DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk Archive => Current Talk '24 I => Current Talk '08 I => Topic started by: David on May 07, 2008, 06:46:55 PM
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I just heard that the Marboro Theatre on Bay Parkway in Brooklyn NY, the old hometown, is gone.
Either condos or office space will replace it.
Though I saw my first movie, South Pacific, at another theatre in 1960, the Marboro was the first theatre I ever went to by myself, without Mom & Dad.
That was in 1964, when I saw Mary Poppins & My Fair Lady.
In 1970, I saw HODS at the Marboro.
The Marboro was a block from my Grandma Sophie's house.
I remember stopping in, in Sept 1970, to look at the coming soon posters and whooping it up when I saw the HODS poster!!
Over at Grandma, everyone was getting ready to celebrate Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, but all I could talk about was HODS!
They couldn't calm me down, LOL!
I'll never forget going there in Oct 1970:
Here was the marquee design:
Jonathan Joan
Frid Bennett
"House of Dark Shadows" GP
It was thrilling to see, and I can't believe I recall the actual desgn of the marquee lettering after all these years.
I went out of my way to walk by the theatre every day for the 10 day run.
Inside, the day I saw the film, some two thousand DS fans cheered and applauded
the credits and the first appearences of each cast member.
Frid and Grayson pretty much got standing ovations!!
It was the most fun I've EVER had going to the movies!!!
The Marboro opened in 1927.
It was HUGE, and had a beautiful mural of the sky on the auditorium ceiling.
In 1982 it became a quad and lost it's charm/soul.
I last visited the Marboro in 1997, for my third viewing of Titanic.
The theatre was no longer what it was, and I'm glad that I first saw Titanic in a theatre that still had good sound!
The Marboro closed in 2002, and the building was demolished recently.
I just found out about this at www.CinemaTreasures.org
where the histories of thousands of movie palaces are preserved.
Coming tonight:
the theatre where I first saw NODS!
Share your theatre memories of HODS & NODS!
David
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I never seen HODS and NODS at the theater. But I do remember the previews shown on TV when I
was a kid.
I hate to hear about The Marboro being demolished.
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Hi! Newbie giving up my lurker status for this post.
Thank you for the link, the theater I saw HODS in is listed.
It's the Grove Theater in Upland, California and tickets were fifty cents at the time.
I barely remember it, but I do remember being scared out of my mind by
[spoiler]Carolines staking scene. It still scares me. Her screams were just so real.[/spoiler]
I'm sorry about your Marboro theater being torn down, that's very sad. I still live in my hometown
and I hope we keep our Grove theater forever.
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Hi, Breebell, and welcome!
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I saw both at the Capitol Theater (and when I saw NODS, I got to see HODS again, since they ran as a double-feature - remember when they still had double features? - the one for HODS was a western). The Capitol was erected opened in the 1920's as a regular performance theater, with a stage, orchestra pit, two balconies, box seats and all the gillding. It became a movie theater solely probably by the 1950's (before then, for several decades, it still had live performancess - including Lawrence Welk! - along with films). In the late 80's, it went through extensive renovations and restorations, reverting back to a performing arts center named the Capitol Civic Center. Films are no longer shown there.
http://www.cccshows.org/html/ccc_history.html
Gerard
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I remember seeing HODS at the Levittown Theater on Long Isaland. Yes the good old days here too, the matinees we also 50 cents. I went with a group of my friends. We usually walked to the theater from the neighboring town of East Meadow. I was about 11. My twin daughters are now 12. I can't imagine giving them that much freedom now days. ( As a sideline one of my daughters loves watching the DVDs with me. !)
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We paid 35 cents for a matinee, and that included not only the double-feature, but also a cartoon and a short documentary. When I went to see HODS (and walked to the theater, too), my mom begrugingly gave me a dollar to pay for admission, popcorn, soda and candy - and she told me to make sure to give her back the change when I got home.
Gerard
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If I remember. I think both HODS and NODS were shown in drive-in theaters in Pensacola,FL. We only had
one indoor theater at that time call "The Florida Theater". It still being used today and it is now call "Pensacola
Little Theater" and they don't show movies anymore, but I think they shown HODS.
All of drive-ins we had are all gone.
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Were it not for the Mayfair Theatre on Avenue U in Brooklyn, I might never have watched DS.
In April, 1967, I went to the Mayfair to watch The Deadly Bees, the first horror movie I ever saw in a theatre.
The death by 10,000 bee stings scene scared the shit out of me, and I was hooked on horror for life.
(Deadly Bees comes to DVD this summer, BTW)
Because of The Deadly Bees, I sought out DS, which I had heard was "scary."
So it all began at the Mayfair.
In Oct 1971, I went to the Mayfair to see Night of DS.
