Here's a full-page spread from an Ocala paper promoting the event.
And here's a trailer, uploaded by ElvisCommunity.
The world premiere of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Cleopatra is still more than a year away, but the romance of stars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, each married to someone else, has thrilled and scandalized the pop-culture world. That gives exhibitors something to exploit. This Milwaukee drive-in sets the pace, but there are more shows like this one coming.
It's a creative way to sell some old movies. Both pictures on the program are Fifties vintage.
Something else exhibitors can exploit this week are the Academy Awards. The Oscars were handed out last Monday -- that seems incredibly late by today's standards -- and here's one of the winners, opening in Meriden CT.
For the record, Sex Kittens Go to College did not win any Oscars. Was this unfair? Watch the trailer, uploaded by benitogatocool, and judge for yourselves!
I managed to catch SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE under its alternate title, BEAUTY AND THE ROBOT, via a mangled print several years ago at B-Fest. Several sizable chunks were missing. There had to be. Otherwise, if it made that little sense to begin with ... Still, you get Mamie Van Doren as Mathilda West -- a/k/a the two-gun-toting-tassel-twirler from Tallahassee (in un-tongue-tied English, an ex-stripper), trying to escape her seedy past by becoming a college professor, who discharges firearms in public as not to draw attention to herself ( -- so make that DOCTOR Mathilda West, pilgrim.) Meanwhile, there's a refrigerator box robot handicapping the horse races, and then Tuesday Weld breaks her bra strap to seduce Norm Grabowski, and then there were these two bumbling gangsters with a Thompson hidden in a violin case, but as far as I can tell they're pretty much irrelevant to the plot (so forget I mentioned them), and don't forget the monkey banging on a typewriter (-- I assumed he's working on the script), and then Uncle Fester showed up, and John Carradine danced the Charleston with Louis Nye, and I think I saw Vampira, and oddly enough, Conway Twitty was there summing it all up in song. In other words, yeah, SEX KITTENS definitely deserved an Oscar for SOMETHING.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant review, Wild Bill! You definitely make me want to see this profoundly strange picture. All memories of '62 classics, however defined, are most welcome here.
ReplyDelete