The double feature is a
motion picture
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
industry phenomenon in which theatres would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.
Opera use
Opera houses staged two operas together for the sake of providing long performance for the audience. This was related to one-act or two-act short operas that were otherwise commercially hard to stage alone. A prominent example is the double-bill of ''
Pagliacci
''Pagliacci'' (; literal translation, "Clowns") is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who m ...
'' with ''
Cavalleria rusticana
''Cavalleria rusticana'' (; Italian for "rustic chivalry") is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from an 1880 short story of the same name and subsequent play b ...
'' first staged on 22 December 1893 by the
Met. The two operas have since been frequently performed as a double-bill, a pairing referred to in the operatic world colloquially as "Cav and Pag".
Origin and format
The double feature originated in the later 1930s. Though the dominant presentation model, consisting of all or some of the following, continued well into the 1940s:
* One or more live acts
* An
animated cartoon
Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most anima ...
short subject
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
* One or more live-action comedy shorts
* One or more novelty shorts
* A
newsreel
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, informa ...
* The main
feature film
A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...
With the widespread arrival of sound film in American theaters in 1929, many independent exhibitors began dropping the then-dominant presentation model.
Movie theater
A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall ( Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...
s suffered a downturn in business in the early years of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
.
Theater owners decided they could both attract more customers and save on costs if they offered two movies for the price of one. The tactic worked; audiences considered the cost of a theater ticket good value for several hours of escapist and varied entertainment and the practice became a standard pattern of programming.
In the typical 1930s double bill, the screening began with a variety program consisting of
trailers, a
newsreel
A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, informa ...
, a cartoon and/or a short film preceding a low-budget second feature (the
B movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
), followed by a short interlude. Lastly, the high-budget main feature (the A movie) ran.
A
neighborhood theatre
Predating multiplex movie theatres, neighborhood theatres were the colloquial name given to smaller movie theatres located in local neighborhoods, as opposed to the large movie palaces located in downtown areas.
Neighborhood theatres were mostly ...
running a double feature won out over a higher-priced first-run theatre with only one feature film. The major studios took note of this, and began making their own B features using the technicians and sets of the studio and featuring stars on their way up or on their way down. The major studios also made
film series A film series or movie series (also referred to as a film franchise or movie franchise) is a collection of related films in succession that share the same fictional universe, or are marketed as a series.
This article explains what film series are ...
featuring recurring characters.
Although the double feature put many short comedy producers out of business, it was the primary source of revenue for smaller Hollywood studios, such as
Republic
A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
and
Monogram
A monogram is a motif made by overlapping or combining two or more letters or other graphemes to form one symbol. Monograms are often made by combining the initials of an individual or a company, used as recognizable symbols or logos. A series o ...
, that specialized in B movie production.
Decline
![Astor theatre st kilda](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Astor_theatre_st_kilda.jpg)
The double feature arose partly because of a studio practice known as "
block booking
Block booking is a system of selling multiple films to a theater as a unit. Block booking was the prevailing practice among Hollywood's major studios from the turn of the 1930s until it was outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in ''Uni ...
," a form of
tying in which major Hollywood studios required theaters to buy
B-movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double featur ...
s along with the more desirable A-movies. The
U.S. Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
decided that this practice was illegal in ''
United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.
''United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc.'', 334 U.S. 131 (1948) (also known as the Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948, the Paramount Case, or the Paramount Decision), was a landmark United States Supreme Court antitrust case that decided the f ...
'' in 1948, contributing to the end of the
studio system
A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the Golden Age of Hol ...
.
Without block booking, the studios no longer had an incentive to make their own B features. But audiences at first-run
movie palace
A movie palace (or picture palace in the United Kingdom) is any of the large, elaborately decorated movie theaters built between the 1910s and the 1940s. The late 1920s saw the peak of the movie palace, with hundreds opening every year between 192 ...
s,
neighborhood theatre
Predating multiplex movie theatres, neighborhood theatres were the colloquial name given to smaller movie theatres located in local neighborhoods, as opposed to the large movie palaces located in downtown areas.
Neighborhood theatres were mostly ...
s,
and
drive-in theatre
A drive-in theater or drive-in cinema is a form of movie theater, cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor movie screen, a projection booth, a concession stand, and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers ...
s still expected a program of two features. In 1948 nearly two-thirds of the movie houses in the United States were advertising double features.
Following the Supreme Court ruling of 1948, known as the Paramount Consent Decree, the source for the second feature changed. The second feature could be:
* a major studio re-release of an older feature,
* an older feature re-released from firms that specialised in acquiring and re-releasing older films such as
Realart
Realart Pictures was a motion picture distribution company founded in 1948 by Jack Broder and Joseph Harris. The company specialized in reissues of older pictures, particularly from the library of Universal Pictures, but also handled an occasion ...
and
Astor Pictures
Astor Pictures was a motion picture distribution company in the United States from 1930 to 1963. It was founded by Robert M. Savini (29 August 1886 – 29 April 1956). Astor specialized in film re-releases. It later released independently m ...
