We're headed all the way back to 1964 for this week's Film Flashback and I do hope you enjoy American International Pictures releases because there's a whole bunch on this list. We're going to look at a couple of days worth of movies at the Princess Theatre located in downtown Murfreesboro. It's your last chance to see The Comedy Of Terrors there because the big Saturday double feature would be showing on the next night.
The Comedy Of Terrors features Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone and is a mix of horror and comedy about an undertaker and his assistant who decide to drum up more business by creating more customers. Thursday's paper on May 7th mentioned that the last 100 teenagers who came to the movie after 4 pm would receive a Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine compliments of the publisher.
If comedy and horror weren't your bag then you could wait and come to the Princess on the next night for a double bill once again courtesy of American International Pictures. They distributed the first film on the bill, Italian made Samson And The 7 Miracles Of The World. Gordon Scott plays the character Maciste AKA Samson in the court of the Great Khan. It's your basic muscle man rescues a princess movie and is really not that bad.
It's definitely better than the American International Pictures production of Reptilicus. It's your standard prehistoric monster comes back to life and terrorizes the world, but the special effects are terrible. It's best claim to fame is that scenes from the movie often appear on The Monkees series and South Park also featured a clip from the movie in their "Cancelled" episode.
It used to be that if you wanted to see the Indianapolis 500 live you would either have to go see it in person or catch it on closed circuit. The Princess Theatre would be carrying the race in 1964. A.J. Foyt would be the winner of that year's race which saw drivers Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald die in a multiple car crash.
Starlite Drive In has you covered with some frothy movies and a couple of late night horror movies one of which is so gory you can only see it if you are over the age of 16. There's Ask Any Girl featuring Shirley MacLaine and David Niven. It's your basic rom/com about an older man falling in love with a younger girl with a lots of nods to the plot of My Fair Lady. Follow The Boys featuring Connie Francis is also on the bill and it's a rom/com/musical.
If you stuck around you could see movies that were on the complete opposite of the spectrum from the light romance comedy and musical selections with Jack the Ripper which I believe is probably the rebadged 1944 release Lodger and then the prime offering of Blood Feast directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis. It is known as the first "splatter film" due to....well...the ad says it right there: The Bloodiest Goriest Picture You Have Ever Seen! The acting is atrocious. It was shot on a shoestring budget with some saying it cost around $60,000 to make and some saying it was made for under $25,000. It went on to make millions.
That does it for this week's Film Flashback. Usually this is where I say come back next week, but instead why not come visit the blog again tomorrow for a special bonus Film Flashback.
No comments:
Post a Comment