Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. I was 16 years old when I first climbed the stairs of the Alamo Drafthouse. I don’t think they’d been open very long. This was sometime in 1997. My first movie was PULP FICTION, a film I had seen first run back in 1994.
I remember I was worried that they wouldn’t let me in. I had been kicked out of screenings and parties at SXSW because I was only 16 and these places served alcohol. I talked my step-dad into taking me down to the Alamo Drafthouse for the midnight showing. He walked me up and told them it was okay for me to watch the movie.
The ticket taker, if I remember correctly, didn’t really care as long as I had the black Xs marked on my hands so the waiters wouldn’t serve me booze.
From that moment on, I lived at the Alamo. I’m a bit ashamed to say that in the last few years I’ve spent less time at the Alamo than I wanted to, but since becoming an editor for this site I’ve had less time to spend there.
That's not to say I haven't been going. I'm sure I've at least averaged once a week in recent years, but for the first four or five years, I was there at every midnight revival screening, every special event and even the second run shows. I think I saw THE MATRIX and SOUTH PARK: BIGGER, LONGER AND UNCUT at least a dozen times on the big screen thanks to those two playing back to back for a month there.
I’ve discovered many films at the Alamo Drafthouse Downtown and saw some of my all time favorites on the big screen for the first time. Keep in mind that the Alamo Downtown existed in the very, very early days of DVD and the only time I’d ever seen vintage films projected beforehand was at Austin Film Society film retrospectives (usually the more serious fare) and the Summer film series at the Paramount theater (Hitchcock, 70mm stuff, etc). Being a horror movie nut, the Alamo’s willingness to play everything from EVIL DEAD to FRIDAY THE 13TH to OLD DARK HOUSE to CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST was the most beautiful place in the world.
Tim and Karrie League put their all into the programming, pushing the boundaries of showmanship. Going from regular 2nd run screenings to ‘80s classics to 3-D presentations to silent films with live music score. I saw Fritz Lang’s METROPOLIS, Buster Keaton’s THE GENERAL, Lon Chaney’s THE UNKNOWN and Murnau’s NOSFERATU with live score.
I was also there for the birth of the Alamo’s Weird Wednesday series. It all started because Tim got a line on some film storage depot that held hundreds upon hundreds of film prints, all from the drive-in circuits. He took a U-Haul and came back with an incredible collection of forgotten films.
He started running them for friends and regulars after hours. Some of these prints were really damaged, missing reels, beet red, warped, scratched beyond repair. He said he didn’t want to put them on the schedule because of these factors. Hell, some of them were mislabeled, so he’d think he was showing a ‘70s women in prison movie and a random European sex film from the ‘60s would pop up.
It was a really magical time of discovery for a film geek. You never knew what you were in for because the people running the films weren’t even sure what they were running.
I don’t recall how long it ran like that. It could have been a month or two. It could have been less or more. Gradually more and more people began showing up and Tim realized he could run the movies for free, find a late show. Thursday-Saturdays had midnight screenings, so he picked Wednesday. A free entry with an understanding that the print might be choppy or not even the movie listed on the schedule. That way he could still sell beer and food.
Harry’s been able to plan many huge events with the Alamo, most of which you guys know about. I’ve had my hands in about half a dozen screenings over the years. My own personal print of CRITTERS has played twice, but the two big screenings I’ve held were for some of my favorite ‘80s flicks.
One was SLEEPAWAY CAMP, one of the best slasher flicks of all time. Low budget, cheesy, over-the-top, but with one of the best endings ever recorded to celluloid. I was able to get the director and two of the main cast, including Angela herself, Ms. Felissa Rose.
The second, and my personal favorite, was the very first reunion screening of MONSTER SQUAD, with Andre Gower, Ashley Banks, Ryan Lambert and director Fred Dekker. Two sold out shows on Easter Weekend. That screening sparked many more reunion screenings across the country and ultimately led to the DVD finally coming out at the end of this month.
I trust Tim and Karrie and I trust that the Alamo at the Ritz will be incredible, but that doesn’t help my depression at the closing of the Alamo Downtown. I know it’s just a building, a space, but that space held magic. I love the other Alamos. All of them are uniquely cool, but none of them have that magic, that sense of history, that the Downtown did.
But the final night was about as perfect a send-off as the Downtown could get. The programming summed up the Alamo Drafthouse. Three movies, each shown with that special Alamo twist.
You had the great movie, BIG NIGHT with full five-course gourmet meal to mirror the awesome Italian food on display in the flick. You can’t get any less exploitationy than BIG NIGHT, which is perfect because the Alamo might love its exploitation, but it's never been about JUST the exploitation. Great cinema has always had a home there.
