# The First Film You Remember Seeing **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 2, 2008, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653 "2008-04-02T08:24:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/101 "2008-04-04T01:27:11Z")
First movie in a theater–[Them!](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047573/) 1954. First movie on tv–black and white cowboy movies made in the late 1930’s/early 1940’s. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/102 "2008-04-04T02:21:29Z")
[QUOTE=gwendee] Also, we didn’t have a color television until a few years later so the impact {of the Wizard of Oz} was slightly diminished. Still I loved it. To this day watching it floods me with sense memories of the feel of those quilted robes, my hair smelling of Johnson & Johnson No More Tangles, popcorn the way my mom made it… [/QUOTE] We didn’t have color until way after the annual showings had halted so the transition between Kansas and Oz was totally lost, as well as the “horse of a different color” gag. I didn’t see _Wizard of Oz_ in color at all until I saw it on the big screen at a film club. Then I understood what all the fuss was about. A few years ago a nearby theater showed _Oz_. I had to talk **DesertRoomie** into seeing it (“I’ve seen it a million times on television.” “You haven’t seen it at all.”) – hell, it was only three bucks and they included a small bag of popcorn. She thanked me later. Earliest movie I can recall by title was the animated [_Animal Farm_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047834/fullcredits) at a drive-in. It was paired with the Fleischer brothers’ [_Gulliver’s Travels_](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031397/fullcredits) that had to have been dragged out of the vault, but I fell asleep during that one. I vaguely remember a movie that might have been earlier but I haven’t been able to track it down. It involved a family on a passenger ship that caught fire or something blew up on. The ship wasn’t in immanent danger of sinking but it was fraught with danger. I mainly remember a scene with a tyke trapped in a cabin with most of the deck missing so it was open to the cabin below and there were flames licking around the hole. Two adults were trying to coax her along the narrow edge left by the bulkhead and she wasn’t buying it. It was in color and – no – it wasn’t any of the Titanic movies. ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/103 "2008-04-04T02:26:34Z")
_101 Dalmatians_, with my parents at the old Oxford drive-in in Maine. That probably wasn’t the first, but it’s the earliest I remember. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/104 "2008-04-04T02:37:22Z")
First film(s) I ever saw at a theater must have been around '61 or so, and was, as I recall, a double bill of _Mothra_ and _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_, even though since then I’ve always had the impression that Disney films didn’t normally double up with non-Disney flicks. Quite a lot of spectacular imagery, though: I took the idea of a city-sized moth pretty calmly, but those tiny little singing girls freaked me right on out. I sometimes wonder if they didn’t inspire the Lady in the Radiator in David Lynche’s _Eraserhead_. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/105 "2008-04-04T03:00:43Z")
Searching back through old Disney movies I remember seeing as a kid, I’m saying it’s probably _The Jungle Book_ in its original release in 1967. I would have been six. ---
**Author:** ![bubastis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d07c76/32.png) [@bubastis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bubastis)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/106 "2008-04-04T03:12:54Z")
The first in a theater was definatly Disney’s “The Black Cauldron”. I remember for weeks beforehand, wanting to see this movie more than anything in the world, due to blanket media advertising on TV, newspapers, tie-in toys in cereal boxes etc. Even at five, I was a sucker. Before this, I remember seeing on TV a scary black-and-white movie, sort of a tales-of-the-crypt effort. It had a Vincent Price-ish narrator, who bookended several short horror movies. The only one I clearly remember veatures a guy whose life is somehow tied in with a ticking clock. I distinctly remember this guy running round a cemetary in a storm, as the clock ticking grows louder and louder. Anyone name this? It could have been a tv series either. Frightened the crap outa me. Very Possibly a dream. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/107 "2008-04-04T03:25:30Z")
[QUOTE=bubastis] Even at five, I was a sucker. [/QUOTE] You sure were. It was an awful film. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 4:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/108 "2008-04-04T04:11:40Z")
_The Jungle Book_. I was four or five-ish. I’m sure MommaHomie took me to movie before that, but that’s the one I remember. It would have been a revival, as it originally came out about 3 years before I was born. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/109 "2008-04-04T12:53:04Z")
