Double Features

My latest Agony Booth article goes into nice ideas for double features.

Double features are almost as old as cinema itself. Before TV came around, a movie would be preceded by an animated short, a live-action short, a newsreel, and then the main feature. During the Great Depression, cinemas began to give customers two movies for the price of one in order to attract more ticket buyers. These presentations initially began with a low-budget film (the B-movie) before an interlude and then the main feature. This allowed studios that specialized in making B-movies, such as Republic, to become successful.

The revenue this generated soon led to major studios making their own B-movie features. This practice continues to thrive today, only nowadays these movies usually go straight to video (or streaming). Thanks to the advent of home video and later the internet, people can now have double features of all kinds in their own homes. Here now (in no particular order) are 10 great double features you can have at home and why I find them ideal.

Star Wars (1977)/Halloween (1978): These two films respectively rewrote the books on science fiction and horror (for good and bad, according to some) as it didn’t take long for imitators of both movies to flood cinemas in the wake of their successes. As it turns out, the villains in these movies (Darth Vader and Michael Myers) also wear what would become awesome Halloween costumes. Even the musical scores for both movies have become iconic, and rightly so. In addition, the first sequels for each film (The Empire Strikes Back and Halloween II) can make an ideal double feature since they each brought family connections into the narrative, influencing the directions of their respective franchises (again, for good and bad, according to some fans).

Hang ‘Em High (1968)/Night of the Living Dead (1968): By the end of the 1960s, Italian studios were basically churning out westerns and zombie pictures like they were pizzas. While neither of these films were Italian productions, both capitalized on that craze. Hang ‘Em High, Clint Eastwood’s first American-made western after the three he did with Sergio Leone made him a film star, involves a rancher (Eastwood) who survives a lynching and becomes deputized before hunting down the men who tried to kill him. Night of the Living Dead, an inexpensive production made in Pittsburgh, centers on a group of people who become trapped in a deserted house as reanimated corpses begin engulfing the countryside. Both movies have a gritty, harsh tone, and the fact that both premiered just after the shocking murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy may have made both films cathartic, if you will, for viewers.

Jaws (1975)/Taxi Driver (1976): I actually plan to go into more detail about these two movies at a later time. Needless to say, however, Jaws, Steven Spielberg’s classic film of a shark terrorizing an island community, set the bar when it came to blockbusters, while Taxi Driver, Martin Scorsese’s classic picture about a loner (Robert De Niro) who ends up committing terrifying acts, did the same for independent films. One could also say they ended up coloring the public’s perceptions of their respective directors.

High Noon (1952)/Rio Bravo (1959): Two classic westerns released during the genre’s heyday. The former, in which Gary Cooper ends up facing bad guys alone when nobody is willing to assist him, was viewed as a critique of McCarthyism for the manner in which Cooper does the honorable thing. The latter, in which John Wayne fights bad guys with loyal men at his side, was viewed as a counterpoint to that argument, as Wayne’s character doesn’t spend much of the movie asking for assistance. Wayne even called High Noon “un-American”, which is what led to him and director Howard Hawks making Bravo. Regardless of political views, today both movies are rightfully embraced as masterpieces.

The NeverEnding Story (1984)/Labyrinth (1986): Both of these films involve young people who must enter a world they know from a book in order to save lives. NeverEnding Story centers on a lonely boy (Barret Oliver) reading a fantasy book, and as he reaches the end, he realizes that he’s the only one who can save a not-so-fictional land from destruction. Labyrinth stars then-unknown Jennifer Connelly as a fantasy-loving teenager who just wants to live in her own fantasy world and regrets her wish that her infant brother be taken away by the Goblin King (the late, great David Bowie), a character from the play she’s reading. She must then enter that fantasy world to save her brother, dealing with the Goblin King and his minions (created by the late, great Jim Henson). One could also say that both movies make a great argument for why reading is good.

Ghostbusters (1984)/Beetlejuice (1988): Two comedy classics involving ghosts. Ghostbusters centers on four men (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and the late Harold Ramis) who manage to make a lucrative business out of capturing ghosts. In lesser hands, Beetlejuice could have been just a Ghostbusters knock-off, but Tim Burton stirs things up with his film by making ghosts the main characters. In that film, a couple (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) have recently died and soon enlist the aid of the title character (Michael Keaton) to rid their home of its new owners, an act that they come to regret, as he has a reputation for wrecking havoc among both the living and the dead. Add the fact that both of these movies are hilarious and you have a great double feature.

