Please work on your film projects during the lab today. Take a few minutes as a break and read about Drive-Ins, Ed Wood, and Roger Corman.
Drive-In Theatres:
Richard Hollingshead, a young sales manager at his dad's Whiz Auto
Products, invented something that combined his two interests: cars and
movies.
Richard Hollingshead's vision was an open-air movie theater where
moviegoers could watch from their own cars. He experimented in his own
driveway in New Jersey. Hollingshead mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on
the hood of his car, projected onto a screen he had nailed to trees in
his backyard, and used a radio placed behind the screen for sound.
Clever!
The inventor subjected his beta drive-in to vigorous testing: for sound
quality, for different weather conditions (Hollingshead used a lawn
sprinkler to imitate rain) and for figuring out how to park the patrons'
cars. He lined up the cars in his driveway, which created a problem
with line of sight. By spacing cars at various distances and placing
blocks and ramps under the front wheels of cars, Richard Hollingshead
created the perfect parking arrangement for the drive-in movie theater
experience.
The first patent for the Drive-In Theater (United States Patent#
1,909,537) was issued on May 16, 1933. With an investment of $30,000,
Richard opened the first drive-in on June 6, 1933 at a location in
Camden, New Jersey. The price of admission was 25 cents for the car and
25 cents per person.
The design did not include the in-car speaker system we know today. The
inventor contacted a company by the name of RCA Victor to provide the
sound system, called "Directional Sound." Three main speakers were
mounted next to the screen that provided sound. The sound quality was
not good for cars in the rear of the theater or for the surrounding
neighbors.
The largest drive-in theater in patron capacity was the All-Weather
Drive-In of Copiague, New York. All-Weather had parking space for 2,500
cars, an indoor 1,200 seat viewing area, kid's playground, a full
service restaurant and a shuttle train that took customers from their
cars and around the 28-acre theater lot.
Please take a look at these clips. Drive in down memory lane...
Clip A.
Clip B.
Science Fiction (or sci-fi)
The Cold War and the fear of nuclear annihilation by the communists is
reflected in the many b-films made in the 1950's. Here's a sampling.
Enjoy!
Forbidden Planet (1956) (starring Leslie Neilson, this is based on Shakespeare's
The Tempest)
The Blob (1958) (starring Steve McQueen)
Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959) Ed Wood’s terrible film masterpiece!
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
Attack of the Giant Gila Monster (1959)
Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)
Ed Wood (Jr.) (10 October 1924 –
10 December 1978) was an American screenwriter, director, producer,
actor, author, and editor, who often performed many of these functions
simultaneously. In the 1950s, Wood made a run of cheap and poorly
produced genre films, now humorously celebrated for their technical
errors, unsophisticated special effects, large amounts of ill-fitting
stock footage, idiosyncratic dialogue, eccentric casts and outlandish
plot elements, although his flair for showmanship gave his projects at
least a modicum of critical success.
Wood's popularity
waned soon after his biggest 'name' star, Béla Lugosi, died. He was able
to salvage a saleable feature from Lugosi's last moments on film, but
his career declined thereafter. Toward the end of his life, Wood made
pornographic movies and wrote pulp crime, horror, and sex novels. His
posthumous fame began two years after his death, when he was awarded a
Golden Turkey Award as Worst Director of All Time. The lack of
conventional film making ability in his work has earned Wood and his
films a considerable cult following.
Roger William Corman
(born April 5, 1926), sometimes nicknamed "King of the Bs" for his
output of B-movies, is a prolific American producer and director of
low-budget movies, some of which have an established critical
reputation: many of his films derived from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe.
Corman
has apprenticed many now-famous directors, stressing the importance of
budgeting and resourcefulness; Corman once joked he could make a film
about the fall of the Roman Empire with two extras and a sagebush.
It Conquered the World (1956)
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
The Raven (1963)
