When I have the time (re: when I am at home and bored) I like to “program” double-features for myself. In the past, films were screened theatrically in multiples. Rather than pay $9 to see Doom and some crappy commericals, you saw a news reel, some cartoons, a feature and a “B” picture. The “B” movies are the campy genre films that have been getting lots of nostalgic press in the last 20 years. They are generally genre quickies (film noir, sci-fi, westerns) that are short on starpower and short in length. Since going to the movies in America used to be a way to get air-conditioning during the summer and heat during the winter, people went en masse to check out the latest Hollywood fare, get the news, eat some food, and have an entire day out. It used to cost less, to boot.
So, wishing that I were alive during the era of the double-feature, I often make up what I think would be funny, fun, provoking, or just generally good combinations of movies. Right now I have a large backlog of nearly 40 films at home that I have not seen. Most I had never heard of on purchase - blind buys can sometimes be great and other times be total wastes. Some are direct-to-video, others were “B” movies in their day, and a select few are features. I had nothing to do on Saturday night, and thus decided to make a double-bill. My choices? Unorthodox to say the least. Rather than be chronological and make sense of the world, I choose to complicate it.
First up was Bloody Wednesday (1985), a VERY bizarre 80s film that oscillated between Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer-style impulses and weird, ambiguous, and surreal hallucinations. It was a pretty good film all said and done, symptomatic of its era to the last. Much better than expected and yards better than most formulaic fare.
Next came The Terror (1963), a Roger Corman film for AIP starring Boris Karloff (who apparently did his role in three days) and a young Jack Nicholson. Despite its low budget and haphazard origins, it works to some extent. Period drama-horrors like this were popularized by Hammer Studios, so this effort feels a bit tired as its production values are slightly worse. The best aspect of watching the earlier film last was to be able to compare the more recent contemporary moment to the older. There is a lot to be said about where horror film went from the early 1960s to the middle 1980s. I’ll save that for another column though.
Program any good double-features recently?
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