Nothing cool is for everyone. Case in point: The Alamo Drafthouse Secret Screening.
I’m at a stage in my life where I ENJOY it when people are confused about why I schlep over to a Richardson movie theater almost every month for a show in which the movie is always a secret until our host, the almost supernaturally likable James Wallace, reveals it to the crowd.
It somehow makes me feel alive to be a nutcase. As I spiral toward age 50, I can think of no better way to get old.
So I jumped at the chance to explain my plans for this past Saturday to anyone who asked.
I was going to the movies.
“What are you gonna see?”
I don’t know. It’s FOUR movies at the Alamo Drafthouse, all based around a theme, but I have no idea what the movies are or what the theme is. It could be anything. Should be fun!
That’s where the other person makes a face like I just said that I plan to go look for beehives on the moon and I’m fine with that.
I’ve had to miss the last few Alamo ass-numbing marathons, but this one worked out. I entered the Richardson Alamo’s Theater 6 (their big room) on a Saturday morning, ready to poison my brain on whatever it offered.
Here’s the lowdown.
The hosts: Micah Prude, Damon Swindall, and James Wallace, all bringing deep video store knowledge and lively creativity to our Saturday weirdness.
The plan: Make this the first of another series of Alamo special events. Hopefully the nearly packed room bought enough beer and pizza to make that happen.
The theme of this one: Kids movies from the 80s, but relics from the dusty corners. As an 80s kid myself, I was all in. Lots of single parents and magic and aliens were about to happen and I was down.
So lets get into it.
Movie #1 was The Dirt Bike Kid from 1985. Peter Billingsly (yes, the BB-gun boy from A Christmas Story) gets hold of a dirt bike that has mystical powers. Also, this movie brings one of the oldest tropes of youth-oriented films, which is slimy adults who want to shut down the kids’ fun. They’ve been making that movie since the 1930s when Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney were always putting on a song and dance show to prove a point to clueless grown-ups. In this one, a hot dog joint owned by a kindly local man who just wants to give the kids a place to have food fights when he’s not coaching softball is about to be shut down. It’s a true injustice, but it’s nothing that a little unexplained magic can’t fix. This is the kind of movie that I’m not sure can be made anymore because it’s so earnestly absurd. The setting is a cartoon world and you’re not supposed to overthink it. It’s lighter than air and it goes down like candy and it was a perfect start to the show.
The Dirt Bike Kid earns bonus points for also being filmed in Dallas. James Wallace went so far as to visit the original location of the hot dog stand in Oak Cliff and report on his experience. It was hilarious and made me glad that I was in for about six more hours of this.
Next up at #2 was The Peanut Butter Solution. also from 1985, but a lot more freaky and Canadian. Some kid gets scared and loses his hair overnight as a result. From there, an adventure kicks in that involves dreams and magical formulas and a menacing schoolteacher who turns out to be a child-kidnapping maniac. The boy’s mother has left the country for a family emergency, so all he has is his father (a loony artist who feels little of his son’s urgency) and his sister who’s not much older than him, but takes over the mother’s role. Everything is screwed up and flipped upside-down. All things rational are out the window and we’re left in a world that makes no sense. That’s how a surrealist sees things. That’s also how a kid sees things. And that’s how this movie sees things. It was my favorite of the day.
Coming in at #3 was Frog Dreaming (or The Quest, as this Australian film was called in the USA) directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith. Everything in his movies are always a little off, a little strange, and not quite of this world and that’s what you get in this mildly scary adventure where Henry Thomas (yes, the kid from ET) investigates strange happenings at a pond deep in the woods and is the only character in the film without an Aussie accent. It’s a film that connects with the dreamy side of childhood, where you seem to notice things that adults don’t and there’s a mystery around every corner.
This is a good time to mention that every film shown this day features a fractured family. Movies are a cultural barometer. They tell you things about the time that they were made and these films reflect a world where divorce was newly mainstream. Films such as Kramer Vs. Kramer in 1979 and Irreconcilable Differences from 1984 told the story in which the parents were central, but fantasy movies back then tended to focus on the kids. They were always a little lonely and needy, in their own worlds, and up for an adventure.
As a child of divorce myself, raised by a single mother and with little memory of my parents being married at all, I kept thinking about that this whole day. I thought about how it formed me and how movies and TV can become a part of what raises you when it seems to understand you more than anyone in your life does.
As a kid, you cling to these things. Then as an adult, you might have a mind to examine them and seek to understand why.
And that’s my whole trip. That’s why this website exists. Media for me has never been a thing that just happens to me. It’s a thing that talks to me and has been from an early age. It’s half of a conversation. And I need to talk back.
Speaking of talking back, I almost booed when movie #4 ended up being Mac and Me. It’s every bit as bad as I remember it being. It’s the most shameless rip-off ever made NOT directed by Bruno Mattei. Even the film projector seemed to reject it. The 35mm print, the only one of the day, had problems more than once.
I understand why they screened it. It fit right in with the other movies in its own way. The crowd who like to “LOL” at bad movies were sure to get hyped, but I’m not one of those people. I only like bad movies when I think that they’re good (I will defend Plan 9 From Outer Space as a wonderful movie all day).
So I took Mac and Me as the punchline to a joke.
Everyone’s childhood is weird and traumatic in its own way, whether you had two parents or not, but you have to get over it. Also, you’re far from the only one. And at least you survived, maybe a little ragged but right, much like an old film print.
The old movie of your childhood sucks. It’s awkward and full of bad acting and hack plots.
But it ends. And then you have to get up and walk out.
I hope that the Alamo here does this again. I look forward to thinking way too much about the next one.