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History
The Bad Movie Club has a long and reputable history, reaching back to 1895. If you have a relative or ancestor who was part of the BMC at some point, we'd like to hear from you.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a sharp rise in our culture's appreciation of bad movies. Some scholars attribute this to the rise of kitcsh and the collector's culture of the 1980s or the rise of Mariah Carey. Most, however, see the emergence of home video as integral in the spread of the mocking commentary style so necessary for the appreciation of bad movies.
The uplift in bad movie appreciation, the founding and production of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the notoriety of the NY/UF Bad Movie Club chapters resulted in a rash of new club foundings, including chapters in Iowa, Los Angeles, and Toledo. But don't let the nation-wide success of the club in the last twenty-five years fool you--we haven't lost our roots. Indeed, the UF and Chi chapters of the Bad Movie Club still set the standard for all the clubs to follow.
Though bad movies continued to be produced throughout the 1960s, the Bad Movie Club's membership waned, both in New York and in Gainesville. Membership spiked, however, after the club announced its plan to organize a six-month trip to Paris, where the club would attend daily screenings at the Cinematheque. The group left on January 3, 1968, and was due back in early June.
The debacle that followed has oft been blamed on the UF chapter's faculty advisor, Dr. Wayne P. Chubb. Chubb, a self-described hippie, did little to guide the students during their trip to France, and was thus taken by surprise when he received news of the club's intimate involvement in the seizure of a Latin quarter cinema house on 25 May. The students, who had renamed themselves "Les Enfants du Cinema Mal," screened a pilfered print of Plan Nine from Outer Space until Paris riot police chased them from the building.
In 1951, the Bad Movie Club officially founded its second chapter, at the University of Florida in Gainesville. The UF Chapter was founded by seven Barnardians who moved South with their family business: Walliburton wool. The Walliburton Seven, as they were known at Barnard, were die-hard Bad Movie Clubbers; they started the UF chapter as soon as they arrived.
The Walliburton Seven
By 1953, the UF Bad Movie Club had surpassed the Columbia/Barnard chapters in membership. Local historians attribute this high membership to the Walliburton Seven's enthusiasm, but it is perhaps more accurate to acknowledge that Columbia and Barnard enjoy a more cosmopolitan environment that may compete for attention from entertainment afficionados.
The nineteen twenties were a riotous time for SACMP. Like the rest of the nation, they reveled in Chaplin's and Keaton's antics. Of course, being afficionados of all moving pictures, or "movies," SACMP also attended screenings from "Barnyard Studios" and United Studio's afternoon "Fright shows," featuring a SACMP favorite, Lon Chaney.
Of course, the depression was a particularly dire time for the SACMP, as even the relatively well-off young men of Columbia. In an effort to save themselves some pocket money, the SACMP officers voted to join the club with the sister organization at Barnard College. The alliance with the Ladies League of Proletarian Entertainment would not only increase attendance at the meetings, but given the progressive Barnardian practice of paying their own way, would save the SACMP lads valuable liquor money.
In 1895, three young men of fine repute and upstanding sensibility found themselves entranced by Edison's mysterious box, the kinetoscope.
Twice weekly William Cohen, Archibald St. John, and Patrick McGonnegal broke from the confines of Columbia University (where the men were reading for Law degrees) and pushed through the bustling streets to 1155 Broadway. Paying their twopence, the men would stride through the crowd, looking for open moving-picture boxes, or as Thomas Alvin Edison called them, kinetoscopes. Cohen, St. John, and McGonnegal kept their habit throughout their tenure at Columbia, recruiting several other young men into joining them in the smoky kineto-parlours.
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