I saw _Escape to Witch Mountain_ in 1975 as well (I was 8). The same year I saw _Jaws_ and _The Hindenburg_. I remember E2WM more than [Hindenburg](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073113/), but _Jaws_ was the best of the 3 by far. ---
**Author:** ![eenerms](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cdc98d/32.png) [@eenerms](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eenerms)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/110 "2008-04-04T12:55:33Z")
**Flipper** with Chuck Conners. I thought that was so cool to live on a beach. ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/111 "2008-04-04T15:30:17Z")
[QUOTE=freckafree] The first movie I remember seeing in the theater was **Old Yeller.** I looked it up, and it was released in 1957. I was born in 1958. I’m positive that I did not see it in utero, but I did see it in one of the big downtown first-run movie palaces, so let’s just leave it at…I was little. [/QUOTE] Maybe you saw it in a school auditorium. Movies like _Bedknobs and Broomsticks_, _Old Yeller_, _Charlie and the Chocolate Factory_ I remember seeing projected on the big screen, but I wasn’t born yet for any of them. They were all part of some kind of school field trip. So we saw them projected on the big screen, but not in a movie theatre during teir actual theatrical release. In particular I remember seeing _Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day_ in a high school auditorium when I was in the first grade. A kid in my class pooped his pants because he was afraid to go into the highschool bathroom. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/112 "2008-04-04T15:55:29Z")
Walt Disney’s The Shaggy Dog. I remember holding the “My Little Golden Book” based on the film, standing in the rain to get tickets, and seeing Fred McMurray switch into the dog. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/113 "2008-04-04T16:14:30Z")
My mom started taking me to movies pretty much since I escaped the womb (1974). I was quiet and well behaved, and not easily disturbed by mature content, so we saw a lot of movies together of all types. It’s hard to pin down which one came first, or which ones I actually saw in the theater as opposed to on tv. My best bet, based on memory and [wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_in_film) would be Star Wars (1977) although looking at my list it looks like 1982 was the year I really started doing the movie thing. Other films I associate with seeing in the theater in early childhood are: Star Wars (1977) Jaws (or Jaws 2?) (1975/1978) Superman (1978) Muppet Movie (1979) Alien (1979) Amityville Horror (1979) Star Trek (1979) The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 9 to 5 (1980) Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Superman II (1981) Quest for Fire (1981) Chariots of Fire (1981) Time Bandits (1981) ET (1982) Annie (1982) The Dark Crystal (1982) Summer Lovers (1982) Fanny & Alexander (1982) Poltergeist (1982) Victor Victoria (1982) Places in the Heart (1984) There used to be four movie theaters in my town, now there is one. The best one was the “dollar theater” which was still a dollar as late as 1984 since I remember they had to raise it temporarily above a dollar just for the very long “Places in the Heart”. That one became a Blockbuster Video. Another one also became a Blockbuster Video but eventually was paved over to make a parking lot. A third was turned into a community stage theater (I’ve heard that before it was a regular theater it was a naughty film place). The fourth is still a theater, and was a twin theater when I was a kid but has since expanded to 6 or so screens. Other films I associate with early childhood but can’t recall if I was actually in the theater: Wizard of Oz Chitty Chitty Bang Bang The Black Hole Snow White Jungle Book Peter Pan Herbie Benji Rocky Freaky Friday The Rescuers Saturday Night Fever Grease Midnight Express Escape to (Return from?) Witch Mountain ---
**Author:** ![Soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Soul)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/114 "2008-04-04T16:19:53Z")
**WhyNot** , thanks 🙂 What a nice ending – now I want to go out and rent it! ---
**Author:** ![VernWinterbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c67d28/32.png) [@VernWinterbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VernWinterbottom)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2008, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653/115 "2008-04-04T17:44:18Z")
On TV, The Wizard of Oz First film in a theater, Mary Poppins, 1964 I saw The Sword in the Stone in the theater, too, but I’m pretty sure it was after Poppins. Probably third film in a theater was The Sound of Music, 1965 At the Drive-In theater I remember Born Free, 1966, and The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming, also '66. (That might even have been a double feature) Then Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, 1968. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-first-film-you-remember-seeing/443653.md?page=5)