Seeing a great movie on the big screen for the first time can send a chill down one’s back.

Market Square Cinemas, 2160 Sycamore Road, (owned by GKC Theatres) is hosting the Rerun Film Series. Consisting of six weeks of old movies, the twice-yearly festival promises nightly raffles and cheap tickets. The festival kicked off last weekend with “Reservoir Dogs” and continues with “Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven’s Door” this weekend.

This is the first year Market Square will hold two showings a night, with 9:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. screenings both Friday and Saturday nights.

“We get a large college audience to see our movies. When you’re playing late-night horror films or cult classics, you tend to get a younger crowd,” said Andy Salvner, Rerun Film Series coordinator with GKC Theatres.

Jeff Kerman, assistant manager at Market Square, said the theatre tries to keep the atmosphere fun. Occasionally, attendees are costumed.

“We don’t just want this to be people sitting in a movie theatre,” Kerman said. “We want it to be people hanging out and having a good time.”

In general, attendance was up for the first weekend of the festival, but due to the NIU football game on Saturday, attendance at Market Square wasn’t as high as expected. Rerun showings usually average a few hundred customers per theater, per night.

“DeKalb is usually one of the best theatres for our rerun films,” Salvner said.

So good in fact, GKC uses it for testing new reruns. This year, the theater will test “The Matrix,” “Psycho,” “Cowboy Bebop” and “Versus.” Both “Mallrats” and “Reservoir Dogs” have sold well previously.

“We feel we have a pretty good built-in audience in DeKalb,” Salvner said.

While Salvner retains final say in the selection of films for the Rerun Film Series, he gets input from audience polls conducted in-house or online and from theater managers.

Market Square holds raffles to reward patrons of the festival.

Kerman said the nightly raffles are known as the “crappy raffles.” During those, the theater gives away posters from such groaners as “Glitter” and “The Banger Sisters,” as well as other small promotional items like key-chains, postcards and T-shirts.

People who attend the Rerun Film Series six times can bring their ticket stubs to be entered in the “good raffle.” Past prizes for that include a computer, television, action figures and posters from popular movies.

Eight of the 31 theaters owned by GKC Theatres are hosting the Rerun Film Series.

Market Square is the only one showing “Cowboy Bebop,” but six are showing “Mallrats,” which is unique in that it will be shown via digital projection.