When I was a child, growing up in
northeast Florida, summers were a time for the three things that were
instrumental in making the Unimonster into the man he is today. One was the days spent at the nearby
Jacksonville Beach, swimming, playing, and soaking up the sun. These days were the hallmark of my
summers—until one July when I watched the movie that would forever end my joy
in going into the ocean, JAWS.
The second was summer nights spent at
the Drive-In, smuggled in hidden in the trunk of a car, then unceremoniously
turned loose by an older sister who was perfectly content to corrupt the
fragile young minds of myself, my younger brother, and our cousin—as long as we
left her alone for the four or five hours the features ran. She would take us to see whatever movie we
requested, regardless of rating or age-appropriateness. It was under her charge that we first saw
movies as diverse—and inappropriate—as NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, BLOOD FEAST,
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE … and BARBED WIRE DOLLS. It was in those long-ago nights that my love
of, and appreciation for, that peculiar form of cinema known as the Drive-In
movie was born … a love that still remains strong to this day.
The third formative experience of my
childhood summers was the “Kiddie Show.”
A combination of movie-going experience and day camp, mothers desperate
for a brief respite from bored, full-of-energy children would load us up by the
car-full, hauling us to the Regency Square Twin Theater. Every Wednesday, cars would line-up to
disgorge hordes of screaming, running children, as anxious for something to do
as their harried mothers were for them to do it. It resembled the landings on the Normandy
beaches, only not so well organized. It
didn’t matter to us what the feature film would be that day. The feature changed every week, but the
ritual leading up to it never did.
It began with the arrival of Monday
morning’s paper. We’d rush to grab the
section containing the movie ads, for it contained the all-important coupon
needed to get in for half price—25¢.
Paying 50¢ for a day’s worth of entertainment might sound like a real
bargain for moviegoers inured to $10 tickets for one movie. But in 1974, a quarter was real money—I could
buy a comic book for less than that—and parents, especially mine, were more
frugal and less indulgent than today’s variety.
There would be a second chance at the coupon in Tuesday’s paper—miss
that one, and it meant a ten-minute lecture from my dad on how hard he’d had to
work to get two quarters when he was my age.
There was usually a smart-alecky comment on the tip of my tongue during
these lectures—my personal favorite involved the lack of horses to be shod in
our neighborhood—but I had too much sense to do more than look contrite and nod
my head.
Coupon or not, Wednesday morning would
find us (usually my brother Mark, our cousin Andy, and myself) lined up with a
couple hundred of our compatriots, waiting to be let in to the theater. As soon as we hit the lobby, we’d get a box
of popcorn and a coke, included with the admission. We would be quickly herded into the
auditorium, the sound of hundreds of kids talking, laughing, and shouting
rising to a deafening pitch. The noise
would continue unabated until the lights went down and the show began.
First would come the cartoons—often
Woody Woodpecker; sometimes Tom & Jerry or Droopy Dog. Seldom would we get the first-class Warner
Brothers cartoons, even though Bugs Bunny was featured on the newspaper
coupons. Two or three cartoons would
easily kill a half-hour, and all were enjoyable.
Next would come something that you had
to be a part of to remember. It was an
audience participation short subject, a series produced in the early 1930s by
Andrew L. Stone entitled “Race Night.”
Each episode featured a number of racers comically competing in a
variety of races—boats, airplanes, bicycles—and each member of the audience
would have a numbered ticket that corresponded to one of the numbered racers …
sort of like the Keystone Kops meets Wacky Races. These were much more fun than they sound, and
there was always the chance that your racer would win. One fine day mine actually did, and those of
us lucky enough to be holding his number walked away with a transistor radio—AM
only. I remember it worked almost to the
end of that night, doubtless a record for the brand.
The preliminaries out of the way, we’d
get down to the feature presentation.
Though earlier I said that what the feature film might be on any given
Wednesday was unimportant, that’s not completely true. We would’ve shown up regardless of what was
on the marquee, that’s true enough. But
there was definitely a wide gulf between what we considered a “good” movie and
what wasn’t.
The lowest point on the totem pole (at
least in the Unimonster’s opinion), below even the worst that K. Gordon Murray
could import, was the series of Pippi Longstocking movies. Four films had been pieced together from the
1969 Swedish television series based on the Astrid Lindgren books, dubbed into
English, and imported for the American market.
While I can’t speak for every kid who attended those shows, among my
friends and I, the Pippi Longstocking movies were universally detested. First, and yes, I know that now it would be
considered politically incorrect and sexist to feel this way, but young boys in
the early 1970s simply were not going to accept a girl heroine able to lift a
horse over her head. Second, even were
we ready to accept such a character, the plain truth of the matter was that
these movies were bad—I mean Coleman Francis-bad. And third, we knew what we wanted in a
movie—and it wasn’t Pippi!
A (very) small step up were the
various films imported by producer K. Gordon Murray [for more on this
fascinating filmmaker, please read Santa
Claus vs. Santa Claus Conquers the Martians: the Legacy of K. Gordon Murray,
21 December 2011, by Senior Correspondent Bobbie Culbertson]. Murray would find his stock in trade in
Mexican and European distributors’ catalogs, buy a print, dub it into English,
and strike off a couple dozen copies—usually licensed, but such legalities
weren’t too strictly observed in the 1960s and ‘70s, especially by showmen who
learned the craft at the feet of the legendary Kroger Babb. Most of Murray’s films weren’t horrible—just
too juvenile for those in my age group to enjoy … even in the ‘70s, his
syrupy-sweet take on fairy tales was unbearable to anyone who had successfully
completed potty-training.
Almost passable were the various
Disney Live-Action movies to which we would occasionally be treated. Movies such as THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON or
THE LOVE BUG were far more entertaining than the average movie that was served
up to us. Even better were the various
sword-and-sandal pictures—Hercules, Samson, Colossus, and my personal favorite,
Sinbad. These movies were great fun,
even if in retrospect they were a little ridiculous. We didn’t care if they were considered campy,
even then—we loved them.
But the best we could get, the movies
we hoped to see named in the coupons each week, were Toho (as well as Daiei and
Nikkatsu) Studios’ Kaijû films. Of
course, we had never heard the term Kaijû,
nor did we care who made them. They were
“Godzilla” movies, whether the big G was the star or not. Gamera, Gappa, Godzilla—they were one and the
same to us. They all meant giant
monsters stomping the hell out of Japanese cities—and that equaled great
entertainment. Each of us had our
favorite—mine, as I’ve written previously, was Rodan—but all were worth
watching. If I gained nothing else from
those summer days spent at the local theater, then the enduring love I have for
Kaijû Eiga (Monster Films) would make
them hours well spent.
The end of the Kiddie Shows came not
long after I aged out of them. Studios
and distributors began requiring theaters to run the same films at night that
they ran during daytime, matinee hours—thus putting an end to the weird,
wonderful, wacky films that were the staple of such programs. It’s a shame.
In this time when kids are under constant pressure to grow up before
their time, it’s easy for those of us who can remember simpler times to look
back with warm nostalgia … and feel a little sorry for our children.
