The earliest I can actually remember seeing was Sleeping Beauty in 1959. But I do remember seeing an ad for Plan 9 From Outer Space being billed as Bela Lugosi’s last film the same year – I knew who Bela Lugosi was at that point. I’m sure I’d seen earlier movies, but I don’t remember them.
In December 1961, my father took me and my brother and sister to see Babes In Toyland in downtown Baltimore while my mother did some Christmas shopping at the department stores. I was seven. I had been to our neighborhood theaters before then but I don’t remember what I saw.
The movie was fun, but I have a strange memory of the day unrelated to the film. I had seen depictions of movie theater balconies on television and thought they were cool. When I saw steps in the lobby leading to the balcony, I asked my father if we could go up there. He said no and was somewhat gruff about it, giving me no reason for his refusal. When I told a friend about it later, he told me that the balcony was for black people (he used another word).
I saw the movie X-15 at one of our neighborhood theaters in the same time period, but I think I saw Babes In Toyland before that.
1979, so I was about 4. Dad told me we were going somewhere, to do something special (don’t remember exactly how he put it). Of course, I was super excited.
I remember sitting in the back of his VW, when we pulled up to the mall. Vividly recall being terribly dissappointed because I’d been there before, it wasn’t special at all.
Until we went in to the theater, which WAS completely new. My first movie was Star Trek.
Don’t remember much detail about the movie, except that I was trying to figure out how it worked. It obviously wasn’t a TV. TV’s were small and not in color!
I also saw E.T. when I was about 6. I remember being disappointed with it, as it wasn’t Star Wars.
I was going to say The Legend of Boggy Creek, but after looking it up, I see I would have been two years old and my brother would have been one. Surely Mom wouldn’t have taken two babies to the movies by herself. So it must have been Return to Boggy Creek in 1977, when we were seven and six. All I remember is being scared of the monster and believing it was a true story.
We also saw Star Wars around this time. Some scenes were neat, but overall I was bored by it (my opinion on this movie has not changed).
The Million Dollar Duck–a Disney movie. I was around seven, and my family saw it at a drive-in when we were on vacation. I’d never seen a movie before, and when I found out that I was going to get to go too, instead of being left with Grandma, I was thrilled out of my mind.
I have some vague memories of my mom and dad taking me to see The Empire Strikes Back when I was three years old. That was my first movie in the theater.
1959–10 years old–The Tingler
I don’t know if it was my very first theater experience, but it certainly left the strongest impression.
Modern hack/slash/mutilation movies don’t have nearly the fright punch of some of those old horror flicks.
Old Yeller
thanks a lot for asking, now my day is ruined.
Ben Hur, in 1959, for my (five years older) brother’s birthday. I was four. I remember the chariot race.
I remember seeing The Rescuers Down Under at the theater, though I don’t remember much about it (the film or the experience). The movie came out in 1990, so I would have been four years old at the time.
I have much clearer memories of seeing both Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin during the following two years.
whoa, me too, similar age and all! I also remember going to see one of the Planet of the Apes movies.
My grandmother took me to Radio City Music Hall to see ***That Darn Cat *** (with Dean Jones and Hayley Mills) around 1965 or 1966. That’s the first movie I remember seeing i na theater.
I guess the earliest I can remember is Titanic (at age 7). I know I must have gone to the movies before that, but that is the earliest specific movie. I remember because I was so disappointed. I just wanted to see a movie about a shipwreck not some boring romance
It’s not a terribly interesting story — to say the least! — but I have the vaguest recollection about seeing Back to the Future. I likely would’ve been about four or on the cusp thereof (BttF was released on 3 July 1985; I turned four on 14 August). But I recall nothing about the movie itself, just a cloudy image of the theatre and the fact that it was BttF.
The first movie I really remember the experience of watching … good question; I dunno. Possibly Karate Kid 3 (released 30 June 1989, I would’ve been seven or eight), although I’m sure if I sat here racking my brain I could think of something else. It seems like my younger sister and I went with our eldest brother to see something else, which was too scary/intense for us younger ones so we snuck into Karate Kid instead.
(My brothers were a bit of a bastard each — I remember them forcing me to watch Thriller every time it came on because it scared the daylights out of me. My eldest was a bit gentler, though.)
Disney’s The Shaggy Dog in 1959 when I was four years old. I remember bringing a copy of My Little Golden Book with the story in it to the movie. I remember it was cold and rainy, and my entire family went–mother, father, and five children. I was thrilled with seeing the story come to life.
My earliest cinematic memory is of Disney’s Treasure Island, re-released for theatrical run in, oh, 1975 or so.
Very young, some old western. I only have blurry memories of it. I would think I had just turned 4 at that point. First clear memories of a movie at the theater would have been First Men in the Moon.
The first film I remember was Willow, in 1988, so I would have been 5.
I say I remember it, but all I can really recall is the line ‘Oh no, he’s going to throw an acorn at me!’ and a few vague images and names. I’ve not seen it since, so I have no idea if the actual film makes more sense than my recollection. We didn’t have a TV, and I rarely got to watch one at other people’s houses at that age, so it made a pretty big impact.
You know what’s weird? The earliest film I can remember seeing in theater is Beethoven, which came out in 1992. I was nine.