Haven't looked at a newspaper in years. There used to be some pretty decent ads for rock concerts and record album releases also in the entertainment section.

A photo album with clear plastic overlays was my scrapbook. I was more focused on collecting glossy one-page VHS ads from Audio/Video magazines, and new release promo/flyers from video rental stores. A Vestron Video booklet from 1985 listing all their releases (including Lightning Video) with poster art, synopsis, production year, year of release, rating, running time and format availability was my bible for many years.

That said I did collect local newspaper ads as well, pinned on a corkboard.

This thread has brought back a lot of memories. When I got a cassette audio recorder for Christmas one year I also started collecting movie ads off the radio and television. I had the mic on pause and ready at the speaker when I thought there's be a commercial block and I'd just wait for an ad to show up. This was in the '70s when there were a lot of queasy late night ads for exploitation films shown during local programming.

Of course I eventually graduated to videotaping ads and trailers.

That's funny, I did that too! In the summer of '87 they constantly ran 30 second ads on TV. I would sit with the VCR on pause/rec and skip through the 15 channels we had at the time and wait for a movie ad and record it.

I have an whole VHS tape of ads for Beverly Hills Cop II, Untouchables, Roxanne, Predator, Full Metal Jacket, Witches of Eastwick etc.

That's the great thing about this forum is that it's a safe place to admit to these kinds of neurotic tendencies and find other like-minded people!

Back in, -I dunno, -the mid-80s, -the E! Channel was originally "Movietime", and their programming was pretty much movie trailers and some EPK stuff running over and over all day. I've got tapes and tapes of that stuff. I would tape all day and then edit them down; it was easier than it sounds, but eventually I let myself get swamped and I gave up on it. Again, they're down in the basement somewhere, might just be tracking marks and snow at this point.

I never taped ads, though I would race from another room to get in front of the TV if I ever heard the opening of an ad for something I wanted to see.

What I did make audio tapes of, as a few others here I know did, was movies in full.

I got my first tape recorder from Radio Shack when I was 8 because they were finally going to re broadcast the original King Kong on the late show.
I waited a year for that blessed event and was going to do everything I could to make it last this time.

After that, taping movies and TV shows became a regular occurrence.

You guys who taped movie trailers off TV can now put them on YouTube for us all to enjoy. I've done that with a few things I taped back in the day.

The first year Nintendo was out, I sat with the VCR on pause trying to record the commercials for that but of course they came out sloppy as I had to recognize the commercial before I started recording. When I was actually taping shows I'd leave the commercials in for posterity, and when I got a 2nd VCR I'd tape shows to watch later and copy any interesting commercials onto another tape.

This one's from the first few months of stereo TV broadcasting, note the processed fake stereo effect (it aired during ABC's Live Aid concert special, local station had a stereo signal but network audio wasn't stereo yet) :


Not my recording:


From a tape I uncovered, uploaded by someone else who got a DVD copy:

I'm another one who created scrapbooks full of movie ads, but if/when I could I would replace the black and white ad from the newspaper with the full-colour ads that were in the Tribute magazines distributed in the theatre. No idea where these scrapbooks are now...

Virtually every one of the theatres of my youth were torn down - a real shame in the case of the old-style movie palaces. I don't think any of them survived the condo boom this city (Toronto) has seen over the last 20 years.

There are two that I know of, they are now part of $5 movie discount-chains. Went to one recently and it was...unpleasant. Small screen, tinny sound, aisle down the middle of the theater. Good riddance to those mall multiplexes.

I never clipped any newspaper ads, I was always more fascinated by the bus stop oversized posters. But I will always love this particular newspaper ad:

Forty years ago today, Feb 2nd 1984, movie choices in my home town were Hitchcock or Barbara Streisand, Steve Martin or Angel.
At the drive-in you could choice between Scarface or soft-core porn, John Travolta & Tom Cruise, or Clint Eastwood & Stephen King.
And these were just the Cineplex Odeon theatres, there were also two Famous Players and an independent theatre not pictured here.


image hosting

Man, Two of a Kind and The Lonely Guy sure fell off the face of the Earth, didn't they?

I've been watching old Siskel & Ebert shows on youtube, and it's really interesting to see them review movies that just sort of vanished after they were released. Some things were big hits that everyone remembered, some of them are cult classics, and some of the just kind of faded into the background noise.

40 years ago today, June 8th, 1984, saw the release of BOTH Ghostbusters and Gremlins. Here's the ads from my local paper that day.

Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Beat Street, and The Natural in theaters at the same time? Hollywood really has gone downhill over the decades.

It really is amazing how so many good movies were able to come out at the same time and all manage to do well. I think some of it may have been to do with the fact that only the large cities had multiplexes, and even then those were about six screens max. Back in the day of the big movie ads , a film could get a release and if it didn't deliver right away, it could still have a chance to make it over the coming weeks as it would be one of two movies booked at a two screen theater for four weeks straight. One of my fonder childhood memories is going on vacation during the summer and picking up local newspapers in whatever cities we visited and looking at the movies section. Larger cities could have up to two whole pages filled with mini posters and showtimes. It would often be the case that seeing certain movies would mean having to drive to a theater located in a totally different part of town from where the other you wanted to see was playing. This would help business as one week you would see Gremlins, and then the next week was Ghostbusters in a different place.

I just googled that movie. Looks like a major case of false advertising.

I think back to the summer of 1990 where "Ghost" was released in the summer with no real buzz or expectations in a busy market filled with Total Recall, Days of Thunder, Dick Tracy, Another 48 Hrs, Die Hard II, Back to the Future III etc. and yet managed to become the number one box office draw of that year.

I saw the film in November 1990 at a first-run theatre and it was still a near-sellout on a Saturday night. Unfortunately the current model will not let this kind of surprise phenomenon happen again.

Ghost was one of those movies that played for MONTHS. Still didn’t take too long to get released on video.

The GOAT

Most were testosterone films it ran against and the women only had this to latch on to. It was more of a love story than Pretty Woman was and it had something to keep both men and women interested.

Cool, that was an epic summer for movies! I saw plenty of films at the Pen Cinema and the Pendale back in the day (along with at the Niagara Square cinemas and the Country Fair Cinema in Ft. Erie).

That's cool. What do you remember seeing there (which era was "back in the day" for you)?

"Back in the day" for me would have been anywhere from the early 70s to the mid 90s. What I saw at exactly what cinema is kind of foggy (and that's not even counting drive-ins!). Pretty sure I saw Star Wars in 1977 and 1979 at the Niagara Square. Also Clash of the Titans, which was the first time I saw a movie at a cinema by myself (I was 14 and my mom dropped me off and then went shopping). Empire and Jedi at the County Fair Cinema, and also at that cinema, Creepshow (a whole story there as it was R-rated in Canada, which meant no admittance under 18, I was 16 and with my dad, who convinced them to let me in as there were hardly any customers anyway). I did see a bunch of movies in the 90s at the Pendale and Pen Centre. Oh, and there was also the Seneca Theatre on Queen Street in downtown Niagara Falls, among other films that's where I saw Song of the South during its final theatrical run in the 1980s.