Looking for something truly frightening? Take a peek behind your fingers at the horrors on screen in a double feature showing at The West Cinema in Cedartown in April.
Tickets are available for the Twin Tales of Terror stop at the West featuring Peter Hyoguchi’s “The Occult” and J. Horton’s “A Hard Place” coming up on Thursday, April 10.
Prices are $7 per person. Show time starts at 6 p.m.
It’s a special screening in Cedartown as the pair of directors bring back a long-forgotten way of marketing movies to audiences across the country: the touring film.
The West Cinema got on the tour stops since it is an independently-operated theater, outside of Hollywood’s distribution system as Hyoguchi explained.
He said that as less movies are available from traditional studios, the concept of taking independent features on the road and getting screening time from local theaters is a way to increase audience reach. He’s already seen the results.
“Last Spring, I took the movie to seven states around the country trying this as an experiment,” he said. “Every stop I had sold out shows.” Those included diverse audiences ranging from Texas to Wisconsin, Ohio to Florida.
Hyoguchi – a Los Angeles filmmaker who moved away from the center of the movie industry to Texas in recent years – said the traditional studio system isn’t keeping up with demand. Fewer movies have come out since the start of COVID, providing less options to consumers – 1.5 new releases per weekend on average instead of 5 new releases – much less than compared to the past 80 years of production out Hollywood.
He said this is hurting theaters as moviegoers are skipping the box office and the social experience for other options like streaming to enjoy films.
A new option is needed, and his experiment that began last spring is now being extended to a multi-stop tour to independent theaters and drive-ins still in operation around the country with his own film (which is a movie warns of the dangers of the occult) and Horton (an Atlanta-based horror filmmaker.)
Turning the trip to the theater for moviegoers back into an experience worth the cost.
It isn’t a new idea.
Hollywood in their early days didn’t have the large distribution system of movie theaters nationally (and globally) to show their movies, so they utilized the old Vaudeville theaters and carried their reels from town to town. This idea expanded as production companies grew during the early days of film, with certain cities getting preview or test runs of feature movies before the full release nationwide.
A famous example would be the Wizard of Oz, which debuted in Green Bay, Wisconsin before a red carpet-style release was celebrated in New York.
Hyoguchi and Horton’s traveling Twin Tales of Terror also harkens back to another idea of the past: the double feature. Their movies are well matched, as Hyoguchi’s movie delves into the horror experienced by a young man tangled up Tarot reading and family secrets, while Horton’s flick “A Hard Place” puts hardened criminals in the midst of “an ancient feud between monsters that road in daylight and creatures of the night.”
The term “B Movie” comes from the double feature model prevalent in the days before VHS came along, when theaters would show films back-to-back with the latest release to start the show, and the second movie (hence B Movie) would run after in a double feature for audiences, and depending on the era split by a cartoon, newsreel and/or reminder to visit the lobby for concessions.
It is this concept with the Twin Tales of Terror tour that gives the audience a real bang for their buck proposition. Two screenings for less than the price of a ticket for a big-budget Hollywood feature, made with just as good of production values as any studio scripted movie.
But don’t expect this experience to be repeated anytime soon. The pair are moving on with their traveling showtimes to Iowa in early May, and then have stops planned in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Michigan and points further onward as their long-forgotten distribution model begins to flourish again.
The only terror you’ll feel in that case? It is the madness caused by missing out.