Film Flashback October 2, 1978

The journey back in time this week is brought to us by Odom's Country Junction where eatin' is just plain pleasure! I never ate there, but I loved the way the building looked. The Murfreesboro location opened on February 1, 1978 and closed for good on October 31, 1982 as Odom's Sausage decided to exit the restaurant business. I'm pretty sure the building then sat empty until Tooter's (later changed to Toot's) opened in October of 1985. Toot's celebrated being in business for 30 years in 2015. 

January 29, 1978 DNJ

Your mind may not have been on seeing the movies over October 5-7 as the Murfreesboro Greater Value Days were happening. It was billed as "the greatest city-wide sales event ever!" and indeed there were many participating merchants who are now just history. Take a moment to look over the list and think about all of the times you visited those stores and all of the cool stuff you bought or didn't buy. 

One store not on the list was Hill Bros. Shoes who were having a sale on some suspect looking non-brand name tennis shoes (if you bought those and were 6th grade or higher the mean kids would tease you about wearing "buddies" which I still don't understand) and some cool men's tan suede casual boots which we all called "freak shoes" since that seemed to be the preferred footwear of the non-preppie more prone to dope use looking high schoolers were. Yeah....I know it's stereotyping, but that's the way it was. I would wear "freak" shoes in high school several years later and I wasn't taking any dope. I did like heavy metal music though so people just assumed I did do drugs. When I was a freshman in algebra class and I got up to sharpen my pencil this one guy would always get behind and murmur, "drugs...get high," and smile at me. 

Now for the film flashback to what was playing at the theater's in Murfreesboro on October 2, 1978. Since it was Monday you could get bargain tickets at Cinema_One where they were showing Tentacles which featured killer whales vs a giant octopus. It's an Italian made film featuring John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, Claude Akins, and Henry Fonda put out in the US by American International Pictures. A mutated octopus decides to make like a great white shark with a little Godzilla on the side and terrorize any puny human that gets in its way. The movie had been out for well over a year by the time it was playing in Murfreesboro. I think I will just skip bargain night and head over to Jackson Heights Plaza and see what's showing at the Martin Twin.

The most gripping suspense you'll ever experience....probably not.

Sea monsters were everywhere this week as Slithis is one of the movies on offer. Once again a mutant monster ravages a small coastal town. This movie is just out there. It's one of those "it's so bad it's good" films. 

The most horrifying of them all!

Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase don't have to deal with sea monsters in the comedy thriller Foul Play, but they do have to deal with solving a crime that involves albinos, dwarfs, and the Catholic Church. That's what IMDB says. This is a movie that I've never seen. The trailer does look amusing. 

I thought you were a klutz.

As we head out of town headed for Smyrna we see the bright light of the Marbro Drive-In beckoning us to pull over and see what's playing there. It's a double feature tonight with the Dyanne Thorne flick Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia and the David Cronenberg directed Rabid which starred Marilyn Chambers. Dyanne Thorne hit villain pay dirt with the character of Ilsa which she played in multiple movies. Rabid is interesting with it's zombie/vampire theme which was most notable when it was released due to Marilyn Chambers being the star as she was one, if not the biggest, pornographic movie star at the time. She does a good job in the film which I saw many years ago on VHS. 

Dyanne Thorne is the mistress of mayhem

You can't trust your mother etc...

We finish off this week's film flashback by including this advertisement that was in the October 2, 1978 edition of the Daily News Journal. The world of media was changing. I'll be back next week with another look back at what was playing in Murfreesboro on some date many years ago.

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