In the '60s, going to the movies meant two things. Either you were lucky enough to have a date and went to an evening show, or (if you were too young to date or just an unfortunate soul) you went to a matinee with your buddies.
If you were lucky enough to have a movie theater close by, matinees in the late '50s and early '60s were pretty cool. The theaters near our neighborhood showed almost exclusively horror (which in that time meant monsters) or science fiction movies. Occasionally one not associated with that genre would show up, like West Side Story (more about that one later), but more often than not you went to matinees to be scared.
One any given Saturday, or weekday during the summer, our gang would decide to take a break from the heat or the rain and see a movie. Sometimes as many as twenty of us would hit the theater. Once we paid our quarter or 50 cents (at some point there was a price increase) to get in, and after we rummaged through the concession stand for snacks, we'd grab our seats, usually five or six rows from the screen.
Once the theater darkened and the featured movie came on the screen, there was a respectfull minute of silence before noise erupted in the theater. Unlike today's movies where the occasional cell phone ring tones break the silence, then, it was all out war. Yells and screams pierced the air. Foods and liquids rained down on all the patrons. Critiques and suggestions were often shouted at the screen.
I often wondered about the adults who brought their children to the shows. I can't recall them ever saying a word. They simply sat there and took their punishment in a silent and dignified manner.
Some of the lousy movies I saw at matinees were The Giant Claw, The Horror of Party Beach, The Monster That Conquered the World (actually it didn't get out of the San Francisco Bay harbor), Eegah, The Magnetic Monster, and I Was a Teenage Werewolf, to name a few.
Some of the better matinees were The Thing, Them, The Incredible Shrinking Man, Godzilla, Rodan, Forbidden Planet, The Creature From the Black Lagoon, The Time Machine, Curse of the Werewolf (and all the other Hammer horror films), and War of the Worlds.
But the best matinee all of all time and the one that I sat through (along with most of my friends) at least eight times in the summer of 1962 was West Side Story.
I don't know what it was about that movie that made it the perfect matinee fare, but it was. Our gang and many other guys in our neighborhood flocked to see it.
Watching it now on dvd, it comes across as kind of a chick flick, what with the guys dancing and singing and the love lost ending. But then, in the darkened Northwood Theater, we found nothing wrong with the singing, dancing, or the ending. I suspect our reason for liking it was a combination of things. The music, though not rock and roll, was hummable and good to whistle to. The story was good. I can tell you right now that our gang was never in a rumble, didn't carry switchblades, and didn't pick fights with cops. Quite the opposite. If any of us sensed the bad vibes that proceeded most fights we'd get the heck out of there. We liked to think that we were lovers not fighters, though we weren't much in the way of lovers either.
I suspect the main reason we continued to come back to that movie was Natalie Wood. Though none of us would admit it, I believe we all had a crush on Natalie. She was just so damn cute in that movie. I think we felt that if someone that looked like Richard Beymer could get her, that maybe we too had a shot.
I remember my father, before he died in 1965, taking me to the Senator Theater (it's still there today on York Road in Baltimore) to see The Great Escape.
I took my future wife on our first date to see The Bridge on the River Kwai. It was at a theater three miles away. I didn't have a car so we walked both ways.
In December of 1966, a few days before I was to depart for Vietnam, we went to the Hippodrome Theater in downtown Baltimore (it's still there too) and saw Doctor Zhivago, a good movie but probably the wrong one to see before a long separation.
In Long Binh, Vietnam, in the year of 1967, we sometimes had the opportunity to watch a movie. The outdoor movies were shown in our company area a couple times a week. They were projected on to a white sheet stretched out on plywood. We sat on backless wooden benches. But, hey, who cared. We were watching real movies sent to us from the United States.
I remember all the movies I saw over there. They were The Ipcress File, The Quiller Memorandum, A Fistful of Dollars, In Like Flint, Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round, What's Up, Tiger Lilly?, After the Fox, The President's Analyst, Murderer's Row, and Riot on Sunset Strip.
At a future date we'll come back to this topic and analyze some movies more thoroughly, especially the spy movies. For now let me close with some of my favorite '60's flicks: The Graduate, Goodbye Columbus, Goldfinger, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Our Man Flint, The Great Escape, The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Harper, Ride The Wild Surf, El Cid, The Professionals, Once Upon a Time in the West, How The West Was Won, Bullitt, Spartacus, The Parent Trap (Yeah, I had a crush on Hayley Mills too), and Lawrence of Arabia.