The Terminator (1984)/Back to the Future (1985): Two time travel stories released in consecutive years. The first, which involves a murderous cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) sent back through time to change history by killing a woman (Linda Hamilton) before she can give birth to the man who will save humanity, was a nerve-jolting thriller, while the second, in which a teenager (Michael J. Fox) accidentally goes back in time thanks to a DeLorean his scientist friend (Christopher Lloyd) has modified, was a comedy. Both films also end up giving nice messages about the importance of believing in yourself and creating your own destiny.

Escape from New York (1981)/Blade Runner (1982): Both of these are science fiction films which show a near future with a dark, apocalyptic outlook that continues to influence the science fiction genre to this day. Escape from New York, which takes place in 1997, involves a criminal (Kurt Russell) being drafted into rescuing the President of the United States (Donald Pleasence) by going into the title city (which is now a maximum security prison), where Air Force One crashed and the president was kidnapped by the dangerous criminals who now inhabit the city. Blade Runner involves a police detective (Harrison Ford) who must go through 2019 Los Angeles to terminate dangerous androids (Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Joanna Cassidy, and Brion James) who have arrived on Earth (where androids are banned) after violently escaping from an outer space colony (three more years to go as of this writing—let’s see if those colonies come about by then). Another interesting contrast is that Escape contains criticism of police and police actions (one of the characters in the film refers to the U.S. as a fascist state), while Ford’s character in Blade Runner spends much of the movie questioning himself and his actions, especially when he realizes his opponents aren’t as evil as society and his superiors have made them out to be.

Ray (2004)/Walk the Line (2005): Two biopics about music legends. Ray depicts the rise of Ray Charles (a brilliant, Oscar-winning Jamie Foxx) while Walk the Line does the same with music duo Johnny and June Carter Cash (Joaquin Phoenix and a brilliant, Oscar-winning Reese Witherspoon). Both movies do a fine job illustrating the trials and tribulations these artists went through (some of which were of their own making) as they fulfilled their dreams of making music, and thus, ensuring their places in history. Interestingly, both Charles and the Cashes passed away shortly before these films premiered, although both movies received their blessing.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)/Clue (1985): Rocky Horror (which, I must confess, I never really liked, but can understand why many do) is a musical-science fiction-comedy with not-so-subtle nods to Frankenstein, while Clue is a mystery-comedy based on the Parker Brothers board game of the same name. However, both films not only take place in mansions on dark and stormy nights, but both also feature memorable roles for Tim Curry. In Rocky Horror, he plays the doctor who was once described by Us magazine as “a bi-sexual Beetlejuice”, while in Clue, he plays a butler who ends up setting an evening of murder into motion after he invites several people over for dinner. In addition, both movies didn’t get much initial notice when they were released, but today have huge followings as well as midnight showings with audience members performing the action as it plays on screen.

HONORABLE MENTION: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966)/Garfield’s Halloween Adventure (1985): As it’s Halloween, it seems appropriate to mention these two animated specials, which may be the most famous of all Halloween cartoons. In the first, Linus waits for the arrival of the Santa Claus-esque Great Pumpkin, while Charlie Brown ends up getting only rocks while trick-or-treating and Snoopy hunts for the Red Baron. In the second, Garfield enlists his dog sidekick Odie to go trick-or-treating with him (both dress up as pirates) in order to get more candy for himself, only for both to get caught up in a genuine ghost story (involving—what else?—pirates, which today reminds me a little of the setting of John Carpenter’s The Fog). The Garfield special actually bests Great Pumpkin in terms of having moments that make you jump, but both specials have a great deal of heart, making them the perfect Halloween treats for all ages.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

"You don't really know much about Halloween. You've thought no further than the strange custom of having your children wear masks and go out begging for candy."
-Conal Cochran.


