There's no end of fun to be had with the double bill format, many films when viewed back-to-back take on entirely new meanings. The only thing holding you back are the limitations of your imagination.
There was a time when a ticket from the box office gave you a full evening's entertainment, and audiences could settle into their seats just after teatime to watch engrossed until the final reel ran off its spool, just in time to make if for last orders at the pub. Following on from a supporting program of newsreels, short films and trailers, cinema-goers could sit back and take in a short B-movie - low budget productions known as "quota-quickies" - warming them up nicely for the feature presentation. Few of us will remember those days. As cinema-going declined after the Second World War, multiplexes struggled to get bums on seats in their increasingly dilapidated auditoriums and instead focused on cramming in as many presentations of the feature film as they could in an evening (sound familiar? Not much has changed since). It was left to the smaller, single-screen independent cinemas to keep the double bill alive, and freed from the constraints of the traditional multiplex format curators were able to screen increasingly imaginative movie pairings. Genre pairings were commonplace, with the Friday night horror double-bill a popular favourite still found in some smaller independent cinemas every Halloween. Sequels and remakes allowed film buffs and geeks alike to compare and contrast their cherished movies alongside their inferior cousins, cheering and ranting alternately at the triumphs and the tragedies. More imaginative were the theme-based double bills, where films you wouldn't immediately associate with one another take on new meanings when shown back to back - the tonal and emotional shift from one well-chosen film to another has the effect of throwing them into sharp relief, where both the differences and similarities seem to coalesce and the audience views them in a new light. There's no end of fun to be had with the double bill format - the only thing holding you back are the limitations of your imagination. Here are some ideas to get you started, from the conventional to the unusual. What double bills would you like to see? Why not post a comment with your favourite movie pairings below?
