A closer look
The granddaddy of all midnight movies died a brutal death at the standard box office. It wasn't until 1976, when 20th Century Fox executive Tim Deegan noticed a small group of regulars at the Waverly Theater in New York drunkenly shouting back at the dialogue, that history was made. Instead of kicking them out, Deegan aggressively marketed the film to other weirdos across the country. The iconic shadowcasts and prop throwing weren't some brilliant artistic vision from the director; they were a corporate salvage operation capitalizing on audience unruliness.
