When I was in junior primary school, a real treat was home movie night. This consisted of a bunch of kids arranged on the lounge floor, a bedsheet tacked to the wall, a 16mm film projector, and a quick lesson in cursing from my dad who was operating it.

Films reels were rented from the local movie rental place. It is strange to think that this business has gone through such massive change in my lifetime. First film, then videotape, then DVDs and Blu-rays, then downloads, and then the subscription services we have now.

I still remember where the rental place was. I think it was called "Dial-a-movie" - but that might be a false memory. It was on 3rd Avenue in Linden. Last time I checked there was a carpet shop in its place. We used to get a printed book with a list of all the movies that were..

...available. As a kid I remember loving the Peter Sellers comedies, and the skop, skiet en donner and kung fu movies. Each movie came on 2-3 reels, depending on length, so there was an enforced intermission while dad struggled to thread the second reel. Sometimes...

...the projector wouldn't thread/align the sprockets on the film properly with the shutter and the film would be presented with the bottom of the picture cut off and positioned above the top. This would require manual intervention with loud complaining from the audience.

Even worse, sometimes, while fixing one problem on the projector (jumping film, sound issues, sync), the operator would accidentally bump the lens ring leading to a bellow from the audience of "FOCUS!". I'm fairly sure that there were large plot points in many movies that...

...I and my family and friends completely missed due to technical issues with the projector. Although, it must be said that none of these films required a lot of concentration.

What reminded me of these days was watching Tarantino's "Once upon a time in Hollywood", and the references to the spaghetti westerns. If there was one series of films that 8-year-old me and all my friends absolutely loved, it was the Terence Hill/Bud Spencer series.

We laughed loudly at all the physical humour, and after the movie ended we acted out all the action scenes. A movie night with a Terence Hill & Bud Spencer movie? The best thing ever! And the strangest thing? I had no inkling that these movies were dubbed into English.

When I say no inkling, I mean none. I only realised that they were dubbed when I was in my forties. Did adults at the time know? Was it just because I was too young to know better? Or were we just less media savvy in the 1970s?

PS: I also remember going to the cinema for a matinee to see a Terence Hill movie at the Greenside Metro. It was bedlam.

Not sure what I'm talking about? Here you go:

Edit: Somebody told me it wasn't called Greenside Metro, but rather the Rex cinema. I don't remember that, but I think it was where the Woolies is in Greenside now.

This was very shortly after the introduction of TV into South Africa, and we didn't have our own TV. Which was actually fine, because mostly TVs just showed this:

Our Movie Nights often had a "short" before the main feature. These were actually TV episodes (but we didn't know) and included one that I haven't heard of for ages: The Persuaders! starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore.

This was before Moore played the campest James Bond in some of the worst 007 movies.