I’m really amazed at the movies Dopers’ parents apparently allowed their very young children to see. The Omega Man at 5? Billy Jack at 6??? How could a kid that young even follow the story, much less realize what s/he is seeing isn’t real? What about the scenes that are disturbing even to adults? Wow.
Bibby
I think it was Mary Poppins. Maybe Sound of Music. It was around 1965…
Well, it wasn’t my parents - it was my stepbrother. It wouldn’t surprise me if he said we were going to Herbie or something, then took me to the movie he wanted to see.
OTOH, my little girl loves the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds, which isn’t really age appropriate. Same thing with Titanic which we watched last week (but I did chapter-skip over the nude Kate Winslet and the doin’-it-in-the-car scenes).
My parents had made a decision to let me see anything I wanted on TV (provided they were present and it wasn’t past bedtime), just like they let me read anything I could get my hands on. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be as liberal as a parent. It screwed me up pretty bad.
Bambi at about age 4. They killed Bambi’s dad and I started crying.
They killed Bambi’s mom. Then he goes off with his Dad, The Great Prince of the Forest. They even made an entire for-home video of that time, Bambi II, a few years ago, with Captain Picard as his dad.
My parents took me to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest at 11. Not only did I love it, but I was the envy of my classmates for having gotten to see an R-rated movie. Not sure exactly why they took me–they weren’t particularly liberal, though they did let me read pretty much whatever I wanted (and watch, too, but only if it wasn’t on past bedtime. Mom was a stickler for bedtime).
I seem to remember The Absent Minded Professor, though it could’ve been one of the old Disney films already mentioned.
…and JohnT? I think there’s probably redress in law.
The one I recall for sure seeing in the theater (and LOVING it): Home Alone 1990, when I was 5 years old. God, I still love that movie and its sequel to this day.
Edited to add Bolding to the title
It was The Jungle Book for me, too. I think Munster Go Home was the first movie I saw at a drive-in. We were staying with my grandmother in her tiny hometown and my Dad was bored out of his skull, so he piled us into the car in our PJ’s and drove to the first town big enough to have a drive-in theater.
I’m surprised I still remember this…
One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing
Batman Returns when I was about six or seven. I think I’d seen movies in theatres before, but I honestly can’t remember it.
No, wait. I’m pretty sure I remember seeing Milo and Otis before that.
Bambi, apparently when I was eleven months old. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I saw Bambi, Peter Pan, or Star Wars first. I had to check, but I do remember seeing it in the theater, and that’s the only showing that matches.
… this explains much mental scarring.
Are you me? I was going to post exactly this! January 1960. I had turned 4 three months earlier.
I can’t pinpoint the first movie I saw at a drive-in or a theater but one of my earliest theatrical experiences was being taken by my parents to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when it came out in 1968.
In 1971 my parents could have taken me to see either Billy Jack, A Clockwork Orange, Dirty Harry, or the French Connection as my first movie. Instead, I was treated to Bedknobs and Broomsticks, an Angela Lansbury flick. Freakin’ Angela Lansbury, that movie sucked.
I think it must have been Swiss Family Robinson. And then sometime in the next few months we went to see The Absent Minded Professor. That had to be in the summer, as we went for my brother’s birthday.
Let’s see. I don’t know which was first, but I can remember Escape To Witch Mountain, Benji, Bambi (a re-release), and Herbie Rides Again. Movies were always released in New Zealand about 8 months to as much as a year after the US, and not necessarily in the same order of release, so this will be 1975 I’m remembering, I suppose.
E.T. It was at a drive-in (hey, that dates me as well), so it may have been well past its Summer `82 release date. I turned 5 that year.
Sadly, I think the first film I remember seeing in the theatre was The Lion King. I might have seen some before that but my memory isn’t too good. Otherwise it might have been Snow White, or one of a slew of old James Bond flicks which my dad used to watch.