What’s This, Then?

I show my series pass, and pay for my popcorn. Coat folded over my arm, I stop at the condiment station. Popcorn, here, comes lightly salted, popped in some noble oil, served in small, medium, and large paper bags. Choose your flavors. There is salt, of course, and buttery flavor, but I always go for the curry powder - shaking it over my medium popcorn bag, then tapping the bag, getting the curry to settle, shaking more curry on, tapping again, until I know the popcorn will taste of curry-goodness.

And I go in.

Last winter, this was my every Saturday, at the Sprocket Society's Saturday Secret Matinees at the Grand Illusion Cinema. Every week, another old movie. The Mole People, First Spaceship on Venus, Gorath, and many others. Every week, an episode of Buck Rogers and the Planet Outlaws.

They don't announce the features in advance. Last year, the series began with Earth Vs the Flying Saucers. "A classic!" I whispered to my wife - who joined me for the first film and one later in the year.

Whatever you do, don’t watch EvFS alone. Have some friends over. Eat salsa. The movie is a classic, but not for acting or story. Ray Harryhausen did the special effects, most importantly, the titular flying saucers. The movie follows a rocket scientist as he develops an energy weapon to defeat the invaders.

About five minutes into the film, the screenwriters treated us to some clumsy sexual innuendo and the audience laughed at it.

"Daddy, why are you laughing?" demanded a young boy in the row behind us. For reasons the little boy would not understand, the audience laughed harder at that.

This is the kind of moment that only happens when you see a film with other people. It makes seeing a movie in a theater different from watching the film at home on a TV or computer. The whole series was quirky and fun.

I thought about blogging the series last year, but I wanted to be in the movies, instead of aware of them. This year, though, I’m going to try to do both. So, if you check back to this blog over the next few months, this is what you will find:

• Posts about the features. This year, the themes are Heroes and Villains, Exotic Lands, and Alien Encounters.
• Posts about the serial, Zorro's Fighting Legion.
• Posts about the theatre and me watching the matinee. The Grand Illusion is a funky little non-profit in Seattle’s U-District. I guess I’ve already talked about the popcorn.
• Posts about dinner and drinks before or after the film.

Although I plan to get a series pass, I will miss two of the weekends, but for one of them, the SIFF/EMP Sci-Fi shorts is at the Cinerama and we have tickets. Expect reviews.

Finally, in early May, I plan to make it down to Portland for the H. P. Lovecraft film festival. I’ve been a couple of times, and it’s been fun. If this blog is going well, I’ll finish it up with reviews from that festival.

And that will be the end of this blog. I’ve tried to do ongoing blogs and I do run out of steam for a topic. I have better success with a project blog. Three months, plus HPL as a coda.

As for the first film in last year’s series, Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, later in the film, the aliens use a mind control crystal on a captured earthling. The scene involved the man's skull turning transparent so we could see the brain inside.

It looked just as hokey as you imagine.

From the row behind us, I could hear the father of the little boy comforting him. I didn't look around, but I think the kid sounded scared - of a hokey, black and white glowing crystal projected on a small screen in a theater roughly the size of my living room.

Ten years from now, that little boy will be a teenager with a flat screen TV almost as big as the Grand Illusion's screen. That teenager may choose any movie ever made, but I doubt he’ll ever be in a movie the way he was that January morning ten years earlier.