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Author Topic: Did you go to theaters and drive-ins as a kid?  (Read 3167 times)
javakoala
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« on: March 20, 2017, 04:55:29 PM »

Tell everyone about your earliest memories of going to theaters and drive-ins. Stories of teen years at the drive-in probably should be kept PG-13, if they really fit in here.

The idea for this thread was sparked by Rev. Powell in another thread. Thank you, Rev.

THE HONEYMOON KILLERS (1970): A Mexican-American gigolo scams lonely women out of their savings through a "lonely hearts club" dating service, but one of his homely victims falls for him even after he is revealed as a con man and insinuates herself as his accomplice; a sick love affair develops between the two amid their intensifying crime spree. Based on true events. Ray and Martha are like real life characters from a John Waters script, played for tragedy rather than comedy, and the low-budget melodramatics sells the tawdry desperation better than a more polished film would. 3.5/5.


I liked the hint of cinema verite with the stark, almost doumentary-style look.

When it was originally released, there were certain distributors who would send around a trunk like the one the stars are photographed on. There was a bloody arm hanging out of it. God knows why, but the Allred Theater in Pryor, OK, got one. That's where my mom would drop me off for Saturday matinee. I got to the theater this one weekend, and the manager had placed that trunk out near the sidewalk with a stand-up sign promoting the film. You know, stir up some talk among the shopping ladies as they went in and out the bank next door.

I was in love. I wanted to see what was actually in the trunk, but I kept thinking, "What if that IS a dead body?" I knew it was fake, but still....

Apparently my mom asked the manager why he put it out in front instead of leaving it in the lobby (She was curious, not condemning. I remember her smiling as she talked to him.) He said he didn't want it upsetting the kids inside the theater during matinee. Dude! We all had to walk past the freaking thing to get in. And, then, they showed us "The Legend of Boggy Creek" with its series of jump scares at the end.

Sadists.

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sprite75
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« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2017, 05:40:28 PM »

Occasionally we would go to theaters when I was a kid, but not too often.  Maybe a couple times a year.  Even now   

Never been to a drive in.  There's one south of where I live open from April through November that I'd want to go to some time.  I've been meaning to go for years, just have to find the time and the right movie.  I'd want to go either earlier or later in the year because otherwise in the summer they don't start until almost 22:00.
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indianasmith
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« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2017, 05:43:05 PM »

My brother took me to see THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK at the drive-in when I was 6; it's the only drive-in movie I ever remember seeing and it scared the bejabbers out of me!!   Buggedout

When I was little, my "girlfriend" and I would go see movies downtown at the old Texan Theater in Greenville.  Saw some classics there, both Disney and others; I remember THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD especially well!
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« Reply #3 on: March 21, 2017, 09:03:07 AM »

When I was little we lived not far from a drive-in that seemed to buck the national trend and stayed thriving until late in the 1980s, at least. (We moved away so I'm not sure how long it stayed open but there is an office complex on the site today.) We saw a lot of movies there over the course of three summers, 1986-1988, and I can remember loving it there, and I was allowed to lie on the roof of the car, and to me it seemed like a big improvement on sitting inside a theater. (There was an infamous skunk that'd come walking around between the cars looking for scraps, and once I saw a "shooting star" while there; try that in a multiplex, right?)

One summer I came back from visiting my grandparents overseas, and it was a few days before school was supposed to start, so my dad took me to the drive-in to see Goonies, and I was so out of whack from the time change (being over there just long enough to adjust to the time difference before getting yanked back home) I apparently fell asleep on top of the car and slept through the entire movie!

But I can't remember going to a drive-in once we moved from there in June 1989, and there's only one left in the entire region today.

As for theaters, we went sometimes, sure, but probably not as often as a lot of families did because my mother didn't like going and my dad was more of a reader, so I think I missed seeing a lot of the classic movies of the first half of the '90s. I did see Jurassic Park with my cousin and I couldn't imagine any film would be that good ever again. (As I remember we also got caught in a whomper of a severe storm driving back.)

One memory of those times.... I think I've told the story in here before of how my friend and I tried to sneak into Pulp Fiction and got caught and chucked out for being underage, and we even tried to bribe the guy who was giving us the bum's rush but he didn't want our ten bucks. Ha.

In retrospect that day was the last hurrah of an entire era of my life, before everything started changing way too fast.
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El Misfit
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« Reply #4 on: March 21, 2017, 10:38:24 AM »

By theater do you mean movie theater, because I went to them a lot, or do you mean play theater, because I went to them a lot. There isn't a drive in theater here, so I can't experience the joy of having a companion to snuggle up next to as the movie is playing in the night.
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« Reply #5 on: March 21, 2017, 10:52:38 AM »

One of my earliest memories are of the time that i saw the last starfighter/footloose. My family went to see footloose. A 4 or 5 year old kid has little interest in watching kevin bacon dance.  At some point i noticed the screen behind us was playing a movie with aliens and all types of interesting stuff,  come to find out, it was the last starfighter. So im watching the last star fighter while listening to footloose! At times they seemed to sync pretty well. Imagine watching astar ship dog fights while hearing kenny loggins sing "everybody cut loose...kick off your sunday shoes!"
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javakoala
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« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2017, 11:58:06 AM »

By theater do you mean movie theater, because I went to them a lot, or do you mean play theater, because I went to them a lot. There isn't a drive in theater here, so I can't experience the joy of having a companion to snuggle up next to as the movie is playing in the night.

