Why There So Many Bad Sci-Fi films from the 1950s, 60s and 70s?

    Well, I had a last minute planning to do. I had to fly to Wichita, Kansas to pick up Elliot, since they were having car troubles. Right now, I am in the Phoenix, Arizona airport, and have about an hour to kill before I board my plane to Wichita. This is a blog post I have wanted to post for a long time, but things come up, and I talk about something else, but here we go.

    If you know me well, you know that I LOVE the show Mystery Science Theater 3000. The premise of the show is they find old, ridiculous films from the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and then a guy and his two robot friends watch the movie and make fun of it, and it is hysterical. The movies are so bad. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to share some film history with you, and it's pretty dang funny.

    So before the 1950s, everyone had to go out to movie theaters if they wanted to watch a movie, or serial shows, but then along came the invention of the Television, and people stopped going out to the movies, because they could just stay home and watch TV, and Hollywood had to act fast. 

    Up until that point, movies were filmed with the ratio aspect 4:3, which was the shape of the almost square TV sets. So, Hollywood started to think of things that would get people back into the theaters, or at least paying to see their movies somehow, so they came up with a few interesting gimmicks to try and get people to come back. 

    One was the invention of the Widescreen format we all know and love today. They had what they called a "Smell-o-Rama" where the theaters would give people a card with numbers on it. When the film flashed a number on the screen, you would take your card, scratch the number matching the one flashing on the screen, and then you could smell things, for example, if the film went into an orange grove, a number would flash, and you would scratch it, and then it would smell like oranges. Sometimes, movie studios will still do that every once in a while, but not very often.

    One of the best ideas, that is still around today are Drive-In theaters. So, here is what was going on in American pop-culture at the time. The country was focused on the Space Race, and science fiction movies were super popular. So there were some pretty good science fiction films before then, but then Hollywood noticed something interesting.

    They found that a lot of teens were going to the Drive-Ins, not to go see the movies but it was a place to "Park". Hollywood then had a great idea...well, for them. They thought that if the kids are just going to make out, or whatever, that they could pump out some really bad movies. They could skimp on actors, just getting one that would work for peanuts. The scripts were terrible. The props were terrible, and the monsters, or threats were terrible, but they figured that as long as there were new movies coming out at the drive-ins every week, the teens would have new titles to tell their parents, so it would seem like they were going to watch all of these movies. 

    Hence, hundreds and hundreds of terrible science fiction films were born, and we owe it all to teenagers who went to drive-ins to make out. So, that's it. That's why there are so many bad movies from that time period. I don't know if that's awesome, or a sad state of teenager affairs, but at least we still have them around to make fun of. 

    That's about it. That's the story. I think it's funny, personally.

    Anywho, I am getting ready to board my plane to Wichita, so I will say so long for now. Be kind to one another and be safe.