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That's the ticket: An upcoming festival helps you super-size your entertainment

(FILM FORUM)

Three cheers for double bills.

At a time when you can pay close to $20 for a single movie (along with half-an-hour of bad commercials and deafening trailers), it's about time we remembered when theaters gave you more than your money's worth.

And a summer festival at New York's Film Forum is helping do just that.

Running from August 19 through September 13, "Return of the Double Feature" presents 26 pairs of classic movies. Each show's admission is the price of a single $14 ticket (only $8 for members) and programs range from arthouse classics to golden-age pleasures. (Visit their site for a complete schedule.)

The double-feature sprang to life during the Depression, when a couple of coins bought you an "A" feature, a lesser, bottom-of-the-bill "B," a cartoon, a newsreel, a comedy short and maybe even a live performance. (And, if you were lucky, Dish Night!)

It was a solid four or five hours of entertainment for pocket change and it eventually encouraged the industry to launch an ad campaign declaring "Movies Are Your Best Entertainment!" ("MAYBE," smirked the critics who noticed the less-than-felicitous acronym.)

But as the A movies grew bigger, and longer, to compete with TV - and theaters tried to maximize admissions, and profits -- the B pictures left for their own world of grindhouses and drive-ins. The double-feature disappeared.

It sprang back to life in the '70s, though, as revival houses - many of them in college towns - cashed in on a growing appreciation of cinema (and a sudden nostalgia boom). At one time there were at least half-a-dozen Manhattan theaters twinning old movies, and every house had its own personality. (At Theater 80 St. Marks, it was classic Warner Bros.; at Cinema Village, it was concert films and "head" flicks.)

But then came the waves of videos, and DVDs, and Blu-Rays, and most of those theaters disappeared or changed their programming.

The Film Forum, though, while concentrating on first-run indies, imports and documentaries, has always kept the revival-house spirit alive. So it made sense for them to dedicate one of their screens to a program that ranges from double-shots of French romance ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg"/"The Young Girls of Rochefort") to classic noir ("Mildred Pierce"/"Double Indemnity"), from mini-fests of early Stanley Kubrick ("Paths of Glory"/"The Killing") to generation-spanning takes on Raymond Chandler ("The Big Sleep"/"The Long Goodbye").

I'll be there September 10th, for the afternoon programs of "Dial M for Murder" and "House of Wax." Come by and say hello (and - shameless plug - get a copy of my new book "The Alfred Hitchcock Encyclopedia"). Oh and both films - a particular rarity for the Hitchcock thriller - will be presented in their original 3D. So if you sit up close, don't forget to duck.

And then settle in and enjoy a day at the movies the way it used to be.

Stephen Whitty may be reached at stephenjwhitty@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @stephenwhitty. Find him on Facebook.

