Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1977

11 thoughts on “Opening Soon at a Theater Near You – 1977”

• Someone just posted on Youtube a segment from Season 1 of “Sneak Previews”, where they reviewed “Saturday Night Fever”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDl3_WsX3Vc&t=74s If only we could find other missing S & E reviews from 1977 and 1978.

• Thanks. Just went there when I saw your comment and noticed in the comments that 2 hours ago the uploader said he is looking at the tape to see if he can salvage more of that episode. He said it also has their “second review” of Star Wars from December 1977.

• I wonder if he had any evidence to support that.

• He posted that he’s trying to salvage what he can from the tape so I expect him to eventually post what he has of the Star Wars review. That’s too big a scoop for him to ignore. It looks like he’s only posted that Saturday Night Fever video in the last three years so he should have time to work on that transfer. He’s never posted any other Siskel and Ebert content at all.

• He also has said now the beginning of the tape has a review of Close Encounters, which makes sense since December 1977 was its wide release. But he said the tape is cut off at the beginning. He says the Star Wars review is distorted in parts, but he is getting the video cleaned up and will post the whole episode.

• The YouTube user ’70s & ’80s VHS Flashback has now posted the original S&E Close Encounters of the Third Kind review:
  Siskel & Ebert review Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977

• Ladies and gentleman we have another 1977 review and that’s on Close Encounters of the 3rd kind, enjoy.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2DAK1V7UyI

• Another listing for a lost episode, the Academy Awards predictions show from Tuesday, March 22, 1977.

• This is the listing for the Saturday, December 17 episode, of which we have three of the reviews.

• The three reviews we have for the 12/17/77 episode take up a little more than half of the 30 minutes. Add in Pete’s Dragon, which is in the listing, and that leaves time for two more reviews or maybe one regular review and a couple “dogs.” Also, it is interesting that this episode aired on Saturday. This might have been a rerun of a show from earlier in the week–so the actual debut date might have been a few days earlier. For a good while the show was debuting on Tuesdays on WTTW, and it would settle in on Thursdays sometime in 1979.

• Opening Soon at a Theater Near You-1977 Episodes (as found in the Trib listings)
  01/25/77 9:30 Tuesday (Best and Worst of 1976)
  03/22/77 MISSING 9:30 Tuesday (Academy Award Predictions)
  05/28/77 MISSING? 10:00 Saturday (Guide says it aired from 10-10:15)

  Sneak Previews
  10/22/77 MISSING 7:00 Saturday (series premiere, movies not listed)
  11/26/77 MISSING 7:00 Saturday (“Bobby Deerfield” “Turning Point” “Heroes” “Equus”
  12/17/77 PARTIAL 7:00 Saturday (“Close Encounters” “SNF” “Pete’s Dragon” “Semi-Tough” “Star Wars”)