Movies, El Misfit. We'd need a completely new web site if we started focusing on bad plays and bad productions of such. Gotta love local theater groups. Bless their well-meaning hearts.
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Rev. Powell
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« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2017, 12:58:42 PM »

I grew up at the end of the classic drive-in era. Mom and dad used to take us and it was cool because we could wear pajamas and fall asleep in the car when the B-picture stated. No telling what masterpieces I missed! My fondest drive-in memory is seeing YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. By the time I was old enough to drive in the mid-80s, drive-ins were on the way out.
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javakoala
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« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2017, 01:00:47 PM »

I think I may have shared this tale before but can't seem to find it in the archives, so, please, forgive me if this is a re-run (hey, hey, hey!).

H.R. Pufnstuf (the last name should tell you what you need to know about how the show was created) was an oddly popular show when I was a kid. I loved watching it. Mainly because it was weird. But, truth be known, I had kind of a guy crush on Jack Wild. I thought he'd make a cute girl, and, with his accent added, it was enough to make me a huge fan. I never admitted the crush as a kid; I just claimed I enjoyed the series.



Since the show was riding fairly high (pun mostly intended), the suits behind the scenes decided to release a movie to cash in on the success. I was in heaven and couldn't wait to see Jack and the others on the big screen. I hounded my parents until they basically told me that I would be taken to see the movie but only if I would just shut up about it.

My mother was the one who got the dirty end of the toilet brush when it came to such events. My dad did construction all day and was the breadwinner, so he often lucked out on involvement in this kind of thing. Somehow, and I think she did it on purpose, my mother had other plans for the night I was to be taken to see the movie (in Pryor at the Allred Theater that I mentioned in an earlier post). I didn't see or hear them, but I'm fairly confident that there was an intense "discussion" about this.

Ultimately, my dad was elected to take me. My dad was a country boy. He didn't take to a lot of the weird stuff his youngest kid (me) liked. He was a western/cop/war movie fan. 90 some odd minutes of weirdos in goofy outfits doing bad physical comedy mixed with iffy song-and-dance routines had to be the stuff of nightmares and human-rights-violating torture for him.



And, so, he took me. I remember he said very little on the drive to Pryor. He was probably considering faking car trouble or cursing my mother. I didn't care. I was gonna see my little mental slice of paradise.

We walked into the theater, which had only one screen back in the 70s, and the place was crawling with kids and their mothers. MOTHERS! I honestly think I was the only kid there with my dad. Oh, the shame, the humiliation my poor dad must have felt.

I think he laughed at only one joke during the entire movie (about a witch having rats in her hair). Other than that, stony silence. He was a smoker, but he never got up to go smoke through the whole thing. He sat there through every painful second of that movie, which, at the time, I thought was better than my mom's peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwiches.

He never took me to another movie that I wanted to see after that.

Years later, with a little age and wisdom under my belt, I realized that, even though he was a parent fulfilling one of his "duties", the man had swallowed a chunk of personal pride in going through with that evening. If that act didn't say "I love you", then words would never be enough.

As a belated peace offering, I took him to see "Rambo". He was almost as giddy after seeing that as I was after watching Jack Wild with his talking magical flute.
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El Misfit
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« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2017, 06:48:43 PM »

By theater do you mean movie theater, because I went to them a lot, or do you mean play theater, because I went to them a lot. There isn't a drive in theater here, so I can't experience the joy of having a companion to snuggle up next to as the movie is playing in the night.

Movies, El Misfit. We'd need a completely new web site if we started focusing on bad plays and bad productions of such. Gotta love local theater groups. Bless their well-meaning hearts.
I've been taught to use theater for both stage and movie by those who are in the stage (aka theater teachers) As far as earliest memory of me being at the movies, I'm gonna say when I was 2-3 and watching Disney's Hercules.
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retrorussell
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« Reply #10 on: March 21, 2017, 09:18:39 PM »

I remember seeing STAR WARS brand new at the Family Drive In (now Tigard Cinemas).  The severed hand creeped me out.  That same year we saw WIZARDS and DAMNATION ALLEY on a double bill there.  I also saw a really dumb movie called C.H.O.M.P.S. about a robot dog, a couple years later.  We saw POLTERGEIST there years later, and probably a number of other movies I can't recall off the top of my head.

Then there are memories of the Valley Theater (still operational) not far from where I live.  I saw RACE FOR YOUR LIFE, CHARLIE BROWN, RAGGEDY ANN AND ANDY: A MUSICAL ADVENTURE, WATERSHIP DOWN, MEATBALLS and AIRPLANE when they were new in the late 70s/1980.  I think we also saw a dumb movie there about an alien family called EARTHBOUND around 1981 or so.

