Now it can be told! Together again
for the first time! It's the film event of the year!
On June 8 the Pacific Film Archives
in Berkeley will present "Trailer Trash: A Mini-Movie Extravaganza,"
a compilation of 40 - count 'em, 40! – movie trailers from some of the
cheesiest B-movies of the 1950s, '60s and early '70s.
Among them: "I Was A Teenage
Frankenstein," "Queen Of Outer Space," "Blood Of The
Vampire," "The Naked Kiss," "Tammy Tell Me True," and
"Burn, Witch, Burn!"
Return with us now to the thrilling
days of yesteryear, when movie trailers were tiny, two-minute spectacles filed
with thunderous scores, thrills and spills galore, and stentorian voices booming
with blustery conviction, "A love that knows no bounds!" "In a
land where passion reigns!" and "All the emotions of a
LIFETIME!"
"Why wade through an entire
feature film when a crisply condensed version can compress ninety minutes into
a pithy two or three?" says Steve Seid, the PFA's film curator.
This event stems from Seid's
lifelong fascination with cinema's historical roots.
"It comes out of vaudeville
and the old tent shows. Back in the day, people would travel around the country
with prints, like a carney, and the pitch was as important as the picture. The
less a film had to offer, the harder it had to sell itself."
No stone will be left unturned in
an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the original experience, including
strategically located misters that will periodically spray the aroma of
popcorn. (Food isn't allowed in the PFA theater.)
Two years ago PFA hosted a similar
event called "Exploit-O-Vision," featuring films that had gimmicks
attached to them, recreating the original gimmicks.
"During 'The Maniacs Are
Loose,' about an ax murder in a movie theater, another person and I ran through
up and down the aisles swinging axes," says Seid. "When we showed
'Polyester,' John Waters gave me a whole bunch of scratch-and-sniff cards to go
with it."
And for a screening of
"Earthquake," featuring a gimmicky format called Sensaround, Seid
borrowed humongous sub-woofers from Meyer Sound, the premier sound equipment
company in West Berkeley that supplies speakers to everyone from the Grateful
Dead to the Dalai Lama.
"They were so enormous, they
literally made the room shake like a roller coaster," he says.
One thing you'll notice is that the
trailers sound like they were all narrated by the same guy.
"That's because only three or
four people do voice-overs for trailers in L.A.," Seid explains.
"They're so successful, they are chauffeured from studio to studio several
times a day. They get out, do the voice-over, then get back in the limo and drive
on to their next gig.
"Most of these guys have been
doing it for two or three decades. So it's always the same set of voices, same
vocabulary, and same emotive thrust."
But despite this continuity, Seid says
trailers ain't what they used to be.
"Lots of trailers nowadays are
nothing but fast cuts, and they end up summarizing the entire film. That's a
dangerous strategy. You end up thinking, 'Why should I bother watching the
movie?'"
The management requests that for
the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet read this column,
you do not reveal the ending.
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