Newspaper ads
 

Anyone else have a fondness for, and kind of miss newspaper movie ads? I remember I used to love looking at the ads in the paper and seeing what theaters they were playing at. Some of them seemed cool, some seemed mysterious and some scared me. Now that you can just look online to get show times, it's more efficient but not as fun.

Here are some of my favorites.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b4YsJkyF51...pt+19+1987.jpg

Being a big He-Man fan I couldn't wait to see this. It seemed so epic and cool.

http://dinosaurdracula.com/wp-conten.../02/chucky.jpg

Something about it's simplicity creeped me out as a kid.

https://parlorofhorror.files.wordpre...-street-ad.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CYQJKkAWkAA4DW_.jpg

http://supermaniv.com/Superman_IV_Pr..._Newspaper.jpg

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I remember when we (the theater company I worked for) quit running newspaper ads. We cut back to just show times and then eventually dumped that.

Like you, I have a spot in my childhood memories for those ads. It was how I found out about movies. My other source was the movie poster case at the local hardware store. The theater was in the next town, so it was cool to be able ride my bike uptown and find out what was coming.

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Yep, a cool part of my childhood was scanning those ads and planning theater trips.

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Gotta love no area codes.

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My favourite ads were the drive-in. I was fascinated by the pairing of an older movie with a newer one, how sometimes they went together perfectly, and how other times the double feature made no sense.

I was also drawn to the way the grid used by the local drive-in resembled a comic strip. Four panels of double-features.

http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/x...psxj8ppz89.jpg

But the coolest of all would be the ads during the holiday dusk 'til dawn marathons. I love the haphazard way four movies have to be jammed into those little boxes, as well as the way they would reach back and pick something truly unique of the bonus features.

http://i739.photobucket.com/albums/x...pskati9f9x.jpg

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Wow. So four screens would show 4 different 4-film marathons? That must have been tricky for the projectionist(s).

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Great idea for a thread. I actually kept the Entertainment sections of the paper to keep a lot of movie ads. Sadly, I dumped them many years ago, but I remember having some gems, including one for Return of the Jedi.

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As a bored eight-year-old I used to wait for my father to come home with the evening paper and I would spread the movie page on the floor and cut-out all of the movie ads and paste them in a scrapbook.

I still have those old scrapbook from early 1980s-1990s. It's amazing to see that just about every movie theatre from 1980s has been demolished.

Now that movie ads are no longer printed in newspapers, I feel completely out-of-touch with any of the new movies. Websites generally just show the title in plain text with the running times, nothing more. IMDB's homepage does not tell you what's playing or when, especially in your particular city.

There's no visual sense of what's going on or what's playing unless you do some very specific web searches - and even then it's scattered and disjointed.

There was nothing like opening up a newspaper and having your eyes quickly scan across two or three pages of movie ads and right away you knew what was playing and where. So simple, but it's gone.

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Oh wow... I'd love to do an all night drive-in marathon with that Pray for Death, Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Dawn of the Dead, and Halloween showing.

Packed drive-in. Rowdy audience. Popcorn, hamburgers, and ice cream from the concession stand. Sneaking in cherry vodka to pour into our Cokes. Sounds like absolute bliss.

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Today, I find it harder to find out what movies are playing and where and when they are playing. Looking it up on the web is only good if you know ahead of time what movie you want to see! But if several movies are playing at several smaller theaters (at least here in NYC), it's hard to find out what those movies are and what they're about in order to determine if you want to see them. I try to read the reviews in The New York Times every Friday, but interesting films often fall through the cracks. In an Age of Information, it gets harder and harder to find...information!

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When I was in college, I had a tablet (the paper kind...computer tablets were only on Star Trek!) where I would cut out the ad from the paper and tape it to a page along with my ticket stub and (later) my star rating for the movie. I remember doing that in the summer of '89, so I had the newspaper ads for Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Star Trek V, Licence to Kill, Ghostbusters II, Karate Kid III, etc. I have no idea if my parents threw out that tablet after I left or if it's in storage somewhere...it would be neat to see if it survived. I'll have to look for it next time I pay them a visit.

