The Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY

Bob Dylan is opening there next month, marking a rebirth of the famous music venue.

Pfffft.

Music venue? I was raised in Port Chester. It was a movie theater when I was a kid. And every Saturday, they had kids' matinees. The best of these included space/monster movies. Creature Features. Whatever you wanted to call them. Double features, plus cartoons and coming attractions. A movie theater virtually packed to the ceiling with an audience ranging in age from about 8 to 12, with one sole adult, the theater manager, doing his futile best to keep a lid on the proceedings.

These were the movies I would watch with gaping jaw, and then go home nonchalantly and not be able to get to sleep out of sheer cold terror. One of the best of these, if not the best, was Enemy from Space. I only ever saw it the once, 50 some odd years ago, and I still remember that this gook came from Jupiter attached to rocks, and it jumped off the rocks and took over humans and made them slaves, collecting the rest of the rocks and getting their passengers into giant tanks where they could breathe their native methane. The monsters, once assembled, were fairly blobbish and run of the mill, but that whole idea of a mind-controlled slave army... In a way it was another twist on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, of course, but when an idea is good, run with it.

By the time Five Million Years to Earth came around, I was too old to lose sleep over a movie, but let me tell you, this one with its primal satanic imagery still managed to shake me up a bit. The whole exercise was way more complex than simple invading extraterrestrials.

I don't know when I finally put it all together and realized that they were of a part, both being Quatermass stories. As explained in ‘QUATERMASS AND THE PIT’: THE ORIGINAL, CLASSIC TV SERIES BY NIGEL KNEALE, this all started as a British TV series. And my guess is, it is pretty well forgotten, as are the movies. I can't recall, until seeing this article, a mention of Quatermass in years.

There's a video of the TV version of Million in the posting. I wonder how it compares to the movie, and if it holds up on its own. As soon as I get a few hours... In any case, find the two movies, if you're a classic SF film buff. At the very least, you'll be amused.