Master Index of Archived Threads


The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

batmagadanleadoff Dec 24 2013 10:08 AM

1. What's the first movie you ever saw in a movie theater? 2. What's the worst movie theater experience you ever had as a youngster/toddler/elementary school aged kid?

MFS62 Dec 24 2013 10:14 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1) Winchester '73 2) They ran out of ice cream. Later

Ceetar Dec 24 2013 10:46 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

batmagadanleadoff wrote: 1. What's the first movie you ever saw in a movie theater? 2. What's the worst movie theater experience you ever had as a youngster/toddler/elementary school aged kid? 1. Hmm. First I can remember is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (We sat in the front row) but I'm not positive that was the first. I doubt it, since I was 8. I just texted my mom to ask. 2. I don't recall having any bad movie theater experiences though. We went to ..I think it was American Pie 2, on opening night in Westbury and the film failed and we ended up watching Osmosis Jones instead (not bad) but that's the worst I can think of. *crossing my fingers here*

Benjamin Grimm Dec 24 2013 12:15 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1. Bambi 2. I can't think of anything at all.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Dec 24 2013 12:25 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1. Can't remember. Either Fiddler on the Roof or Dumbo or Charlotte's Web. 2. I was on a date at a showing of FARGO at one of those old twin-theatres that had been killed by Multiplexes, but reopened as an "art house cinema bistro" with food and drink. I knew the guy who who was running it did it all on a shoestring and it showed. The food was bleh, the beer was warm, and the film broke midway through and they were unable to contniue the showing. They handed out free passes to a future showing but the joint closed before I ever had a chance to go back.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Dec 24 2013 12:27 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

(edit) I didn't realize I was also required to answer question 2 as an elementary school kid. Nothing bad ever happened at the movies then. Remove the age requirement and let's talk about bad adult movie theatre experiences!!

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Dec 24 2013 05:57 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

Adult movie theater experiences? Oh, I've got plenty of good adult movie theater experiences. 1) Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Ziegfeld; we left early. My aunt who took me swears that I freaked out when Sallah and Indy fell into the pit of snakes; her subsequent track record of reactions to snakes/wild animals suggests otherwise. 2) Batman, when I was 10; my seven-year-old cousin ate too much popcorn and threw up on me. By the time we got back in, we'd missed 20 or so minutes of the middle. We ended up leaving a short while later, when it started coming out the back end.

Frayed Knot Dec 24 2013 06:06 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr wrote: Adult movie theater experiences? Oh, I've got plenty of good adult movie theater experiences. As do I, although in my defense I was young and needed the money.

Edgy MD Dec 24 2013 09:05 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

batmagadanleadoff wrote: 1. What's the first movie you ever saw in a movie theater? I think it was Day of the Dolphin, with George C. Scott --- a family movie but not really a kids movie. batmagadanleadoff wrote: 2. What's the worst movie theater experience you ever had as a youngster/toddler/elementary school aged kid? Watching Augustus Gloop being sucked up the plexiglass tube, and piecing together that this Wonka guy my parents took me to see was really an infanticidal maniac, and I cried and screamed bloody murder, because bloody murder was what I was sure I was seeing.

Ceetar Dec 26 2013 07:24 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

Ceetar wrote: 1. Hmm. First I can remember is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (We sat in the front row) but I'm not positive that was the first. I doubt it, since I was 8. I just texted my mom to ask. Made this a topic all holiday. We eventually looked through movie releases from the mid-80s and settled on it probably being Flight of the Navigator.

metsmarathon Dec 26 2013 08:24 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1. it was probably bambi, in '82, though i don't remember much of it. i was 4 or 5. 2. e.t. scared the hell out of me. i think. i don't specifically recall seeing it in a theater, although i assume that i must have...

themetfairy Dec 26 2013 09:30 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1. Doctor Doolittle 2. Seeing Doctor Doolittle. It was boring to my toddler self and I didn't last halfway through it.

