As I have detailed elsewhere, my dad was not big on taking his children to the movies. On Sundays, when he was home in the afternoon instead of working at Aarone’s Bar and Grill on East Hennepin, he liked to sit in his easy chair, digesting the huge Sunday dinner my mother always concocted. He did not take kindly to pleas from us to go see the latest Jerry Lewis movie or Fred MacMurray in “The Absent Minded Professor.” The only Hollywood star that could pry him from his postprandial coma was John Wayne. Then he would gladly bundle us all up in the car and shoot out to the Cooper Cinerama in St. Louis Park. Since we little ones didn’t much care for the lusty brawling and cattle car antics of Wayne and his cronies, dad stilled our whines and murmurs with a handful of coins, which I and my sisters were allowed to spend on Jordan Almonds, Raisinets, Dots, Mike and Ike chewies, Nonpareil chocolate disks, and, of course, huge tumblers of syrupty Coca Cola and glorious tubs of popcorn dripping with melted butter (or whatever it was they used back then to simulate butter -- probably Brylcreem.) Glutted and satiated beyond the cares of this world, we sank back into our theater seats, as inert as gravestones. Of course, when we got home we’d have to be packed off to bed with hot water bottles on top of our palpitating tummies.
As I say, it was a rare occasion when we went to the movies as a family. But I gratefully recall many Saturday afternoons when my pal Wayne’s dad would take the two of us to see a feature over at the Hollywood Theater in Nordeast Minneapolis. It was an art deco joint that should have impressed the feculence out of me -- but the effect was somewhat ruined by the chow mein shop next door; the pungent odor of frying celery and onions drifted into the mezzanine to spoil the razzle dazzle effect of all those acoustical tiles and gilded pillars.
Wayne Matsuura’s dad, Mr. Matsuura, favored creature features. Whenever a new fang flick blew into town he was sure to take Wayne and I to it. The late Fifties and early Sixties were the heyday of cheapie creepies -- I can only assume that these low budget films were meant for the Drive-Ins, where teenage couples could begin their grappling as soon as the cheesy monster popped into view, giving the girl ample excuse to clutch her swain in a half nelson. But little boys, like Wayne and I, were a bit more discerning in our cinematic tastes. If the monster was too fakey, he and I would hoot it to scorn, despite Mr. Matsuura’s stern injunctions to be quiet.
Through the magic of YouTube I recently reviewed one of those cheap old monster movies. The Giant Claw was a Columbia grade-B picture that featured a dismal creature that looked like a disgruntled turkey vulture in a Muppet movie. It was a ludicrous special effect that wouldn’t scare a babe in arms. Wayne and I gave it the loudest raspberries our lips and tongues could muster, in spite of Mr. Matsuura’s threat that such behavior would forfeit a visit to Bridgeman’s for mint chocolate chip cones after the show.
On the other hand, Werewolf in a Girls Dormitory, although a cheapie Italian production that featured a werewolf who sported the kind of fakey fangs you could get at Woolworths around Halloween for a quarter, was quite effective in giving Wayne and I nightmares for the next several days. We clung to each other in a terrified huddle as the not-too-hairy fiend stalked his prey -- always a fetching young girl in a flimsy nightie. (I have a sneaking suspicion that Mr. Matsuura took us to this film in particular so he could enjoy some, ahem, cheese cake on the side without Mrs. Matsuura being any the wiser.) I think what made this cheapo movie so scary to us little boys was that the monster only prowled at night, unlike The Giant Claw, which enjoyed swooping down on an unsuspecting humanity in broad daylight. We were in a darkened movie theater, and all that murk onscreen and off just pressed some primordial panic button in us. It’s easy to scoff at a fakey monster in the light of the sun -- but in the black shadows of night even a bad actor with a set of dimestore fangs becomes worrisome.
The scariest film Mr. Matsuura ever took us to was undoubtedly Michael Landon’s “I Was a Teenage Werewolf.” I tried looking this one up on YouTube, but they only have the trailer. And that was enough to remind me how effectively horrifying that movie was. It’s a classic finger peek movie, meaning that when the music turns ominous you know that Landon is ready to howl and rip, so the hands automatically come up to cover the eyes, with the fingers spread just a teensy weensy bit to catch some of the gruesome action -- but not too much! By the middle of that film I gave up any pretence of bravery and simply dove for cover under my seat whenever the snarling started. I came up for air at the end of the film, I remember, to watch the monster’s inevitable demise -- and Mr. Matsuura chose that exact moment, when I was leaning forward, eyes bulging in fright, to put his arm around past Wayne and clutch my shoulder to whisper “Pretty scary, isn’t it?” Thinking some creature had tagged me for its dinner, I let out a scream in a high register that even opera sopranos rarely reach, and immediately lost control of my bladder.
Wayne and his father, I am sorry to report, thought that this was a tremendously hilarious joke. Mr. Matsuura spread newspaper on the backseat of his car for me to sit on during the ride home. Wayne, curse his soul, kept breaking out in giggles as we passed Bridgeman’s (no chance of an ice cream cone now) and pulled up to the front of my house. I sullenly thanked Mr. Matsuura for taking me to the movies (as my mother had drilled into me ten thousand times in the past year) and silently wished Wayne in the deepest pit of Hell as he continued to ineffectively stifle his laughter.
Y’know, sometimes childhood isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
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