Nah, there's a lot of schlock films that people watch for genuine fun, in spite of how bad it might be. That's the feeling I'm wondering about when they were newly released. Stuff like people seeing Return of the Living Dead for the first time, or like, Invasion USA.
That's one of the scenes I remember. I am aware that it was in the comic adaptation. And it is often sited as the reason myself and others mistakenly remember this being in the movie. Another minor detail I remember is the Joker saying the line, "Where does he get those wonderful toys?" All video versions I've seen cut out "Where does he" and skips to "Get those wonderful toys." It doesn't sound right at all. Another scene I distinctly remember is Batman having a conversation with Alfred while he was in the Batwing. Alfred was seen on a tiny screen on the console of the Batwing.
Also in the comic adaptation there's a scene where the cops find Batman's body as he was thought to have fallen off the building as well. It's revealed to be Alexander Knox as Batman had taken his cape and cowl off and put it on Knox's unconscious body. You see Batman without the cape and cowl walking away from the scene.
All of that reminds me, it would be interesting to go back and see Gremlins again to verify something from my memory. I have a distinct memory of a scene showing Billy’s dog knocking over Mrs. Deagle’s “imported Bavarian snowman” as he’s following Billy to work but I can’t find any evidence such a scene was filmed. However, it was in the novelization, which included a few other plot details that were dropped in the final movie. So maybe I’m just conflating the movie with the book.
For those wondering about this fabled comic adaptation... In Batman Returns, while Batman is driving the Batskiboat through the sewers toward the abandoned zoo, he is in radio contact with Alfred, who is in the cave jamming the Penguin's signal to launch rockets into Gotham. Alfred isn't shown on a little screen in that movie, but he would be shown on a tiny wristwatch screen in Batman Forever. It's very easy for the memory to merge these things together, especially when the same actors appear in multiple films or the cockpit sets are very similar-looking. My brain does it too. I thought for sure I would be able to pull a shot of Alfred on a screen in the Batmobile from the Batman: TAS episode Mudslide ("Don't take this the wrong way, sir, but your goose is cooked.") But looking back at the episode Alfred is speaking on a chordless landline phone from Wayne Manor and doesn't appear on a screen in the car at all. ~L~
Of course, movies that were meant to appeal to certain audiences that way did so, whether it is something subversive like Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or something outrageous and over the top like a John Waters movie. But they were typically understood going in only by real cult audiences. I think the Mystery Science Theater or Red Letter Media type of audience seeking out the "so bad it is good" movie being so common is a relatively new phenomenon. Over time the phenomenon grew, audiences became more snarky and cynical, and by the 1990s and 2000s movies were intentionally made to appeal to that kind of audience in a way that they weren't before. Snakes on a Plane is probably the height of that kind of thing. To get a snapshot of how movies were perceived back then you could check out how reviewers discussed them. You can track down old episodes of Siskel and Ebert from the late 70s and early 80s, and they would do a "Dog of the Week" segment where they mercilessly mock bad movies. So, that certainly happened. They also loved the original Swamp Thing movie because it was so schlocky, but fun. Also, you could see reviews from Joe Bob Briggs of the various B-movies he reviewed, though his tongue was often firmly in cheek when doing so.
Joe Bob is a great piece of living genre history, though while his current commentary is great it's, again, nowadays mostly through a modern lens and not quite what I mean. His old reviews were amusing, often insightful, but fairly brief. The mainstream film criticism of the era is too stodgy I think for appreciating the schlock of that era. Oddly enough the yt algorithm has been pushing Siskel and Ebert 'worst of the year' episodes for a while now (probably because I watched red letter media). But what I'm getting at is that genre film / exploitation film / low budget sleaze was a guilty pleasure for a lot of folks from like... The drive-in era onwards? The 50s sci Fi films, the 60s horror films and 70s Kung Fu and exploitation films, on to the action/sci-fi/horror b-movies of the 80s. I'm saying I'd like to experience those in their original release environments, before they became cult classics / so bad they're good films.
I would also like to go in a time machine and see those movies, as an adult, when they came out in this bygone era. Something like Basket Case or Re-Animator must have been a blast to see.
Good lord, this thread is making me feel old. Yeah, saw all of them in theaters. Yup. Both in theater and then later in drive-in. No, even future fanboys wouldn't be enough. The film opened against Aliens as it was gaining momentum, it didn't really have a chance. I have no idea how big of a release Princess Bride got here, but it was one of those that flew under the radar entirely and was a later home video purchase. The hype was real for ROTJ. One of my parents friends invited us over and we watched Star Wars and Empire on home video before seeing ROTJ so it was all fresh for us. When ROTJ came out, Toys R' Us by me had an entire aisle of Star Wars merchandise and struggled to keep up after ROTJ had been out for a while. I will admit, we slept on Clue, I have no doubt if we'd known how good it was, we would've seen it. Man, that was such a phenomenon at the time. TV stations were showing the Adam West Batman movie, I had friend groups wanting to see it, it was huge on home video and really propelled home video stores in popularity. We rented the last copy a brand new store called Blockbuster had and they probably had 70 copies of the movie to rent; literally the entire back wall of the place was nothing but Batman. In a way, that was a pretty important movie to me, it was the first time I thought the antagonist was far more interesting and wanted more and less of the protagonist would've been okay with me. Let's see, Willow is probably the only other big film that I saw in theaters that I can think of; that one was special; my mom was taking a night class and my dad completely uncharacteristically suggested a movie that night and that's what we saw. Again, we were matinees, dollar theater, and drive-in when we did see movies to save on costs when I was growing up, so for my dad to just up and suggest it with no warning was unusual. I get the idea, it's a fair chunk of why I see Marvel films in theaters, so you also get the shared audience reactions, but I fear a great many films it wouldn't be that great of an experience. Movies like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", "Batman", ROTJ, sure, there were reactions and the movie really grabbed the audience, but you also had films that had minimal reactions for audiences, Raiders and to dip into the 90's for a moment, the first TMNT movie, at least when I saw them, not much of an audience reaction during the movie, just lot's of pleased people afterwards. Since I lived through the entire 80's, it's hard to pick. Maybe the Thing since it likely would've had good audience reactions.
Batman hadn't been out on VHS long before we got our 1st VCR, and Batman was the very 1st VHS we got.
