Writer of Pop Culture

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This Day in Pop Culture

This Day in Pop Culture for March 8

Movies featuring a scream queen and a female superhero were both released in theaters on this day.

March 12, 2020

2–3 minutes

2019: Captain Marvel Makes History

Marvel Comics’ Captain Mar-Vell was created by Stan Lee and drawn by Gene Colan and appeared on the pages of the comic book Marvel Super-Heroes #12 in 1967. However, years later, the character’s gender was changed to female.

Brie Larson played the title role of Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel for the first theatrical movie which opened in theaters on this day. Written and directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (with some help by Geneva Robertson-Dworet), the storyline of the movie was set in 1995 following Danvers as she discovers that she has amazing powers. Ultimately, she ends up saving Earth which was falling into a conflict of two different alien civilizations.

Captain Marvel became the first female-led superhero movie to gross over $1 billion. A sequel to the movie, The Marvels, opened in November 2023 and also starred Teyonah Parris and Iman Vellani, two other “Marvels”. This movie has also made history…becoming not only the first box office bomb, but also the lowest-grossing film of the MCU.

1960: Psycho Scares People Silly

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is considered one of the director’s greatest works and perhaps the most controversial. It was filmed on a low budget in black and white, was nominated for four Academy Award nominations and raised up a new “acceptability” for violence, deviant behavior and sexuality in American movies.

Known for pushing cinematic boundaries, the film, which premiered on this day in 1960, was one of the first to show an unmarried couple in the same bed and a toilet flushing. At the time, Hitchcock instituted a “no late admission” policy for the movie. Since the movie’s main star is killed off early in the film, he was afraid that latecomers wouldn’t know what was happening. Anthony Perkin’s portrayal of Norman Bates was so good, that he had a hard time getting other roles to play then on out.