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?