Christmastime at the movie houses, part 2

A selection of movies playing in Columbus during Christmas week 60 years ago (1959).

The Ohio Theater downtown was showing the animated Mr. Magoo movie 1001 Arabian Nights and a circus drama, The Flying Fontaines, which seems to have dropped out of sight.

Two ads for Disney's Third Man on the Mountain--one beefcakier than the other. James MacArthur tries to conquer a dangerous Swiss mountain, The Citadel. It's Disney adventure but it's got some good effects.

Another downtown house had a double bill of the family-friendly Journey to the Center of the Earth and the somewhat less wholesome war thriller Blood and Steel.

Porgy and Bess, playing a downtown roadshow engagement in Columbus on Christmas day. Supposedly this is a very good film, but legal problems have kept it mostly unseen for many years.


Below, movies that were playing 50 years ago (1969):

Two of the movies that were trying to keep the big movie musicals alive. Hello, Dolly was miscast and too lumbering, but even though it lost money, it did play for several weeks in Columbus. The musical version of Goodbye Mr. Chips lost even more money that Dolly. I can't quite bring myself to watch a musical with Peter O'Toole after the debacle of Man of La Mancha.

James Bond at Christmas! But not Sean Connery. George Lazenby was a one-and-done Bond, but both he and the movie are better than their reputations.

An art house Christmas consisted of 2 second-run cult films, Goodbye Columbus (based on Philip Roth) and Barbarella (with an almost nude Jane Fonda). Neither movie is a masterpiece, but it's interesting counter-programming during the holidays.

The Disney reissue that season was 101 Dalmatians from 1961. This was one of the first movies I saw in a theater (I would have been 5 in 1961) and I loved it, but I don't know how I'd feel about it now.

Christmastime at the movie houses, part 1

I had planned to spend much of December posting movie ads from various Christmas weeks between the 40s and the 70s but life got in the way. Not even anything sad or happy or weird, just everyday living around the holidays. So I'll post a handful over the next few days.

Christmas of 1943 saw the fabulous Technicolor musical The Gang's All Here playing in New York City. The movie is really nothing special in terms or story or acting, but the production numbers are fun, and the opening number with Carmen Miranda and her Phallic Bananas is justly famous.

In 1947 Los Angeles, this cool double feature was playing, a throwback to the first classic horror era of the 30s--Son of Frankenstein ('39) and Bride of Frankenstein ('35).

A forgotten live-action Disney movie, Westward Ho, the Wagons, was probably relying on the fame of Fess Parker as Davy Crockett on TV to grab Christmas audiences in Atlanta in 1956.

The release of Ray Harryhausen's fantasy The 7th Voyage of Sinbad seems more attuned to holiday family audiences at Christmas of 1958. Seen today, it's a little old-fashioned storywise but the effects are still awfully fun.

Thanksgiving cornucopia, part 2: 1969

Following is a selection of movies playing in Columbus over Thanksgiving 50 years ago, in November of 1969. As befit the times, of a Hollywood undergoing big changes in a "youthquake" era, it's a bag of oddities.

Paint Your Wagon was another nail in the coffin of the big Hollywood musical. I've never seen it but that odd trio of stars (Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg) would seem to spell disaster for a musical.

Liza Minnelli's first leading role--and it's not a musical or comedy, but a gloomy coming-of-age melodrama. She's good but it doesn't feel like holiday viewing.

The Undefeated, a western with John Wayne and Rock Hudson.

Two big zeitgeist movies from the year, Alice's Restaurant and Midnight Cowboy.

And at the drive-ins (with electric car warmers), Change of Habit and Eye of the Cat (not a bad little thriller)

Thanksgiving cornucopia, part 1: 1933

Here's a few days worth of movies that were playing on or around Thanksgiving over the years. Unlike at Christmastime, these are mostly not films with holiday themes, but they are often family movies or films getting an early shot at holiday traffic.

Opening in time for Thanksgiving viewing in New York in 1933 was Design for Living, a witty and sophisticated romp based on a play by Noel Coward. He complained that the screenplay was a complete rewrite of his story of an attempt at a long-term threesome, but it still has its moments. It was playing at the Criterion, and coincidentally, the movie was released on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection.

For less high-class comedy, you could see Duck Soup, the Marx Brothers classic, over Thanksgiving. The top ad is from New York, the bottom from Atlanta the week after Thanksgiving. At the time, the movie was not a box office hit like their earlier ones were, but it is now considered their funniest. I like Animal Crackers more, but this one will do.

A Busby Berkeley musical spectacle, Footlight Parade, also opened in Manhattan for Thanksgiving, complete with live vaudeville acts, though I suspect none of the live performers could outdo the production numbers that Berkeley put on the screen.

Finally, the legendary Mae West, in one of her last hit movies before the Production Code came into effect next year and tamed her ribaldry.

Horror-rama 2

I didn't get around to posting as many horror ads for October as I would have liked--work and vacation got in the way. But here are a couple more.

A Sioux City, Iowa "dusk to dawn" horror bill from 1969 anchored by The Devil's Bride (aka The Devil Rides Out), one of my favorite Hammer horror films. The story of a small band of intrepid do-gooders out to save two people from being baptized into a Satanic cult is interesting, and based on a pretty good pulp horror novel by Dennis Wheatley; the budget is too low for most of the shocks to really be effective, but it's still fun, and Christopher Lee gets to play a hero. Also playing: The Vengeance of She, The Power (sci-fi thriller), and the Roman Polanski comedy The Fearles Vampire Killers.

