What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[HudsonHawk]

We still have dollar cinemas here, showing second run, I guess, for $1. We also have a drive-in which is $6 adult/$4 kids for a double feature.

 

[Feraud]

Just to clarify, I am not anti-theater. I'm a movie fan and have been seeing films in the theater since I was around 10-11 years old. I truly miss the grand old theaters of my youth.
As time passed and the family and expenses grew it's been hard to justify the cost.

I'm looking forward to the senior discount!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Years ago, before the renovation and after the multiplex came to town, we used to have a policy of $2 second run films seven nights a week. It was a great deal, especially for those of us who live right in town, and I saw a lot of good pictures here during that time. The prints were a little banged up, but two bucks is two bucks.

When I was a young adult "buck nite" was a common thing at all the theatres around here -- $1 admission every Monday or something like that. Today we offer $7.50 admission for all ages on Monday nights, which are the slowest nights of the week in the movie business, and it does perk up attendance a bit.

 

[Feraud]

There was also a much bigger spread in types of movie theaters in the past, and a different releasing structure: exclusive run, first run, second run, and neighborhood houses that played year-old films. Lots of films that I saw back in the 60s/70s were at second- and last-run theaters that were real bargains. Many were double features for 99 cents! (For example, I originally saw the earlier Sean Connery James Bond films as 99-cent double features circa 1968.)

Oh yes, I remember the second run theaters and movie houses that showed older films at basement prices.
In the NYC / Queens area it seems the variety is gone and we're stuck with the mega multi-plexed stadium seating theaters.
I miss the variety we used to have.

 

[Feraud]

We still have dollar cinemas here, showing second run, I guess, for $1. We also have a drive-in which is $6 adult/$4 kids for a double feature.

Sadly I've never been to a drive-in which sounds like a great experience.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Sadly I've never been to a drive-in which sounds like a great experience.

Yeah, you need to make that happen, for you and the kids. It's a neat experience.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I learned to run projection in a drive in. If you can take the mosquitoes and bees, there's nothing like it.

 

[DecoDame]

Sadly I've never been to a drive-in which sounds like a great experience.

I have very fond memories of Drive-Ins as a kid. Going in our pajamas (yes, we're to blame for that trend! I just realized!); Mom would pop an entire grocery bag of popcorn for us to take - the butter staining the bottom of the bag; trying to look smaller and slightly younger as we drove in for some kid's discount that I had finally outgrown (Mom's idea, that 2 bit criminal); falling asleep in the back of the station wagon by the second, more adult feature (I remember groggily peering over the seat in time to see Bonnie and Clyde bite it - yuck). I loved those hanging speakers, but someone always drove away with it attached (well they sold beer at the concession).

I'm not sure if it would be as charming an experience now as a grumpy adult tho. lol Still, you should give it a shot if you can find one in your area. There's one a half hour drive from here. We may have to venture over this summer.

 

[Stearmen]

HH - that's is good internet research you did. Thinking back, my parents never gave us money for movie theater food / sodas as they always said "it is overpriced." Also, we only went to matinees where my mom could drop me off and it was (over my childhood - this was the '70s, so prices kept going up) 50 cents to $1.50 for the movie and I'd be out of her hair for an afternoon. I only bought soda and popcorn when I started earning my own money as a kid. So, my view was skewed a bit by the fact that the movie ticket price was a matinee special not a Saturday night date price. But as to the food / soda, I'm guilty of thinking it was cheaper than it really was.

Living in NYC, they don't do matinee specials, but do other parts of the country still do them as they were great value?

And Lizzie, had to chuckle about your senior citizen comment as I know many very well off seniors in the city who would take up arms against anyone who said they didn't deserve their rent-stabalized or controlled apartment. I live in a very old rental building in the city and some of my very nice senior citizen neighbors are paying 15% of what I pay in rent for the same apartment and they have second homes in the Hamptons, take nice vacations and live very well. I am sincerely all for helping the poor and needy, especially seniors, but rent control / stabilization has become - as with some many well-intended programs - just something else that is gamed by the well connect and politically powerful voting blocks.

