TCM Underground: 50 Must-See Films from the World of Classic Cult and Late-Night Cinema

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Others showed it during prime time on weekend nights; after a break for the local news, another genre film—a literal midnight movie—might follow, resulting in such virtual double bills as Dr. Valid after 7pm Sunday and all day Monday and Tuesday at all Showcase Cinemas and Showcase Cinema de Lux. In our autism-friendly screenings, the lights are left on low, the sound is turned down and trailers and adverts aren't played.

With the hustle and bustle of one of Europe’s busiest streets below you, it’s the perfect spot for a relaxed daytime coffee or a delicious after-work cocktail. The Elgin soon came up with another midnight hit in Peter Bogdanovich's spree-killer thriller Targets (1968), featuring one of the last performances by horror movie mainstay Boris Karloff and a tale that resonated with the assassinations and other political violence of that era. The film was great; we had really wanted to see it at the cinema, in 3D; so it was good to finally do that, but we would have much preferred to have seen it elsewhere.In 1993, Buffalo's WKBW-TV began airing a late-night hosted mix of low-budget genre movies, foreign art films and eventually well-known classic films; Off Beat Cinema later became nationally syndicated (currently through Retro Television Network) and, as of 2013, originates from WBBZ-TV.

As of late 2006, Rocky Horror itself continues to play on a weekly basis at thirty-two venues around the country, and at least once a month at about two dozen others. Cinema of Outsiders: The Rise of American Independent Film (New York and London: New York University Press). Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) can be considered an example of the sort of (then) obscure horror film shown on late-night TV beginning in the 1950s; in the 1970s and early 1980s it was a staple of midnight screenings at theaters around the U. We ask guests to not bring in large bags with them, and to not wear fancy dress masks or bring replica weapons with them to the cinema. Author Gary Lachman claims that Kenneth Anger's short Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), a mélange of occult symbology intercut with and superimposed on images from a Rolling Stones concert, "inaugurat[ed] the midnight movie cult at the Elgin Theatre.

Other examples ( albeit animated) during this time were Ralph Bakshi's 1972 debut feature Fritz the Cat based on the Robert Crumb comic of the same name and Sally Cruikshank's 1975 experimental short Quasi at the Quackadero. Two popular midnight movies made during the phenomenon's heyday have been selected to the National Film Registry: Eraserhead (inducted 2004) and The Rocky Horror Picture Show (inducted 2005). Where the irony with which Reefer Madness was adopted as a midnight favorite had its roots in a countercultural sensibility, in the latter's place there is now the paradoxical element of nostalgia: the leading revivals on the circuit currently include the crème de la crème of the John Hughes oeuvre— The Breakfast Club (1985), Pretty in Pink (1986), and Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)—and the preteen adventure film The Goonies (1985). By November 1971, four Manhattan theaters beside the Elgin were featuring regularly scheduled midnight movies: the St.