# Movies you got to see way too young. Thoughts on them now? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [July 27, 2021, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464 "2021-07-27T23:12:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/1 "2021-07-27T23:12:20Z")
Did you get to see any movies when you were a kid that you probably shouldn’t have or that your parents would not have allowed had they realized what was in them? I remember being pretty innocent as a kid, but I was born in 1978 and saw: **Temple of Doom** - I was about 7 when I had a sleep over with a friend and his parents got permission to see this on Pay-per-view. I might have been 8. Our jaws were so dropped when that heart came out and when they ate monkey brains. I would now say it is a good movie, but the low point of the series and kind of out of place in the Indy series. **18 Again** - My parents rented this PG movie to see as a whole family. I mean…it’s George Burns in a fun comedy. It actually has a brief nude scene and let me tell you, my dad pushed “stop” on that VCR so quick. I’ve never seen it again, but my dad was cool enough that he went and previewed the rest of the movie after that point later and let us watch the rest the next day. What an odd thing to happen in the middle of a pretty tame movie. **Throw Mama From the Train** - This is a fun one for a totally different reason. We only ever saw the TV-cut of this movie, so I remembered it as an almost entirely clean comedy…even though it is about killing people. I saw it again 20 years later(around 2007) and I was kind of surprised. It’s an R-rated movie. Not shocking, but NOTHING like what I remembered in the TV-cut. I also thought it wasn’t as fun as we remembered. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/2 "2021-07-27T23:28:33Z")
When I first saw _Doctor Strangelove_ at age 12, I thought it was the best movie I ever saw up to that point. When I rewatched, I still loved it, but I realized I had missed the sexual double entendres. When I rewatched it recently, I realized it was filled with blatant sexual elements from start to finish. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/3 "2021-07-27T23:28:33Z")
My mother was a big Hitchcock fan, but she hated going to the movies alone. So one day when I was five, she dragged me along with her to see a flick of his that had just come out. I was actually bored through most of the movie, and the only thing I remembered for years afterward was a hot blonde running around in her underwear at the beginning. (I was a very precocious child. 😊) For years afterward, I wondered what the hell movie we had gone to. It wasn’t until 1983 or so that I saw the whole thing from beginning to end on TV (I had only seen fragments of it until then), and I was shocked—yes, shocked! 😲 If you haven’t guessed yet, the movie was _ **Psycho** _, and the hot blonde was Janet Leigh. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/4 "2021-07-27T23:31:55Z")
I saw _ **Dr Strangelove** _ when I was nine, and it was incomprehensible to me. The only thing that stuck in my mind was George C Scott talking on the phone while a half-naked woman lounged on the bed in his room. (That and Slim Pickens riding the bomb down.) ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2021, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/5 "2021-07-27T23:40:26Z")
My parents took me with them to the theater to see at least a couple of adult movies that were beyond my comprehension at the time - “Irma La Douce” (with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine) and the original “The Manchurian Candidate”. I haven’t seen “Irma La Douce” as an adult; “The Manchurian Candidate” is a fairly good movie but I think Frank Sinatra was miscast, and the book was better anyway. In a classic family event, my parents didn’t research the Broadway play “America Hurrah” very well and I and my grandmother wound up going with them. It was a series of skits, and the only one I remember, vividly, is the one where an actor and actress dressed up as oversized naked papier-mache mannikins and pawed at each other. I think it was supposed to make a point about American sexual mores. My mother was mortified. Grandma took it in good humor. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/6 "2021-07-28T00:01:51Z")
Another movie my mother dragged me along to see with her was _ **Some Like It Hot** _ (I was four for this one). I didn’t quite get the gangster element (maybe we had missed the beginning), but I thought the cross-dressing was hilarious. I was also smitten by Marilyn Monroe. I have **never,** **ever** , at **any other time in my life** been as **turned on** as I was watching her perform on stage in that flesh-colored dress. 😳 My dad took me to see _ **The Apartment** _ when it came out. I thought it was supposed to be a comedy, because of the way Jack Lemmon strained his spaghetti. But I don’t remember laughing at anything else. Now that I’ve seen it as an adult, I recognize its seamier aspects. The part where Shirley MacLaine’s brother-in-law shows up at the apartment went completely over my head. My dad also took me to see _ **Taras Bulba** _ over Christmas 1962. That was one helluva introduction to Russian history. The part where the plague was in the city and they were hauling the dead out in carts really freaked me out. ---
**Author:** ![Tabco](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tabco/32/7644_2.png) [@Tabco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tabco)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/7 "2021-07-28T00:22:12Z")
A friend and I went to see some movie (I don’t remember which one) and we ended up in the wrong theater and saw _Sleepers_ instead. I was 11-years-old. Pretty intense for a kid my age. I didn’t fully understand what sexual abuse was but the overall plot of the movie was comprehensible to me. Haven’t seen it since. Not sue what I’d make of it now. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/8 "2021-07-28T00:32:19Z")
Saw _Blazing Saddles_ some time before I was 10. Thought parts of it were funny and thought “wow, this is really some adult humor”. Now when I watch it I think “wow, this is really some juvenile humor.” ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/9 "2021-07-28T00:42:00Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > Did you get to see any movies when you were a kid that you probably shouldn’t have or that your parents would not have allowed had they realized what was in them? Ha! Probably seen a number of them, but one stands out. In the 1980s my small nearby town had reopened the towns run-down old 1950s-1960s theater as a second (or third) run dollar theater\*. In 1985, at 12 years old, I got my mother to take me and a couple of cousins to see _[School Spirit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Spirit)_ there. Somehow (in the pre-internet age) I had an idea what it would be like, but my mother had no idea at all. I can’t remember how she reacted. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/24ev0xwihzA/hqdefault.jpg "School Spirit Trailer") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ev0xwihzA) \*(The theater was in terrible shape, but saw lots more 80s movies than if I would have to be driven much further into the city.) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/10 "2021-07-28T11:01:46Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > “The Manchurian Candidate” is a fairly good movie but I think Frank Sinatra was miscast How so? ---