Vic Sage Dec 27 2013 08:15 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1) CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG - i was a little freaked out at the end, where the child catcher was snatching up kids with a big net, but otherwise liked it alot. i always had a soft spot for dick van dyke. 2) my only bad memory of childhood movie-theater attending was actually when i was 13 (the summer of 74; i had just finished 7th grade) I went to a movie without my parents for the first time, going with some friends to the theater in Kings Plaza. My dad drove us to the mall, then killed time til our movie was over, so we could have the experience of "going ourselves" without, you know, actually having to go ourselves. so anyway, it was PG, and we were allowed to go without parental supervision, but I was 13 so had to pay adult price (which was cool!). But when we got inside, the usher made us sit in a special "kid's section" for unsupervised kids. i WAS OUTRAGED! If they were going to charge me full price, i was damn well going to sit wherever i wanted. i told the usher the only way i'd sit there is if i had purchased a child-price ticket. There was a bit of yelling and threatening and the manager threw me out. I sat in front of the movie theater until it was over and my dad came back to drive us home. I told him what had happened, thinking 'these guys are going to get it now!" but he didn't do anything. I think he said something about the theater needing to keep an eye on kids in their theater or something. i was devastated. Even though i had just turned 13, I had not had a Bar Mitzvah (our family didn't go in for that sort of thing), but that day i became a man... or at least suffered a loss of innocence generally associated with manhood. I don't remember the movie; it may have been MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN. I remember seeing it on TV years later and thinking "god, what a piece of crap...i'm glad they didn't let me see this!"

batmagadanleadoff Dec 27 2013 10:46 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

Principled bastard, you are. I also had a shitty experience at the Kings Plaza Movie theatre. Two bad experiences, but they weren't as a young 'un ... more like a teen-ager. As a teen-ager (barely) I begged my father to take me to see Across 110th Street at the KP after the studios brainwashed me by bombarding the television with trailers for the flick. I vomited during the screening. I also saw one of the Rocky movies at the KP (I think it was the one with Mr. T) with a bunch of friends. Not my choice. I just went for the company. You know ... because everybody else wanted to go. The theater was packed by the time we got there and the only seats available were scattered. There was no way our group of six or seven was gonna be able to sit together so we sat spread out all over the movie theater. Except me. I couldn't find a single seat. So I hadda watch this movie that I didn't even really wanna see in the first place all alone, without the friends I wanted to hang with - them being the only reason I even went, standing up, at the back, near the entrance to the theater. First movie I saw in a theater was Mary Poppins. Uneventful. As a little kid, my crazy insane aunt once promised me for about a week how she was gonna take me to the movies the coming weekend. She took me to see Doctor Zhivago in a re-release*. I couldn't have been older than seven. I fell asleep about a half an hour in, and pretended to remain asleep even when I woke up and discovered, to my dismay, that that interminable movie was still playing. Or maybe she stayed to see it twice, the stupid cunt. She also smelled like mothballs. Mothballs mixed with vomit. Her whole body. Even her breath smelled like mothballs and vomit. Powerful extra mothnbally mothballs. And her furniture also smelled like mothballs and vomit. Once I hadda sleep over there because my parents went away for a weekend and left me in her care, and even the bed I slept in smelled like mothballs and vomit. Let's open up this thread to bad adult movie theater experiences. ____________ * Re-release -- For the under 30 crowd here, before the internet, before Netflix, before DVDs and VCR's, before cable TV, before you could own your own copy of a movie, the only way you could watch a movie that wasn't in its initial premiere movie theater run was if it was re-released in the theaters (odds: slim) or if it was rerun on television. You'd get your TV Guide (largest circulation of any magazine in the USA during its pre-cable golden age) and skim the movie section to see what movies, with commercials and all cut up would be shown that week. When The Godfather first aired on network TV, it was a national event. I remember all us neighborhood kids talking about that one, the ones who saw it in the movies acting like big shots, bragging cause they knew which movie parts were cut out for the TV version. I saw it in the movies with my parents, so I bragged, too.

