It's May 25, 1979, a three-day weekend is upon us, and the movie studios want us to spend some of our hard-earned dollars at the cinema. Alright then, what's showing?

The big movie debuting that Memorial Day weekend was "Alien" (Jeff Millar's review: "If you leave the theater with your nerves unjangled, you arrived in a coma."). Best place to catch it was probably at the Alabama Theater, in 70mm Six-Track Dolby Stereo, no less.

But if a chest-bursting creature wasn't your thing, you can watch "Grease." Again. (Note for those born after 1990: Before VHS, hit movies were often re-released in the theaters. You'll see in these photos that "Jaws," originally released in 1975, resurfaced again that weekend.)

And as the tagline suggests, "It just ain't summer without Burt." "Hooper," which reunited star Burt Reynolds with "Smokey and the Bandit" players Sally Field and stuntman-turned-director Hal Needham, popped up again in area theaters. You'd be a fool to pass up a chance to see Burt and Co. take on Terry Bradshaw at a big screen drive-in like the McClendon Triple.

Now if any of these movies are just a little too mainstream for your taste, there's always the Majestic Metro on Preston, where "The Killer Snakes" was showing. (BeyondHollywood.com: "[O]nly recommended to die hard fans of exploitation cinema, or those strange individuals who enjoy seeing real life snakes being pulverised.")

If that doesn't interest you, you can venture even further from all that is decent with "The Erotic Adventures of Pinocchio" playing at, believe it or not, the River Oaks Theatre. You'll have to Google that one yourself if you want any more information.

Finally, inside these pages from the Chronicle, there's a review of the Village People concert at the Summit. As the Chronicle's Dale Adamson wrote:

"The Village People are six guys dressed up like cowboys, Indians, cops, soldiers, bikers and construction workers chanting silly lyrics to a monotonous disco beat selling millions of records and -- judging from the medium-size crowd at the Summit Thursday night -- fooling enough of the people enough of the time to justify their existence, at least from a business standpoint, if not a musical one."

Though the headlining act might have been, as Adamson put it, "boring," opener Gloria Gaynor provided the "only redeeming social value to the show."

(You can download a PDF of the images above here.)