I remember being dropped off by one of our Mothers, then 50 cents. Great times in the balcony, sometimes it was more entertaining to watch the teenagers making out! Then we would walk home, about ten miles, stop at a 7/11 and buy a soda and some jaw breakers, I think that cost about 16 0r 17 cents, so for about 75 cents, you could have a darn good Saturday! I remember in the early 70s, pick up my girlfriend, fill up the motorcycle, go to a movie, go to Taco Bell, all for around $10. Just remember to pick her up around the block so Dad wouldn't see the motorcycle.

 

[Stearmen]

I have very fond memories of Drive-Ins as a kid. Going in our pajamas (yes, we're to blame for that trend! I just realized!); Mom would pop an entire grocery bag of popcorn for us to take - the butter staining the bottom of the bag; trying to look smaller and slightly younger as we drove in for some kid's discount that I had finally outgrown (Mom's idea, that 2 bit criminal); falling asleep in the back of the station wagon by the second, more adult feature (I remember groggily peering over the seat in time to see Bonnie and Clyde bite it - yuck). I loved those hanging speakers, but someone always drove away with it attached (well they sold beer at the concession).

I'm not sure if it would be as charming an experience now as a grumpy adult tho. lol Still, you should give it a shot if you can find one in your area. There's one a half hour drive from here. We may have to venture over this summer.

My Mom would put a skillet with fried chicken in the trunk, good times!

 

[Dennis Young]

Sadly I've never been to a drive-in which sounds like a great experience.

Well, yes and no. It was fun but the speakers you hung on the window or door were awful. Terrible sound.

 

[2jakes]

Well, yes and no. It was fun but the speakers you hung on the window or door were awful. Terrible sound.

You mean you actually went to the drive-in to watch the movie ???? :eeek:

 

[Zombie_61]

Well, yes and no. It was fun but the speakers you hung on the window or door were awful. Terrible sound.

As bad as those were, the "newer" technology of clipping a lead to your antenna so that you would listen to the movie's soundtrack through your car stereo was often worse.

When The Empire Strikes Back opened in 1980, I foolishly allowed a friend to convince me to see it at a local drive-in theater because he didn't want to wait in one of those lines that encircled the walk-in theaters. The problem was that, throughout the movie, the broadcast from one of the local radio stations kept intermittently bleeding through; sometimes it would blend in with the movie's soundtrack, other times it would override it completely. So, there we sat, watching Luke Skywalker in a duel with Darth Vader, not to the sound of John Williams' brilliant score, but to the B-52s' "Rock Lobster". :frusty:

 

[Dennis Young]

Oh man...

 

[Ghostsoldier]

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032551/



Rob

 

[Feraud]

My Mom would put a skillet with fried chicken in the trunk, good times!

That sounds very good!

I'm not sure if it would be as charming an experience now as a grumpy adult tho. lol Still, you should give it a shot if you can find one in your area. There's one a half hour drive from here. We may have to venture over this summer.

Indeed. My wife would agree how this grumpy adult would likely complain through the entire flick! "That guy parks like an idiot. Can this dummy turn his lights off? I cannot hear a thing through these awful speakers. I can hear those screaming kids from here.." So on and so forth.
My poor wife deserves a medal for putting up with me.. :eusa_doh:

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032551/

View attachment 25772

Rob

That's one of my favorite pictures, even though it tones down the book's message quite a bit. It would have been impossible to make it ten years later.

 

[Dennis Young]

The last *good* picture I watched….probably the Thin Man. I like Wm Powell and Myrna Loy in those roles. Wasn’t too crazy about Asta, but the picture was still good. The thing I like most about those old pics though are the clothes and the architecture and music. J

 

[DecoDame]

The last *good* picture I watched….probably the Thin Man. I like Wm Powell and Myrna Loy in those roles. Wasn’t too crazy about Asta, but the picture was still good. The thing I like most about those old pics though are the clothes and the architecture and music. J

See. Something we definitely agree on. On both counts.

 

[Bushman]

Captain America.