During the early late 50s and 60s, the Center Theater began showing a number of Godzilla and other ToHo studio films. As a “tween”, I maintained somewhat of a love/hate relationship with these movies. While they were for the most part entertaining, the effects often looked phony even to a kid. Anyone could easily spot the electric wires supplying power to the toy tanks. On the other hand, seeing Godzilla leveling “realistic” city buildings or setting them on fire with his fiery breath looked so neat. In fact, it looked so cool I thought I should try to replicate it in my bedroom.
I already had a 10 inch tall Godzilla model. Making a model town out of Styrofoam, plastic and card board was the next step and easily completed over a couple of weekends. Obviously the next stage was to use my small set and have Godzilla attack the little city. Problem was, I wanted a bit more realism with my set.
How does one do that? Why fill strategically placed bowls of turpentine throughout the town and light each of them. All went well until one of the little bowls of flames accidentally set one of the buildings on fire. It was at that time I discovered how flammable Styrofoam tended to be. Besides burning very fast, it created a thick black smoke. Though a little panic set in, I moved quickly and smothered the flames.
One would have thought that episode would be enough of a lesson. Well; one would be wrong. After I replaced the burned and melted buildings, I decided to once again use bowls of turpentine for realism, but with a little more care. I was more careful…but not careful enough. I accidentally knocked one of the bowls of flaming liquid onto the wood floor. After quickly putting out that fire, I noticed the floor’s varnish had been burned away. Once again moving quickly, I ran out, bought an inexpensive small rug and simply covered my deed.
And no…my parents never found out about either of the (accidental) fires in my bedroom. Nor did I ever tell them. On the positive side, having two situations involving fire was enough for me to discontinue the use of any flammable liquids. I decided I should probably leave that sort of thing to the movie studios.
And what a treat it was at that time! From what I remember, I was able to see the exciting sci-fi movies “The Angry Red Planet” and later “Journey to the Seventh Planet”. They seemed so realistic, frightening, and a little cool…well, at least to a kid my age.
While “Red Planet” was somewhat entertaining in its own right, “Journey to the Seventh Planet” was simply painful to watch. In addition to being badly acted and featuring marginal special effects, it was incredibly slow moving. (I must have been a very patient kid to sit though that).
huge budget of $75,000! Mr. Pink was also responsible for bringing us the even worse Danish film “Reptilicus” where a puppet (yes a puppet) was used for filming the giant destructive dinosaur like creature.
My mother who was barely 17 at the time I was born, was still quite young herself when she started taking me with her to see movies. She was in her early 20s when we saw such black and white “epics” such as “The Beginning of the End”, “The Colossal Beast”, and “Attack of the Giant Leeches”. Though these films were made on incredibly low budgets, and consisted of equally low special effects, as a child I found these movies terribly frightening. I actually recall abandoning my mother during a particularly scary part of the giant grasshopper movie, “Beginning of the End”, and taking refuge in the lobby. Of course when viewing these movies many years later on DVD, I could not believe how fake and cheesy these looked. On the other hand, they did and do still have a type of charm. Once my mother began to move pass her interest in “scary movies”, she would occasionally venture out and would take me to see some of the bigger, more adult movies.
I recall coming home and letting my mother know that while I essentially liked the movie, I thought the movie ended somewhat abruptly, and making no sense due to leaving so many parts of the story unanswered. It didn’t take long before she was able to determine that I left the theater during something I had never heard of or experienced before… an “intermission”. Needless to say, I made sure that never happened to me again.
the Center Theater began running triple features on Saturdays. They tended to consist of either 3 horror pictures or 3 science fiction movies. Three movies in a row! Almost 6 hours of fantasy or safe fear to escape into. Most of these were from the 50s and early 60s and were repeated quite often. While some of those were occasionally shown on TV, there was nothing quite like seeing them on the large screen, in color, with an audience and without commercials. American science fiction and and British horror movies seemed to be the primary menu items.
experience, we were able to fill up on far too many boxes of Atomic Fire Balls, Red Hots, or Milk Duds.