,
* a low budget feature contracted from a smaller studio.
James H. Nicholson
James Harvey Nicholson (September 14, 1916 – December 10, 1972) was an American movie producer, film producer. He is best known as the co-founder, with Samuel Z. Arkoff, of American International Pictures.
Early life
Nicholson was born on ...
and
Samuel Z. Arkoff
Samuel Zachary Arkoff (June 12, 1918 – September 16, 2001) was an American producer of B movies.
Life and career
Arkoff was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, to Russian Jewish parents. He was the son of Helen (Lurie) and Louis Arkoff, who ran his ...
formed
American International Pictures
American International Pictures (AIP) is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing fi ...
in the mid-1950s to produce and distribute low budget features. Unfortunately, they
discovered exhibitors were only interested in buying their pictures as supporting features (a
B movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
) at a flat rate. Once Nicholson and Arkoff combined two features into a
program sold as a double bill, each picture given equal billing in the advertising and backed up with an explosive ad campaign, theaters were willing to exhibit on a percentage basis.
The exhibitors may have kept a larger share of the box office than the major distributors demanded,
but AIP's share of the box office was enough to keep it from going out of business.
The double bill was sold on a percentage basis and each feature was given equal billing in newspaper advertisements and promotional materials. Since the trailers and advertising promoted the two titles, exhibitors were discouraged from separating the features in the package. To distributors and exhibitors, it was a substantially different policy than the standard double feature in that it was not a top-billed A feature combined with a minor-billed support feature sold at a flat rate (a
B movie
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
).
By the mid-1960s, double features had been mostly abandoned in non–drive-ins in favor of the modern single-feature screening, in which only one feature film is exhibited. However, double bills of popular series that had previously been run as a single feature, such as the
James Bond
The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...
and
Matt Helm
Matt Helm is a fictional character created by American author Donald Hamilton (1916-2006). Helm is a U.S. government counter-agent, a man whose primary job is to kill or nullify enemy agents—not a spy or secret agent in the ordinary sense of t ...
series in the
superspy
A superspy is a glamorous, important spy, especially seen in spy fiction
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intr ...
genre, and the ''
Man with No Name
The Man with No Name ( it, Uomo senza nome) is the antihero character portrayed by Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's "''Dollars Trilogy''" of Italian Spaghetti Western films: ''A Fistful of Dollars'' (1964), '' For a Few Dollars More'' (1965), ...
'' and ''
The Stranger''
spaghetti Western
The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...
s were re-released together by the main studios.
The end of the first-run double feature also saw the end of continuous screenings, an exhibition policy where a theater opened at 10:30 or 11:00 AM and ran the program without breaks until 12:00 midnight. Customers bought tickets and entered the theater at any time during the program.
While most cinemas have discontinued the practice of showing the double feature, it has nostalgia appeal.
The Astor Theatre
The Astor Theatre is a classic, single-screen revival movie theatre located in the inner Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, that has a long and illustrious history. The site at 1-3 Chapel Street was first used for public entertainment in 1913 when ...
in
St. Kilda,
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
,
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
, established in 1936, continues the tradition of the double feature to this day.
Short films still occasionally precede the feature presentation (
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios (commonly known as Pixar () and stylized as P I X A R) is an American computer animation studio known for its critically and commercially successful computer animated feature films. It is based in Emeryville, Californi ...
films generally feature a short, for example), but the double feature is now effectively extinct in first-run movie theaters in the U.S.
Following the success of ''
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' is a 1988 American live-action/animated comedy mystery film directed by Robert Zemeckis, produced by Frank Marshall and Robert Watts, and loosely adapted by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman from Gary K. Wolf's 1 ...
'', three
Roger Rabbit
Roger Rabbit is an animated anthropomorphic rabbit. The character first appeared in author Gary K. Wolf's 1981 novel, ''Who Censored Roger Rabbit?'' In the book, Roger is second banana in a popular comic strip, "Baby Herman". Roger hires private ...
cartoon shorts were created to be shown as preludes to other Disney films, in an effort to revive the viewing of cartoon shorts before major films. Only three were made and the scheme failed.
Many
repertory
A repertory theatre is a theatre in which a resident company presents works from a specified repertoire, usually in alternation or rotation.
United Kingdom
Annie Horniman founded the first modern repertory theatre in Manchester after withdrawing ...
houses continue to show two films, usually related in some way, back to back.
During the 1990s, many
VHS cassettes that showed two films on the same tape (the second was often a sequel to the first film) were self-named as "double features."
