I was four years old and remember seeing Star Wars at a small movie theater in Seattle (I believe it was at what is now the Guild Theater on 45th). This was in 1979, and it was a second run showing or re-release in conjunction with Empire Strikes Back’s release. I still remember coming out of the theater after it was over singing the theme at the top of my lungs.
My mom took me to see The Aristocats. It was a very big deal because we walked to the theater, which was about a half-mile away and crossed “the dangerous street” that I was absolutely not allowed to cross on my own.
Edit: IMDB says The Aristocats was released in 1970. My memory of seeing it is from around 1981 or 1982, so either we saw a different movie, or The Aristocats was re-released in theaters that year.
My brain is telling me that it was Death Race 2000 at a drive-in in the late '70s.
But that came out in 1975 when I was infant so it may not be a real memory unless it played the drive-in a few years later.
Otherwise the earliest I can come up without doing any poking around to try and dredge up memories are:
E.T. - Saw it in the theater at Jantzen Beach Mall in Portland, OR. 1982.
Poltergesit - Saw it in the theater at Vancouver Mall in Vancouver, WA. 1982.
Still don’t know what my parents were thinking with Poltergeist. I was freaked out for quite a while. But those two movies are both landmarks.
E.T. is the last time a movie made me cry. Once I got over it, Poltergeist was the last movie to actually frighten me.
ETA: And of course I immediately remember something else. I have a very clear memory of Fox and the Hound at the no-longer-there drive-in on Andresen and 18th in Vancouver, WA. So that would have been 1981, when I was 6.
I remember going to the drive-in to see Billy Jack around 1972-74. I was 5-7 years old, depending upon the year.
We’ve taken our daughter to movies starting at the age of 3, her first film being the otherwise forgettable Home on the Range. Her first PG-13 movie was one year later, when Mom insisted that Sophie was going to see at least one Star Wars movie on the big screen.
Also, Star Wars in '77, in Wyoming. Oddly, I mostly remember going TO the movie - I can still remember the long drive and the outside of the theater. I was 4 years old…
I remember seeing E.T. in the theater, but I would have been 3. Maybe they re-ran it at some point? (And no, not the 20th anniversary)
I do remember thinking the General Cinemas bumper was somehow related to E.T., so the next time I saw it I was very surprised to see a different movie play.
Earliest film memory was seeing Lady and the Tramp at a re-release (I’m not quite that old). I actually remember standing in line more than the movie itself, but I do remember the movie too.
But my earliest film-related memory is from when I was four years old. My older brother and half-brother got to go see Star Wars in its first release, and I was told that I was too little to go. I was really mad. Still a little peeved, on some level.
1962, Birdman of Alcatraz. Drive-in with my parents.
I remember going in the car to the drive-in quite a bit in the late 60s with my parents (so I was under five), but the experience was more hanging out in the backseat in pajamas and a nest of blankets and sleeping during the movies – which I think my parents counted on. So, yeah, they were a little surprised to discover I was watching Planet of the Apes with them (so I guess that would have been around 1968, 1969). I was convinced it was a documentary, and was no little freaked out.
Later on in the early '70s I know I saw a number of films rather inappropriate for a child as my mother insisted I be taken to all the new Disney re-releases, but she never took me because she thought they were boring (so why on earth did she grimly insist that I had to see them? 
) Fortunately, so did my dad and oldest brother who were designated ‘take the child to the movies’ people, so instead I saw things like the Poseidon Adventure, The Sting (twice!), and *Dirty Harry *at age 6 and 7. It all ended when my dad was planning to take me to see Jaws, and my mother found out. I was stuck grimly sat through stuff like Fantastia, Mary Poppins and the Black Stallion, ugh, through age 12 or 13 (so by that point I was way too old for that stuff.)
But I do remember seeing a lot of films at that drive in, including a number of kid-appropriate films like the Love Bug, Escape to Witch Mountain, stuff like that.
My dad and I did go to see Star Wars a couple of times when it came out, when I was 11. That was a big thing, as there were no first-run theatres near us, so it was a bit of a haul to get there.
