Coolest thing ever! Chicago’s Portage Theater on Saturday, Aug 23rd will be showing THREE classic big bug movies.
5:45 PM Beginning of the End Going in reverse quality order, I see. Bert I. Gordon’s classic tale of the giant grasshoppers that ate Chicago. See! Giant monsters walk off buildings and onto open air! See! The mountains that define the Midwest! See! Peter Graves wonder why his brother was in The Thing from Another World and Them!, and he was in this and Killers from Space!
7:45 PM The Black Scorpion Willis “King Kong” O’Brien did the awesome stop-motion effects for this flick, and that’s ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW!!
9:45 PM Them! What’s that?! My favorite monster movie of all time, PLAYING ON A HUGE THEATER SCREEN?! I’m so there!!
Also at the Portage this month, Creature of the Black Lagoon plays this Saturday night, with Creature portrayer Ricou Browning signing autographs!
Fans of schlock, meanwhile, will want to check out the mini-marathon run at the theater on Aug 16th, featuring The Hills Have Eyes (the real one), The Tingler, The Deadly Spawn, Slumber Party Massacre, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Machine Girl, and a documentary on William Castle. All for $17!!
#1 by El Santo on August 6, 2008 - 10:17 am
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Hey, did the Portage show Bride of the Monster and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers back in January or February? I was driving one of the B-Movie Message Board guys around Chicago on the afternoon before B-Fest, and we passed by this neat old theater in the western part of the city that seemed to make an avowed policy of fairly regular 50’s monster flick revivals. I immediately told myself that I’d need to make a note of that for future Chicago excursions, and then naturally fogot all of the pertinent information.
#2 by kbegg on August 6, 2008 - 11:43 am
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That was probably it. The Portage basically is a rental theater, and there are currently two groups who nearly every month put on some genre double bill–sadly, they seem to view the other as competition more than colleagues. One of them is doing this week’s Creature of the Black Lagoon showing, the other the big bug show. You can’t argue with the result.
This was (weirdly) a dead town for revival stuff for decades, but lately the genre revival scene has been getting a *lot* stronger, especially at the Portage and the Music Box, which does a 12 hour sci-fi marathon in the spring and a 24 hour horror one around Halloween.
Of course, my hovel is always open to you if you do visit the Chicagoland area at any point.
#3 by The Rev. D.D. on August 7, 2008 - 10:29 am
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MAN, I would love to met Ricou. That is one of my all-time favorite monster movies, hands down. I wish I could be there for it.
The giant bug festival would be awesome too.