I laughed my butt off at the marquee:
David SHELBY in
Night of Dark Shadows
Yup, Shelby!
The Mayfair was around the block from my childhood home~~I saw many a Hammer film there.
At about 1,000 seats, it was large but not grand.
Not sure when it opened.
The Mayfair was the first of the old theatres in Broolyn to go. It closed in 1980, and was torn down.
A McDonald's now occupies the site.
Sad.
David
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I watched both movies on their original releases. I saw HODS at the Page Theater in Luray, Virginia and NODS at a theater on the Boardwalk in Ocean City, Maryland (I don't remember the name of the theater becasue I was on vacation that summer).
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One of the friends I watched DS with at Vassar lived in Scarsdale, NY, and there was some sort of brief vacation or holiday weekend or something when it (HODS) came out, and I went to her home for the weekend and we saw the premiere. (It's interesting, she was someone my other DS friends and I became friendly with in connection with DS, but with whom we evidently would not otherwise have been friends, because once the show was over, we no longer maintained the relationship!)
I had graduated and was back home by the time NODS came out. I don't recall which theater I saw it in, but I know I went alone.
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I first saw HoDS at the Granada Theatre in Bluefield, WV. The next year was a double-billing of HoDS and NoDS at the same theatre. The Granada Theatre closed in the mid-1970's and was last used as a nightclub. Another Bluefield theatre was the Colonial which showed every Hammer Horror Film that came out. It too closed in the mid-1970's.
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I saw HODS with my older cousin (I was too young to go alone due to the rating) at the Cinema House in Newark, Delaware. My father had dropped off us and picked us up. When I got into the car, I was devastated that Barnabas had been killed at the end of the movie - not sure what the bat flying out at the end of the death scene meant. "Do you think Barnabas is dead on the show too?" I asked. Dad's memorable reply, "No, honey, don't worry. That guy makes them too much money to really kill off!"
I didn't see NODS because Barnabas wasn't in it.
Nancy
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Hello,
First I would like to say hello to everyone on this site. It looks like I'm the newest member. I was introduced to this site by my co-worker, we now both use the last name Collins. (Not our real name - what a surprise [ghost_embarrassed]) I've been reading the posts for awhile and lt's been fun. I thought I'd intoduce myself and start posting.
I ask one favor, please don't tell our boss that we do this on company time [ghost_wink].
The topics here are very interesting. Unlike my co-worker I've never been to a festival. Maybe this year. There is much I'd like to comment on, but I guess I'll start here and say I first saw HODS in my living room on the Turner Classic channel and I've never seen NODS. Is it ever on TV?
Anyway, I'll be responding to other posts. It's nice to be here.
__Master Tad Collins [ghost_nowink]
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I to never saw HODS or NODS in the theatre. In 1970 I was not old enough to drive and someone had tipped off my parents about the gore in the films. Every time I saw a preview for the show on TV, I pestered my parents about going, but to no avail.
I remember doing some channel hopping in the late 1980's and came across a movie with Kate Jackson in it. I said to myself " Their's Kate Jackson, she used to be in Dark Shadows". Then there was John Karlen, Nancy Barrett, and then David Selby. At that point I realized I had to be watching NODS for the first time. It was like seeing old friends again.
I checked the TV listings to confirm what I was watching and was horrified to find out that NODS had played just before and I missed it. This was on TBS and they were playing as some Friday the 13th or Halloween marathon. I religiously checked the listings for the next marathon they would have and was finally rewarded with the double showing again. At last I got to see NODS and the complete HODS. I loved every second of it.
I also taped it that evening, and despite having bought the official release tapes years later, I still have those taped copies with comercials and everything. It wasn't long after that when MPI started releasing the show on video.
Thanks
Jeffrey
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Welcome, Master Tad Collins! Your secret is safe with us. [ghost_grin]
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I also first saw HODS and NODS as a double feature on TBS in the 80s. I was really excited to finally be able to watch them.
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Welcome, Master Tad Collins! Your secret is safe with us. [ghost_grin]
Thanks Midnite. I promise we're on only during breaks... [ghost_embarrassed]
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Welcome, Master Tad!! How nice that you can share this with a co-worker!!
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Welcome, Master Tad Collins! I won't tell your boss if you won't tell mine...though I imagine my boss's response would be, "You ought to see this web site that I found!"
I still haven't seen either HODS or NODS.
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OK, everyone is coming clean now about accessing this site while at work. I refuse to admit it, really I do... In the meantime, I saw NODS for the first time at a DS festival. I saw HODS on TV in the early 80s.