As I once noted, 1982 was an amazing year for science fiction and fantasy films. It was also a pretty good year for horror films. In addition to Poltergeist and The Thing, two of the most successful horror franchises of the decade came out with their respective third entries. The more successful of these, Friday the 13th Part 3D, had not only 3D, but, as Friday fans will tell you, this is the one in which Jason acquired his famous hockey mask.
The other, less successful film was Halloween III. This is because the Friday film, like almost all sequels, simply covered the same ground as its predecessors. Halloween III, on the other hand, actually did something quite bold. It did not have its serial killer, Michael Myers, at all. The story was completely unrelated to the Halloween entries that have come before or since.
Halloween's director John Carpenter and producer Debra Hill, after Halloween II became successful, decided to leave Michael Myers behind and attempted to make the series an anthology of sorts by having each entry be a different story pertaining to the Eve of All Saints.
This film, which was co-written by Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale(who was not credited), begins with Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) cutting his visit to his ex-wife (Nancy Loomis) and their two children short when a frantic man is brought to his hospital, holding a Halloween mask of a jack o'lantern. Challis treats the man, one Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry), before a man mercilessly kills him, and then kills himself.
Challis later compares notes on the incident with Grimbridge's daughter Ellie (Stacey Nelkin). They go to her father's store and learn that his last stop was at the factory which creates the masks, such as the one Harry was holding, in Santa Mira. This factory, called Silver Shamrock Novelties and headed by Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy), is basically the reason the town is thriving and, for Halloween, the company is enjoying success with the glow-in-the-dark masks, of which there are two other versions: a witch and a skull.
The lovers' (yes, they take the time to become that) inquiries into the factory lead to Ellie being captured. Dan is likewise captured when he attempts to save her, but he learns that Cochran's men, some of whom resemble the one who killed Harry, are really androids.
Cochran then reveals his plans to kill all children on Halloween night with his masks, which he plans to have them wear when a giveaway he has planned airs on TV.
He gives Dan a demonstration of this in the film's most shocking scene when Cochran kills his salesman Buddy Kupfur (Ralph Strait), his wife Betty (Jadeen Barbor) and their (ham-handedly named) son Little Buddy (Brad Schacter).
Dan finds Ellie and destroys Cochran and his factory. But his attempts to alert authorities to the impending mass slaughter are initially deterred when Ellie turns out to be an android. After he defeats her, Dan goes to a gas station and desperately tells the networks to cancel the broadcast.
This movie is certainly not perfect. For instance, I find it hard to believe that so many kids would buy the same damn masks for Halloween. I also wonder why Ellie didn't wait until after Dan destroyed Cochran and his factory before trying to stop him.
But this movie deserves credit for trying something different in a way that no film series ever has. Indeed, the only reference to the original Halloween is seeing TV spots for it during this film.
Director Tommy Lee Wallace stated that the film may have been more successful if it didn't have Halloween III in its title. I can certainly understand that because there are some tense moments in the movie, especially the moment when Cochran kills Buddy and his family. It's also bizarre that Cochran wants to go to all this trouble just to bring back the original spirit of Halloween. I mean, Charlie Brown disliked how Christmas was commercialized, but you didn't see him try to wipe out children everywhere on December 25.
I also liked the nods to the classic movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers(1956). Like that film, this one takes place in a town called Santa Mira. Wallace stated that the final scene, with Dan desperately screaming that the commercial be stopped, is another nod to Snatchers.
Alas, the failure of this movie led to a return to the status quo for the Halloween series for its next entry Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers(1988). The good news is that that movie, which rightly turned its stars Danielle Harris and Ellie Cornell (both of whom I've had the pleasure of meeting if you refer to the pictures below) into beloved horror icons, was quite entertaining, and its success ensured that there would be more Halloween sequels (I must confess, though, I didn't care for Rob Zombie's Halloween flicks, even though Danielle was in them).
Hence, if any film could be considered a noble failure, it's Halloween III.

Still More Underrated Movie Lines

Here now is the third installment in our series of lines from famous movies that aren't quoted often, but I'll never get tired of hearing.
1. The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973):
The penultimate entry in Hammer's Dracula series and the last one to star Christopher Lee as the Count. By this point, Lee was frustrated with the series due to how far it had strayed from the material in the original Bram Stoker novel. The fact that this film (which was released in the U.S. with the generic title Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride) and its immediate predecessor, Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), were set in contemporary times certainly suggests that the filmmakers were desperately looking for ways to keep the series going. But this film's biggest weakness is not its cotemporary setting, but its plot, which has the count attempting to introduce a plague to kill humanity, even though doing so will deprive him of his sources of blood, a little tidbit even Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) points out to him in the film's climax.
But, like Halloween II, this film still manages to be entertaining in spite of its gaps in logic thanks to its stars. I also liked the musical score by John Cacavas, even if it doesn't necessarily make me think of the Count the way James Bernard's great score in the first film in the series, Horror of Dracula (1958), did.
A wonderful line comes from Lee at this movie's climax when his plans to kill Van Helsing and his granddaughter (Joanna Lumley) are thwarted:
"My revenge is spread over centuries and has just begun!"
This is a great line because of Lee's delivery and because it was one of the few lines from Stoker's novel to find its way into a film script.
But the quality of the series would continue to go down with the next and final entry in Hammer's series, the watchable but unspectacular Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), which combined the vampire genre with kung fu (the film was a co-production between Hammer and Hong Kong's Run Run Shaw studio). Lee declined what was essentially a two-minute cameo in the movie (Dracula was played by John Forbes-Robertson), which is just as well because, that same year, Lee had one of his best roles as the title character in...

