Double feature
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.
[edit] Origin and format
Movie theaters, interested in attracting customers during the Great Depression, began changing the way they booked movies. In the 1920s, before the Depression and the advent of sound film, an evening at the cinema would often consist of the following:
- One or more live acts
- An animated cartoon short subject
- One or more live-action comedy shorts (e.g., Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, or The Three Stooges)
- One or more novelty shorts: a musical, a travelogue, etc.
- A newsreel
- The main feature film
Theater owners decided that they could both attract more customers and save on costs if they offered two movies for the price of one. In the typical 1930s double bill, the screening began with a variety program consisting of trailers, a newsreel, a cartoon and/or a short film preceding a low-budget second feature (the B movie), followed by a short interlude. Afterward, the high-budget main feature (the A movie) ran. Although the double feature put many short comedy producers out of business, it was the primary source of revenue for smaller Hollywood studios, such as Republic and Monogram, that specialized in B movie production.
[edit] Decline of the double feature
The double feature arose partly because of a studio practice known as "block booking," a form of tying in which major Hollywood studios required theaters to buy B-movies along with the more desirable A-movies. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that this practice was illegal in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. in 1948.
By the 1960s, double features had been mostly abandoned in favor of the modern single-feature screening, in which only one feature film is exhibited. Short films still occasionally precede the feature presentation (Pixar films generally feature a short, for example), but the double feature is now effectively extinct in first-run movie theaters in the U.S.
Following the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, three Roger Rabbit cartoon shorts were created to be shown as preludes to other Disney films, in an effort to revive the Double Features. Only three were made and the scheme failed.
Many repertory houses continue to show two films, usually related in some way, back to back.
[edit] References
- In the 1975 film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the first song is called Science Fiction, Double Feature.
- The Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez collaboration "Grind House" is a tribute to the Double Feature phenomenon consisting of two feature films; "Planet Terror" and "Death Proof".
