The Shining
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Tonight's screening was one of Stanley Kubrick's greatest films, and although the author disagrees with my opinion, the best film adaptation of a Stephen King novel to ever hit the big screen; the 1980 horror classic The Shining.
Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
Tonight's screening was one of Stanley Kubrick's greatest films, and although the author disagrees with my opinion, the best film adaptation of a Stephen King novel to ever hit the big screen; the 1980 horror classic The Shining.
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| Show banner designed by Andrew Kern |
I haven't missed a Thursday night screening yet this season, so The Shining was the tenth punch on my Thursday Thread-Up card. That means that my next Thursday night movie will be free of change. You can't beat that deal!
The pre-show included a 35mm presentation of a 2002 animated short called Gone Nutty, which features Scrat from Ice Age. We've seen this cartoon at the Mahoning before, but this is the first time that it played this season. The ice and snow made it an excellent appetizer for the winter horror film that followed.
The reel that was played prior to the film also included a 35mm print of the 1988 Dr. Pepper commercial that uses a version of Robert Palmer's Bad Case Of Loving You. These are a nice touch that I'm always happy to see. The only example of this commercial that I could find online was pretty small, but here it is.
The Shining hit the screen at sundown, and I apologize in advance, but I'm going to have to rant for a bit. One of the things you learn pretty quickly as a repeat visitor of the Mahoning Drive-In Theater is that if the 35mm print was provided by Exhumed Films, there's a chance that it's going to be red with washed out colors like this print of The Shining. It wasn't as bad as the Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan print that we saw here a couple of years ago, but it wasn't good. While I appreciate getting to see an original 35mm print of a horror classic like, the atmosphere of being at a beautiful drive-in theater and the opportunity to see a classic movie on the big screen with my friends in an audience of movie lovers are the things that matter the most to me. The medium that they're projected from is secondary, so I'll always prefer a digital presentation to a bad 35mm print.
Since I have Dr. Pepper on the brain after seeing that commercial, the analogy that springs to mind is having the choice of a glass of soda from a fountain or from a can. If all things are equal, I'd prefer the fountain soda, but if the fountain is dispensing flat or flavorless beverages, I'll take the can.
I know that if the drinks coming out of a fountain don't taste very good, they're probably running low on CO2 (flat soda) or syrup (bad flavor). Just as I know that there's no problem with the fountain machine itself, I know that there is nothing wrong with the dual-Simplex projectors at the Mahoning. If the movie is red, the problem is with the film that's being put into it. However, not every customer is going to understand that this is the case. I wonder how many people have visited the Mahoning for the first time on a night where one of the red Exhumed Films prints ran and assumed that all of the films shown here look that way.
If you're selling soda and you're out of syrup, the smart thing to do is tape an "out of order" sign on the fountain and move a cooler with some cans of soda up to the front until you get a shipment of syrup. You get to keep selling soda. the customer gets a quality product (even if it's not exactly in the format they had in mind), and your reputation to the customers remains intact. What you don't do is sell a poor quality drink out of a commitment to staying true to the history of fountain soda.
Likewise, if you have a 35mm print that looks like this, the smart thing to do is to make a brief announcement prior to showtime that the film print isn't quite up to par, and then show the film digitally.
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| Which of these would you rather watch? |
I'm sure that there are some staff and customers of the Mahoning who would disagree with my opinion, but I really don't think that I'm in the minority here. Last month, they held a screening of The Crow which was advertised as a digital presentation and tickets sold out. I'd be shocked if there were a dozen paying customers that night who really cared all that much that the movie wasn't shown from a 35mm print, and I doubt that anyone except for Harry would have cared if they showed The Shining digitally instead of running the red 35mm print just for the sake of being able to say it was screened on 35mm.
Red film prints notwithstanding, it was still a fun night out at the drive-in and I appreciated being able to see one of my favorite horror films of all time on the big screen. This image of Jack Torrance at the end of The Shining is a pretty accurate representation of what it feels like in my lawn chair by the time the end credits roll this time of year. I could always sit in the nice warm car, but I'm a stubborn bastard who would rather bulk up with three layers of clothing and a full bedspread on top of me. If you notice a tall lump of blankets with what looks like a head peeking out when you're pulling off of the lot, please try not to run it over.
