$1 Movies

Back when I was in high school in the early 70's and dating my future ex-husband, one of the multi-screen theaters in town showed moves for $1. That's right, all movies were $1. They weren't exactly first run but we went to the movies every Friday night. We usually brought my younger brother and sisters and one of my ex's younger cousins.

There were four screens and they ranged in size from about 8' x 10' to 16' x 20'. They seemed not much bigger than what people have in their living rooms today and the theaters with the smallest screens probably had less than a hundred seats and there were rarely more than ten or fifteen of us in there. We saw a lot of Kung Fu movies with Bruce Lee before anyone knew who Bruce Lee was. We saw Fritz the Cat cartoons, lots of Burt Reynolds and great movies that are now referred to as Blaxploitation.

My favorite then and I still love them were the detective movies. I had a huge crush on Clint Eastwood so we saw all the Dirty Harry's. If you ever see the following on the late night cable listings, watch them, they are absolutely fantastic: The Seven Ups (Roy Scheider), The Laughing Detective (Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern) and The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 (Walter Matthau, Robert Shaw).