The flip side of film history
Hollywood's double features came with an A picture and a cheaper B picture, like the two sides of a record. These are notes on the flip side: cult films and midnight movies, B-movies and drive-in fare, classic Hollywood, vintage cartoons and TV, and how to watch them today.
Tonight's double feature
Side A
Classic Hollywood
Shadows across a detective's office, rain on a city street, a woman who cannot be trusted and a man who should have known better. Here is what film noir means, where the name came from and how to recognise it.
Side B
Cartoons & TV
For decades, American kids woke early on Saturdays for hours of cartoons on the big networks. Here is how the tradition began, what made the 80s and 90s special, and why it quietly ended.
Projection booth glossary
- Double feature
- Two films for one ticket. In the studio era, an "A" picture and a cheaper "B" picture.
- B-movie
- A low-budget film made for the bottom half of a double bill; later, any cheap genre film.
- Poverty Row
- Small Hollywood studios of the 1930s and 1940s that turned out quick, cheap pictures.
- Midnight movie
- A film shown late at night to a devoted crowd, often for years.
- Cult film
- A film with a passionate following, usually outside the mainstream.
- Public domain
- Works no longer protected by copyright, free for anyone to show and share.
Sections
- Cult Films & Midnight MoviesHow films become cult classics, the midnight movie circuit, and the strange, bold and so-bad-they're-good films people keep coming back to.
- B-Movies & Drive-In NightsThe second half of the double feature: Poverty Row quickies, creature features, drive-in favorites and low-budget genre films.
- Classic HollywoodSilent films, the studio era, pre-Code pictures and film noir: how old Hollywood worked and where to start watching.
- Vintage Cartoons & TVTheatrical cartoons, Saturday morning shows and oddball television from the decades before streaming.
- Watching Old FilmsPublic domain films, archives and restorations, film formats and how to watch old movies legally today.
