of 1975. Great movie, always welcome for a return.  

Hammer double bill...with stamps!

A Tucson drive-in double feature the first week of May, 1965. The Gorgon has Hammer duo Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing fighting a creature who can turn people to stone. The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is a lesser Hammer effort (see my review here).

Not sure what was going on with the "black stamps." I first assumed they were stamps like Easter seals, but they were probably inked stamps that kids could apply to their hands or faces or whatever.

A hell of a triple bill

45 years ago today, some Columbus drive-ins were serving up what sounds like a fun triple horror film bill: 1) The Demons from 1973 was a piece of "nunsploitation," sold as Jess Franco's take on Ken Russell's The Devils; 2) The Devil's Wedding Night from1973 was a Countess Bathory story, with a wicked woman bathing in the blood of virgins and so on; 3) The Devil's Bride from 1969 (the American title of The Devil Rides Out) was a Hammer film about "white" magicians battling Satanists. Sorry for the poor quality, but it sounds like quite a bill. The only one I've seen so far is Devil's Bride which is quite good (as is the Dennis Wheatley novel it's based on).

She's Julia Ross, damnit!

My Name is Julia Ross, opening in New York in November 1945. I just saw this Gothic melodrama (sometimes mistaken for a film noir because of its moody photography) which has a minor cult reputation. A predictable damsel-in-distress flick which is fun if not great. Nice to see Dame May Whitty playing a villain for a change. Interesting that, as a B-movie barely over a hour long, it still merited a little "world premiere" ballyhoo. A color lobby card follows.