Sally
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I saw HoDS at the 220 Drive-in Theater, in Martinsville, VA, on its first run (I saw countless monster movies at this drive-in, long since plowed under). At the same drive-in, I saw NoDS when it came out. In 1973, the movies came to the Rives Theater as a weekend double-feature, and at the matinee I attended, the theater was so full of noisy kids that you couldn't hear a word of dialogue in either film. Partway through NoDS, the management ran a reel that showed a stern-faced gentleman in a suit exhorting the audience to be quiet ("This is what -you- sound like," he says, to the backdrop of a bunch of screaming kids), but to no avail. Several youngsters I knew were in the audience, so I made a point of hating their freaking guts for the rest of the way through high school. I eventually decided to forgive them their trespasses, but that doesn't mean I'd ever go to a movie with any of them. [ghost_wink]
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Another topic answered late!
Commisserations to David on the loss of the Marlboro theater. Thank goodness for that site you provided the link to -- I've found a few of our late great local movie palaces on there as well.
I saw both movies at a real old movie palace: The Loew's Paradise on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. It was built in the 20s, with all the marble, decorations and ornamentation of that era. It also doubled as a vaudeville house. Fortunately, after being chopped into a triplex, then shuttered for at least the last ten years, it has finally reopened,fully restored. Who cares that its now BOXING that's held there -- its a classic movie palace that now has a new lease on life!
I don't remember a lot about seeing the movies, except that both times I walked there with my grandmother. HODS didn't thrill me (and doesn't to this day) because Julia was changed into such a lovesick moron.
NODS I remember,and after knowing now about two different versions released, I KNOW I must have seen the more adult of the two. I remember sitting there with my reserved English grandmother (born 1900) and squirming in embarrassment over the VERY LONG (longer than I remember,and with more dialog than I remember from seeing the vhs release) scene in bed where Quentin is mauling Tracy.
Jeannie
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Of course, there were no DS theater screenings for someone my age and in my location. I halfway watched a VHS of NoDS from a local video rental place a few years ago and I saw HoDS via digital rental on Amazon Unbox.
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For anyone here who has not seen HoDS, it is on youtube - the entire movie. It is in, of course, segments, so when one segment is done you have to click on to the next. At least you get to see it. I re-watched the original version of Dawn of the Dead, the one made in the late seventies, that way. That was the first time since I originally saw it when it came out in movie theaters. I really enjoyed it, because when I moved to Pittsburgh, PA in the mid-eighties, I often went to the mall where it had been filmed. (DotD, not HoDS, although a DS movie set in a mall would be interesting, to say the least).
Gerard (Who's right now reading Stephen King's Cell, a novel about how cellphones have turned users into murderous zombies, ala night-of-the-living-dead, which I'm also immensely enjoying because I absolutely, positively hate and detest cellphones; I had one and when the contract ran out I got rid of it and have never looked back and am doing just fine without one. [Stephen King has stated he also hates them and doesn't have one - so there. {Grrrrllllllloowwww! - a murderous phone-crazy, as they're called in the novel, coming after you!}])
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I think watching HODS on You Tube would be OK, as long as the print was good.
The chapter interuptions would be no different than watching commercial television.
David
who can no longer do business without his cell phone
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The clarity is actually very good, David! If someone has one of those wide-screen computer screens, it's fantastic. I downloaded the scene where Barnabas arrives at Collinwood just for the heck of it. And get rid of that cellphone! My hatred for them climaxed when I was at the movies (I think it was Cloverfield) while, trying to enjoy the movie, suddenly - FLASH! - someone opened their cellphone to check whatever the heck they needed in their addictive obsession to check. Minutes later - FLASH! - another one did it. And the another one. And then another one. Fed up, I shouted as loud as I could: "If you people don't have a life beyond those intrusive boxes, then stay at home." I got a round of applause for it. Afterwards, I asked if the manager was in. He was and I told him he needs to ban anyone from bringing those annoying gadgets into the theater. He said cellphone use is already prohibited and people are instructed to shut off the ringers. I said it's not enough - they can't help but keep checking them every 42 seconds and it disrupts us who paid money to see a movie. "Good point," he said. Maybe I've started something.
Gerard
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I saw both at the Capitol Theater (and when I saw NODS, I got to see HODS again, since they ran as a double-feature - remember when they still had double features? - the one for HODS was a western).
I never got to experince DOUBLE FEATURES until GRINDHOUSE last year and I loved it the movies and the double feature feel. It was just so fun and great to see a double feature. I saw NODS and HODS on tv for the first time.
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[ghost_smiley]
OMG, Gerard!
You are so right about cell phones in theatres.
I do shut mine off at the movies!
David
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Also welcome Breebell and Master Tad!!
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When I saw Prisoner of Azkaban in the theater a few years ago, there was a kid a few rows down playing a Game Boy Advance. I could hear it faintly until his mother made him shut it off about 15 minutes later. There was also a woman who was quite annoying with her cell phone when I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.