MST3K wackiness
mood: 
thoughtful
thoughtful
Last night ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
scout1222 and I watched "MST3K Mr B and other Shorts" which is basically a bunch of short movies from the 50s that get the MST3K treatment. Mr B Natural is one of my old time favorites and hasn't been seen for awhile due to Conn, the musical instrument company that produced the short, having a fit and threatening to sue. Mr B Natural is about a boy, a boy named Buzz, who is not popular until Mr. B Natural, androgenous man played by a woman and the spirit of music, shows up to convince Buzz to play a musical instrument. Buzz decides this is his calling and makes a trip to the music store in which we see how Conn musical instruments are made and what great quality they are. Suddenly, Buzz is the most popular kid in school.We also saw shorts on the consequences of being a bad driver in New Jersey in which God lectures and recently deceased dead driver on his driving habits, another on how to be good Chevrolet door to door car salesmen, and finally a dream bit in which a lady floats through the world of the future.
Each mini-movie was about 15 minutes long and classic MST3K material. What I did not understand was where did these movies get played. The one about the Chevrolet Salesman even had a "To Be Continued." Continued where? They were too short to be television programs and too long for commercials.
Scout suspects that they might have been played at the beginning of movies like when you went to the theater to watch the new but the 50s seem a little late for that. Perhaps they were TV programs and people were so hypnotized by the TV they didn't care what they watched there were little people dancing on a box in their living room.
I also wonder about movies today and how you end up watching 10min of commericals before the previews. Perhaps that wasn't a new thing, but an old thing that died out when I was a kid and made a comeback when I was at the age when it would annoy me.
Something I noticed is that the last two movies I saw at the AMC theaters didn't play commercials before the previews. Hopefully, this is a result of recently lower ticket sales and theaters are getting the idea that people are fed up with their BS.
We have a DVD collection called the Atomic Age (something-or-other), full of hours of that stuff (minus the MST3K commentary) from the 1940’s to the 1960’s. Most of them are hilarious and some are just down right disturbing.
Anyway, my favorite was one where the wife is paranoid that her husband has been cheeting on her when he comes home late smelling like perfume and with lipstick on his collar. It then shows all the reasons why these things happened.
Well into the 50s, movie shorts were still in vogue. The reason movie geeks call previews "trailers" is that until relatively recently, they played after the film. (They trailed after on the print.) So you'd get to the movie, they'd play a short and then the feature. And if you wanted, you could stay after and get a glimpse at coming attractions.
The big thing in cinemas currently is advertising playing on the screen while you wait for the flick to start. Regal has a series of ads presented as "The Twenty" which is just a 20 minute loop, but produced as if it were a TV show.
We have a mix of theaters in San Diego including Regal, AMC, Pacific and the indy branch Landmark. I had been to the Regal theaters and caught "The Twenty" and you right, it is a 20min commercial done up like a TV show. Wow, the more things change the more the stay the same :o
AMC use to do something similar but like I said, they recently stopped. A trend I hope other theaters pick up.
I also get bored sitting in an empty theatre, so the pre-show loop is good because it entertains me.