Content Warning: We will be screening the R-rated cut of the film, which contains graphic scenes that might be upsetting or triggering to some viewers.

“If you were not around in late 1977, you may not fully appreciate the seismic wave that SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER sent through the world.

It was not the movie that invented disco; disco had been around in one form or another since DJs figured out how to extend mixes of danceable songs back in the 1960s, and it had boogied into the mainstream in the early ’70s, with such hard-hitting hits as The O’Jays’ “Love Train,” TSOP’s “The Sound of Philadelphia,” Gloria Gaynor’s “Never Can Say Goodbye,” Van McCoy’s “The Hustle,” Polly Brown’s “Up in a Puff of Smoke” and Carol Douglas’ “Doctor’s Orders.”

But SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER suddenly awakened America to the trappings of disco culture. Yes, there was the music, but there were also the dances, the hypnotic light shows, the glamour, the clothes and, in the era before AIDS, casual sex, steamy one-night-stands, cocaine and cocktails… you get the picture. Suddenly, even the suburbanites who had never dreamed of going clubbing were clustered by the velvet rope at their neighborhood disco, hoping they would be judged hip enough to get in. (As a former babysitter who made plenty of spending money watching the children of these partying parents, I feel deeply grateful for SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, Donna Summer and anything else that sparked these disco dreams.)” (Alamo Drafthouse)