Friday, May 18, 2012

Now Playing: MAY 18, 1962

In Charleston, Cleosploitation returns!



This sort of exploitation is close to inconceivable today. Think back a decade and ask if anyone would go see a double feature of a Brad Pitt picture and an Angelina Jolie movie just because Jolie had wrecked Pitt's marriage to another celebrity? Yet the fact that I'm seeing these Taylor-Burton double-bills so often in 1962 has to mean the idea must be working for somebody.

Speaking of exploitation, Adolf Hitler plays Lumberton, NC this weekend.



And speaking of obsolete personalities, check out Rome, NY



Do you suppose somebody was thinking, "The Three Stooges came back!" Or was there still genuine interest in the Boys, who hadn't released a feature since 1958? Hard to believe, yet it may be so.

A triple-bill of more recent films doesn't seem like enough for a St. Joseph, MO exhibitor. For this drive-in, the icing on the cake, the cherry on top of the sundae, is a live version of Premature Burial.



What was the idea exactly? Were people expected to come to the theater every night to check on the progress of the buried man? I guess that if you were a real skeptic you might try for that cool grand by proving the guy a fake. Maybe you went to one feature each night and spent the rest of the evening studying the pit. Now that's entertainment!

But maybe you spent your weekend that way because you couldn't get into something like this attraction in Spartansburg, SC.



The Private Life of a Teenage Bride may be better known as Please Don't Touch Me. For more info, here's a synopsis from TCM. The second feature is Sam Peckinpah's directorial debut. Parental permission may have been required for young folks to see some of his later stuff....

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