ABSTRACT
The 1970s-era exhibition of midnight movies, commonly associated with urban repertory theatres and university film societies, may hold an especially privileged place in cult film history for segregating esoteric films into less accessible viewing contexts, but drive-in and grindhouse theatres also occupy a significant place in the annals of cult spectatorship. As an exhibition policy that did little to combat cinema’s generalized disrepute as a populist entertainment else, it is little surprise that independently owned theatres operating on grind policies earned special scorn as potential economic threats to studio-established exhibition practices. The film establishment’s denigration of grindhouse patrons’ supposed tastes was, however, rooted in the very restrictions imposed upon such theatres by the studio-era monopoly on film distribution. The total number of US drive-in screens and attendance fluctuated over the decades, dipping over the 1960s and recovering in the 1970s, until a long industry collapse over the 1980s.