This isn’t quite the same thing, but I remember the first film I was allowed to see in the near-the-campus arthouse/second run theatre (The State Theatre in Newark DE) – basically the theatre that showed all the cool rock and roll movies, foreign films, and every Friday Rocky Horror. As a pre-teen and teen, I was all over the crazy and obscure films they showed there, but my mother refused to allow me to go, even with friends, because she was convinced the moment I set foot inside I’d be raped, kidnapped, turned into a pothead/shot up with heroin, murdered, &c &c. Friends of the family finally convinced her to let me go with them when I was about 15 to see 6 hours’ worth of Beatles movies one summer evening, and even at the last minute she tried to pull the plug; the adults had to swear up one side and down the other that they would ‘protect’ me (in fact, they dropped us teens off and said, ‘Have a great time!’). I did see a few other things there, rock and roll films mainly but also Life of Brian for the first time, and it was always fantastic as the whole place had this air of forbidden fruit. I have no idea what my mother’s problem was.
I’ve got three contenders, all early 80s (I would have been about 5), but I can’t remember which one was first (the release dates don’t necessarily mean anything, since Mom likely would have taken us to second-run theaters). One was ET; one was some version of Tarzan that I can’t find on IMDb (I remember it had a scene of Tarzan as a young boy standing high up in a tree and peeing); and one was an animated version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that I also can’t find on IMDb, but which had a very impressive pounce in the scene where Aslan defeats the White Witch.
The earliest film I remember seeing was “Song of the South” I’d guess during it’s 1973 release when I was 5. When the boy is attacked by the Bull near the end my 3 year old brother was crying so hard we had to leave the theater and I never got to see the end.
I suspect I did see other movies in the theater before that, but I don’t remember them.
My first drive in movie experience was a double bill of Family Plot and Jaws
Not my first movie I’m sure but the first one I can remember is Dark Star, which I saw at a drive-in with my parents.
That Tarzan movie sounds like Greystoke. I remember the peeing scene. Came out in 1984.
Another Star Wars child here. I was 5. I subsequently spent countless hours trying to move things with my mind.
The first movie I recall seeing in a theater was in 1968 when I was three. It may have been either Disney’s Jungle Book or 2001: A Space Odyssey but I’m not sure. I do know that before going my parents explained to me the rules of movie-going and that unless to laugh or scream at what was going on in the movie, you were to keep quiet and pay attention.
I saw quite a few movies at the theater or at the drive-in between my third and fourth birthday. Off hand, I remember also seeing Dr. Doolittle, The Odd Couple, The Shakiest Gun in the West, the re-release of Snow White, Funny Girl, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That’s already more movies than I saw in the theater last year.
I can remember watching The Jungle Book and Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar, but I can really only remember a few scenes. I remember seeing Doctor Dolittle more distinctly. Checking online, I see these came out in October and December of 1967 when I was six.
I recall going to the drive-in with my parents (me in my pajamas in the back seat) eons ago. I remember seeing a coming attraction for a movie starring Cary Grant, so I must have been old enough to read, but can’t remember the name of the movie. Or watching it, for that matter. When I was 8 or 9 my rich uncle wanted to play Rich Uncle taking Adorable Niece out to the movies, and I think it was Sleeping Beauty (which I really did find to be utterly entrancing). Except for the scene with the evil witch. I freaked out and started screaming, had to be taken out, and got sick to my stomach out on the street. And that was when my relationship with my rich uncle started to go downhill for the rest of his life.
Old Yeller, 1957. Six years old. Orpheum Theater, downtown San Diego. Saturday morning. My few distinct memories of the event include:
- somebody yanking a hair from the mule, to use as thread for stitching OY’s wound
- scarfing down buttered popcorn, while up on the screen the boy is sighting down the rifle barrel (to put OY down)
.
The first one for which I can remember an actual scene was Snoopy, Come Home. 1972, I was 4yo. It was my second movie; the first one was an animated Mafalda movie (I remember this HUGE Mafalda face and Mom says I didn’t want to leave the theater when it was over) but I can’t find a record for it in iMDB… maybe it was actually an episode from the Mafalda series they list as made in 1965, released for theaters in Spain.
I learned to read on Mafaldas and I know I was able to recognize the Mafalda compilation my parents had at the time (they bought the rest later) as being those characters from the movie.
Two
The first was The Story of Mankind which my parents saw with me and my brother in a drive-in theater, so we could go to sleep in the back see. This was 1957, when I was 5. I remember the beginning. I think my mother wanted to see it because the Marx Brothers were in it.
Even before that (and I didn’t know the order until I looked them up) was The King and I which I almost saw at Radio City Music Hall. I was 4 then. I was staying with my great-aunt in New York and she took me to Radio City Music Hall. I say almost saw because the very beginning, when the Siamese sailors came to get Anna freaked me right out and I demanded to leave. My poor aunt.
We got engaged right after seeing Star Wars (which we had each seen once before) so you people are making me feel very old.