Santa vs Satan / Robots vs Mummies / Wrestlers vs Vampires
May 12, 2007 11:43 AM   Subscribe

Even if you're not a baby boomer, you might remember a little something called the kiddie matinée that apparently went all the way up to the mid 80s. I remember them because in the 70s they were still popular enough that the 1959 Mexican Christmas flick Santa Claus continued making the rounds and I saw it in the theater. Imagine my surprise 20 years later when my favorite man in space and his robot pals are subjected to one of own childhood traumas of Santa Claus vs Satan for the soul of a small Mexican child. One man was responsible for my trauma: K. Gordon Murray. Importer of not only fine children's classics like Little Red Riding Hood Vs The Monsters but also other great MST3K experiments like The Robot vs The Aztec Mummy and Samson vs The Vampire Women. It wasn't all X vs Y. Sometimes it was about peaceful things.
posted by smallerdemon (12 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
You know, all of a sudden all of those Peanuts cartoons with the kids waiting in line for a matinée make a lot more sense. Interesting stuff.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:51 AM on May 12, 2007


It seemed as though every time I went, they were showing this, one of these and a couple of these.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 1:01 PM on May 12, 2007


For 15¢ admission you could stay through the day on Saturday and watch the whole thing over and over: cartoons, newsreels, serials, shorts and features. The world was different when Charlie Brown's head was bigger and rounder.
posted by taosbat at 1:29 PM on May 12, 2007


So who does MST3K owe more to: K. Gordon Murray, or Sandy Frank?
posted by Rangeboy at 2:09 PM on May 12, 2007


It's hard to say. You can't for Corman, of course, but there were others, like Bert I. Gordon too. Gordon may be the one they did the most of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_I._Gordon.

And god... Coleman Francis. *shudder*

I think for sheer weirdness, though, K. Gordon Murray may take the cake.
posted by smallerdemon at 2:14 PM on May 12, 2007


From 1982-1984 my parents would give me $2 each Saturday, which would buy a $0.50 ticket to the kiddie matinee and $1.50 of candy and hockey cards. Life was good until we moved to a town without a movie house.
posted by furtive at 2:24 PM on May 12, 2007


I managed theaters for Carmike Cinemas from I'd say... 84 to 88, and we went through a kiddie matinee period in the summers. They were less ambitious that the K. Gordon Murray affairs, I admit, as we played second runs of terrible movies usually done to capitalize on 80s TV fare like Care Bears and the like. Still, wow, people showed up. And we made it cheap for them and donated the admission cost to the Will Rogers Foundation. We made money from the food sales anyway, not the admissions, and overall I was always amazed (and still am when I go to the theater) how much money people spend on concessions.

I am a bit sad, though, that those kids never got to experience the wild psychedelic trips of Mexican and European filmmakers' visions of these fairy tales. Care Bears are hardly the stuff from which nightmares are made.

Say what you will about Harry Knowles and AICN, the entire reason for the butt-numb-a-thon is to raise money for the Saturday Morning Kids Club at the Alamo Draft House (soon to be closing... *sniff sniff*) so that Harry and Tim League could show kids great children's cinema like Harryhausen's Sinbad flicks for free.
posted by smallerdemon at 2:59 PM on May 12, 2007


Care Bears are hardly the stuff from which nightmares are made.

Speak for yourself.
posted by Clave at 3:19 PM on May 12, 2007


Great post! I saw trailers for the bizarro kiddie movies on Something Weird on Demand a couple of weeks ago and meant to look them up, but you've done it for me! Thanks!
posted by bayliss at 4:06 PM on May 12, 2007


And god... Coleman Francis. *shudder*

Good point. There's more awfulness in one scene of Beast of Yucca Flats than in Murray's, Gordon's, and Frank's oeuvres combined.
posted by Rangeboy at 4:21 PM on May 12, 2007


Caperucita Roja Contra los Monstruos! They were still showing that in Mexican T.V. occasionally up to the mid 90's at least. My father got his nickname from one of the characters in that movie (coco liso). The horrible English dubbing makes it 1000 times better/worse.

This is the tip of the iceberg, you should see the Mexican children movies that were too weird for Murray.

Thanks for the links, I'll have to show them to my American coworkers.
posted by Dataphage at 4:26 PM on May 12, 2007


This is the tip of the iceberg, you should see the Mexican children movies that were too weird for Murray.

Oh my! Now I am interested.

I probably should have dropped this link in as well. That's a fascinating look at Murray's foray into the weird area of children's movies, including information on how shrewd of a businessman he was in how he rolled these shows out. "Childhood Productions" was apparently a booming little business and they even produced one original production.

Make sure to check out the list at the bottom of all of Murray's Childhood Productions distributions including Puss N' Boots and Snow White and Rose Red, with the following odd plot line: "In a satisfying yet curious finale for a children's' film, the evil dwarf falls off a cliff to his death, and in so doing, the Bear is turned back into Prince Goodheart. As in the true fairy tale, there is no happy ending for evil here; Evil must be destroyed in order for Good to prosper. This is a message which Disney would never dare convey to its audience."
posted by smallerdemon at 5:45 PM on May 12, 2007


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