2. The Man With the Golden Gun (1974):
Roger Moore's sophomore outing as 007 is often criticized for its weak leading lady (Britt Ekland), but I thought its weakest aspect was Bond's ally Hip (Soon Tek-Oh), who, at one point, simply abandons 007 in a weak setup to get Bond to outmaneuver persuing bad guys by himself.
Fortunately, this film is still watchable thanks to the great interplay between Sir Roger's Bond and Lee's Scaramanga. While Richard Kiel's Jaws (who appeared in the next two entries in the series) gets all the attention (and is a great character), I always thought Scaramanga was the best Bond villain from Moore's Bond films.
Lee said that he played the character as the dark side of Bond, and, indeed, unlike his fellow Bond villains, he admires 007 to the point where he has a full-scale figure of him in his home.
This makes the scene where Bond and Scaramanga dine together unique among the other similar scenes in the series. Scaramanga points out that they are similar even though Bond acts on behalf of queen and country. Bond gets one of his best lines when he points out a major difference between them.
"When I kill, it's under specific orders from my government-and those I kill are themselves killers!"
While some foolishly say that Sir Roger's Bond became too much of a joke, this line proves that he could be as serious as the other 007s.

3. The Thing (1982):
This film, about a group of men fighting a shapeshifting alien which has infiltrated their isolated outpost in Antartica, is certainly one which gives remakes a good name. It is superior to the original The Thing From Another World (1951), because it does not relentlessly copy it and it retains the spirit of the original 1938 John Campbell story Who Goes There?.
Kurt Russell is obviously the lead but, while he's good as always, the best line comes from David Clennon's Palmer, who says
"You gotta be fucking kidding!" after seeing the title character revert to a, shall we say, bizarre form to escape from their efforts to kill it. As one of my colleagues noted, that line is the best f-bomb in movie history. This is because it perfectly reflects what both the characters and the audience are thinking at this point in the film. In addition, the line comes naturally from the situation, unlike many other films which fall all over themselves trying to come up with a line the filmmakers hope will be a classic one.
But there's an equally great line later in the film. After Russell's MacReady deduces that they can determine who is still human by testing samples of everyone's blood, he goes through the remaining staff members until base leader Garry (Donald Moffat) is left. Once it is revealed that he is still human, Garry rants in an initally-calm tone:
"I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time, I'd rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!!!"
Like Palmer's line, this line is great because it comes naturally from the situation.

4. Frantic (1988):
While the film was not as intense as In the Line of Fire (1993), which surprised me given Roman Polanski's real-life involvement with this sort of ordeal, Harrison Ford was perfect casting as the doctor whose wife (Betty Buckley) is abducted while they are vacationing in Paris.
While the movie's villains are underplayed and the U.S. Embassy officials Richard Walker (Ford) turns to for help are stereotypically useless, Ford has many great moments which make it easy to side with him. One such moment is when he attempts to phone the Embassy for help and is repeatedly asked how to spell his wife's name and the location he's calling at. Walker then understandably says:
"With an 'S' for Shithead!"
If only everything around Ford in the film could match his great performance, this movie would probably have been as successful as basically all the other films he put out during the 1980s and 1990s.

5. A Few Good Men (1992):
Naturally, the most famous line from this film is Col. Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) tells Dan Kaffee (Tom Cruise) that he can't handle the truth.
But there's another line from earlier in the film which my sister loves. After an earlier court hearing, Kaffee's colleagues Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollack) and Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore) have an argument about if the marines they are defending are truly innocent. Weinberg then asks Galloway why she is so taken in with their clients' plight, to which she answers:
"Because they stand on a wall and say 'Nothing is going to happen to you tonight-not on my watch!"
When she introduced this film at the Academy Awards a few months later (Men was one of the Best Picture nominees), Kathy Bates rightly noted Galloway's contribution to the film's story by saying "A few good men...and one woman."

