The Geezers'/Geezettes' movie thread.

[trof]

My boyhood cinema experience was at the neighborhood 5-Points Theater on the south side of Birmingham, Alabama.

The floor was always sticky from the spilled Cokes when the action got hot.

At a climatic moment some kid would pop a popcorn bag and scare the crap out of everybody.

Double feature B westerns that I would sit through twice.
And a cartoon.
Roy and Gene and the lesser knowns.
Bob Steele, William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd, Johnny Mack Brown (a fellow Alabamian whom my mother knew in college - WOW!), Lash LaRue, The Durango Kid, Red Ryder and Little Beaver (Robert "Bobby" Blake), Tex Ritter (one of the first singin' cowboys), The Lone Ranger, Randolph Scott.

And the side-kicks...Gabby Hayes was my favorite.
Frog Milhouse, Fuzzy St. John, Andy Devine, Tonto.

Sometime they ran a serial, like Rocketman, or the Green Hornet.
Those are where the term "cliff hanger" came from. Each episode ended with the hero or his girlfriend in some kind of dire, inescapable straits or other. The next Saturday they'd always miraculously manage to extricate themselves, only to wind up in yet another cliff-hanger ending. whew

So...what were your early movie days like?

[Not_Giving_Up]

1. My grandfather told me stories of going to the movies with a quarter

That got two shows for him and a friend, a pickle, and ice cream. This was in Mississippi some 70 years ago. (He's 80 now)

[maveric]

3. Saturday kids day, 1964, 25 cents ALL DAY!

Five cents for a cup of tonic (soda), ten cents for popcorn. Two Features, usually hercules/gladiator/monster flick, with cartoon and Three Stooges shorts in between.

[trof]

5. My grandpa called them "shoot-em-ups".

When I was too young to go alone, sometimes he'd take me.
"Come on, Buddy, let's go see a shoot-em-up."
It wasn't until years later that I understood how boring it probably was for him, and what a nice thing he was doing for me.

[texastoast]

2. Disney, Elvis, and Old Horror Flicks

Disney movies were high priced. 50 cents, as opposed to Elvis's 30-cent take. Saturday mornings we saw a double feature of the old Lon Chaney/Boris Karloff scary movies. Price: 10 cents. Coke 5 cents, popcorn 5 cents, candy 5 cents. Saturday movie allowance: 25 cents for the highroller version.

Of course, minimum wage (thank you, JFK, may you laugh at Bush in peace) was $1.25. Still, I think it was all a better bargain than today.

:hi:

[trof]

4. The prices sound about right.

The old 5-Points never had Disney.
The cowboy flicks are all I remember.
maybe a Tarzan or Jungle Jim once in a while.

[asjr]

6. Just like yours. Sure brings

back memories. I thought for years Westerns were the only movies available on Saturdays. My favorite serial was Nyoka. She was queen of the jungle before Sheena.

[CBHagman]

7. I remember the drive-in kiddie experience...

You know what I'm talking about. The parents would pack the kids into the car with pillows and blankets, and there would be a cartoon running before the feature. That's my first clear memory of going to a movie -- the drive-in. I suspect I went to be duly traumatized by both "Bambi" and "Pinocchio" before that, but the first definite memory is of being taken to the drive-in to see "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm." We arrived during the cartoons, and I stayed awake long enough to see the beginning of "The Shoemaker and the Elves" segment of the film. I fell asleep for a lot of it and woke up for Buddy Hackett and the dragon. I was in my 30s before I even KNEW Russ Tamblyn was in the film. :-)

I love memories like that.

Oh, and I eventually did visit the German city where they filmed a lot of the exteriors. It's Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber.