Years ago, I saw movies like AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK and YOR: HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE during their theatrical runs. Now, you rarely (if ever) see these cheesy imports in theaters. They go straight to cable or video, taking away the "movie going" experience. There's nothing like getting lured into a movie based on a misleading ad campaign, then realizing that the movie was probably filmed 2 to 5 years earlier in Italy or Spain or someplace. Now THAT'S what I call a B-movie treat!
No doubt the great B-movie age is gone without a venue like the drive-in theater. It also must have something to do with the theater both indoor and outdoor making money as you don't ever see the short serials before or between features. People use to spend the whole day in the theater till cable and satilite tv made it into the home.
Straight to video is the closes we have for an outlet of this type of film, but they never reach the depraved films of the 60's and 70's. They don't make movies like they use to..............
I read in an airline magazine (so you understand the source) that had an article on drive-ins. Apparently they're having a pretty big resurgance and the number of active drive-ins has actually risen considerably in the past few years. Could be a temporary fad, but I hope not. By the time I turned 10 in 1980, drive-ins were in steep decline. I only saw one movie in a drive-in: History of the World Part I. I'd like to see more someday.
>Now, you rarely (if ever) see these cheesy imports in theaters. They go straight to cable or video, taking away the "movie going" experience.
You can thank all the "movie going" whiners out there for that. It was easier for studios to get their films into theaters up until the late eighties. People started to complain about wasting money on horrible films and so they began French kissing the asses of every Hollywood executive to put a stop to it. Just a little inside information that you'll probably never read in Entertainment weekly. "It would be considered mean spirited."
I've heard that our area in South Jersey is constructing a completely new drive-in. I was surprised at the news of a totally new one being built.
Not sure a resurgence of the Drive-In would bring back the increadible films of the past as I think film makers won't make strange/gory/explotive type films anymore. They are looking for larger audiences. International markets that they can sell their product. That's why we have all this bland cleaned up stuff over the last 20 years of the video era. Maybe over time they will test these markets with the strange and bizarre. Alot of it is cultural stuff we are fond of from the 60's and 70's and other countries wouldn't appreciate the subject matter and wouldn't see the product because they don't understand the nuances. Thats why you see alot of straight action films without unique dialogue as they can sell internationally and make more money for the studios. Strickly action films bore me personally. I think it will be a long hall before the world thinks like us (or we think like them). Either that or filmmakers have just plain run out of ideas.
I think if you put your mind to it you can come up with original dialogue. The music scene has seemed to run out of material for the past 15-20 years. Or is it just nostalgia they we like to watch? I don't think so because I can enjoy a film from decades before I was born.
Due to the fact that I'm part of the younger generation, I never got to experience a truly b flick at the theater. The closest was Beyond Re-Animator back in July. Although not of the same type of experience that many of you had, it was really nice to see a truly sickend and disturbed couple run out of the theater.
Worth the price of admission.
I don't think that a resurgence of drive-ins will bring back B-movies. The few drive-ins in my area show the same damned movies that are in the theaters. I'd love to see someone open a "revival" drive-in that showed all of the old drive-in movies. Every time I watch a DVD like THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT or THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE it brings back fond memories of the horror triple features that the drive-ins used to show back in the 70s.
* sigh *
B-b-b-but... video is how we FOUND half of these things in the first place!
Anyone lucky enough to have seen them in the theactrical run deserves a medal...
Have you seen ANY of the movies featured in MST3K in theaters? Nope, didn't think so...
Remember the dusk till dawn drive-ins Burgomaster? We never actually made it thru till morning, but it was always neat to think we could. There is a big Drive-In in the Atlanta area that shows some of the drive-in classics on special weekends. It's called the Starlight Six Drive-In
http://www.starlightdrivein.com/
No doubt Electro, but there has to be a way to produce and distribute stuff without money being involved as a motivating factor. : ) Well, maybe in another life.
I grew up going to the drive and saw many B movies, but also many classic films. Mainstream movies would show up there after few months in regular theaters.
We used to sit on the monkey bars in the playground and watch the movie.
After a tour in the Navy back in the 70's I worked as the cashier at the local drive in while going to school. The biggest nights we had were our Xrated marathons (We'd run out of speakers and start selling parking spaces). I had some regular old guys that would show up on Saturday night by themselves, especially when we were showing some goofy European made sex comedy.
The direct to video business has killed this outlet, but going to the drive-in is an experience unto itself and is not anything like watching a movie on a big indoor screen with a good sound system.
Scott wrote:
"Remember the dusk till dawn drive-ins Burgomaster?"
I sure do. I never went to any (I was just a kid, so I was at the mercy of my parents), but I did go to a few triple features.
They did show all 5 PLANET OF THE APES movies at a dusk-till-dawn show. That must have been quite an experience.
ElectroSunDog wrote:
"B-b-b-but... video is how we FOUND half of these things in the first place!"
Not me. Most of the B-movies in my collection are either movies that I remember seeing in my drive-in days, or movies that I never got to see at the drive-in, but are now available to me on DVD!
What makes B-movies enjoyable is that they weren't TRYING to make them bad. Star Wars, in fact, was in itself technically a B-movie; the only thing that kept it from being laughed out of the theater was the fact that Lucas was a creative GENIUS (not sure if he is anymore, though).
When they're bad just for the sake of being bad, it's just pitiful.
But then again, there ARE some b-movies that never got released in the US....or went out of their theactrical run before anyone had a chance to see 'em.
And then there are the ones NO ONE can find. Have you seen, for instance....The Naked Ape?
A lot of the movies I first saw on regular tv in the 1970s (back when we had at most 6 or 7 channels.)