I know we’ve had this thread before but there was a taped segment about this topic on this year’s Oscars and made me curious again.
So fellow Dopers tell about it. What year was it, how old were you, and what movie did you see? First experiences are preferably limited to those had in actual theaters but if you if you saw your first movie at a drive-in and the story’s interesting, go ahead and tell it.
It must have been 1968, I was about 3.5 years old, and it was the Rex Harrison Doctor Dolittle. I’m afraid I don’t remember much about the circumstances, but I do remember the movie.
A better story attaches to a later experience. I was probably 6, and the whole extended family took two cars to the drive-in and saw a double feature of Support Your Local Sheriff and The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!. The movies are really funny, but all us kids got the most enjoyment out of watching my Aunt Pat laugh herself silly. She always makes funny things funnier by her reactions.
Ten years later, I would see Superman as my first movie ever viewed in a theater. I was four. Mother developed a fear of towels and theme songs soon after.
1967 -** Bonnie and Clyde**.
My family saw it at the drive-in when I was 4. I had nightmares for weeks.
Until then, the most violent thing I had seen was** Gunsmoke**.
Star Wars, 1977. Probably one or two drive in movies before that, but I don’t remember what they might have been.
1958 and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Great movie.
The earliest that really pops in my memory was a double feature of Labyrinth and Short Circuit. Assuming it was summertime of 1986, I was 7. I remember the aisle off the theater and the concession stand between movies more the the films.
I think I was about six. Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I was obsessed with it after I saw it. I remember loading up with Bedknobs coloring books and stickers and toys. I think that movie may also have marked the beginning of my love of soccer, in a weird way.
It’s one of my earliest memories, period.
Me too. I was 4, and don’t particularly remember the movie, but do remember being COLD in the theater.
Earliest I can remember was The Fox and the Hound, which came out in 1981. I’d have been just over 5. My impressions of it are very vague, but I remember being somewhat upset about it when the fox was being chased.
Disneys Fantasia, when I was six or so. Blew me away. Parts were scary, (the broomsticks!) parts were beautiful…I never thought of classical music as something dull afterwards ever again.
The Lady of the Lake, an adaptation of the Arthur legend. With a sexy Helen Mirren. No wonder I still found her sexy forty years later.
Babes in Toyland at a drive-in in SoCal when I was about 4.
I believe I’ve mentioned this before, but I was around seven, and the first fillms I ever saw in a theater were a double bill of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Mothra. Both were pretty spectacular, but regarding the latter flick, about the time the tiny little female twins showed up singing that 747-sized moth back to its home, my mind was well and truly blown.
I vaguely remember my mother taking me to see *Mary Poppins *on the big screen. I would have been roughly 5.
I know that the first movie I was taken to see was The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, but I don’t remember any of it because I was about a month old (it was a drive-in). My first memory of going to the movies involves a lot of red velvet and even stools at the back of a theater, but I don’t remember if it was Bambi or Snow White - I don’t remember watching the movie at all! It’s this blurry memory of suddenly being there and leaving. I also remember going to *The Sound of Music * with my twin and my father; my mother was too pregnant to go so we must have been under four years old. The problem with this plan was, who was going to take us to the bathroom? We refused to go in the men’s room, my father refused to go in the ladies room (of course), going to the parking lot and peeing behind the car was discussed and I think some random lady finally took us.
Bambi, in the theater. Mid-60s, I guess.
I remember having gone to see The Sound of Music. I don’t remember anything about the actual film.
either Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II or Hook
One of my first movies, too, but I’m sure I saw it on a re-release at a matinee.
Never saw a movie before my mother took me to see a double feature at a neighborhood indoor theater. It was Heidi, with Shirley Temple, and White Mane, both in glorious black and white. She didn’t let us stay to see White Mane, since she said the horse died in the end. (This wasn’t a first-run theater, and it wasn’t 1937.)
20 years later, I played music and directed stage shows in the same theater, which had been converted back to a stage venue.
The 2nd movie I saw was 4 years after the first, a Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin flick, in color! Parents magazine didn’t think much of it for kids, so it was difficult to get permission.