Perfect timing on my part.
I was a kid during the 70s growing up in a tiny town in north Alabama. We had one of the few locally owned movie theaters around, ran by the wonderful Bill Harris and his wife. During the week they'd run a current 'A' movie For us that meant stuff like BILLY JACK and WALKING TALL. These would play for months, it seemed.
Saturday was 'Kiddie Movie' time. Yes, this meant the latest live action Disney nonsense like THE COMPUTER WORE TENNIS SHOES, but was also got tons of PINK PANTHER and WOODY WOODPECKER cartoons. We also got many of the current horror movies like FROGS, DRACULA AD 1972, and NIGHT OF THE LEPUS mixed in with the Disney and the cartoons. Occasionally we'd get a classic like a GODZILLA movie or a Harryhausen SINBAD movie.
They also held several old fashioned 'Spook Shows' with old movies and people dressed like ghosts and monsters running around in the audience. A bonus was the theater was right across from the city jail. Yelling back and forth at the prisoners was a good way to pass the time when waiting for your mom to pick you up.
It was the PERFECT breeding ground for a bunch of Monster Kids and fans of weird movies.
i am SO jealous! i would have loved to see a spook show inreallife as a kid/teen...
As cheeseball as the things were then we were absolutely TERRIFIED when the lights went down and some people wearing rubber dime store masks ran up and down the aisles pretending to 'get' you.
Probably my BEST experience at that theater was when they ran IT'S ALIVE and the audience of mostly preteens started screaming at the first note of music (I know now it was Bernard Herrmann slumming for his pal Larry Cohen) and pretty much yelling and screaming for the entire movie.
