Film Flashback July 3, 1980

This film flashback takes us back to a galaxy far, far away when Murfreesboro had a wonderful rocking chair movie theatre named Cinema_One which was featuring Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back on Thursday July 3, 1980. It was released nationally on June 20th, but the big ad with the scenes was in the June 18th Daily News Journal which makes me wonder if the Cinema didn't jump the gun a couple of days. The movie had been out in limited release since its premiere in Washington D.C. on May 17th. It would play uninterrupted at Cinema_One all through July finally giving way to the Chevy Chase bomb Oh! Heavenly Dog on August 1, 1980.

I'm not going to say much about a movie that perhaps everybody has seen or will see someday. I think it's the best of the series and I perversely like how it ends with the rebels in disarray, yet still hopeful. It's like a throwback to all of those Seventies movies which ended on bittersweet notes. I remember it was several weeks before I went to see it with my cousin Freddy, probably later in July, but I did not expect the surprise between Darth Vader and Luke so that was great. I doubt I could have avoided such a spoiler situation for too long nowadays. Another thing about that night I remember is simply driving by the Mars gas station that was across from where Maney Avenue terminated at Broad Street. I had moved to Smyrna around the end of March and we rarely ever went to that side of Murfreesboro. I thought the Mars station was futuristic looking and it was a treat to see it at night. 

a galactic odyssey against oppression

It was your last chance to see the Martin Twin and Marbro Drive In offerings as there was even an ad which I've included touting what would begin playing on Friday. The Get Smart movie The Nude Bomb had been playing a week while the Burt Reynolds film Rough Cut was finishing up its second week. 

The Nude Bomb was a bomb at the box office never making back its estimated cost to produce it. The brilliant Don Adams reprises his role of Maxwell Smart from the Get Smart television series, but the absence of Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 hurts the movie. The paper thin plot about an evil fashion designer who blackmails the world with the threat of unleashing a bomb that destroys clothes is too dumb for what was supposed to be a smart comedic parody of spy films. 

Rough Cut is a comedy caper with a little rom mixed in with the com starring Burt Reynolds, Lesley-Anne Down, and David Niven. Reynolds and Down are two diamond thieves that join forces and end up romantically involved. Niven is the Chief Inspector out to arrest them. The movie seems to have a troubled history with Blake Edwards originally set to direct before Don Siegel was selected. Siegel gets fired for Peter R. Hunt and when that doesn't work Siegel comes back to the movie. A fourth ending was filmed for the picture by yet another director Robert Ellis Miller. Producer David Merrick got sued by Peter R. Hunt and then David Niven sued him and Paramount Pictures claiming that he was underpaid and not billed correctly (his photo wasn't used on the US movie poster) so Rough Cut was indeed rough. It wasn't a hit, but it didn't flop either. I could not find a trailer for it.

What are these people fighting for...

The Marbro has a couple of movies I covered on previous film flashbacks so if you want to read about them here you go:

Starting Over can be found in October 11, 1979 film flashback and Little Darlings was covered in the April 3, 1980 film flashback. 

The movies would all be changing at the Martin Twin and the Marbro the next day and since it was the 4th of July and a cold blooded Hoth monster of a movie was packing them in across town a little extra publicity in the July 3rd paper was a plus. I'm not going to go into a breakdown of these films (I did cover Coal Miner's Daughter in the original post about Little Darlings) but I will include trailers for the first run Martin Twin entries. I did see Herbie Goes Bananas at the theatre outside Hickory Hollow Mall that summer. It was no Empire Strikes Back. Interesting that both The Shining and Herbie Goes Bananas feature VW Beetles.

Herbie

The Shining