h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

For silent and B/W movies, I'd go for Buster Keaton.

A Peter O'Toole theme would throw up some interesting flicks:

(The aforementioned) Lawrence of Arabia
(The also aforementioned) Lion in Winter
The Ruling Class
The Last Emperor
Lord Jim
Goodbye Mr Chips

My Favorite Year

I've never seen that one. Is it worth a punt?

A more recent one is Venus but I'm not sure that would be, er, quite suitable.

My Favorite Year is a very fun and sweet film. It's one of those films that I remember watching when I was a teenager that just made me happy to watch it. I grew up watching reruns of 50's and 60's TV shows and this film is set in that world.

"I'm not an actor... I'm a MOVIE STAR!"

My Favorite Year is a terrific film. I think it revealed O'Toole's comic talent, and Joe Bologna was great as the Sid Ceasar character, too.

Vincent Price movies?

Movies based on Poe? (I know I've seen The Raven (extremely loosely based, but fun) and Fall of the house of Usher... Actually, those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, and they'd fit under my first suggestion)

Spot-the-Shakespeare-this-is-mangling? There's got to be tons more than just Forbidden Planet=The Tempest.

*insert actor/ress name here* retrospectives? From first appearance to latest? (Jack Nicholsen was in The Raven with Vincent Price, and I could only identify him because I knew he was there.)

Film Noir. You can't go wrong with Film Noir

Incidentally, how are you showing these?

stop frame animation, Ray Harryhusen

Earth v Flying sausers coolio film

MST3K is Mystery Science Theatre 3000. They showed cheesy old films with added heckles from some robots.

Amy mentioned Shakespeare - films based on his plays could be a theme. Some of those films are quite entertaining - how I laughed at Much Ado About Nothing with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh!

Shakespeare films - great idea if you leave out Larry Olivier (though, for a laugh, his 'Richard III' is hard to beat, it's so bad).

I'm thinking Roman Polanski did 'The Tempest' once. Isn't his the one with Sycorax singing 'Stormy Weather'? That one was fun.

And then of course 'Prospero's Books', with John Gielgud...

If you haven't seen Branagh's 'Love's Labours Lost', try that one, it's a hoot. He's combined it with thirties musicals. (That might be too pricey and recent, though.) Then there's the four-hour, definitive, perfect 'Hamlet'...

There's an old 'Midsummer Night's Dream' with Mickey Rooney as Puck.

You could always throw in 'West Side Story', too.

If you widened the theme to include Marlowe, you could show Jarman's 'Edward II'. Wait, you're in Missouri, maybe you couldn't.... How, er, tolerant are your board members?

How about movie farces? There's my personal favourite Some Like It Hot, there's The Producers (though some audiences won't like that), Twentieth Century is another great old b&w farce.

You guys have a lot of great ideas.

As to format, I set up in my conference room, which has screens that pull down. I use a regular DVD player and Dell projector. Nothing fancy. But it works.

How about an Audrey Hepburn series? Roman Holiday, Paris When it Sizzles, Funny Face, Breakfast at Tiffanys and Charade to name but a few that own?

Mags, those films would appeal to the group that came last summer for the musicals.

When I was growing up, my favorite pastime was plopping down in front of the black-and-white TV to watch the Afternoon Movie. It typically ranged from the early monster movies through Westerns to Sci-Fi. I believe you've already mentioned the monster movie genre, yet it might be a bit of a send-up if you double-billed the old-style versus a newer release of the same theme. (Shy away from the Lugosi films if you don't want to counter-point the vampires.)

B4irummagethroughmyoldmagazines2findEerie&Creepietales

The best 50s scifi/horror flick, far and away, was 'Sssss'. (I may have misspelled this.)

This brilliantly bad film concerns a mad scientist (the inimitable Strother Martin) with the inevitable pretty daughter. M.S. is dead gone on snakes (hence the title).

In the process of going madder and doing bizarre things with snake venom, he:

- Turns his graduate assistant into a cobra. The poor kid ends up with a job as a circus attraction rather than the Fulbright he had hoped for.

- Bumps off the campus jock with a mamba in the shower. The head cheerleader thinks it was because the footballer broke training by hooking up with her. Hilarity ensues.

- Denied a major grant, the tenured nutcase locks his department head into the cellar with a very large python. Veterans of academic infighting will appreciate this.

As you can see, this film is a not-to-be-missed intellectual treat.

Pair this with a documentary on Civil Defence, circa 1955. I had to learn Duck and Cover, why not the rest of you?

Pairs of movies can be fun, either as a double feature or over two days.

For instance, I was told that Warner Brothers tried to suppress the film of Pygmalion (Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller) when they launched My Fair Lady. They'd be interesting together.

You could run Seven Samurai along with The Magnificent Seven, or Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars.

If you do 'Seven Samurai' and 'The Magnificent Seven', you could also take a look at 'Battle Beyond the Stars', the Roger Corman sci-fi version (which is really funny):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080421/