**Author:** ![Si\_Amigo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/si_amigo/32/2877_2.png) [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/11 "2021-07-28T11:47:04Z")
I went to see the Exorcist with my older brothers and cousins when I was 12. I would probably been shocked and more upset if it were not for my cousin making funny comments throughout the movie and all of us bursting into laughter as he “You mother sucks cocks in hell” became his tagline for weeks afterwards. It still makes me laugh to this day the way he says it in Regan’s demonic voice. My dad had our mom take all of us kids to see a matinee showing of Patton when I was 9 or 10 and I was more shocked by George C. Scotts speech at the beginning where he is telling the troops to make the other guy die for his country, that real Americans love a good war. Dad said it would make men of us to know how a real Americans thought. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/12 "2021-07-28T12:27:53Z")
I remember my folks loading us all in the station wagon in our jammies and going to a drive-in. It was a double bill and the main feature was _Cat Ballou_. I remember the singers/narrators and a drunk Lee Marvin singing Happy Birthday at the funeral. Years later, I realized that wasn’t such a great movie for pre-teens, but it was probably the only way my folks got to go to a movie without trying to find a sitter for 5 kids. I don’t think any of us were scarred, tho. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 12:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/13 "2021-07-28T12:34:10Z")
My dad showed me Alien when I was around 7 or 8, and I didn’t watch it again until a couple years ago. It’s just about as good a horror movie now as it was to me then, though the whole corporate dystopia angle was lost on me as a kid who was just in it for the monster. Ditto for The Terminator and its sequel. Kid me thought Terminator 2 was much better, but adult me loves the practical effects of the original, appreciates it more as a horror movie than as sci-fi, and grasps Kyle Reese’s backstory as a Vietnam metaphor in a way kid me never could have. (Kid me has absolutely no memory of the sex scene, so I can only assume my dad made me close my eyes and cover my ears for that part.) ---
**Author:** ![Retzbu\_Tox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/retzbu_tox/32/11829_2.png) [@Retzbu\_Tox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Retzbu_Tox)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/14 "2021-07-28T15:18:57Z")
I saw Silent Running when I was eight. By the end of the movie, all the human characters have killed each other and there is a lone robot left caring for Earth’s last forest in a bio-dome drifting into interstellar space. I was a bit scarred by it. I have not re-watched it, due to an assumption that I would not enjoy the experience. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanubv.2/32/3260_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUBv.2)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/15 "2021-07-28T15:43:43Z")
Hitchcock’s _Rope_. I had seen and loved _Vertigo_, _Psycho_ and _The Birds_ so naturally my mother thought nothing of encouraging me watch it when it came on tv. To my 10 year old self it was BORING. Just a bunch of fussy adults talking talking talking. I had no desire to ever rewatch it until 40 years later I thought I’d give it another try. So much great dialogue and subtext that went over my head as a kid. There’s probably a ton of horror movies most people would consider me too young to have watched when I did, but it’s always been my favorite genre. I can remember watching some that came on Sunday afternoons that scared the pants off of me but I never complained about my (occasional) sleepless nights lest my parents restrict me from watching them. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/16 "2021-07-28T15:45:23Z")
Something about the deep conviction with which Sinatra’s character says “Poor, poor Raymond.” ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/17 "2021-07-28T18:20:24Z")
> [@Retzbu\_Tox](#): > > I saw Silent Running when I was eight. By the end of the movie, all the human characters have killed each other and there is a lone robot left caring for Earth’s last forest in a bio-dome drifting into interstellar space. I was a bit scarred by it. I saw the original _ **Time Machine** _ (with Rod Taylor) right after my sixth birthday. The only thing that really scared me was the “Atomic Satellite.” I left the theater thinking “We’re all going to die in another six years!” 😭 ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/18 "2021-07-28T19:06:08Z")
I was eight years old when I saw _Jaws_. For years afterward, I would be having fun swimming, and then suddenly I would have a completely irrational wave of fear. Today, when I am channel-surfing, I will pause on the movie. I will stay to watch the skinny-dipper in the opening scene, or Robert Shaw’s tale of the _USS Indianapolis_. But the rest of the film doesn’t really interest me. ---
**Author:** ![Chad\_Sudan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chad_sudan/32/4509_2.png) [@Chad\_Sudan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chad_Sudan)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/19 "2021-07-28T20:49:30Z")
At 10 years old, saw the racing film “[The Quick and the Dead](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071942/reviews?ref_=tt_urv).” It opens with an extreme-closeup, extreme-slow-motion shot of a man being [hit by a race car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Pryce#Death) and his body cartwheeling across the track like a rag doll. This morbid footage was simply tacked on to a documentary that had originally come out a few years earlier. So exploitative. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2021, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464/20 "2021-07-28T20:55:02Z")
My parents (father in particular) had a strange habit of taking me to see a bunch of movies that I wasn’t anywhere near old enough to see. I think they figured that most movie violence at the time (late 70s/early 80s) was fairly stylized and cartoonish, and that I’d already heard most of the bad words from them or classmates anyway. So as a strapping seven year old, I got to go see “The Blues Brothers” in the theater. I enjoyed it- it was funny even to a seven year old kid and I really enjoyed the music, but a LOT of the jokes and innuendo sailed right over my head. Seeing it again probably nine or ten years later opened up the movie a lot more; there was a lot of stuff I hadn’t understood as a young boy. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-you-got-to-see-way-too-young-thoughts-on-them-now/947464.md?page=2)