The Return of the Vampire

"Your fate is to be what you are, as mine is to be what I am."
                                            -Dr. Armand Tesla (Bela Lugosi)
                                              The Return of the Vampire (1943)

The previous line is from one of my favorite horror movies of all time. I try to make sure I watch it at least once every October. Besides being entertaining, it is notable that it is one of the few films that Bela Lugosi made where he actually portrayed a vampire. This gem from Columbia also went against several of the tried and true bloodsucking legends in that the chief vampire hunter was a woman, he went after a little girl and an adult man, and he turned his human slave into a werewolf. This werewolf was unusual in that he spoke perfect english and didn't kill anyone. This movie is also unusual in that he was staked in the first part of the film and not with a wooden stake but a metal spike. As a lot of studios did during WWII, they gave a it a war background to help boost ticket sales (the story began at the end of WWI and leapt forward in time to 1941 for the second part. Stock footage of fighter planes was used as well.) and the London blitz played a pivotal part in resurrecting the vampire. As I said before, it is one my favorite horror films and is very entertaining. My heroes at TCM usually schedule it each October. Also there is a brief comic moment with two graveyard workers, one of whom is played by Billy Bevan, a contract player for Mack Sennett Studios during the 1920s. All in all its a great film and I  could think of a lot worse ways to spend an hour and a half.

Where Have All of the Theaters Gone?

Growing up in my hometown of Augusta, GA, during the 1960s and '70s, I remember there being nine movie theatres. Three downtown (one of which showed soft-core porn), two in the suburbs, and four drive-ins. The nearest drive-in is now 60 miles away in Monetta, SC, none of the three downtown functions as a movie house now, and the two in the suburbs are gone. All nine went under. In their places we now have three, all of them in the suburbs. Two of them are first run houses and the other a subsequent run house. Granted, the two first-runs have multiple screens and only one from my childhood had more than one screen and then just two. In addition, four other theaters have opened and closed in my lifetime. That gives Augusta a loss of thirteen theaters over the last 40-odd years. Quite a difference from the golden age of Hollywood. In 1941 there were approximately 17000 theaters in America in 8500 cities with 10.5 million seats. There were 49 cities with a population of  200,000 and up and they contained 20% of all theaters, one-third of all seats, and generated two-thirds of all ticket sales. Today there are less than 6000 theaters remaining. The factors of general television, the supreme court decision forcing the studios to divest themselves of their theater chains (at one time Paramount Studios alone owned over 1200 theatres) and the resulting reduction in new movies being made, home video (videotape and DVDs), pay television and new technology allowing us to watch movies on our computers have all done their part in this. Will we see a further reduction? I don't think so. I think the market has shaken itself out enough to where we are at a static situation. Simply put, we will see very few new theaters but also very few going out of business. People still need date nights and cheap entertainment and for the movie geeks there is no substitute for the theater experience.

FIRST POST

This is the very first post to this blog. I am using it to mainly play around and edit things to look the way I want them to.