MFS62 Dec 29 2013 08:55 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

Since this has been expanded to after-kid bad movie experiences, here's mine. My high school buddy and I skipped school to see Psycho on 42nd street (when they used to have first run movies there). During the tense scene where the detective is climbing the stairs, a woman starts yelling, "Masher! Masher! Masher! He tried to put his hand on my leg!" The movie stopped, the lights went on. And we saw what looked like an 80 year old lady bashing a 90 year old man over the head with her umbrella. The ushers came down the aisle and dragged him away. The lights dimmed (many in the audience were still laughing) and the movie resumed. But the mood, and the tension, weren't the same. Later

Rockin' Doc Jan 01 2014 08:05 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

The first movie I can recall going to was Charlie the Lonesome Cougar/Jungle Book when I was around 6 or 7 years old. I vaguely recall going to see an Elvis Presley movie at a drive in theater a year or so earlier. Can't actually recall any bad movie experiences as a child.

Edgy MD Jan 02 2014 07:42 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

My dad had his own parking space at King's Plaza. He broke up a ring of robberies there, and as a thank you, the managers and merchants had a brief ceremony and surprised him with this special reward. He took the presenter aside briefly afterwards and told him he couldn't possibly accept this honor. It was illegal enough in general, but after the Serpico hearings, anything that smelled of graft would have been a serious threat to his career. But they had marked the spot as reserved and left it that way. So, occasionally we would go by King's Plaza and I would ask, like an annoying kid always does, "Is THAT your spot, Dad? Is THAT it?" as we circled looking for a real spot. He was a cop, so he probably could have left his car, idling, anywhere he wanted, but he couldn't use that damn spot. I remember going to Kings Plaza at Christmas time, and there were no available spots, and we circled and circled with the rest of the dopes and my Dad's head was turning red and building up pressure and ready to blow. Couldn't take the chance that another cop would spot his green VW wagon in his personal grafty-grafty spot. It taunted him.

RealityChuck Jan 02 2014 09:18 AM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1. As far as I can remember, it was Sleeping Beauty on its original run. 2. I can't think of any really bad experiences. As a child, I once left a theater after a show, not knowing that it was a continuous one (my mother left us there while she shopped and we didn't have continuous matinee showings where I was). I also never saw the opening credits of a movie in a theater until I was in college: we would always get there late and watch the begining of the second show until it was familiar.. The worst was Blue Water, White Death (a documentary about sharks). We got there at 8:00pm; the show started at 7. It annoyed me, but it helped me with my writing: I developed the talent to figure out the early parts of a movie on the fly, which taught me about plotting.

G-Fafif Jan 02 2014 12:09 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

1. I think Thoroughly Modern Millie was the first movie to which I was taken. A little later, Skidoo became my first and probably only M-rated movie. My parents didn't seem too concerned that it was considered suitable for Mature audiences. 2. Some guy walked over from several rows ahead during Cabaret and told me to stop randomly breaking into Johnny Nash's "I Can See Clearly Now". Though I was singing relatively softly and he seemed unnecessarily nasty, he was by no means wrong. Worst moviegoing experience at any age I can recall was leaving In The Line Of Fire with a sick headache from the butterlike topping on the popcorn. Went home, threw up and never permitted that stuff splotched on my popcorn again.

Frayed Knot Jan 02 2014 12:30 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

G-Fafif wrote: ...Went home, threw up and never permitted that stuff splotched on my popcorn again. Hope nobody was in your line of fire.

Vic Sage Jan 06 2014 01:05 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

well, if we're going up to adulthood, I had food poisoning in the middle of AMERICAN PRESIDENT. I doubt that theater bathroom was ever the same afterwards.

Edgy MD Jan 06 2014 09:46 PM Re: The Two Pronged Movie Theater Survey

Ouch, you paid to see American President in a theater? I don't want to say you deserved it, but... .