During the 70s, I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago, so my real "grindhouse" experiences were limited. Chicago had kind of a "mini-deuce," with grinders along Randolph and State (you can see a glimpse of this area in the Lee Marvin film PRIME CUT). I rarely set foot in this area that was riddled with chopsocky, porno, gore and more. My Dad once took me down there when I was around 11 and we gazed at all the grungy posters and one-sheets that adorned the strip. He even commented on some black and white porn images encased in glass under a marquee - "They always black tape the good stuff..." I barely knew what he meant... <_<

Anyway, as the late 70s came in, I got a license and my true grindhouse was a drive-in called the Skylark Drive-in Theater, located in Aurora, IL.

It was there that I saw all sorts of horror and softcore sex comedies, Italian action flicks, etc. The beauty was I didn't have to risk going into an increasingly desperate area of Chicago.

My favorite triple feature: HOUSE OF HOOKERS, HOOKER'S REVENGE, VAMPIRE HOOKERS. It was promoted on the marquee as a WEEKEND LONG HOOKER EXTRAVAGANZA!!!!

Those truly were the days...

While I did go to 42nd Street theaters in the heyday of the Deuce, most of my grindhouse viewing was in the Bronx, where neighborhood theaters, in their final days, ran double features of the kinds of films that made grindhouses famous. There was even one theater when I was a child that played triple features of older movies. (One triple bill I missed that would have been fantastic to see at the age of 8: ON THE WATERFRONT, THE ANGRY RED PLANET and the Audie Murphy/John Saxon/Vic Morrow/Lee Van Cleef western, POSSE FROM HELL.)

As the neighborhood went into decline (along with the rest of the South Bronx), some of the old movie palaces and arthouses turned to grindhouse fare. The first movie I saw at the Ascot was Zeffirelli's ROMEO AND JULIET (1968). The last time I went was to see GODZILLA VS. MEGALON and Sonny Chiba in THE KILLING MACHINE. Take a guess as to which audience had the better time.
The Loew's Paradise was once the borough's premier movie palace, and the first film I saw there was JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, but by 1977 it was showing a double bill of REVENGE OF THE CHEERLEADERS and SLUMBER PARTY '57. Let's just say that I had great fun both times, 14 years apart, but for very different reasons. ;)

"Sword 'n' sandal," Hammer horror, blaxploitation, Italian westerns, French crime thrillers, Japanese monsters, Hong Kong kung fu, westerns, car chases, cheerleader movies and reruns of WEST SIDE STORY. Films by Roger Corman, Mario Bava, Edgar G. Ulmer, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Robert Aldrich, Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Robert Altman, Sam Peckinpah, Don Siegel, William Castle, George Romero, Jack Hill, Lo Wei, Chang Cheh, Kinji Fukasaku, Ishiro Honda, Terence Fisher, Henri Verneuil, Rene Clement, Dario Argento... The neighborhood theaters had them all.

I spent some time at the Chicago "mini-deuce" mentioned; The Woods had the roughest fare and the toughest customers (I saw a double feature of WEREWOLF WOMAN and the strange '82 picture THE BLACK ROOM there), while the State Lake had DEATHSTALKER marathons. The Woods held on as long as it could but the other neighboring theaters moved to more conventional fare like the FRIDAY THE 13th pics and STREETS OF FIRE, once Cineplex Odeon bought them out. It was definitively all over by 1986, when the Chicago (which kept its lights halfway on during weekend shows to discourage troublemaking), whose movie theater days ended with the family-friendly BREWSTER'S MILLIONS in 1985, reopened as a legit theater a year later, which the town fathers applauded but more rabid cineastes mourned. Even when the programming turned Hollywood at the "MD" I still went, just to soak up the ambiance.

I never experienced New York's finest. Funnily, the one cinema near my hometown of Randolph, NJ, went from Disney double features (I think I saw them all) to porn (not one viewed :) ), by the late 70s. The K-Cinema is now a bank, or a gym.

Grand Theatre, San Francisco (circa 1969). Dig the marquee!

I must heartily thank the darkened cinema I spent the better part of my childhood in: Long live the remarkable Grand Theater! Fortunately, I grew up to be a pretty well adjusted guy, and even dated girls, despite my love for Horror Films and Monster Movies (it didn't do bad for Kirk Hammet of Metallica, either). During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Grand Theater (on Mission St. @ 23rd St. in San Francisco) specialized in Horror, Sci-Fi and Fantasy films and nothing else! As a grammar school-aged monster maven, I was there for every new Triple Feature, which changed every Wednesday. I recall that admission was a mere 50¢ for Children -- hell, I'd pay $15 to see some of those triple features in the darkened Grand again.

The Grand booked first, second and third run films, and I sat through a great majority of them, and the place was like church to me. Even as a little boy, I often wondered why the other kids ran around and talked during the screenings ("Hey, the movies are running, people!"), so I generally avoided weekend or holiday matinees -- sometimes getting my Mother or Aunt to take me on school nights ("No kids!"). GAMMERA THE INVINCIBLE, DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS, THE SKULL, HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN, THE WONDERS OF ALADDIN, GHIDRAH: THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER, THE PROJECTED MAN, FRANKENSTEIN CONQUERS THE WORLD, NIGHTMARE CASTLE, TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT, BUG, SUPER AGENT DRAGON, ISLAND OF TERROR, COUNT YORGA, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, BLACULA, and more, all haunted me there.

The Grand acted as a larger than life supplement to Bob Wilkins' "Creature Features" on KTVU Channel 2, and was part of my regular monster movie diet. When the mid-'70s Kung Fu movie boom knocked the Horror Boom out of its throne, The Grand was the showcase for Chop Sockey triple features and the admission went up to 75¢ for Children (Oh, the humanity!). Guess what? I went with the tide. Somewhere in the late 1970s, the Grand changed again -- this time it becoming a showcase for Filipino films. After that, I lost track of the Old Girl, and was shocked when I returned to my old neighborhood (I still live in San Francisco) only to find that it was gutted to house a Chinese-owned "discount" shop. To paraphrase Vincent Price from THE COMEDY OF TERRORS: "Is there no morality left in this world?"

Today, I am trying to emulate the feel of the old Grand Theater triple features with a series of Halloween Horror Movie programs at the historic Castro Theatre called SHOCK IT TO ME! Long live the memories of The Grand Theater!