Super-8 Movie Madness @ The Way Out Club #1

Next Tuesday, October 6th is SUPER-8 MOVIE MADNESS Night at The Way Out Club in St. Louis! Younger movie geeks might not be familiar with Super-8 movie madness, so a brief history of the malady is in order. Besides waiting for a favorite film to pop up on TV, what did movie buffs do before home video? That’s not a rhetorical question because I have the answer: Super-8 millimeter Films! I’m not talking about the kind our dads made of us on vacation in the 60’s and 70’s but the kind that were sold at stores and through mail-order that were condensed versions of popular feature films. Ken Films, Castle Films, and Blackhawk were just some of the distributors of these digest versions of famous movies. I remember the ads that ran in the back of “Famous Monsters of Filmland� magazine advertising mini horror films and I collected them as a kid. The 200 foot editions ran about eight minutes and the 50 footers just three and they were all silent. I have fond memories of my friends and I huddling in my basement watching REVENGE OF THE CREATURE and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY screened on the wall as these little spools of film ran through my noisy super-8 projector. They were packaged in boxes with sensational, often lurid artwork (I vividly remember the box for THE SPIDER depicting a giant human skull pasted over the spider’s head. I hadn’t seen the film and for many years I thought THE SPIDER was a movie about a giant spider with a giant skull head and the concept haunted me. Frank Darabont’s THE MIST in 2007 had spiders with skull heads and I wonder if he was influenced by this spooky box art) and these have become very collectible now as most baby boomers around my age remember these crude but nostalgic home movie entertainments.

Less known is that in the 1970’s, Super-8 films with sound were sold as well. The small-gauge film actually had a thin magnetic sound stripe glued on the edge that would run through a sound head on the projector. These sound versions were mostly sold in either 200 foot (9-minute) or 400-foot (18-minute) editions although there were feature-length versions available as well (when I was a kid the Kirkwood Library had KING KONG on five 400 foot sound reels. I would repeatedly check it out and watch it over and over at home even though I did not have a sound projector and I would always skip the first reel – no monsters!). Unlike the silent films, the sound versions were not marketed exclusively for children and many R-Rated movies were sold in this format (a lot of early pornography was on Super-8 but that’s another topic). When complete films on VHS (and Beta) tapes were introduced around 1980, the market for Super-8 sound films quickly disappeared (the last film chronologically I’ve found in this format is 1979’s ALIEN) and the format was practically forgotten. About 12 years ago I scored a super-8 sound projector at a garage sale. I bought a small collection of the films and, though I already had thousands of movies on VHS, I was surprised at how much fun it was watching and hearing these abridged versions screened on the wall.

I was soon stricken with Super-8 Movie Madness, started collecting the films and have now amassed well over one hundred Super-8 sound movies. STAR WARS, JAWS, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, and ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW were among the Super-8 Sound best sellers as well as comedy classics starring the Marx Brothers, Three Stooges and Little Rascals. I have most of the Universal golden age horror films that were available including FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN, THE INVISIBLE MAN and the Lon Chaney MUMMY movies. I’m a big Ray Harryhausen fan and what’s great about condensed version of MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, and THE 7TH VOYAGE OF SINBAD is that all the animation highlights are intact and very little of the exposition. THE FRENCH CONNECTION, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN, TAXI DRIVER, Pam Grier in COFFY and the 1974 lesbian vampire fave VAMPYRES are among the R-Rated titles in my collection and the violence and nudity is usually intact. These films were edited into 18-minute digests by the companies that distributed them and they usually did a good job of condensing the story. A few, such as TAXI DRIVER, have narration added to string the scenes together and occasionally the editing choices are curious (most of the M*A*S*H film for example is comprised of the football game played at the film’s end!).

Ebay is the best (and just about only) source to find these treasures and I’m sometimes amazed at some of the unusual titles that pop up there in this format. GRIZZLY, STRAIGHT JACKET, SQUIRM, and THE KLANSMAN (starring Lee Marvin and O.J. Simpson!) are some of the stranger titles I’ve been surprised to find. In the U.S. the color films were printed on cheap Kodak Ektachrome stock and the color is now usually faded to the point where the blues and yellows are almost gone and what’s left is a very red (but still watchable) image. In Europe they apparently took their Super-8 viewing more seriously and printed Super-8 films on the more stable Kodachrome stock. The British Hammer Horror films were popular sellers in the U.K and I’ve got editions of TWINS OF EVIL, VAMPIRE CIRCUS, THE GORGON, PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES and many more where the color is often stunning. Sometimes I can only find a desirable title dubbed into a foreign language or a color movie that’s has been printed on a more economical Black-and-White stock and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Charles Bronson in a B&W digest of HARD TIMES dubbed into German (it’s the international language of Bronson kicking ass!).

I throw Super-8 Movie parties at my house two or three times a year (whenever the wife goes out of town) and show a bunch of these to a group of friends. I’ll be showing 16 of the films October 6th at The Way Out Club between 8pm and midnight and this will be the first time I’ve showed them at a public venue since last year’s Kitbuilders Monstrous Weekend. The Way Out Club is a 21+ nightclub located at 2525 Jefferson Avenue in South St. Louis (corner of Jefferson and Sidney). I’ll be showing condensed versions of the following films: THE BIRDS, THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN, TAXI DRIVER, COFFY, SCARS OF DRACULA, EARTH VS FLYING SAUCERS, TARANTULA, THE KLANSMAN, THE MUMMYS TOMB, THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN, FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN, JAWS, JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, a JAMES BOND 007 Trailer Reel, and The Little Rascals in THE KID FROM BORNEO (“Yum Yum Eat ‘em Up!�). Spread the word to all local movie-lovers. If turnout is decent October 6, Bob at the Way Out promises it will become a monthly event and all St. Louis-area movie buffs can become infected with Super-8 Movie Madness!

Check out the flier for SUPER-8 MOVIE MADNESS here.