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Hoyts Suburban Childrens Cinema Club For boys & girls Eclipse Theatre Members Card.

Mike Brooks writes - Saturday afternoon matinees were so important, as not only was it getting us out of the house, and away from our nosy parents, but it also allowed us to see a plethora movies that we would otherwise most likely not have seen.

It didn’t matter if it was an old adventure film from the 40’s or 50’s, because it was new to us, and when our parents dropped us off – with enough money for a ticket, a large pop, licorice and Milk Duds – a whole amazing world opened for us, and the people putting these matinees together really made it an event.

These matinees were a whole afternoon affair, that often included games and such before the house lights went down, then when those lights dimmed our journey into wonder began. We would first be treated to a cartoon, and it was through these matinee afternoons that I first was exposed to the hilarious antics of the Looney Tunes gang, and I’ve been a fan of them ever since.

We all wanted to grow up to be Bugs Bunny but most of us ended up being Daffy Duck.

After the cartoon we’d then get a chapter from a serial, and each week we’d be able to see the latest installment in the adventures of Captain Marvel, Zorro or Flash Gordon, and it certainly didn’t matter to us that they were in Black and White – many of us didn’t even have colour televisions at home – and these chapters would all end in a nail-biting cliffhanger that would ensure that we would be in attendance next week, much as it did to those who saw those serials when they first originally ran. Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe (1953)

Then after the serial, we’d finally get the movie we came to see, sometimes two movies if we were lucky, and I can remember sitting surrounded by hordes of like-minded kids as if it was yesterday, we laughed at the antics of Kurt Russel’s Dexter Riley in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or cheered as Blackbeard’s Ghost thwarted a bunch of gangsters who were trying to foreclose on a bunch of old ladies, and even hide behind our mittens as the horrifying Green Slime threatened to barbecue our hero.

It’s amazing what scared you as a little kid that now seems absolutely laughable, yet when you were in the darkened theatre the dangers were real, even if it was just a guy in a terrible rubber suit. It didn’t matter to us that the plot of movies such as One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing made little to no sense, because gosh darn it, we believed it. Sometimes I am able to briefly recapture that feeling when I sit with my little nephew and nieces as they get enraptured by one of these classics, letting me see it through their eyes as I once did my own.

Something has been lost when those theatres stopped bringing an afternoon of magic to all of us kids.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -