Anyone here ever attend an old timey Saturday matinee? With the cartoons, shorts, double feature and the works?
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, 1964 (I was 3). I’m sure my parents knew better than to take me to this movie and can only guess that one of my older sibs was supposed to watch me, couldn’t find a babysitter and took me along, hoping for the best. Um, we had to leave early, due to my horrified screaming.
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Mary Poppins** also came out that year, so maybe that was the first.
My first movie in a theater was The Lion King when I was 4. I still can’t really watch Mufasa’s death. That was rough on a kid. My second movie experience was Toy Story which changed my life. The animation mesmerized and made a lifelong Pixar fan out of me. Some try to say that The Lion King is the ultimate 90’s kid movie but I always make the case for Toy Story. Toys really came alive after that. I think I almost shed a tear during TS3.
Our theater used to have Saturday matinees when I was a kid – and it wasn’t a “nostalgia” thing, it was the continuation of their running matinees. They were often double features, but rarely had any extras – no short subjects or cartoons.
They did have commercials – advertisaing in the movie theater is not a new innovation.
I’m playing a new game with myself in this thread: How many movies listed were so far into my movie-going career that I’m pretty sure I got high to go see them. I think we’re solidly in double-digits already.
Ours did something like that - I grew up in a small town with one theater (now sadly closed 
) that would play one major feature at night and repeat it on weekday/Sunday matinees but Saturdays would have cartoons, old John Wayne movies, etc. This would be in the late 79s-early 80s. My first memory of seeing a movie without parents was when I was ten or so and a friend and I saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Another fairly early memory was Star Trek: Wrath of Khan- first drive-in movie experience. We piled up in our 70s model, bright red station wagon and I remember that us kids mostly watched the disney movie next door, without sound, because A.) Star Trek was BOOORING and B.) EAR WIGS! EWWW!
Bedknobs was my first remembered inside movie theater experience. Little Big Man the year previous was my first drive in movie experience. To be honest, my first public performance of anything was in 1966, I was taken to see The Nutcracker in NY, and I saw Rosenkranz and Guildenstern Are Dead the year after. I was regularly taken to see the Rochester Philharmonic play from about 68 until 73 [soaking up my Dad’s seat so it wasn’t wasted]
[my birthday is 10/1961]
I have to admit, I have an abiding love for classical music from that - though I have a dislike for some of the modern dissonant classical crap. I prefer baroque, actually. Well also light chamber music too.
Back in my mom’s day, they did!.. The movie theater downtown used to have all-day kiddie cartoon days, in the 60’s - you got dropped off with a zillion other kids to rampage up and down the aisles and throw popcorn boxes at the screen. It was a madhouse and they sensibly put an end to it right quick.
You betcha. 1950’s. The Saturday morning newspaper listed them as “Kiddie Matinees.” My local theaters were the Bay, and the Abilee, both in National City, San Diego County. Unless it’s been torn down in the past couple of years, the Bay is still there.
The girl next door was my age, and for several years we probably went most weekends. Parents provided chauffer service, much too far for 8 year olds to walk.
The features were always B-movie monster/science fiction/horror/adventure flicks (The Blob, I Married A Monster From Outer Space, Macabre, Wasp Woman, The Mysterians, Bomba The Jungle Boy). Occasional comedies like Abbott and Costello. Cartoons. Black and white serial shorts like Captain Marvel. I especially remember those 1940’s Batman and Robin series-- even as an idiot protein unit I could see how crappy they were.
Great memories.
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When I was a kid (70s-80s) our theater (Austin) had a program called something like the “Kids Summer Movie Club” or somesuch. At the end of the school year you bought a big page of movie tickets, and then there would be one or two movies a week all summer that you could go to. They weren’t first-run movies, but older ones. There would always be cartoon shorts before each movie, often Woody Woodpecker.
Some of the types of movies I remember seeing through this program:
Pippi Longstocking (the badly-dubbed Swedish films)
Marx Brothers movies
Three Stooges
live-action Disney movies (Charlie The Lonesome Cougar, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Song of the South)
various other kid-oriented movies
It was lots of fun. Mom would pop popcorn at home and we’d take it with us in brown lunch bags, and we would stop for cokes and candy at the convenience store on the way. Good times.
Huh, this may not be correct. First, looking at 1972 in film on wikipedia, a movie called “The Legend of Boggy Creek” is 11th on the box office list. I saw that movie in the theater, and it resulted in the same nightmare, one that recurred until, I dunno, high school? I also say “Hickey and Boggs”, featuring Bill Cosby and Robert Culp.
Also, my parents divorced when I was young, and during weekend visitations with my dad he would take me to movies. Looking at 1973 in film, I know I saw The Sting, American Graffiti, and Paper Moon in the theater with him (I was obsessed with that American Graffiti soundtrack!).
In 1974 my mom retaliated by taking me to Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and The Longest Yard (I wonder where the MPAA fit in to all this). My dad did take me to a film called “The Super Cops”, though, and “Uptown Saturday Night”, so clearly we didn’t stop going to movies. Someone also took me to Benji.
I guess I saw a lot more movies than I realized.
I was 7 years old and I went to the theater with my best friend (at the time) who was my next door neighbor and his father. We went to see Project X with Matthew Broderick.
I may have been to the theatre before this with my family but I don’t remember it. This is my first movie-going memory. All I remember about the movie is that there was a monkey in it at some point.
I went to see the original release of Disney’s PETER PAN (1953), I was six. I loved it. I still do, mostly.
Okay, third time’s the charm. My dad took me to Diamonds Are Forever (1971) in the theater when I was 8. I haven’t seen it since, and all I remember, weirdly, is a moon buggy.
Oh, and two girls named Thumper and Bambi who beat him up.
my earliest movie memory at the theatre is either:
-Return of the jedi. the part were luke unmasks vader. i remember clinging to my dads arm during this not knowing what to expect underneath.
OR
-Ghostbusters. the part in the library with the female ghost jumping at the screen (scared the shit outta me and my younger brother LOL)
not sure which came first since i dont know if the RotJ i was taken to was the initial '83 release or the later '85 release.
^^^^ This. It was a drive-in. I think I fell asleep through part of it.
Thank God you didn’t remember 007 strangling a girl with her own bikini top in the opening montage. I like that all the subsequent Bonds were a skosh less misogynistic.
Sort-of.
My first experience was when I was five. My mother decided that, for my sixth birthday, she was going to round up all my friends and take us to see ‘The Jungle Book’. The problem was, she wasn’t sure how ‘kid-appropriate’ it would be, so a week before, she took me to see it.
I remember walking into the theater. There was just the two of us, and maybe like one or two other people. We sat near the front, off to the left side, and the lights went down just as we sat. It was magic to me, and even more; it felt somehow… Holy. It started a love I’ve had for movies (especially in theaters) that I’ve had all my life.
The matinee started with a Zorro short (which started my love for swashbucklers as well), and then moved on to the movie. I apparently begged my mom to sit through the Zorro short again, but she wouldn’t stay for another showing of Jungle Book. Still, I got to see it all a week later with my friends for my birthday.
The Blue Max (1966). I was four.
Star Wars, when I was 5. Even today, the Fox fanfare is actually just the prelude to the Star Wars theme. Hearing it always gave me a little rush because it meant we were SEEING STAR WARS AGAIN!!! And the little pause between the fanfare and the title was something like the moment a roller coaster crests the hill, just before it starts to drop. And then x10 that for the first showing of Empire Strikes Back.