Was there anything comfier than second-run/dollar theaters that all eventually shut down?
>$2 movies>$1 movies>While tickets in the big chains were creeping up to $12>Always a good kino because they actually want people in seats
Eleven shitty shitty movies.
current release cycles leave no place for dollar theaters because now the movies are on streaming like a month after they rellease.it used to be a movie would come out:mainline theatersdollar theatershome video (priced for rent - like $50 for a tape, mostly bought by rental stores)premium cable (HBO, Movie Channel, etc)home video (priced to own, like $10-20)broadcast television (edited with commercials)finally reruns in syndication and or on basic cable channels (USA, TNT, etc)
>>220885146You don't like Batman Returns? Don't think we can be friends.
>>220885168how are you such an expert on this?
>>220885191NTA but it wasn't that long ago, people remember it.
>>220885258Netflix should have stayed as a mail-order dvd service. Everything went downhill after this happened.
>>220885168It also used to be a way for studios to recoup the costs of the film reels themselves, having the dollar theatres use whatever old, dirty, scratched up shit was leftover from the regular theatre run. But now it's all digital CRAP.
>>220885191Unc deadass using his memory frfr
Overhead on running a theater has priced these almost out of existence, to show the newest disneyslop even a month after its released they have to charge upwards of $10/seat just to keep the lights on and most people have figured out you can just go see it at AMC a week or two later and not have to deal with teenagers scrolling through instagram
>>220885081yeah, spent a lot of my childhood in them even though there was a spooky cemetery across the street.>>220885168pay-per-view too, i never really understood the economics.vs. tape rental but i think that must have been subsidized by hotel chain shit
>>220885146pinocchio isn't that bad. it's not even close to one of disney's best but it's far from "shitty".
>>220885081we didn't have flea pits here, the concept kind of baffles me honestly
>>220885168My town of 20k has second run theather that's subsidized by local govt. We get movies 3-4 weeks after premiere but the tickets are half price than in big cinema chains
>>220885081My grandma took me to see Furry Vengeance at one of these. Was a very weird experience because I was only used to the huge multiplexes.
>>220885981drive-ins could and should make a comeback, maybe throw some charging stations in on the same lot.
>>220885323I briefly worked as the sole employee in a rural post office a couple years ago, and the intake box still had a faded label on proper netflix disc return and processing. Made me a little nostalgic.At the very least now you can get pretty much any movie older than 2015 at a library media sale for $1.
>>220885168they could save them by bringing back adult films like they had in the 70s.heading down to the goonplex, ma!
>>220886018thats cool. hows the crowd?
>>220886002I forgot pay per view, that was around the same time as priced to rent home video or maybe slightly before
>>220885081They finally tore my local one down even though it had been closed for years. I remember passing by on occasion and it still had a sun bleached Jumanji 3 poster up
>>220886078precisely zero people would go to watch a 90 minute porn flick. theatres could barely make money on them in the 70s when it was the only way to watch porn, they sure as shit wouldn't make money on them now.
>>220885081The amount of R-rated movies on that marquee is quite hilarious.Despite Clinton being elected, the 90s were still pretty conservative in the USA and even one f-word or a sex scene with clothes on would earn you the wrath of the moral majority who wanted to "protect the children" from those degenerate Hollywood liberals.Nowadays most of those wouldn't be rated R
>>220885081Yes the buildings were in serious disrepair, the floors were unmopped and sticky, the employees looked like meth heads, but it was beautiful.
>>220886078Why go to the goonplex when you can do it from the comfort of home
>>220886158tarantino shows pornos at his cinema sometimes but dunno how many tickets he sells.
>>220885081theres still one near me. arent all gone yet (but theres nothing good in theaters to go watch anyways)
>lived in the same suburbs for 20 years now>slowly watched every local mom and pop, independent business, restaurant, movie theater get replaced with the same generic mega chains you find everywhere else
>>220886163I rewatched American Pie yesterday and was surprised how chaste it seems by today's standards. There's one real nude scene in that entire movie and everything else is just innuendo. Network TV feels more raunchy than it now.
>>220885146KYS, nigger. Over 50% of those films are all great, especially Batman Returns.
>>220886163These were actually Bush 1 era movies not Clinton.and the actual reason is because there was still a place for medium-high budget action movies targeted at adults. They hadn't yet reached the era where in order to recoup budget, they HAD to get a PG13 rating in order to ensure the largest possible audience (also, theaters were a lot less strict in checking ID of teenagers back then as well). As a result, movies weren't in the habit of nerfing violence scenes to get the PG13 rating, hence movies like LW3, Patriot Games, Universal Soldier being Rs. (Unlawful Entry was an erotic thriller and Boomerang was an extremely adult raunchy comedy). This was the very beginning of the 90s, as the 90s went on the forumla of nerfing action movies into wannabe blockbusters happened more and more.
Loved these as a kid. Sad to see the steaming pile of shit streaming services slowly destroy anything that could give zoomers even the slightest hint of socializing and having fun without going into debt.
>>220885168The wait for Jurassic Park to come to home video was painful. It came out in theaters Memorial Day ‘93, but didn’t come out on VHS until October ‘94.
>>220886557i forgot that home releases used to take a whole fucking year. holy crap, recent releases have really spoiled us.
>>220885191He's probably like 50 years old
>>220886003It’s easily the best animated of all the hand drawn Disney features and there isn’t a close second.
>>220886666better than fantasia? that's definitely debatable.
>>220886078I really want an actual boomer to come into this thread giving us a detailed anecdote about how he walked into porno theaters and found a way to inconspicuously jerk off.
>>220887104i don't think it was as inconspicuous as you think. i wasn't around during those times but i presume it was pretty open that you just jacked off into your pants, wiped it up with a kleenex, then walked out.
>>220885323 This. It was the best catalog of any movies anywhere. Can't even blame Blockbuster b/c there's only so much you can keep in stock at any one location. Movie loving died with the disc service. Today, you need a dozen streaming accounts to hopefully find some obscure flick and even then they might not have it. NF disc almost certainly would have, even odd foreign & arthouse tittles.
>>220887269the issue is distributors hoarding movie rights and every jackass ceo thinking "oh hurr durr we can just do a netflix and make billions easily!" not realizing that the reason netflix dominated in its early streaming/dvd days because it had LITERALLY EVERYTHING and not just some fuckass collection of 15 dinky movies that you kind want to see in addition to hundreds of trash films. letting copyright exist for so fucking long was a massive mistake for letting competition show who can actually make the best entertainment service. copyright should be 20 or 30 years at maximum.
>>220885191He was born in the early 1900s most likely (1991).
>>220887351What else do you know about him?
>>220887104There's still an adult cinema in my city. It has two big screens, one that is always playing straight porn and the other is always playing gay porn. There's also little booths with curtains where you can pick a porn video to watch privately. They also sell sex toys.It's mostly gays and super perverts who go and they openly jerk off or even fuck in the theaters. If you take a seat alone, a dude might sit next to you and offer you a BJ if you want a break from your hand. Sometimes it's like an event, a big orgy. It's across the street from one of the cheapest dive bars around, next door to a tattoo/piercing shop.
>>220885081where was this? fayetteville nc? when it was whiter?
i remember seeing The Borrowers with my class as a kid, spending half the movie looking up watching the bats swoop around, more interested and curious than put off. One girl had to leave because she was genuinely terrified.
>>220885081>>220885129Only problem is qts rarely worked there because they were seedier. Often in less desirable neighborhoods and districts. And the fatter ones were difficult to fit in the trunk.
The last movie I saw at my local budget movie theater was Interstellar. When the movie started, it was slightly out of focus. I thought it was odd, but then I heard the sound of film running through sprockets. It turns out they were running one of the few 35mm prints that were made of the movie. It was the last analog film projection that I saw in a theater. The theater turned into a church.
>>220885146Fucking zoomer.
>>220885146>Sister Act The most successful family comedy starring a black woman back when Whoopi Goldberg was neutral-good like Denzel, Eddie Murphy or Michael Jordan >Batman Returns Considered one of the darkest studio sequels ever, and was never deemed "shitty" just devisive, inappropriate with a BDSM Catwoman, an "antisemitic trope" Penguin, and a "Batman movie without Batman." Considered a moderate classic. >Boomerang Notable mostly for how 1990s blacks had their own upscale adult comedies that were not degenerate loosely about gang culture and drug dealers. This entire era of comedy was memoryholed by the Obama revisionism era. A moderate hit, which marked a brief playboy era in Eddie Murphy's star trajectory. >Honey I Blew Up the Kid A stupid but quaint Disney cash grab to a semi beloved summer smash, the original counting inflation grossed nearly $1 billion globally, and not nearly as awful as some modern sequels, Grogu coff Grogu, Mortal Kombat 2 coff shit coff fatality. Today we're just lucky to have another Rick Moranis as MC flick. And Honey I Shrunk the Kids contends for whitest "baseball fields and blue skies happy 90s" movie title >Lethal Weapon 3 Apex of Mel Gibson as a summer box office draw, arguably every bit as strong a threequel as Die Hard w a Vengeance, although each suffers capeshit action quip creep. Lethal Weapon isn't "shitty," it's a peak of the 2nd wave of Hollywood summer sequels. >Unlawful Entry A slickly made but shittily executed harmless 90s thriller that was synonymous w an "edgier" Blockbuster rental your parents selected for family pizza night. Of course Kurt Russel is hero, Ray Liotta is the psycho, and there's a mild cuckhold threat ripped from its macdaddy inspiration Cape Fear. >Housesitter What is this? A Sinbad com? A Jonathan Taylor Thomas solo try? 1 of 3 on OP's marquee that's "shitty" >Patriot Games Most "white dad" blockbuster ever>Universal Soldier Requisite to JCVD's arc as "the next Stallone?"
>>220885146all enjoyable kinoconsider jumping into traffic
>>220888205Based as fuck.>>220888039Uhhhhhhhh>>220886042I kinda wish I owned a drive in. Apparantley you need a giga projector just to make it look good outdoors.
>>220886505zoomers never know how electric movies used to be movies used to make everyone smile like wagtmi
>>220885168PPV came before premium cable
>>220888526JTT was in Man of the House. Housesitter stared Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. Directed by none other than, Frank OzI can see your confusion and your joke still stands.
>>220885129>>220885146 >11 shitty moviesI saw Saving Private Ryan at one that is now demolished. Its not shitty movies (they do all movies), it's shitty, second hand theaters. Its great if you missed a movie in the main theaters and you want to go watch it on the big screen, but not if you want to take a date lol. I drove by it to and from practice everyday and the place was always dead because most people prefer to see the movies in the real theaters and don't miss their window to do so like I did
>>220886557>>220886602Could you immediately buy Jurassic Park or only rent it? I asked for some movie for my birthday and my mom almost paid $500 for a VHS that's how much new releases cost lmao and how much rental stores paid wholesale. So glad my mom didn't waste her money lmao. Imagining the "well he did get straight Bs this semester and made his bed" convo in her head. The price of a that Neogeo console lmao for probably Rocketeer or Good Son.
>>220885191>asking how someone is knowledgeable on the film industry on a film boardShocking that anyone would have an interest in the subject beyond just being here for Bane memes and Snood threads.
>>220888526bot?
>>220888867its not film industry knowledge its consumer logistics probably worked at blockbuster or something
>>220888726who worked at this mag? former israeli officials?
>>220888766i'm pretty sure renting and buying was simultaneous but someone can correct me if i'm wrong
>>220888938I just assumed it was made by gay men and women who mentally never got past 14.
>>220885081>199X, sometime after 1993>dollar theater>the ticketbooth is in a big hallway indoors>always empty>there's a little side room with a couple of arcade cabs and a indiana jones 3 pinball machine>the last action hero is always playing and always emptyI can't tell you how comfy that place was for me. It's one of my fondest childhood memories somehow and it's also impossible to describe how it actually felt even though I distinctly remember it. I'm not sure of the exact year but it was obviously post 93 and definitely pre 98. Probably 96. My parents would go off and do something and I would just roam that failing dollar theater. I loved it. Pic related was the exact place around the same time. Double doors on either side led right into the long empty hallway with the ticket booth at the end. Various doors on the side led to projection rooms, snacks, arcade, etc. Strangely this specific scene and setting in The Natural (1984) always reminded me of the same vibe of that theater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SVbOl0jwOQ&start=386The lighting, the echoing sounds, the architecture. It's all there. Looking back I realize we had a lot of stuff left over from the 50s and even 30s back then in my small town. Like the authentic milkeshake diner I used to go to for sandwiches. It's all gone now. Another thing is that even in the 90s there were way less people on Earth. There are about 10 million more people in my state in 2026 than in 1996. In my town the population has increased by about 63%. And I feel that difference. An emptier world was a better world and I miss it dearly.
>>220888938SuperTeen was a fine publication from Sterling McFadden. They also published, 16, Teen Beat and the original, Tiger Beat.Teen Idol magazines aren't published anymore.
>>220885081dollar theaters were awesome, the only caveat being the employees who always had down syndrome or some other kind of obvious mental defect and could barely do their jobs.
>>220885146if you don't get a chub watching honey i blew up the kid, then you are a p-zombie
>>220885168>it used to be a movie would come out:>mainline theatersYep >dollar theatersYep. You never go here as a family unless you just want to admit you're a failure to your kids >home video (priced for rent - like $5 to $10 to rent a VHS tape)Yep - the video store was a big part of me growing up in my family. As a family, our parents often took us to the video store and let us pick out a movie. These were priceless memories >premium cable (HBO, Movie Channel, etc)My Mom cancelled HBO the day after she walked in the living room when i watching Alien right when homegirl did the scene in her underwear. I wasn't getting hard or sexually excited or anything, I find that chick to be uggo. Mom was big on raising us ultra sexually conservative, she's old school Catholic >home video (priced to own, like $10-20)We didn't do this because we had such a good VHS collection of movies that we dubbed with the VCR and slapped a sticker on it with the name of the movie. Dad compiled such a big collection on a book shelf in the living room, that I had more than enough great movies to pick from. Our neighbor across the street had the most I've seen, he had a whole wall of his living room covered with bookshelves full of VHS tapes >broadcast television (edited with commercials)>finally reruns in syndication and or on basic cable channels (USA, TNT, etc)
>>220885168Comfy post. Distribution tree used to be based. Actors waited forever to confirm if normies liked a movie or them. No one told them if some movie was being added to cable. Just flipping channels. Cable residuals meant you could buy a house or bigger house back then. Actors could fuck a new tier of models because their movie was added to HBO rotation. An actor's kid idolizes his dad because one day he and his friends saw his dad on the back of a box in a video store and everyone at school heard and checked it out, some even rented it and told the kid it was pretty good and his dad did well. The kid pictures his dad winning an Oscar then realizes he doesn't care and they probably won't happen. It might. But he loves his dad and is proud of his success. They can't all fire guns at bad people. His dad told him he's auditioning to play a dad on a new drama about the Holocaust, and the kid knows how important the role is, he read Anne Frank's Diary. Then one day his father sits him down, his father is divorcing Mom and marrying an actress he met on the Holocaust set who is a different religion than the boy, his dad and mother. But that's okay. The boy will learn. His dad's new wife has three children, two older girls and one who is a boy/girl. A boy/girl? What's that? the boy asks his dad. Like a gay person? Don't ask silly questions, the father says. Over time the boy sees less of his father but more of him in TV movies, one about a man named Harvey Milk where his dad plays a sickly friend of Milk's who dies by a new disease. His father wins a "masterclass" job playing a priest who harms children based on a true story. He wins an Emmy award. The son isn't allowed to attend but his step children are. His dad sends him a stuffed lion from Israel with weird letters which the boy throws in the trash at school so his mom can't find it.
>>220885081can this be a /gen/ lots of industry itt
>>220885168lots of people will never subscribe to a streaming service but do want to watch some of the content. playing the streaming content in theaters for $1 or $2 would work.
Our theater was just around the back of a megamall, then it moved to upstairs in the megamall. It had this awesome carpet between cinemas and sparkly roof that made it feel like you an outer-space universal experience.Now it's all bland and very corporate since the overhaul, but at least the seats are much more spacious with footrestThe Luxury gimmick sorta died out and only exists in one cinema where people get pompous plated meals brought to them and alcoholic beverages, we used go there as a family for Harry Potter but they stopped doing Infinite refills on popcorn / drink so it wasn't worth anymore
>>220889171>>220888726>Jon's Confession Session! >Jonathan Brandis Wasn't he murdered? >Color Wallet Pix!! Wtffff would a magazine marketed to girls offer "wallet" pix of babyfaced boy actors?
>>220885081>honey i blew up the kid
>>220889480>I wasn't getting hard or sexually excited or anything>Mom was big on raising us ultra sexually conservative, she's old school Catholic she prolly thought you were gay if Sigourney's big bush wasn't driving you bonkers.
>>220889796That movie was late 70s and I didn't see it until early 90s so that was part of it. 70s is probably my favorite era in most things but their women were nasty when you were watching them in the 90sBut yeah, being raised by an ultra sexual conservative mother, i am basically the 40 year old virgin in comparison to everyone else but the most turbo of virgins
>>220889629There's a rumor that Jim Carrey is a serial killer and one of his victims was Jonathan Brandis. Official story is he hung himself. He and Soleil Moon Frye, were really close, she kinda confirms he committed suicide.Lots of girls put teen idol pix up in their lockers. Us gay boys had to secret those wallet sized pix in our rooms somewhere and pine, silently at night.
>>220885146>>220888526To be far, all these movies were shit when it comes to "have to see these in the theater"Let me double check...
>>220889484I'm just racking my brain trying to figure out who you're alluding too.
>>220889184>in the 90s there were way less people on EarthSo much this. Less cars on the road. Less noise. Less enshitification. I've looked at US cities that have the same population as mine did in the 90s, and I'd have to move to Okiehoma for that, ffs. I wish I could say it was just me getting crotchety with age, but that's not the case. Things are genuinely worse. I guess it's nice we have internet shopping, though.
>>220888526>>220885146>>220890171Yeah, all of that was total ass garbage. I only saw Batman Returns at the movies, was awesome but the movie was still shit. The Penguin shoots down the Bat plane with a 12 foot pistol? It was a total low brow kids movieIMDB ratings19927.1 - Batman Returns6.8 - Patriot Games6.7 - Lethal Weapon 36.6 - Sister Act6.4 - Unlawful Entry6.2 - Housesitter6.1 - Universal Soldier5.8 - Pinocchio5.7 - Boomerang4.9 - Honey, I Blew Up the Kid 4.7 - Man Trouble
Still around, not a dollar theater anymore though. It was kinda nasty and you had to deal with changing consumer habits, but it was cheap and comfy. When you're a teenager with no money it was great.
>>220890435They convert a lot of them into indoor family fun centers.
>>220890454Makes sense. This one's been remodeled and became a first-run theater in 2019
>>220888526>neutral-goodButt yeah I'm stunned what a seething lunatic racist you turned out to be. You just cancelled yourself from ever having anyone respect you in life ever again
>>220885081Post movies you saw at second run theaters>Sin City>Speed Racer>Kill Bill 1 & 2>Marley & Me>The Mummy Returns>Freddy vs Jason>Toy Story>The Phantom>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003
>>220885081You could call dollar theaters a lot of things but comfy wasnt one of them. They were all total shitholes. Thats why they were dollar theaters.
>>220890511Mine did the same, but even that didn't last and it ultimately turned into a fun center. I miss it, but at least it's not an empty eyesore, and the func center has brought new life to the shopping center that it didn't have for a few years--all the place needed was tumbleweeds. Funny thing: I don't ever recall an evening when the parking lot wasn't packed when it was a dollar theater, yet still they "went under."
>>220886089Better behaved than at cineplexes, for most major blockbuster slop bit empty but for some ESL releases we get packed theatre, I find that funny how most random movies will be full while 500 million hollywood production will be empty. Half of the repertoir is kids movies though and once a week some live show, standup or such
>>220888526>Sister Act>The most successful family comedy starring a black woman back when Whoopi Goldberg was neutral-good like Denzel, Eddie Murphy or Michael JordanI'm from the all-white suburbs, never got to meet blacks until later in life (blacks are great), I would sayA+ list - probably at least 50 blacks >Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal:, Magic Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr,, Deion Sanders, Barry Sanders, Mike Tyson, Tiger Woods, etc>Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, Wu-Tang Clan, Outkast, etc>Eddie Murphy>Samuel L. Jackson>Laurence FishburneEtc etc etcA list>Denzel Washington>Wesley SnipesB->Will SmithC at best to me at the timeHalle BerryWhoopie Goldberg OprahMartin LawrenceNobody in their right mind would ever want to purposely watch Sister Act. Maybe it's wholesome but it just sounds so stupid and Whoopie was always MEH. Martin Lawrence-tierNot sure we're to put black music as I didn't know about that as much at the timeBoyz II MenDr DreTupac ShakurThe Notorious B.I.G.Jay-ZWhitney HoustonJanet JacksonMary J. BligeLauryn HillQueen LatifahTLCAaliyahI also missedSerena & Venus Williams
>>220891068Sister Act was about the last time there was any Catholic/clergy/religion representation that wasn't denigratory.
>>220891238As a Catholic, if you're worried about perceived negative things happening in movies you lost at life. Missed the whole point of everything
>>220891319And for flicks, I was just recommending Cabrini to my Catholic cousins recently. In Catholic circles, it seems like we have too many movies made in our favor then ones against us, and I've been a part of a wide variety of Catholic churches and have been a Sunday school teacher. We have a shit ton of movie nights and a shit ton of movies to have the kids watch
>>220889184Your photo reminds me of a two cinema theater I only went to once or twice. The aesthetic was perfect. It was so clean it was futuristic but like you said probably from the 1950s. Or art deco? Most four screen cinemas used pink or red neon. This place used green. A thin green line on the outer facade. It reminded me of a thin dinner mint for cool rich people. What did I see there? Rumble in the Bronx. When I sat in my seat with my two friends I felt smarter. Something about how the room smelled was intelligent like mints and popcorn and maybe coconut flavored air conditioning? I remember when the movie ended this song "Jackie Chan" started playing, it was so perfect I started crying. My friend's sister took us but she went to see Sharon Stone's Diabolique. I hadn't noticed but when she exited her movie she was wearing a short plaid skirt with pantyhose and a strapped yellow top. She went by herself or at least I think so. She drove us alone. To this day she was the hottest girl I ever knew but just for that night. She never dressed like that again around us. When I got my license I drove to find the theater. It was less than an hour and 30 away. The whole place had been torn down there was nothing in the lot except potholes and this weed reed. It was a pink red sunset. I just sat in my car. I got out, as soon as my shoe hit the ground, it sounded like scratchy old pebbles. It made me so sad. I waited in my car hoping to think that the sky would get a trace of mint green like the theater.
>>220889246Nigger you pedo
>>220885146>>220885081I'm neither a woman nor gay and I would rather watch The Help or Bridesmaids than the latest Star Wars, Obsession or Backroom.The most appealing movie in theaters right now is Sheep Detective, and Devil Wears Prada 2, and possibly Breadwinner. Apparently the breadwinner guy is a standup comedian my parents like but the movie is all recycled from his standup.
>>220889484Some kike will use this post to write the next A24 blockbuster.
>>220885081I saw Star Wars every couple weeks for 3 years at the dollar theater. They had posters of Young Frankenstein and The Outlaw Josie Wales that they left up until the place closed in the '90s.
>>220889484>Comfy post.>Distribution tree used to be based. Actors waited forever to confirm if normies liked a movie or them. No one told them if some movie was being added to cable. Just flipping channels. Cable residuals meant you could buy a house or bigger house back then.>Actors could fuck a new tier of models because their movie was added to HBO rotation. An actor's kid idolizes his dad because one day he and his friends saw his dad on the back of a box in a video store and everyone at school heard and checked it out, some even rented it and told the kid it was pretty good and his dad did well.>The kid pictures his dad winning an Oscar then realizes he doesn't care and they probably won't happen. It might. But he loves his dad and is proud of his success. They can't all fire guns at bad people. His dad told him he's auditioning to play a dad on a new drama about the Holocaust, and the kid knows how important the role is, he read Anne Frank's Diary. Then one day his father sits him down, his father is divorcing Mom and marrying an actress he met on the Holocaust set who is a different religion than the boy, his dad and mother. But that's okay. The boy will learn. His dad's new wife has three children, two older girls and one who is a boy/girl. A boy/girl? What's that? the boy asks his dad. Like a gay person? Don't ask silly questions, the father says.>Over time the boy sees less of his father but more of him in TV movies, one about a man named Harvey Milk where his dad plays a sickly friend of Milk's who dies by a new disease. His father wins a "masterclass" job playing a priest who harms children based on a true story. He wins an Emmy award. The son isn't allowed to attend but his step children are. His dad sends him a stuffed lion from Israel with weird letters which the boy throws in the trash at school so his mom can't find it.That was interesting. I hope their situation improves.
>>220889480>Our neighbor across the street had the most I've seen, he had a whole wall of his living room covered with bookshelves full of VHS tapesYou could tell how close a family was by how many pen labeled VHS they had with two or three movies a piece. And all the movies would be kino. Fuck the FBI lol
>>220890391Retard. Joker acks the Batwing with a 10 foot gun in the first Batman, the goat Batman
>>220890435>Fletch Lives >No Holds BarredHow many fucking movies were playing goddamn
>>220891853No, nigga. I just looked it up on wikipedia.
>>220889480>raising us ultra sexually conservativeHow did that work out for you? Happily married with lots of children?
>>220885942And those bargain theaters were even more dependent on the profit margins of concessions as the ticket cost barely covered the fixed costs of keeping the doors open. The studio fees by then were pretty low but there's still the cost of air conditioning, electricity, and however many people are working. The locations with just a couple of screens had a difficult time with labor because they can save by having the same person selling tickets and selling concessions but that meant sometime missing concession sales if there was a more than one or two people trying to buy tickets. If you have ten screens, it's much easier to dedicate employees to specific roles.
>>220891238>>220891068>The 1992 comedy Sister Act grossed $140 domestically during its initial release. When adjusted for modern inflation, its domestic (U.S.) gross alone translates to approximately $380.5 million Sister Act made as much money in America as Project Hail Mary and Super Mario Bros Galaxy. It made $680 million worldwide. Wew. Sister Act 2 also did fat numbers.
>>220890174himself?
>>220892452>having the same person selling tickets and selling concessionsI remember that scheme. At one point the classic outside ticket stand closed altogether and you just got in line at concessions to buy a ticket, popcorn or not. Then a short period where tickets were self-serve, then it went under.
>>220888766>>220888974When movies were first released on VHS or DVD, the price was high, so while you could pay $100 for a copy of Jurassic Park ($230 in current dollars), most people would just rent it. Movie studios early on tried to sue video stores for a cut of each rental but the courts ruled against them. Studios responded by charging high prices that only rental places could afford. The longer a movie was out, the lower they'd start selling the video, until a decade later it cost ten bucks in the Walmart bargain bin.
>>220885081People blame COVID for theaters closing but I live in a dense suburban area and the two theaters closest by me both closed well before the coof one of them didn't even make it to Last Skywalker
>>220892592How often did you or your family even frequent the place? Or just watch at home?
>Honey I Blew Up Patriot Games
>>220892628The cable company offered customers free movie Tuesdays and the two local theaters were SLAMMED because of it. Then they stopped doing the offer and people stopped going all together. The only theater now is at the giant ass mall half hour away that's half dead and parking lot looks like Ukraine
There used to be a Cinemark Movies 10 near me, went there a bit as a kid (was Movies 10 always a Cinemark thing? don't remember). The theater is still there, but some years back they renovated it and dropped the discount aspect. Seems really stupid to me, considering that, last I checked, it was exclusively floor seating, unlike the stadium style seating at other nearby Cinemarks.
>>220892772Yes, Cinemark always did "Movies X". Where "x" was the number of screens.
>>220885258I remember going to dollar theaters. They would show Marx Brothers and old stuff like that.
>>220892592People staying home to watch Netflix and getting takeout instead of eating in a restaurant got popular a few years before the plandemic. Covid just solidified the behavior.
>>220889952wow never heard the murder theory
>>220889952Why did he hanged himself?
>>220892964There's a bloke on Twitter has a whole theory>>220893008He was a sad boi.
>>220892133most of our movie collection as a kid was exactly this. We got them from my uncle who had all the cable channels cause he had a side hustle selling cable, and he would tape the movies off of HBO, Showtime, etc.a lot of our movies started with thishttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhsUx_6fqJAand yeah they were 3 to a tape cause you would record them at EP speed to fit more on a tape (6 hours per tape) whereas commercial releases were always recorded at SP speed (2 hours per tape)
>>220892584It would be so kino to be a smart white adult in the late 80s who sees the mass potential in video rental stores and opens a mom and pop operation that flourishes. A lot of the business minutiae involved is at risk at becoming lost to time, how mid size town store owners attended private expos where they'd brush up alongside A and B-list celebrities whose agents emphasized how the game was changing. It's just so funny that white dudes became millionaires off this shit and came into their own, buying boats, living like mini celebrities themselves for a bit, bragging about their fucking exclusive laser disc setups and home theaters, some probably doing coke, a few lucky ones fucking some softcore Skinemax actresses and having the vision to franchise, high school dropout managers getting the bite, seeing the boom, saving enough to open their own stores with slightly different visions, competing with their old bosses in local rental wars, kids growing up renting shitloads of VHS thinking they might start a store too. There was a store that opened up that had a front counter like a bar where people would sit and watch movies playing and they had a raffle for the chainsaw from Leatherface with this huge poster, this was a family store that had a lot of money to compete, and later on I realized the raffle was likely fake af but our whole town was gossiping about this shit, because only this store had dibbs on the chainsaw and the owner had "connections" so that meant celebrities would be stopping by our town or at least knew about it. I think the owners were definitely coke heads, the store went under a few years after, maybe the industry crashed, but I had already moved away to try to start a band.
>>220893385Was VHS LP literally the most unused setting in the history of technology? I've alwasy felt sorry for it, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone mention it.
>>220892772cinemarks were really respected right?
Small theater by me does $5 classics on wednesdays, it's some good stuff too
>>220893572I think someone made a movie about being a video store clerk, and it always seemed appealing in a certain way, though not the same as being the entrepeneur himself the way you describe. There was just something about that magical time in the 80s when home video became a thing. I guess it would have been similar to seeing music stores open for the first time, whenever that was.
>>220892772Same thing happened to mine, plus they expanded to 16 screens from 12. Has stadium seats now though.
>>220892964>>220893008>>220889952Jonathan Brandis death was a hushed subject in Hollywood. Something happened to him on that Seaquest SUV show with the Jaws actor that Spielberg produced. To me it had a vibe like the Poltergeist girl who died. Like Hollywood sickos went overboard and everyone knew it, the guilty silence was deafening.
>>220893653They did a gay version with Stranger Things and Tarantino's podcast is basically that. But I've never seen any media focus on the store owners during the boom. As a kid you were vaguely aware of who the owners were because every family preferred a store, less by proximity than vibe and social circle, and to me a lot of the owners attended kids sports just to show their faces to customers, but the owners wouldn't talk to each other, the rivalry was real. The stores themselves became hubs for celebrity gossip through the owners and managers, I can't recall shit I heard, but I would eavesdrop. The energy though was just insane, it was different from music stores which are less family friendly, but again I didn't know what coke was, but it was everywhere I guess, and all of this product and marketing shit was constantly moving in, all the posters and the counter sets ups, and snacks, some had arcade games, one had a weird room with Nintendos and beanbags where teens made out they not everyone knew about even though it was across from the entrance. It stood out because horror posters really were like an energy that felt contagious at night even if your family was renting Ruthless People or Beaches.
>>220893701>clifford and beethoven 2 reduced to the clearance row imagine pitching a clifford beethoven crossover movie and then an exec runs the numbers just to see.
>>220885146You're missing the point, in a big way. You're talking like a fucking film student or something and you forget that these theaters were running a business and they wanted to cater to a wider demographic than fucking .5% of the population who are film students. Imagine taking a girl or even your own daughter or little sister or something out to see a movie, there's Lethal Weapon 3. It's got a great little romance between Riggs and Rene Russo, you got Danny Glover fucking breaking down and pretending he's reincarnated Malcolm X or some shit, you can make silly faces at her during this and see if you can make her laugh, you got the great Joe Pesci up there, Mel Gibson, the finest American actor of his generation from Australia, you can use that to kind of break the ice with your date/daughter/little sister, "hey you know, I'm like a depressed fucking schizo freak too, kind of like Riggs, you know?" And so it's the perfect date/daughter/little sister movie and oh yeah by the way guess what, instead of paying fucking $60 for the tickets and popcorn and drinks and candy or whatever, imagine if you paid less than $20. And you, stupid forever-single dingus that you are, "why don't girls/daughters/little sisters like me, my fucking taste in movies is so high-falutin', how can the ladies resist basking in my fucking glow? Yeah, did you know that actually Top Gun is about being a repressed homosexual, yeah this really smart gay guy I read and get my opinions from wrote an article and it was pretty obvious from what the article said, too bad the cheap movie theater doesn't have any good movies tonight, you'll just have to sit here with no popcorn and no cherry icee and no box of dots and listen to more of my fucking mind-blowingly controversial opinions, hey did you know James Cameron's Avatar is just a total ripoff of Pocahontas? And don't get me started on what a production nightmare it was to film 1994's Warriors of Virtue, it was like, really crazy . . ."
>>220892584You're mostly right, but Batman 89 was marketed to consumers to buy. I t remember paying $16 when it came out. 4 years later, there's no way in hell Jurassic Park $100. I bought it in a grocery store, release day. Robocop in 87, I definitely remember it was priced at $100 or more, and only rental places had it. I rented it and copied it because my parents had a VCR and a VHS camcorder.
>>220892584DVD were never priced at the "rental-only" price model. I had laserdiscs before DVD was a thing, and even those were average $30.