Fear in the Dark (1991)

"From a quiet voice whispering in the dark to a motion picture costing millions of dollars, the effect seems to be the same. We enjoy the electric jolt of sudden shock and revel in the rush of adreneline that goes with prolonged and heightened anxiety."
-Christopher Lee


I suppose I have always loved the horror genre. Every Halloween growing up, I always enjoyed watching classics such as the 1931 gems Dracula and Frankenstein. I remember wanting to see Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) when they were originally released, even though I didn't actually watch the films themselves until I reached high school. But when The Silence of the Lambs (1991) came out, my love for the genre seemed to increase ten-fold (some say Silence isn't a horror film, but the rest of us know better). Maybe it was because I was a teenager, but I started seeking out more and more horror entertainment after seeing that classic. Eventually, I even sat down and, over time (not in one sitting, because I had other priorities), watched all the Friday the 13th entries. Like Star Trek: Voyager, that series is too non-sensical to be classifed as 'good,' but it can be fun to watch. But this documentary on the horror genre, which was televised on the BBC the same year Silence appeared in cinemas, is definitely good, as I found out after purchasing it on VHS (remember those?). It discusses the beginnings of the genre, which, at the time, emphasized vampires and other supernatural figures. The references to McCarthyism in such classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) is also referenced, as are the 'nature gone amuck' genre which, in the 1970s, was reinvented by Jaws (1975). There is also reference to Jack the Ripper and how that case eventually led to the influence of Psycho (1960). That film, of course, led to the slasher film genre such as Halloween (1978) and its subsequent ilk. Ed Gein, a farmer from Wisconsin who was imprisoned for killing a number of women in 1957, is also mentioned, as it was his story which would inspire Psycho, Silence, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Other notable highmarks of the genre include The Exorcist (1973) and the EC comics, such as Tales From the Crypt, which would sadly fall victim to McCarthyism. The emphasis on then-recent release Silence is also nice (I wonder how this documentary would have played out if it was televised after its well-deserved Oscar wins). Directors such as Dario Argento, John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and William Friedkin, writers like Kim Newman, and Saul Bass (who worked on Psycho's shower sequence) give wonderful insight. Christopher Lee's narration is the icing on the cake.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

"You're pretty fancy, Wilson."
"I have moments."
-Lt. Ethan Bishop and Napoleon Wilson.



Like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, if anyone knows about this film, chances are it was due to the lame remake it inspired years later.
Just before his career-defining triumph with Halloween(1978), John Carpenter wrote and directed this jolting urban thriller which is a variation on the great western Rio Bravo(1959), in the same way that A Fistful of Dollars(1964) is a variation on the great samurai film Yojimbo(1961).
In the aforementioned Howard Hawks film, John Wayne plays a sheriff who enlists the help of a drunk man, a crippled man and a overly confident gunfighter to keep the brother of a wanted man in jail.
In Assault, Police Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is given the unenviable task of supervising the closing of the title precinct (which, in the film, is referred to as Precinct 9, Division 13, but I guess that title wouldn't have sounded as cool). Not long after arriving, Bishop and the skeleton crew receive two surprises.
First, a police bus stops by to get medical attention to one of the prisoners it is tranferring.
Once the two healthier convicts, convicted murderers Wells (Tony Burton) and Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), are put in the available holding cells, a man named Lawson (Martin West) arrives at the precinct in a state of shock. His arrival is followed by gunshots from violent street thugs (introduced at the beginning of the picture) who want to kill him to avenge his killing of one of their own (that thug, in the film's most shocking scene, murdered Lawson's daughter, played by none other than reality TV star Kim Richards).
The gunshots take out most of the inhabitants of the nearly-deserted precinct except for Bishop, Lawson, Wilson, Wells, and two secretaries Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) and Julie (Nancy Loomis).
Bishop reluctantly frees Wilson and Wells who agree to assist him in their struggle. After a failed attempt to gain entry into the building, the thugs decide to mount a siege of the station. Everyone correctly deduces that Lawson is the reason they are essentially trapped now. Although Wells and Julie show reluctance at going through such hell for the sake of just one man, Bishop is determined to protect him and salvage the situation. But the thugs plan for another attempt to take the building, which they know is in a sparsely populated area. Eventually, a final standoff ends in the basement with only a tank of acetylene gas standing between the thugs and Bishop, Leigh, and Wilson.
This movie's tension is complemented by its great Carpenter score, which is just as memorable as his music for his three following films Halloween, The Fog(1980) and Escape From New York(1981).
The film began what I call a golden period for John Carpenter. Although it went virtually unnoticed in the U.S., Assault won numerous awards in Europe. That success led to Carpenter getting complete creative control for Halloween. That film's great success itself led to The Fog, Escape, The Thing(1982), Christine(1983), and Starman(1984), as well as the TV movies Elvis(1977) and Someone's Watching Me(1978).
It's quite sad that his subsequent films haven't matched the quality of the work he was putting out during that time.