The Joy Theater is still around in Tigard, OR and is really, really old.. built in the 30s.  We saw LORD OF THE RINGS (1978) and INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) (definitely not for little kids-- thanks a lot, mom, for dropping my sisters and I off to see it!) and I saw the really stupid SUPER FUZZ for my friend's birthday party in 1981.

The Westgate Theater is long-gone and was near where I currently live.  We saw FLASH GORDON, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, E.T., RETURN OF THE JEDI and several other big blockbusters there.

The Washington Square Theater (which constantly had projector problems) is also long-gone and was right by the Washington Square Mall in Tigard.  We saw lots of movies there, both blockbusters and crappy movies.  Saw Gremlins and Ghostbusters among other movies.  I remember having to walk out of ALIEN 3 due to the projector problems, and I walked out of BILLY MADISON there because it was simply horrible.
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« Reply #11 on: March 22, 2017, 01:26:55 AM »

My home town of Gweru, Zimbabwe (I wasn't born there but in another then Rhodesian city called Bulawayo) had two cinemas and one drive in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gweru

The main cinema was the Embassy and this is where the movie bug bit me after my folks took me to see Murder On The Orient Express there when I was seven. The other bugs that bit me then and often were the bugs crawling around the floor and hiding in the seats.  Buggedout Wink



The Gweru theatre - an actual playhouse - could also screen movies and this was where I saw Gymkata for the first time: what has been seen cannot be unseen or forgotten.  Buggedout



Just FYI: the theatre was full that day: no place to swing an amoeba.  Wink

The drive in was known as the Flamingo - I remember seeing Elvis and the lovely Juliet Prowse there in G I Blues years after its' first release: I think the screening happened not long after Elvis passed, so this must have been in 1977. The last film I saw there was Gandhi, of all films to see in a drive-in.  TeddyR

« Last Edit: March 22, 2017, 04:37:09 AM by Trevor » Logged

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« Reply #12 on: March 22, 2017, 05:45:57 AM »

I pretty much grew up in movie theaters. As a kid we would sometimes go three times a week since the theater was basically just around the corner. We did the Saturday children's matinee with mostly Disney movies like The Strongest Man in the World (1975), Return from Witch Mountain (1978), The Cat from Outer Space (1978), Pete's Dragon (1977) etc.

Since my mother loved horror movies I've also seen The Exorcist (1973), The Sentinel (1977), The Omen (1976), The Fury (1978), Alien (1979) and countless more.

We still went to the theater on a regular basis in my early teens, but once renting movies on video became popular we didn't go as often as we used to.

There was a local inner city drive-in located near an airport we went a few times, but that was the only drive-in in our area. One of my greatest movie experiences was visting a drive-in inside the U. S. Naval Station in Rota (Spain) where we used to spend our summer vacation for a couple of years. This was a classic old school drive-in theater with a small playground unterneath the screen. The Concession Stand did offer burgers and pizza among other things, and they even had an arcade video game corner. Lots of great memories.

I hardly go to the theater these days because people are rude, loud and obnoxious. Tickets are expensive and there are more annoying ads than actual previews of coming attractions.  Lookingup
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« Reply #13 on: March 22, 2017, 05:53:22 AM »

This was a classic old school drive-in theater with a small playground unterneath the screen. The Concession Stand did offer burgers and pizza among other things, and they even had an arcade video game corner. Lots of great memories.

You saying that reminds me of the burgers the Flamingo Drive In used to sell: huge greasy things guaranteed to make your stomach go when nothing else would  Buggedout Wink Wink
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« Reply #14 on: March 22, 2017, 06:42:54 AM »

I grew up in a very small town when small towns still had their own movie houses and perhaps a drive-in or two not too far away.

Movies were a rare treat when I was a kid.  The entire family would go maybe once or twice a year.  This would have been in the '60's and early '70's so mostly Disney releases.  The highlight of our summer after I was 10 years old and we bought a cottage was to go to the drive-in once a year.   Triple features were standard.  I remember seeing "She" and a list of similar films one night and coming home in the wee hours to find our dogs had tangled with a porcupine.  No sleep that night.

In High School I remember going with friends to see Blazing Saddles.  Very risqué.  lol!

My Mom is still resentful (seriously) of how I got my Dad all fired up over Star Wars coming out: he packed us all (5 kids and Mom) in the car and we drove an hour to see it the week it was released.  (She found it hard to motivate him to take her anywhere - at least that's how she felt).  The man had been a mad SF fan all his life OF COURSE he was excited to see Star Wars!   Lookingup

When I was in uni and dating my now husband we lived in downtown Toronto - Canada's largest city.  We share a love of movies so date night most often included a trip to a theatre.  Sometimes several movies in one week. We could reach numerous theatres on foot (a perk of living downtown) and many more were easily accessed by public transit. We did a lot of walking. On one occasion which I always recall with a laugh, we took in three movies in one evening (Excalibur, the 1981 re-release of Star Wars and oops I forget what the third one was but it had to be similar): planned it out so we could make it if we ran, and run we did.   TeddyR
« Last Edit: March 22, 2017, 06:52:11 AM by Newt » Logged

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