Ok, a day has passed, so my partial answer of what I think the movie titles are:
(1996, ****)
1. (10/3, 187). Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders.
(1955, ***)
2. (8/1, 150) Revenge of The Creature.
1
(1990, ****)
3. (10/1, 185) Soultaker.
(1958, ***)
4. (9/3, 174) The Space Children.
(1980, ***.)
5. (9/6, 177) The Pumaman.
(1962, ***)
6. (5/13, 108) The Brain that wouldn’t die.
(1956, ***)
7. (4/16, 87) Fire Maidens from Outer Space.
Edit to add: The new movies in the Hint are (Thanks Stiv, and good pickup Chengarda):
(1978, ****)
8. (11/4, 201) Avalanche
(1966, ***)
9. (4/24, 95) Manos: The Hands of Fate
HINT 2:
One thing that all the movies have in common is that they have all featured on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (hence the first part of the title “At the theatre”). I have updated each movie’s entry with the season/episode and the overall episode number.
I’m also noticed that
The movie’s year is followed by either 3 or 4 asterisks
So I’m guessing that
The number of asterisks tells us which letter position to use within each title. Since there are 3 or 4 asterisks, and the years are always 4 digits, there’s a link between the asterisks and the digits of the year?
Hints 3 and 4
were puzzling - how on earth could you make an F, let alone a J. Then it struck me that the stars could represent
The first letter of the (stars)th name of the starring cast, eg in order as shown in the posters.
Hint 1 Avalanche cast names are rock hudson, mia Farrow. Hint2 Manos cast names are tom neumann John reynolds.
Also the . for Pumaman could be because the leading star has 3 names, so indicated to take his surname instead of the first name of the following star.
So this gives us :
H (4 ernest borgnine mark Hurtado) L (3 john agar, Lori nelson) S (4 joe esteves vivian Schilling) A (3 michael ray Adam williams) A (3 walter george Alton. donald pleasance) V (3 herb evers Virginia leith ) S (3 anthony dexter Susan shaw)
Unfortunately, for the puzzle, this seems to give HL 1 SAAVS, Which doesn’t seem helpful
