those fifties horror movies are all so bad, they form their own sub-genre. remember how all the giant insects, etc. were supposed to have been the result of nuclear testing? I figure that Cold War paranoia was behind these movies at least as much as any other single thing.
those 'physical gimmick" movies were something else completely.…
those fifties horror movies are all so bad, they form their own sub-genre. remember how all the giant insects, etc. were supposed to have been the result of nuclear testing? I figure that Cold War paranoia was behind these movies at least as much as any other single thing.
those 'physical gimmick" movies were something else completely. I remember "Matinee" very well and the funniest thing about it is the fact that it's pretty much how that shit worked, without exaggeration. the crazy thing is that a few days ago, I was reminiscing with a friend about this exact thing. synchronicity!
"The Tingler" promised unlimited terror, but turned out to be windup toys that crept slowly down the aisles. but it was a technological compared with the preceding William Castle gimmick in "The House on Haunted Hill." that one featured a not-quite-life-size plastic skeleton connected to a "pully system" (actually, it was basically nothing more than a clothesline). the skeleton was "hidden " in a crappy little box just under the screen on the right-hand side of the auditorium and when a character was supposed to come across a "live" skeleton, the box opened and this skeleton very slowly moved on this clothesline about --I don't really exactly remember--twenty or so feet before it finished its half-circle and returned to the little box . then the box closed. end of story. I think the newspapers had advertised a money-back GUARANTEE if you weren't scared halfway to death. can you imagine trying to get that refund?
thing is, when that movie came out, I think the price of a kid's ticket was half a buck or so, if that.
I was particularly upset by "The Day the World Ended" because of that man-sized walking monster with tiny little arms. at the movie's "climax," the whole thing is explained (nuclear testing, dontcha know) and the horrible creature is identified as a freak chipmunk.
and finally...was it here that people were naming favorite antiwar records from the Vietnam Era or the Lucian Truscott Substack? sometimes it's hard to keep track. but I wanted to recommend a compilation that came out about twenty years or so ago called "A Soldier's Sad Story: Vietnam Through the Eyes of Black America 1966-73." there are some really great records here, and most of them I'd never heard before. I guess that even if you were listening to the available Black stations, those stations would have been pretty careful about not shooting themselves in the foot, as it were.
remember when Eartha Kitt was invited to the White House and got in LBJ's face about the war? a classic early case of "cancellation."
"The Tingler" was that business with wiring the seats that Goodman's character does in "Matinee." A direct lift from William Castle. When my dad was running a radar technician school for the Navy during the war, they did the tingler - wired the seats in the auditorium. They gave a lecture on the electron, which no one could see, and then to prove it's existence they told everyone to join hands and they tuned on the juice - everyone was quivering and then when someone finally let go and broke the circuit, everyone got a zap. And when they had collected themselves, dad would tell them "Gentlemen, you now understand the power of the electron."
that's pretty cool. and do you remember the two failed technologies "AromaRama" and "Smell-O-Vision?" they were virtually opposed techniques. "AromaRama" pumped smells into the circulating air in the auditorium, while 'Smell-O-Vision" pumped the smells into pipes in the individual seats. obviously, the former was cheaper to accomplish than the lartter, but everyone I talked to who'd actually gone to the Times Square First-Run, Reserved Seat (yep) movie palaces that featured these technologies told me that everything smelled like Pine-Sol.
two neurological traits I inherited from my mother are a fine tremor in my hands and the pretty radical lack of a sense of smell. the first is just a drag, the second is a mixed blessing because for some reason, there's a day or two every year on which I wake up with a pretty normal sense of smell, and I experience it as pretty much a drag. so both of these smell technologies would have been completely lost on me.
those fifties horror movies are all so bad, they form their own sub-genre. remember how all the giant insects, etc. were supposed to have been the result of nuclear testing? I figure that Cold War paranoia was behind these movies at least as much as any other single thing.
those 'physical gimmick" movies were something else completely. I remember "Matinee" very well and the funniest thing about it is the fact that it's pretty much how that shit worked, without exaggeration. the crazy thing is that a few days ago, I was reminiscing with a friend about this exact thing. synchronicity!
"The Tingler" promised unlimited terror, but turned out to be windup toys that crept slowly down the aisles. but it was a technological compared with the preceding William Castle gimmick in "The House on Haunted Hill." that one featured a not-quite-life-size plastic skeleton connected to a "pully system" (actually, it was basically nothing more than a clothesline). the skeleton was "hidden " in a crappy little box just under the screen on the right-hand side of the auditorium and when a character was supposed to come across a "live" skeleton, the box opened and this skeleton very slowly moved on this clothesline about --I don't really exactly remember--twenty or so feet before it finished its half-circle and returned to the little box . then the box closed. end of story. I think the newspapers had advertised a money-back GUARANTEE if you weren't scared halfway to death. can you imagine trying to get that refund?
thing is, when that movie came out, I think the price of a kid's ticket was half a buck or so, if that.
I was particularly upset by "The Day the World Ended" because of that man-sized walking monster with tiny little arms. at the movie's "climax," the whole thing is explained (nuclear testing, dontcha know) and the horrible creature is identified as a freak chipmunk.
and finally...was it here that people were naming favorite antiwar records from the Vietnam Era or the Lucian Truscott Substack? sometimes it's hard to keep track. but I wanted to recommend a compilation that came out about twenty years or so ago called "A Soldier's Sad Story: Vietnam Through the Eyes of Black America 1966-73." there are some really great records here, and most of them I'd never heard before. I guess that even if you were listening to the available Black stations, those stations would have been pretty careful about not shooting themselves in the foot, as it were.
remember when Eartha Kitt was invited to the White House and got in LBJ's face about the war? a classic early case of "cancellation."
"The Tingler" was that business with wiring the seats that Goodman's character does in "Matinee." A direct lift from William Castle. When my dad was running a radar technician school for the Navy during the war, they did the tingler - wired the seats in the auditorium. They gave a lecture on the electron, which no one could see, and then to prove it's existence they told everyone to join hands and they tuned on the juice - everyone was quivering and then when someone finally let go and broke the circuit, everyone got a zap. And when they had collected themselves, dad would tell them "Gentlemen, you now understand the power of the electron."
that's pretty cool. and do you remember the two failed technologies "AromaRama" and "Smell-O-Vision?" they were virtually opposed techniques. "AromaRama" pumped smells into the circulating air in the auditorium, while 'Smell-O-Vision" pumped the smells into pipes in the individual seats. obviously, the former was cheaper to accomplish than the lartter, but everyone I talked to who'd actually gone to the Times Square First-Run, Reserved Seat (yep) movie palaces that featured these technologies told me that everything smelled like Pine-Sol.
two neurological traits I inherited from my mother are a fine tremor in my hands and the pretty radical lack of a sense of smell. the first is just a drag, the second is a mixed blessing because for some reason, there's a day or two every year on which I wake up with a pretty normal sense of smell, and I experience it as pretty much a drag. so both of these smell technologies would have been completely lost on me.