Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Sex At The Drive-In

Let's Have Sex At The Drive-In: Grindhouse & Drive-In Movie Trailer Marathon!

Michael Flores from The Global Psychotronic Film Society

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Let's Have Sex At The Drive-In: Grindhouse & Drive-In Movie Trailer Marathon!

It is no secret that I believe two categories should be included in Academy Award nominations: stunt work and trailers. Today's post is about trailers.

MICHAEL FLORES

JUL 29

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PREVIEW

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In the 1940’s and 1950’s, grindhouses became places to hold “make out parties”. Hey if I don’t remember this history, who will?

Last year I saw 163 movies at movie theaters. They weren’t all American films, my AMC 21 theater in Streeterville in Chicago shows Bollywood action films, new Vietnamese films, Chinese and Hong Kong movies. I am a huge fan of Bollywood action films and these films often end up on Amazon and Netflix. But you have to do a search to find them. Even the trailers burst with excitement. Here are a few of my favorites:

We all know a bad trailer when we see them. It usually gives away the entire film when it should be seducing us into wanting to see it.

If trailers were allowed to be nominated, I think we can all agree the Barbie trailers would have to be at the top of the list.

The Barbie trailers:
The first teaser trailer:

Teaser Trailer 2:

Trailer 3:

These trailers let you know this was not a kid’s film, yes kids would like it, but the first screening I went to the audience was all adults! The second time I saw it on the big screen there were people in the audience dressing up as characters in the film. (Hint to studio: release this as a party movie for Friday and Saturday nights and watch the money roll in).

This one hurts to write about. GRINDHOUSE. I knew the film was marketed wrong when people began leaving the theater after the first film as the credits rolled. They didn’t seem aware a second film was coming. But I can’t blame the trailer which was cool as hell. I don’t know, maybe the credits for both films should have run at the very end. Not only did I love the trailer, but there was a homage to trailers in GRINDHOUSE that was just outstanding. Here is the actual trailer followed by different directors having fun making trailers:

Some folks went to the drive-in and didn’t actually care what movie was playing. Imagine that.

Film trailers were conceived in 1913 by Nils Granlund, the advertising manager of Marcus Loew theaters, when he spliced together rehearsal footage of The Pleasure Seekers, a Broadway play at the time, into a mini promotional montage that trailed after films shown at Loew’s theaters. Thus began the trailer industry, which was hardly an industry then, operated by theaters and studios themselves at first, but in ways that never fully capitalized on the potential for both business and stylistic expansion. Then Herman Robbins created the National Screen Service in 1919, a company theaters and studios could outsource to do all the work for them, expanding the idea of what a trailer could and should do.

The NSS held a virtual monopoly on the trailer game until the 1960s, when auteur filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick began cutting trailers for their own films. The market changed again in the 1970s to promote Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, the world’s first summer blockbuster. That film’s subsequent success helped solidify the advertising model still widely prevalent in today’s trailer strategy: customize trailers to be viewed during prime-time hours of television viewership and then, to the point of near oversaturation, inundate the market with these trailers prior to the film’s release under the blanket hope that potential consumers know of only one movie opening that weekend and their only plan for that weekend will be to see that one movie. read the history of the trailer here

I love trailers because I can sit and watch them and know what I want to see and what you couldn’t drag me to see. Now let’s begin our orgy of movie trailers.

By the way, is there a fashion for the drive-in?

And now on to our trailers:

Grindhouse/Drive-In Movie Trailers 1960s-1970s (Summer 2024 Edition)

1. The Final Programme aka The Last Days of Man on Earth (1973) 2. Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) 3. Infra-Man (1975) 4. Tales that Witness Madness (1973) 5. Tales from the Crypt (1972) 6. Take the Money and Run (1969) 7. The Big Bounce (1969) 8. Hustle (1975) 9. Zorro (1975) 10. El Condor (1970) 11. Viva Knievel (1977) 12. Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) 13. Last Summer (1969) 14. The Marriage of a Young Stockbroker (1971) 15. Goodbye Columbus (1969) 16. The Twelve Chairs (1970) 17. Project X (1968) 18. Out of Sight (1966) 19. Badge 373 (1973) 20. Me, Natalie (1969) 21. Adam at 6AM (1970) 22. Hercules and the Captive Women (1961) 23. The Wild Bunch (1969) 24. Little Big Man (1970) 25. A Man Called Horse (1970) 26. Lightning Bolt (1966) 27. Born to Win (1971) 28. Jaguar Lives (1979) 29. The Warriors (1979) 30. Life of Brian (1979) 31. Phantom of the Paradise (1974) 32. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) 33. The Magic Christian (1969) 34. Guess What We Learned in School Today (1970) 35. Joe (1970) 36. Latitude Zero (1970) 37. The Groove Tube (1974) 38. The Naked Ape (1973) 39. The Lawyer (1970) 40. Lightning Swords Of Death (1972) 41. For Those Who Think Young (1964) 42. The Prize Fighter (1979) 43. Myra Breckinridge (1970) 44. Day of Anger (1967) 45. Riot on Sunset Strip (1967) 46. Hot Rods to Hell (1967) 47. Death Race 2000 (1975) 48. Derby (1971) 49. Colossus The Forbin Project (1970) 50. Super Stooges vs. The Wonder Women (1974) 51. Record City (1978) 52. Zachariah (1971) 53. The Tongfather (1974) 54. SuperManChu: Master of Kung Fu (1973)

Behind the paywall: Double Feature Drive-In: Carnival of Souls & Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory