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I spent part of the Thanksgiving weekend watching a marathon of movie trailers with family members.  This lead to a discussion of why certain types of films aren’t produced anymore, and how the "event" experience we had a couple of decades ago in movie theaters is also gone.

One event I remember was the Kiddie Show Matinee.  As this web site explains, a couple of enterprising producers made quite a stir in the 60s and 70s by taking over the weekend matinee slots for kid audiences.  It was thanks to this experience that I have vivid memories of films like "Superbug" and "Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World."

A simpler event that seems to have dwindled in the mid-80s was the Double Feature.   Up to that time, it was common for theaters to double-up two older films to keep the crowds coming back.  I don’t know if you can still find double-features in the big cities, but here in Central California it only happens at the Drive-In Movies.  My most vivid experience with double features is from my movie theater usher days: we were said to have had the longest run of the 1980 comedy "Airplane!" of any theater in the world.  This was done by keeping it in a perpetual double feature, co-featuring it with every comedy that came along through 1981.

A movie theater event that came before my time was the Spook Shows.  In the 30s through the 60s, Carny-type folk would travel from town to town armed with film prints, costumes and magic show props.  After heavily advertising their "Late Night Spook Show" to the town’s teenagers, they would put on a program that involved scaring the audiences with costumed actors, intermixed with a screening of a classic horror oldie like "White Zombie."  This lost event is well-covered in one of my favorite DVDs, "Monsters Crash the Pajama Party."

The act of seeing a movie today is pretty mechanic in today’s corporatized world.  I’m afraid theater management today is not much different from running a fast-food restaurant.  And audiences are bored why….?

UPDATE:

Ask and ye shall receive:  After bemoaning the loss of the kiddie matinee, I recently noticed an ad for a local cineplex and their Sat/Sun kiddie matinee.  It even mentioned a website!  Seems like a distribution company is attempting to revive the kiddie matinee tradition by featuring direct-to-video cartoons on the big screen.  It’s not exactly Little Red Riding Hood and the Monsters, but it’s still kind of neat that to have the opportunity to see Scooby Doo in Where’s My Mummy? on the big screen.