Here was the scheme: buy the rights to a bunch of foreign fairy tale movies really cheap, dub them into English at the Coral Gables, Florida Soundlab studio, and then furiously market the hell out of them, insisting to theater owners on strict "weekend only" matinee showtimes. Then you sit back and watch the money roll in --which is what happened in the '50s through the early '70s to old school showman and huckster K. Gordon Murray (whom many of you know as the man who brought Mexican horror to the USA, turning El Santo into Samson). So successful was Mr. Murray's children's crusade that others followed suit with the weekend matinees, including the behemoth Disney. By the '70s, the big studios enforced exclusive contracts with the major theater and distribution chains that forbade "weekend only" engagements (which not only killed the kiddie matinees, but the midnight spook shows as well).
Most of the films presented at these matinees have drifted into dusty obscurity (except for the perversely bizarre Mexican film Santa Claus, which was Murray's biggest hit). Kiddiematinee.com is trying to remedy that, with an extraordinary database of almost every kid movie exhibited in the US, including some gems as Hershell Gordon Lewis' Santa Visits the Magic Land of Mother Goose, the weird Italian The Seven Dwarfs to the Rescue, and one I remember seeing in the mid '70s (on a double bill with Godzilla Vs. Megalon), West Germany's Superbug (which also holds the dubious distinction of being the first movie I ever walked out of).
No comments:
Post a Comment