Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Midnight Movie Suggestions

This is topic Midnight Movie Suggestions in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Christian Volpi (Member # 2370) on 01-20-2005, 04:08 PM:

My theater is going to start bringing in old movies to play for midnight shows on the weekends. For those of you that have ran them in the past (or present), what brings in the masses? We were thinking about movies that I consider classics such as The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, Animal House...etc. Any suggestions would be helpful. No Rocky Horror Picture Show!! [puke]

Posted by Chris Hipp (Member # 1788) on 01-20-2005, 04:20 PM:

I recommend Anchorman every friday night, but there may be some actually useful titles in these threads

Midnight shows Midnight movies

[ 01-20-2005, 06:04 PM: Message edited by: Chris Hipp ]

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 01-20-2005, 04:26 PM:

I'd vote for some 1930s Universal horror B-movies, if decent prints are available. As most are only 60-70 minutes long you'd probably need to do a double bill, though.

Posted by Christian Volpi (Member # 2370) on 01-20-2005, 05:00 PM:

Thanks, Hipp.

Posted by Allison Parsons (Member # 2728) on 01-20-2005, 05:55 PM:

We did a 'Re-run' Film Series every spring and fall and the two best grossing films that we'd showed were Goonies and Office Space. Scarface, The Lost Boys, Breakfast Club did quite well also... and Fight Club.

Posted by Thomas King (Member # 2745) on 01-20-2005, 09:39 PM:

Our showings are 'themed' : wednesdays are foreign/arthouse, fridays and saturdays are for fairly recent big hitters, and sundays are for old gold, so to speak. Annoyingly, sundays don't perform well, I can only assume that most people have seen it all on VHS and DVD millions of times before. When I try to explain that watching Se7en in your living room just isn't the same, they look at me bug-eyed.

A few always pull in the crowds, though. Priscilla; Queen of the Desert, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, American Beauty, Trainspotting, The Usual Suspects, The Crow and Fear and Loathing all got a nice big crowd of geeky types. (But why no Rocky Horror? It's just a jump to the left, you know)

Posted by Sam Graham (Member # 2889) on 01-20-2005, 11:35 PM:

Cinemark 16 in Fort Collins, CO was doing that recently, and I believe "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller" were among the movies they'd tried according to the newspaper article I read about it. I thought I'd kept that article but I can't find it...

Anyway, the local college kids were supporting it well.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 01-21-2005, 01:08 AM:

Much as I like classic b&w movies onscreen, I'd have to think that they'd be the kiss of death to a midnight movies series. The demo is going to be 18-30 mostly males. Check the popular culture, Scarface would do well, as would Donnie Darko, explosion pictures, etc.

Posted by James Faber (Member # 2796) on 01-22-2005, 08:57 PM:

Our showing of The Breakfast Club didn't do too well, however Donnie Darko did really well. Rosemary's Baby also did really well. Some movies I've been trying to get ahold of have been Swingers, Office Space, and American Beauty.

P.S. How do you get ahold of old prints anyway(assuming Mr. Money Man lets me)?

Posted by Brandon Willis (Member # 2345) on 01-22-2005, 08:59 PM:

A Brat Pack series would be a great idea.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-24-2005, 08:45 AM:

Booking older titles "shouldn't" be a problem. You just call your booker (or the distributor) and book the film.

Sometimes things get interesting and distributors claim that they don't have any prints of a particular title when they actually do. At that point, it's helpful to have the name of a theatre that played it recently and (if you know them and can call and ask) a print number. Sometimes there are rights issues and the company that original produced the film no longer owns the rights, but someone else does. Sometimes you will run into distributors who have rights but no prints, but will license the screening if you can find someone who has a print or if you want to run the show on video or 16mm. Sometimes prints may be available through third-party archives (e.g. UCLA) who might rent them out, but only if you pay for exhibition rights to whoever owns these rights.

Personally, I think it's horrible that an entity can hold the rights to a film (or book, record, etc.) but not own any elements (prints, negs, recordings, etc.) for it. Such is the US legal system, however.

Popular titles shouldn't be a real problem, though. The rare ones sometimes aren't permitted to be run on platters or large reels, but those are issues that need to be addressed with the distributor.

Posted by Andrew McCrea (Member # 674) on 01-24-2005, 05:37 PM:

I was going to say Rocky Horror, but you don't want it and printsd are usually hard to get, so I've heard. This originally played in Winnipeg for 8-10 years, I believe.

As for another title: A former theatre I worked at ran A Clockwork Orange (great movie!) as a midnight show and we sold out our 535 auditorium for both Friday's and Saturday's showings. As for the crowd, they weren't too bizarre, didn't hassle the concession staff for free food, but a lot were under age, and many were turned away (due to age and traffic).