In the 21st century
In 2007, filmmakers
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
and
Robert Rodriguez
Robert Anthony Rodriguez (; born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 ac ...
released their individual films ''
Planet Terror
''Planet Terror'' is a 2007 American action horror film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. Set in Texas, the film follows the survivors of a biochemical outbreak as they battle zombie-like creatures and a rogue military unit. It stars Rose ...
'' and ''
Death Proof
''Death Proof'' is a 2007 American action-thriller film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars Kurt Russell as a stuntman who murders young women with modified cars he purports to be "death-proof". Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Jo ...
'' as a double feature under the title ''
Grindhouse
A grindhouse or action house is an American term for a theatre that mainly shows low-budget horror, splatter and exploitation films for adults. According to historian David Church, this theater type was named after the "grind policy", a film ...
'', edited together with fake
exploitation film
An exploitation film is a film that tries to succeed financially by exploiting current trends, niche genres, or lurid content. Exploitation films are generally low-quality "B movies", though some set trends, attract critical attention, become hi ...
trailers and 1970s-era
snipe
A snipe is any of about 26 wading bird species in three genera in the family Scolopacidae. They are characterized by a very long, slender bill, eyes placed high on the head, and cryptic/camouflaging plumage. The ''Gallinago'' snipes have a near ...
s in order to replicate the experience of viewing a double feature in a
grindhouse
A grindhouse or action house is an American term for a theatre that mainly shows low-budget horror, splatter and exploitation films for adults. According to historian David Church, this theater type was named after the "grind policy", a film ...
theater. Although ''Grindhouse'' received critical acclaim, it was a complete financial flop in the United States. The films were screened individually in international markets and on DVD.
Another recent double feature was the
Duel Project
Duel Project was a challenge issued to Ryuhei Kitamura and Yukihiko Tsutsumi by producer Shinya Kawai during a night of drinking. The challenge was for the two directors to see who could make the best feature film with two principal actors/actresse ...
, when Japanese directors
Ryuhei Kitamura
(born May 30, 1969) is a Japanese film director, producer, and screenwriter.
Biography
Early life
Kitamura was born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. He dropped out of high school at age 17 and relocated to Sydney, Australia, where he attended a sch ...
and
Yukihiko Tsutsumi
is a Japanese television and film director. He began directing commercials and music promotion videos as an employee of Nihon Television. After spending time abroad, he returned and started his own production company, ''Office Crescendo'', from w ...
created competing films to be shown and voted on by the premier audience.
One of the
Marvel Animated Features
''Marvel Animated Features'' (''MAF'') is a series of the first eight direct-to-video animated superhero films made by MLG Productions, a joint venture between Marvel Studios (later Marvel Animation) and Lions Gate Entertainment.
History
In ...
, a direct-to-video series features ''Hulk vs.'' which is a double feature, has ''Hulk vs. Wolverine'' and ''Hulk vs. Thor''.
More recently, double features of re-released popular films hit the big screen. The first was of the re-release of ''
Toy Story
''Toy Story'' is a 1995 American computer-animated comedy film directed by John Lasseter (in his feature directorial debut), produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The first installment in the '' Toy Story ...
'' and ''
Toy Story 2
''Toy Story 2'' is a 1999 American computer-animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. The second installment in the Toy Story (franchise), ''Toy Story'' franchise and the sequel to ''Toy Story'' (1995), it wa ...
'' that started October 2, 2009 before the release of ''
Toy Story 3
''Toy Story 3'' is a 2010 American computer-animated comedy-drama film produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures. It is the third installment in the ''Toy Story'' series and the sequel to ''Toy Story 2'' (1999). It was d ...
'' in the following year. Both films were in
Disney Digital 3D
Disney Digital 3-D is a brand name used by The Walt Disney Company to describe three-dimensional films made and released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures mostly under the Walt Disney Pictures label and shown exclusively using digital proj ...
in select movie theaters. The next double feature was a re-release of ''
Twilight
Twilight is light produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, when the Sun is below the horizon, which illuminates the lower atmosphere and the Earth's surface. The word twilight can also refer to the periods of time when this il ...
'' and ''
The Twilight Saga: New Moon'' for one night only, on June 29, 2010, shortly before the midnight screening of ''
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse'' in select theaters.
In February 2011, it was announced that the 14th
Pokémon
(an abbreviation for in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures (company), Creatures, the owners of the trademark and copyright of the franchise.
In terms of ...
movie ''
Victini and the Black Hero: Zekrom and Victini and the White Hero: Reshiram'', due in July, would be released as a double feature, though both films are actually "versions" of each other, with differences related to plot points and character designs varying between the version being watched.
In 2022, Russian cinema launched double features with American and Russian movies. The first film is a Hollywood blockbuster, it designated as "free pre-feature service". The second film, designated as main feature, is Russian patriotic propaganda movie or
short film
A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...
(tickets are sold for it).
References
{{Independent production
Film and video terminology
History of film