The Best Movie Gift I Ever Received

The best movie gift I ever received was a Season Pass to the Dubinsky Brothers Chain of movie houses (now defunct) in the Illinois Quad Cities, of which the Sierra Theater was one. I won it predicting the Oscars the most accurately in the theater's in-house contest. I had won other Academy Award-predicting contests, including one with a year's supply of bread and one that awarded me 50 passes to see the Alfred Hitchcock film (his last) "The Family Plot," (also 1976, (www.imdb.com/title/tt0074512/ ) where a blue plastic black-and-white television set was my prize, awarded me onstage at the Capitol theater by then-ABC anchor Jim King.

In subsequent years, that small blue plastic portable black-and-white TV set with rabbit ears made the rounds from college dorm rooms to my mother's elderly high-rise. It always made me remember trooping off to the Capitol Theater in downtown Davenport, Iowa, (now closed) with the 50 students in my English classes at Silvis Junior High School who had made the Honor Roll and, therefore, made the cut for one of the 50 free tickets.

I always felt sorry for one of my favorite students, Tom Bollaert, who put me on the spot with the question, "If you win the contest, Mrs. Wilson, will you take us to the movies?" At the time, I thought the odds of my winning were extremely slim and said, "Sure!"

I had 150 students in those days of teaching at Silvis Junior High School (one year, 1969-1970, I had 35 students per class). I was awarded only 50 tickets. Some system had to be devised to make the number of students fit the number of freebie tickets. Tom---whose idea it had all been---just missed the cut (Sorry, Tom.)

The building that was the Sierra Theater (first film shown there: 1968's "Funny Girl", (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funny_Girl) still stands in the parking of a Hy-Vee Supermarket (formerly a Target store), but it is now a rehabilitation center for a local hospital...not a theater. The very first film I viewed there using my free Dubinsky Brothers pass was "The Omen," with Gregory Peck and Lee Remick.(www.imdb.com/title/tt0075005/) "The Omen" went on to become one of the biggest hits of the year 1976. Looking back, 34 years later, it's easy to see that big name stars were attempting to jump on the "classy horror movie" bandwagon that was then taking off in a big way. (Hence my book's title, "It Came from the '70s", (www.ItCamefromtheSeventies.com).

The box office train for horror movies had actually started rolling with 1960's "Psycho," (www.imdb.com/title/tt0054215/ ),directed by the inimitable Alfred Hitchcock. It would take a good ten years before slasher flicks really gathered speed and strength, with some classic horror flicks ["Alien" in 1979 comes to mind (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)] joining the less-classy "Halloween," (www.imdb.com/title/tt0077651/), "Dawn of the Dead," (www.imdb.com/title/tt0077402/), "When A Stranger Calls" (www.imdb.com/title/tt0080130/) fare [all discussed in my recently-released book "It Came from the '70s" (www.ItCamefromtheSeventies.com)]

Said Harvey Bernhard, producer of "The Omen," at the time (quotes from the book): "My picture was the Number One box office hit of 1976. Since its release in July, it has grossed about $110 million worldwide and it's still going strong. We earned $80 million domestically, and another $20 million in Japan alone. 'All the Presidents' Men' did as well in this country, but did not do as well abroad. Our picture has international appeal because it's about the devil. But American politics, as in 'All the Presidents' Men,' has limited appeal overseas. (*If you watch "All the President's Men" today, the opening sequence with typewriter keys will instantly date it. [www.ovguide.com/movies_tv/all_the_president's_men.htm]) The figures just came in for our first week in Nairobi, Kenya. We racked up 145,000 pounds, which is unheard of there. The theaters were 92% full for all performances. Of course, we'll be in the Top Ten Box Office pictures, if we're not there already." (Quotes from "It Came from the '70s", p. 228, by Connie Corcoran Wilson, The Merry Blacksmith Press, www.merryblacksmith.com). Producer Bernhard said he was working on a sequel to "The Omen." (www.imdb.com/title/tt0075005 )."The pictures will all follow the progress of the devil. In 'The Omen,' he was found in a child . We will see him successively as a teenager, a man in his twenties, and as an older man."

"The Omen" was remade in 2006 with Liev Schrieber and Julia Stiles in the Gregory Peck and Lee Remick parts. Somehow, it just wasn't the same. That remake was not like the Coen Brothers remake of "True Grit," which is garnering critical plaudits this Christmas season as being better than the original John Wayne film.(www.TrueGritMovie.com) (

Now, as a working critic, I no longer enter contests, but I do write about films, cover them with enthusiasm (see my October coverage of the Chicago Film Festival) and I plan a few more movie books, so stay tuned. [In the meantime, check out my article "The Best Movies of the Decade 2000-2010," Number One on Google.(www.associatedcontent.com 'º Arts & Entertainment)