Predawn Theater

I've always been in love with the movies. I was transfixed by them as far back as I can remember. My viewing habits changed as the years passed. When I was young, before cable and home video, I watched what I could at any given opportunity. I scheduled my life around the movies that aired on TV, and I got out to the theater whenever possible.

The VHS revolution came along, and everything changed. For the first year or two, I watched movies constantly. Night and day. My reading suffered in the process.

Things leveled out and I became a night viewer. Daytime was for reading and outdoor activities. Night was for movies and beer.

My friends and I partied up a storm at the drive-ins and in the early days of home video, but all that gradually dissolved. We all went our separate ways, but I wanted the party to continue.

I mimed the raucous days of old by telling myself I was keeping the spirit of the drive-in alive. What I was really doing was killing myself.

This went on for a long time. Way too long, and when I finally gave up the beer bottle, I found it difficult to watch movies. Where was the beer? What kind of party would it be? Just me and a cheesy movie?

I didn't watch a lot of movies for a few years. Now and then, sure, but nothing like my nightly baptismal ritual of fermented holy water and sacred bloody movies.

I've developed a new method of watching movies. I call it Predawn Theater.

I don't exclusively watch movies by myself in the wee dark hours. My wife and I enjoy a couple of features a week. I don't watch them before going to work. On weekends however, I am up most days well before sunrise. I've started watching DVDs and Blu-rays around four or five o'clock in the morning.

It's an entirely different experience. I generally take an hour or two to become fully coherent in the mornings. Watching something while still in a somnambulant mental state is surreal. Sipping strong tea adds to the hypnotic ambiance.

I've watched dozens in the past year or so. I almost always watch something older. I don't care to watch beloved favorites I've seen time and again. Instead I choose to watch things I've seen maybe once a long time ago. Or ones I've never seen at all.

In what seems like a blink of an eye I went from the youngest person in the room to the oldest. The things you hear about older people are true. It's a lot harder to sleep. I was once able to sleep ten or more hours at a time. Now I am lucky to get seven. I often wake up after five or six hours, feeling disoriented and unable to relax into sleep. The ironic cruelty is how I need the extra rest more than ever.

I'm enjoying Predawn Theater so much I wonder why I felt the need to drink in the first place. Was it really, really, all that fun? Deadening my brain? Polluting my body?

I mostly watch horror, but I also indulge in comedy, action, and the occasional drama. Sixties gothic horror, like The Vampire and the Ballerina, Revenge of the Blood Beast, and Nightmare Castle is especially effective in the hour of the wolf.

I still have to work, but my dream is to retire with enough time to watch movies nearly every morning like this. I have little desire to travel the globe, to seek high adventure, to save the world. I merely want to have time enough, at long last, to really be able to enjoy the books and movies I love with all my heart.

Written by Mark Sieber