They're Not Going To Eat Off The Van Buren China

Mars Attacks
The Gap Theatre - Wind Gap, PA
The schedule for the next couple of months at The Gap is an impressive and eclectic mix of films across different genres, time periods, and countries of origin.  If I lived closer to this place, I'd probably stop in at least a couple of times a week.  In fact, I would have been here on Tuesday if I knew they were screening The Hills Have Eyes.  I'm kind of bummed out to have missed it.

Tonight's 35mm screening of the 1996 Tim Burton classic Mars Attacks was one that I couldn't miss.  It also marks the first time that I'm missing a Thursday Thread-Up screening at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater since the series began in May of last year.  They were showing a different movie from 1996, the Baz Luhrmann adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which was a movie that I saw on VHS the year that it was released and really have no desire to ever see again.

Mars Attacks is based on a set of Topps trading cards which were first released in 1962 and have been re-released several times in the following decades.  I had some of the cards from the 1984 reprint series that I kept in a binder with cards from the 1988 Topps Dinosaurs Attack when I was a kid.  They were my favorite novelty cards other than Garbage Pail Kids when I was growing up, so I was pretty hyped up when it premiered as a major motion picture when I was 16 years old.  Despite my excitement, I didn't end up getting to see it on the big screen during its initial run in theaters, so this opportunity to see it on an original 35mm print was too good to pass by.  It's every bit as funny today as it was in the late 90's.

I may not be able to make it out to The Gap once or twice a week, but this definitely will not be my last visit of the season.