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The really cool ones were the drive-in ads. "All-Nite Blood-A-Thon", "Monsterfest", etc.
At Christmas they would use red and green ink. Ads would be bordered with Christmas garland and ornaments.
Special Halloween spook shows would have pumpkins and skulls, black cats, etc. on the ads.

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I used to cut these out and save them in a scrap book... great thread!!

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When I was a kid I saved a few clippings. Films like King Kong ('76), Superman The Movie, and Close Encounters I definitely remember having huge, full page ads on opening day.
There would also frequently be a countdown for a big release that would start with a small 1/4 column and get progressively bigger up to release day.

I always thought about going down to the library and getting some xeroxs made of the movie pages that are now on microfilm. All the theaters that I regularly went to as a kid are now torn down. Not one of them is left. Would be cool to see my favorite films with those listings again.

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This thread's a minor revelation for me. You kind of think you were the only loon doing something...

I used to scrapbook local movie ads and reviews from about '74 to about 79, I guess (definitely post "Star Wars"). However, as usual for my hobbies, I let it grow out of control and started adding more and more ads and stuff from entertainment magazines at the time. I used to buy two-to-three copies of the local paper of Fridays so I could get the ads on both sides of the page. Unfortunately, I couldn't keep up with all the cutting and gluing, so I had drawers filled with spiral notebooks of raw clippings. I eventually dumped the unfinished books, though I kept the four or five volumes I completed. Geez, I bought a lot of glue sticks.

We had to local papers at the time and one would pretty much print what they were given while the other paper would censor the titles of "Adult" features or some of the Blaxploitation films.

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What's up with all you guys where every theater from your youth is torn down. I grew up in Southern California. All the theaters from my youth are still around. The only two I can think of that closed have reopened as little indie theaters.

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I miss the dollar theaters. There was one near my house growing up where for $3 you got the movie, a small popcorn, a can of soda, and a small candy. Blockbuster killed those places.

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Same around here as well, all torn down. A lot of these theaters were only a couple of screens while some of the larger ones were maybe 6 screens. They are all pretty much megaplexes now besides a couple of the independent theaters.

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You're in luck! Google actually has a website dedicated to old newspapers from around the world that have been digitized page-for-page.

Here is the link to the Vancouver Sun, my hometown paper.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?n...VpG6JtcC&hl=en

There are lots of gaps in the years but the early - mid 1980s is well represented.

I'm sure larger cities may have more issues available.

BE WARNED: Clicking this link may subject one to losing many hours of their waking life. :D

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Now you've got me thinking about the theaters of my youth. All the theater chains from back then are gone, -the last one standing sold the chain but retained the name. yeah, all the dollar theaters are gone, -most were full-size theaters that were chopped in half leaving them with screwy seat alignments.

I remember the old repertory house (or whatever you'd call them) that showed art and cult films to the college crowd in The Seventies. Two or three films a night representing a particular theme, for one or two night engagements. Video killed that market, of course, and it eventually became a first-run art house. It was chopped into three units and is still going strong today.

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Figured I would post some more of my favorites.

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_HCk2f13n...el%2BMyers.jpg

Didn't know anything about Michael Myers but that pal white face always creeped me out.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...2c992ad5fc.jpg

The first Batman movie I was able to see in theaters so this one holds a soft spot to me.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yiIrgO7pa3...r%2Bad%2B1.jpg

Found it creepy as hell with the mask and the blood. Even though I was a kid I knew who Jason Voorhees was.

https://www.google.com/search?q=robo...GzOHdVR8rRM%3A

I thought this movie looked so cool and badly wanted to see it.

https://www.google.com/search?q=nigh...m5e085JYvxM%3A

I never made the Santa connection when I first saw this until later in my life. Even then I thought it was cool.

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Back in the day, I would love to get the paper in L.A. and look for the "70 MM" banner to see if one of my theaters were listed.

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I went to this at the local grindhouse in the 80's

http://i68.tinypic.com/2mmhcph.jpg

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I guess it depends on where you live or when your youth was. I would think most theatres from 1980s and early 1990s were torn down, especially in the more expensive cities, and replaced with the mega-theatres with stadium seating which were usually located on the outskirts of most cities.

Remember all the multiplexes that were located in shopping malls? Gone. They were all replaced with food courts & Wal-Marts.