It is wonderful to be a baby boomer! As a baby boomer, I got to see all the best scary movies right when they were first born! Do you think it strange that a baby boomer would write, much less think, that last sentence?
Do you think it strange that a baby boomer would use such terrible grammar to describe the experience? Well, it is all part of the ambience so hold your britches!
It is true though. Scary movies in the 1950's and 1960's really did seem to come to Life, as if the birth of them occurred as the white screen was still wobbling from being pulled down from the ceiling and the sound of the film clacking on the reel first began.
Couple that with the way movies were shown and you have the mixings of a true Rosemarys Baby...wait...I am getting ahead of myself aren't I? Went nearly fourteen years and into the color realm!
Sorry, back up a decade or so.
First of all, the "devil is in the details" after all so let us set the stage!
Imagine a huge movie theatre that only showed ONE movie and it played for an entire week. A movie palace, with two balconies, red, plush carpet, thick deep seated chairs that were fit only for the tallest of your group; short people had to perch on the edge of their seats for the entire show. Perhaps that is where the term came from; do you think? "This movie will have you perched on the edge of your seat!" Well, perhaps not.
This theatre has ushers, not the singing kind, that masqueraded as high school students when the movie house was shut. The ushers carried flashlights to shine in unsuspecting couples faces or they were so polite and showed you to your seat if you came in late to the show. Ushers were unpredictable, you never knew which direction their flashlights would take them!
Theatres with a room above all the chairs and movie goers, with a film projector, a reel to reel projector often prone to overheating and then...the film would break! Which led to interminable waits until the master of projectors spliced it back together! Remember sitting in the tippy top balcony, right beneath the projector because there were no other available seats? You could smell the glue used for splicing, the cigarette smoke would pour out of the little window, you could hear muffled talk from the projectionist but above all that would be the dull growl from the projector overriding all other sounds.
If you are really old, you can recall Saturday's spent inside the movie house from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon! All you needed was a pass from the nice ladies at the make up counter in Loveman's and you were in for free! If you did all your chores that week you even had a quarter to spend at the concession stand.
Why was it called a stand? The Alabama Theatre was ritzy. They didn't have a stand, they had a huge booth with a counter you could not see over! The only thing that stood was the popcorn maker and it was off to the side, red and yellow, it had four feet shaped like claws on the bottom, remember that?
What was the first movie you saw inside a movie theatre?
That isn't fair, exactly, especially if your first memories are of entire Saturdays spent inside the movie house. Ooops, showing my age there. Movie house instead of movie theatre.
The first things you watched were cartoons, then you had to listen to organ music. The organ rose out of the floor, music pouring up before it was even visible. No wonder the first thing I wanted to learn on the piano was Bach's "Tocatta in D!" Then more cartoons and probably a talent show from one of the churches, yes churches were the only thing going on in the summer, cause let's face it, kids were not in the movie house during the school year! The second round of organ music, the door prizes handed out, which really took a long time, more cartoons and finally, Finally!
The Feature Film!
Now, this baby boomer had to be prodded awake by her big sister by that time, the coca cola and popcorn and excitement having taken its toll, but the first movie I remeber watchingwas a scary movie.
Dracula with Boris Karloff. Who can say that was not a frightening movie? The very idea of an old guy sucking the blood out of you is enough to guarantee many sleepless nights for an elementary school kid!
The Thing. Now that was a good movie! Black and white, grainy picture, a theatre house full of screaming kids and some-Thing in the snow and ice of a forlorn landscape! Ooooohhh makes me shiver just to remember it!
Remember Wolfman? I couldn't look at Paula, our dachsund, the same way again! What can I say, I was impressionable as a kid!
But of all the movies my sister and I watched in that wonderful place of dreams, the best one, the one our parents would have died if they'd known we seen it, was "The Haunting of Hill House."
What a truly magnificent movie. That terrifying movie lives in my memories as the best scary movie of all time. Not just a house, not just a dare to stay in the house, not just being alone, in the dark, where no one can hear you if you call for help, not just the help itself being out of the house by dark, they do not stay there after dark, no one stays in the house after dark...oh my, nothing presents itself in such a shiveringly real way as that run on sentence from the old housekeeper does it?
I bet I know your innermost fear that was derived from The Haunting of Hill House." Or rather, allow me to ask this question, do you sleep with your bedroom door open? Or shut?
Oh Land Sakes Alive As I Live and Breathe!
Do Not Close The Door!
The door will breathe!
"Who was holding my hand?"
See? Told you so! I can spot a fraidy cat a mile away!
Comments
barbarabAug 18, 2011
happynutritionistAug 18, 2011
barbarabAug 11, 2011
now Anne Rice shes the one I wanted to put down and couldn't..The Witching Hour...the one and only book of hers I have read/she has a pull that no southern girl should be pulled into!!!
never have been able to watch the interview with the vampire either and I love vampire stories!!!
whew...but I had a good time writing this with the twist at the end like any good scary story :)
SidewalkPhilosopherAug 11, 2011