The Most Terrifying Film Comes to Town

Something changed between the time I was watching horror films on TV as a kid, and those screened in theaters a generation later. My horror movies starred recycled monsters from before World War II: Karloff’s Frankenstein monster, Lugosi’s Dracula, and the classic Wolfman played by Lon Chaney, Jr. And let’s not forget the sympathetic Hunchback of Notre Dame as brought to life by Charles Laughton. Or King Kong, for that matter, whose rampage was entirely justified. I had the plastic models of all three, meticulously assembled and painted, lined on the bookshelf above my bed. They were scary, but lovable, victims in their own right.

Then mainstream movies turned scarier, grosser, and more violent with the likes of “Psycho” (1961), “Night of the Living Dead” (1969), “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968), “The Exorcist” (1973), and the rise of Stephen King. But those films couldn’t hold a blowtorch to the wave of British and European horror films that followed.

And where would a young impressionable teenage mind see trashy exploitation films in the 1970s? The Civic on Chestnut Street, of course. The 1874 theater, adapted into a cinema, played the very best and the very worst films of the era. The venue where kiddies watched “The Three Lives of Thomasina” (1963) and “The Incredible Mr. Limpet” (1964), about a kitty-cat and a dolphin, slowly turned to the dark side.

Middle schoolers, according to one reader, got their first taste of R-rated comedy with the arrival of “Animal House” (1978). The rise of VCRs forced the B-theaters like the Civic to discount prices even further. For 99 cents, another reader told me, you could watch movies all day. For an extra dime, you could sit in the balcony and raise hell. Saturday double-features ran as low as 75 cents in an era when the new multiplex at the mall was charging $3 to $4.

How low was the bottom? Many locals will recall (but few will admit attending) the Civic Theater’s brief flirtation with X-rated fare. The erotic “Emmanuelle” (1974) might be called an art film; the slogan announced ”Lets you feel good, without feeling bad.” But there was no denying the unabashed adult content of films such as “Intimate Playmates” and “The Swingin’ Stewardesses” (1976).

The bottom, however, was the European exploitation films from the ’60s that found their way into discount American cinemas in the mid-1970s. One local movie-goer, after lovingly listing dozens of classic action and horror films he saw at the Civic, noted two movies no mother would allow her children to see. “Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed” included a rape scene by the monster and was rated “M” for “Mature.”

Desperate for audiences at any cost, the Civic bottomed out with “Mark of the Devil,” a German-made schlockfest billed as “Positively the most horrifying film ever made” and “rated V for Violence.” Set in Austria, the film depicts the torture of women accused of witchcraft–and most horribly, is based on historical facts. It was marketed in the USA by the distribution of vomit bags printed with the disclaimer that the film was “Guaranteed to upset your stomach.” Today, in a world highly desensitized to violence, that phrase might accompany the evening news.

Copyright J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.