Gordon Jones runs in the AICN circle. He’s a talented artist…. He designed and executed the last couple BNAT posters. He did up a beautiful piece that he gave to Tim and Karrie to commemorate the original location. I wish I could have gotten a better picture of it, but here’s the moment the Leagues were presented with the art:
I understand it’s getting a place of honor at the Ritz. Great job, Gordon.
The second feature was EARTHQUAKE shown in Sensurround. They brought in huge subwoofers, giant stacks of speakers powered by 50,000 watts of rumble. The goal was to give a big “fuck you” to the neighboring clubs that have routinely annoyed us with their bass thumping during Weird Wednesday, Terror Thursday or any of their regular programming.
There was a genuine fear that they were going to shake the place the loose. The Alamo staff and patrons were given hard hats before the screening in case the ceiling tiles were vibrated out during the Earthquake scenes. And we needed them, too.
I hadn’t seen the movie and I still haven’t seen the very first tremor sequence. I was in the theater, of course, but I spent most of that sequence looking up at the ceiling as dust particles filtered down. I happened to be sitting underneath the video projector (for pre-show stuff) mounted to the ceiling, so for those first few minute I was eyeballin’ that. I wanted enough warning to duck underneath the wooden table if that fucker came crashing down.
As it were, the only thing that came close to being serious during the screening was a loose tile that dislodged… it didn’t fall, but if it had, it would have crushed Harry like the wicked witch he is.
The print was faded, many reels warped, causing the focus to shift a bit, but 50k or more wattage and a crowd totally into the experience made it better than any newly struck or remastered print playing at some retrospective somewhere.
The third film, the final film ever to grace the genuine silver screen at 4th and Colorado, was the immortal Weird Wednesday discovery that most called NIGHT WARNING, but it’ll always be known as BUTCHER BAKER NIGHTMARE MAKER, the title it was originally listed at, to me.
And it came with a special guest. Susan “SuSu” Tyrrell herself. In BUTCHER BAKER she plays the most psychotic creepy-ass mother ever portrayed in cinema. Yes, that includes Anthony Perkins and Joan Crawford/Faye Dunaway.
I remembered Tyrrell mostly from CRY-BABY, but BUTCHER BAKER is a powerhouse performance. I don’t know what I expected from Tyrrell, but she almost literally stepped off of the screen.
Well, maybe not “stepped.” She lost her legs a few years ago thanks to a blood disease and she was wheeled in by David Strong, an Alamo regular and true original himself. Tyrrell was wild, outrageous, outspoken and hilarious. From her frank recollections of Bo Svenson being a bastard of a man that had a different whore in his rocking trailer every single day (her words, not mine, Mr. Svenson) to her talking about how she never reads scripts (she just looks at her part, what the money is like and then reads the sides given to her every day on the set) to how bad she had to pee (she claimed her hollow legs were already both filled… I would hope she was joking, but with Tyrrell you can never tell).
It was a perfect night. Emotion was high, sure, but everybody had a good time.
Harry posted the video farewells I arranged from Don Coscarelli, Peter Jackson and Edgar Wright. Click here if you didn’t catch them yet. I felt like I had to do something. I am certainly not a brilliant artist, so I couldn’t do up a piece like Gordon did, but I wanted to play a small part in the final night, in honor of Tim and Karrie and the kindness and friendship they’ve shown me over the years. It felt right to have some filmmakers who have had great experiences as guests of the Alamo say their good-byes and thankfully Coscarelli, Jackson and Wright answered the call to be a part of the final night.
At the end of the triple bill there was a toast, led by League, and then those who wanted their seats got to dismantle them and take them out of the theater.
I stayed around a little bit, watched Monki grab as many Alamo seats as he could for his JOYSTICKS-themed room.
It started sinking in when the rows started emptying, blank space where there were full lines of seats thirty minutes before.
I still stuck around a bit, but then they announced the iconic neon sign was in the process of being removed from the front of the building. Outside, I watched the work truck pull up and the bastard that was to make Colorado more dull start to untangle his ladder.
That was too much for me. I couldn’t watch the killshot as it were. So, I left. The next night I was downtown again and I ended up driving down Colorado. That block is now lifeless, the building a corpse. The soul is gone, the body rotting.
The world has lost a little of its magic. Here’s hoping the Ritz is able to recapture it or at the very least create its own unique brand. It’ll never be the same, but the dream is that The Ritz will continue on the tradition began at 409 Colorado Street.
Without the Alamo Drafthouse I wouldn't be the geek I am today. I have many fond memories there... I've met some of my best friends, some of my idols and my longest lasting girlfriend to date at the Alamo. Thanks for caring about showmanship and preserving the theatrical experience... and thanks for the memories.
