Cinema

Cinemas (or simply movie theaters) are an activity in Red Dead Redemption.

Description

In the era in which the game is set, cinemas were an extremely innovative novelty. Films produced in this era were usually very short, without audio, and often lacked a narrative plot. The player is able to watch a cinema at the cost of two dollars. While watching the film, an NPC pianist will provide a Vaudeville soundtrack.

Locations

• Armadillo
• Blackwater

The cinema in Armadillo is located down the road from the Marshall's office and is a temporary structure, located in the town school house. The cinema in Blackwater, however, is a permanent structure, in the style of the Nickelodeon Theaters found across America at the time. It is located next to the Blackwater Saloon safehouse.

Films

Two films are available for the player to view in the Cinemas.

The Dangers of Doctors and Patent Medicines

The film's plot revolves around a medical doctor who closely resembles Nigel West Dickens

The doctor has set up a Tonic shop and throughout the film sells medicine to an old man with back pains, a young womanizer with tapeworms, and a little girl with toothaches. However, the medicine the doctor sells to these people ends up hurting them. The old man is energized by the medicine so greatly that he has a heart attack and buries himself in the ground and dies. The womanizer takes the medicine and even though he farts out all the tapeworms, he is overly aroused and ends up humping a tree which he mistakes for a woman and is taken to jail. And as for the little girl with toothaches, the doctor gives her medicine that is effective on her teeth, but the little girl starts hallucinating. She hallucinates a giant monster attacking her mother. The little girl pulls out an axe and chops down the monster, which sadly and somewhat humorously ends up to really be the little girls mother. The doctor takes a break after this and sits down on a rock to smoke illegal drugs from Mexico. But as he is about to do this, a group of Mexican Banditos pop out with guns and prepare to steal the drugs for themselves. Luckily, the doctor takes out an invisibility potion and drinks from it, turning him invisible and allowing him to escape. But as the doctor sneaks away, he is suddenly sucked into the ground. The doctor falls through the Earth and lands in Hell, where he is greeted warmly by the Devil ("Welcome dear boy! We have been expecting you!"). The film ends with a warning to not trust medical science (IT WILL KILL YOU AND LEAVE YOU DEAD.)

Beaumont the Burly: Damsels Causing Distress

This film's plot revolves around a large muscular man named Beaumont the Burly who is introduced to suffrage (a women's right to vote.) The film is highly sexist in a humorous and sarcastic way.

The film starts out with Beaumont lifting 300 pound weights in public, but as he is working out, he notices a group of women passing by who pay him no attention. Beaumont is confused by this because "tis usual women wilt at the sign of a performance like this." Beaumont returns home for lunch, but as he is walking, he hears gunshots in a nearby house. When he investigates, he finds that a housewife has tied up her husband at gunpoint because she is tired of taking care of her children and doing all the housework. The woman leaves to smoke opium and Beaumont returns his descent to home. When he gets home, he tells his wife who is reading a book that "it is time for our marital congress to assume." But his wife declines, and shows him a book called Suffrage: A

Woman's Right to Vote. Beaumont is heavily confused, and his wife leaves to go to a suffrage rally. Beaumont wanders the streets seeking reason, and along the way he sees a group of tomboys playing cards which Beumont thinks is "just disgraceful." As he wanders further, he is almost killed by a female construction worker who accidentally drops a wheelbarrow of bricks off the top of a building. Walking along, Beaumont sees a Suffrage Rally taking place in an alley, with groups of women coming together. When Beaumont orders the women to return home, he is attacked, tied up, and thrown onto the railroad tracks. Beaumont in distress declares "America hath lost its reason!!". When he looks to his right, he sees Uncle Sam tied up also. Uncle Sam tells him that they "tried making me a woman!" The film ends with a message to vote against women's suffrage ("DON'T TURN UNCLE SAM INTO AUNT SAMANTHA. IT IS YOUR PATRIOTIC IMPERATIVE TO OPPOSE WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE").

Trivia

• Both films comically portray the issues surrounding the early 1900s America, i.e. The Temperance Movement and Women's Suffrage.
• Both films also seem to be early examples of cinematic political propaganda.
• The cinema is very similar to the cabaret and comedy club shows in Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto IV
• Like the television in Grand Theft Auto IV, the movie theater only provides a diversion to the player, and has no significant gameplay value.
• During Undead Nightmare, the survivors at Blackwater (led by town gunsmith Elmer Purdy) will use the town cinema's roof as a vantage point to shoot at the Undead from, and will remain there even when the town is temporarily safe. Likewise, in Armadillo, Alden Renshaw (sometimes joined by Jessie Hargrove) will hide inside the cinema during an attack, attacking any Undead that remains in or pass the building. Obviously, during the course of the DLC, neither cinema is in a functioning state.

  

  Doc West's Revitalizing Swig

• A small segment of the Battle Hymn of the Republic is played by the piano near the end of Beaumont the Burly: Damsels Causing Distress. These tones are heard at the ending of the movie, from the moment that Beaumont is laying hogtied on the railroad till the very ending of the movie.
• The fraudulent salesman in the film, The Dangers of Doctors and Patent Medicines could be argued to depict, or at least be reminiscent of, Nigel West Dickens. One of many reasons for this is that one medicine bottle in the film reads, 'Doc West's Revitalizing Swig'.

Gallery

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Videos

Red Dead Redemption Beaumont The Burly

Red Dead Redemption The Dangers of Doctors and Patent Medicines