Tonight, we have the choice of the horror flicks Friday the 13th (I wonder if this Part VI… but then, does it really matter?), The Fly, Howling II, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. These were films that generally were not new releases, but definitely had the fun flavor of a midnight show. I love how local theaters almost always had the the midnight movie.

When else but the eighties can you have, in major release across the country, both a big budget porno produced by Penthouse ( Caligula), and The Toy, a story about a rich white man who rents a black guy to be his son’s playmate. I saw this film in the theater in Indiana, and lapped it up and begged for more. There is no way a movie of this caliber gets put in your theater these days… and what a shame. If you’ve seen Ninja III, you know this is a low budget flick which rode the popular ninja gravy train. This gets a bigger ad than Ghostbusters and gets widespread release… this would simply not happen today. I bring this one to your attention because of Ninja III: The Domination.

Imagine, going to the local movie theater and having to choose between The Terminator and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. Also playing: an woefully underrated sci-fi film, 2010, and the David Lynch clusterf**k that was Dune. Let’s start the New Year off with Kiss’ Gene Simmons vs. So, let’s have a look at what was playing at the local cineplex, and not only take note of how times have changed, but also stroll down memory lane, remembering some great and not-so-great flicks from yesteryear…

Sure, many of the films were awful, but it was a lot cheaper to see a movie back then, so we didn’t need to see a three hour long CGI extravaganza to feel we got our money’s worth. It’s a motherload of variety, from low budget to medium budget, from horror movie to teen comedy. Now take a look at what’s playing in theaters in the 1980s. Each Friday, these six flicks are incrementally changed, with a couple new big-budget movies replacing a couple big-budget movies which have grown tired. Today, we have a half-dozen big-budget productions that play at each and every movie theater, with almost zero variation. Here are a bunch of movie theater ads from the 1980s, and it’s impossible not to notice how different things are today in terms of what’s playing at the local cinema. If you want to demonstrate how times have changed for movies, just show them this post.

Arnold theater movie times