| Micah's Memories of the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown |
[Ed. Note: This post is my contribution to Jette Kernion and Blake Ethridge's Alamo Blogathon, an online tribute to one of the world's greatest movie theaters. For those who don't know, the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown will be closing its doors at its original location on June 27.]
February 5, 2003: My first memory of the Alamo Drafthouse is for a movie that I didn't actually see. I'd lived in Austin for about five months, and somehow hadn't heard about the Drafthouse (probably because I was flat broke and didn't have any money for things like movies). So when I read in a local newspaper that a theater downtown was showing Caged Fury (1983) that night - for free - I was very interested. Here's the description:
I'd never heard of this so-called "Filipino sleaze god," but the stuff about human time-bombs sounded good. So I called up a buddy who was - like me - into "B" movies. We'd spent a few summers prior going through Maxim's "Worst Movies Ever Made" list. It was a hit-or-miss experience, ranging from the intentionally bad (Killer Klowns From Outer Space (1988)) to the truly great ('Gator Bait (1974)). We then progressed to renting movies from Blockbuster with promising "so bad it's good" box art... stuff like TerrorVision (1986) and Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982) (spoiler: he gets his grandmother pregnant). We were mostly interested in laughing at bad acting, bad writing, and bad camera work. Don't judge. We've all gotta start somewhere.
We planned on checking out Caged Fury, but ended up going to a bar on Sixth Street. Ooops. Our loss. But we set our sights on the next week's screening of Blood Tide (1982). Here's that description:
I wish I could tell you that I was awed as soon as I walked in the Drafthouse, but that'd be a lie. To tell the truth, I was kinda underwhelmed: there was only one theater, and it appeared to be unfinished. The concrete walls and ceilings were painted black, and there were wires and pipes running everywhere. But at least there were couches in the back row and beer on tap.
My memories of that night are somewhat spotty, but two items stand out: First was the set-up for the movie. Before it started, a tall, skinny, hairy guy came out and gave us some background about the film. He enthusiastically described Blood Tide, and told us about other films that the actors and director had made. He genuinely seemed to think we were about to watch a good movie. We were bemused. And then he told us that we couldn't talk to or yell at the screen. The hell? Hadn't this guy seen Mystery Science Theater? Didn't he know how funny it was when people made jokes during bad movies? What a stickler.
The second was the movie itself. It left me speechless. Not so much at the quality of the movie, but by the fact a svelte James Earl Jones - Darth Vader himself - spends a good portion of the movie in a skin-divers outfit. How had I not heard about that before? Why had it never come up in conversation? What else was out there that I didn't know about?
Again, I wish I could say that that screening changed my life, but it didn't. At least not at first. True, the next week me and my buddy (and my wife, for her one and only Weird Wednesday experience) were back for Frightmare (1983):
But just a few nights later, I sat at home doing who knows what while Sleazoid Express author Bill Landis presented a "Book Signing, Lecture, and Double Feature" of Pets (1974) and The Candy Snatchers (1973). And although we were at the Drafthouse that next Wednesday for the 9:45 screening of The Backyard (a doc on the backyard wrestling fad of the early 2000s), we skipped out of the Weird Wednesday screening of Snakes (1974) to hit Sixth Street. The shame.
But slowly, through almost-weekly visits to the Drafthouse, I began to get it. To understand that a movie wasn't laughable just because it had flaws. To realize that so-called B-movies actually had a lot to offer. Hell... that they were better than many of the A-movies I'd grown up watching.
So, for the next few years I began to go to the Drafthouse with greater and greater frequency. When I couldn't find someone to go with me, I went alone. I watched trailer marathons and AV Geek shows. I learned about genres I'd never heard of - EuroSleaze, Italian Crime, Giallo - as well as exploitation's infinite subgenres - Women-In-Prison, Biker Flicks, Hicksploitation, Indonesian Madness, Blaxploitation, Home Invastion, Nazisploitation, Nunsploitation...
I attended all-night and all-day movie marathons. I saw a double feature of Dancing Outlaw (1991) and Speedo (2003) that cemented my love for all things cinematically redneck. I drank a beer with George Wendt and Stuart Gordon, got grilled by Crispin Glover on whether I really got what he was trying to say with What Is It? (2005), and was counfounded by the college-aged chicks that threw themselves at an almost-40-year-old Pauly Shore.
And when it came time for me to move from Austin to Dallas, I delayed my move into a newly-purchased home to stick around for the 6th Quentin Tarantino Festival... it didn't matter that I had to live in a furniture-less apartment for nine days: I got to watch movies at the Drafthouse.
August 31, 2005: The last Weird Wednesday that I saw as a citizen of Austin was Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), an Al Adamson-directed horror-biker-hippie oddity. In many ways, it was the perfect way to come full circle. Many in the audience were there to laugh at the amature acting and giggle at the fact that the movie seemed to feature two largely unconnected plots (they were right on that last count). And I was sure that a lot of those people would leave the theater laughing about how bad the movie was. I can't say I fault them... the movie was kind of a mess and, after all, I'd done the same thing myself 31 months earlier.
But there were plenty of people there who - like me - truly enjoyed the movie... who appreciated Adamson's earnest approach to filmmaking, who were impressed by Gary Graver's skilled cinematography, who enjoyed watching Russ Tamblyn as an evil biker, and who were moved by watching Lon Chaney Jr. struggle through his last performance. Yeah... it was the perfect way for me to leave the Alamo...
... but not for good. In the past two years I've made the 3-hour-something drive from my house to the Drafthouse numerous times, though sadly I've missed way more than I've seen. I'll be headed down one last time Wednesday night for a double feature of Earthquake (1974) and Night Warning (1983)... and then that location will become another uber-trendy nightclub. But I can't think about that... not yet.
I said before that my first experience at the Drafthouse wasn't an instant life-altering event. But looking back on how my cinematic tastes have changed since February 5, 2003 is like night and day. And a large part of that is because of the Drafthouse. And if I hadn't run into Brian at QT6, there would be no Reel Distraction. So at the very least, this site's existence is directly attributable to the Alamo. So to Lars, Tim, Carrie, Kier La, Karen, and the rest of the Alamo Drafthouse crew, thanks for the education, and thanks for the memories. |
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Author: Micah
Post Date: 06.25.07
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