In the town where I grew up there was a movie theatre – the Calvin on Michigan Avenue – that was the perfect high school date spot. For $1.25 you could see two movies – one was some film on its second run so the film was always a little battered and scratched, and the other film, well, trust me, you’d never even heard of the second film on the bill. They were “straight to video” releases before anyone had videotape players. Anyway, for not too much pocket money, you could bring a date and hold hands in the dark or heck, just get away from the parents for awhile. And sometimes the movies weren’t too bad.
When I went away to college, I discovered another kind of double feature, one where not only are both movies good but when they are shown together on the same night a neat sort of “discussion” starts between the films. The first one I saw was Casablanca played on the same bill as Woody Allen’s Play it Again Sam. Though video pretty much killed the little film revue theatres, now we have the ability to make our own homerolled double features. And our double features don’t have to include snotty art house film; they can be horror movies.
The big idea for this column are suggestions for two films that might work really well together, either based on their theme, a common actor, a common situation…whatever. And the films don’t necessarily have to be “good.” Putting one film in the right context sometimes makes different aspects noticeable, and often this means that a film that might initially be dismissed as mediocre might actually have something more profound going on. Or for that matter, sometimes a film that’s passable on its own completely falls apart when shown beside another work. That’s the fun here.
We all get to play Dr Frankenstein. What are fantastic “Creature Double Features” you’ve concocted? How’d they turn out?