Also from 1969, The Witchmaker, a B-horror film that is surprisingly good, set in a swamp and involving graduate students who run, as in The Devil Rides Out, into some murderous devil worshipers. Playing in Akron, Ohio in November of 1969.

Finally. The Crawling Eye (1959), one of the first horror movies I saw, as a child of 7. Seen as an adult, the effects are not terribly impressive, but as a kid, it gave me frights.

Horror-rama!

The multi-movie horror fest had a long tradition, especially during the heyday of the drive-in theater.

And Now the Screaming Starts (1973)--Terror in the Wax Museum (1973; with Ray Milland and Elsa Lanchester)--Ben (1972; sequel to Willard). Columbus Ohio triple bill at a couple of drive-ins in September 1973. 

Don't Go Near the Park (1979; with Aldo Ray and Barbara Bain)--Don't Go in the Basement (aka Don't Look in the Basement, 1973)--Don't Answer the Phone (1980). Playing at a Columbus drive-in in the summer of 1982. Never heard of any of these movies, but the "don't go" theme is clever. 

Nightmare in Wax (1969)--Blood of Dracula's Castle (1969)--Blood and Black Lace (1964). Triple horror bill at Columbus drive-ins in September 1970. Dracula's Castle is the only movie I've seen by the notorious Al Adamson, and it's cheap but not bad. Blood and Black Lace is beautifully photographed.
 

Another Al Adamson cheapie, Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), and two classier horror pix from Hammer, Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), the movies that revived the horror fad into the 1960s. This bill was playing in Columbus during Halloween week, 1972.

October is horror month

I'm a little late getting started, but it's time to post some horror movie ads from my collection.

A Halloween night triple feature from Akron, OH in 1969. Teenage Psycho is better known as the grade-Z classic "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" which you may know from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Also Hammer's Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Castle of Evil (1964) with Barbara Steele. 

Black Sunday, another Barbara Steele movie, in Tucson in 1961. A witch is brought back to life to wreck vengeful havoc. This is the movie whose opening freaked me out so much, I had to leave the theater when I first saw it in the mid-60s (I was 9, and it was the iron maiden scene) and I didn't see the whole thing until I was in college.

The Horror of Party Beach, a B-movie which tried to combine the appeal of the monster movies and the Frankie & Annette beach movies. It did not succeed. I owned a photo-comic of this movie in the 60s and didn't see the actual movie until sometime in the 80s. It did not live up to the magazine, but again, it made good fodder for MSR3K. Ad from Dayton, 5/9/64.
 

As I seem to be on a Mystery Science Theater kick, here's The Mole People, on a double bill with Curucu, Beast of the Amzaon, showing in Atlanta in December of 1956. My first experience with Mole People, as with the above Party Beach, was owning a photo-comic book. The movie itself is deadly dull. I'm sure I saw Curucu at some point in the 60s on Chiller Theater; I'm trying to track it down again but it seems to be in hiding.

(Maybe not so) Astounding!

The Astounding She-Monster (1958) provides a good example of ads vs. reality. Below are 1) a sexy full-color ad for the movie (about a space woman wondering through the woods, scaring people with her blurry figure); 2) an example of the kind of ad that ran in newspapers--it was released as the second feature to Viking Women and the Sea Serpent; 3) what the She-Monster (Shirley Kilpatrick) really looked in the movie.

Merkins and Humppes

One of the oddest movie titles ever is Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? This 1969 film, directed by and starring Anthony Newley, was rated X on its initial release (sexy but not pornographic according to critics). I've always wanted to see this, but I've never run across it. After reading some summaries and given that it's Newley at the helm, it's probably very similar to his Stop the World I Want to Get Off, which was interesting but not nearly as charming or profound as Newley seemed to think it was. The first ad is from Columbus Ohio, 50 years ago this week; the second from Honoluly in August of '69.

At the drive-in 60 years ago

I guess I'm feeling a little trashy today. Here are a few ads featuring perfect examples of drive-in exploitation movies which were playing around the country in the fall of 1959, 60 years ago.

A double bill of High School Big Shot and T-Bird Gang. The lead in High School Big Shot, Tom Pittman, died in a car accident just two weeks after this film was released. T-Bird Gang had Ed Nelson (Peyton Place) and Vic Tayback (the diner owner in Alice) in supporting roles.

I love the title of Louisiana Hussy, which involves a woman seducing two brothers, one of whom is a newlywed. The Beatniks has Peter Breck from Big Valley in a supporting role.

Back in the summer, a Columbus drive-in was showing Because of Eve, one of those supposedly educational movies about childbirth, firsr released in 1948. The co-feature, Dangerous Age, was a 1957 teenage angst movie. A color ad appears below, highlighting the tastes of life and love (probably more like the taste of lipstick)

September 1981 in Columbus Ohio

A sampling of what was playing in Columbus in September, 1981.

The first time I felt a bit disillusioned with Hollywood horror was with American Werewolf in London. It seemed like the movie makers couldn't decide on comedy, drama or horror, and they kept stopping the action to show off their special effects.

I saw Body Heat before I saw its inspiration, the classic noir Double Indemnity. Indemnity is great, and Body Heat is pretty good, too.

How proud the local Loews theaters must have been to snag the premiere of Soggy Bottom USA with Ben Johnson (years after he won a well-deserved Oscar for The Last Picture Show), Dub Taylor (lots and lots of big-bellied parts on TV), and Don Johnson (pre-Miami Vice). Looks like a Southern family comedy, though info on it is hard to find.

John Travolta triple feature from Paramont: Blow Up, Grease, and Saturday Night Fever.

The Unseen, a "what's in the basement?"horror film with Barbara Bach, former Bond girl and wife to Ringo Starr.