When I saw The Crying Game a huge amount of people walked out
when we found out the “twist” in the plot.
Also, I saw John Carpenter’s The Thing in an “urban” movie house and when the dog split open a good portion of the audience literally ran out of the theatre. It was a sight that still sticks with me 24 years later.
Well, I have no idea what this says about me, but The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, A Clockwork Orange and Pulp Fiction are all in my top 5 movies of all time with Five Corners and Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down rounding out the top five.
I own all of them on either DVD or tape. Apparently, I’m a weirdo. This would not be the first time that had been made clear to me.
More to the OP, I’ve never walked out of a movie, but I returned White men can’t jump to the video rental place and demanded a refund after about 15 minutes. When that stupid cow Rosie Perez started in about the frikin’ water, I just HAD to shut if off, lest I throw a brick through my TV screen.
I’ve only actually walked on one movie, but I think it was more about my mood at the time (recently divorced) than the movie.
But I effectively walked out (DVD) of Lost in Translation. I know I am supposed to like it, but I…just don’t get it. I generally like Bill Murray’s films, but I just wasn’t prepared for a 100-minute character study.
I’ve never walked out on a movie.
I fell asleep during Seven though.
I wish we had walked out of Crying Game, but we stayed until the bitter end.
And as for Clockwork Orange, I saw it at home. Possibly it’s because I saw it so far after the fact, but a good deal of it was much too over the top and actually kind of silly to me. Bright, garish colors, combined with brutal scenes of rape…it just didn’t seem real.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Fantastic movie, but I can see some people back in 1968 leaving during the opening with the apes.
Um, the previews? And the reviews? And that ad-nauseum repeated clip of the Big-Mac-in-France conversation? So you’re saying it was NOT intended to be a dark comedy? The Big-Mac-in-France conversation was NOT supposed to be funny? All those people in the theater that laughed their asses off just didn’t get the movie correctly? The scene of accidentally blowing the guy’s face off in the back of the car, and then talking about cleaning up the mess, was NOT supposed to be laughed at? And, again, all those people rolling in the isles were horribly missing the point of that scene?
I have walked out of three movies (not counting film festivals, where walkouts are more common because there are often two movies playing at once that one wants to see):
Peggy Sue Got Married because it was borning and I was a teenager on a date. We had more fun after we left.
Manhattan Murder Mystery because it everybody talked like Woody Allen, and it wasn’t funny at all. I can’t stand Woody Allen after that movie.
Waiting is a horrible, horrible insulting movie. Insulting to the audience, and insulting to its subjects. In fact, to give you an idea of the kind of person this movie appeals to, here’s a quote from the only review at imdb.com :
For the record, I didn’t walk out of either Battlefield Earth (which I knew was going to suck and I went to laugh at) or Highlander II: The Suckening (which I stared at in abject horror, like watching a train wreck unfold). The movie that I saw the most walkouts on (not counting film festivals) was The Aristocrats. But the theater where I saw it had warnings posted at the box office and on the door of the theater about the language. What did these people think the movie was going to be about?
The strangest walkout I ever saw was a couple who walked out of American Beauty during the first five minutes, when Kevin Spacy makes the joke about jerking off in the shower.
Well, more trivia for that movie indicates that 200 out of 2,700 people at the Cannes film festival walked out of the movie. I can see how they might have kept track of that.
As for the Newsweek claim, I think they might have done a survey of movie theaters and figured it out that way. After all, there really is no accurate way to measure this stuff.
Another was Wing Commander. cite
Shoot, if you wanna talk about videos, I didn’t even make it through the opening credits of City Slickers. Something about it just irritated the crap out of me, although I don’t think I requested a refund.
What? No hate for Pink Flamingoes. A film that includes a rape scene with a live chicken crushed between the participants, Divine eating dog turds and the very presence of Edith Massey certainly must have caused riots to get to the exit.
I don’t know about hate, but it’s the only movie I’ve ever walked out of. My freshman roommate and I went to see Very Bad Things at a cheap screening on campus, and Pink Flamingoes was shown after it. We knew nothing about it other than it was rated X (or maybe it had been reclassified NC-17 by that point, I don’t remember). I think we lasted about 20 minutes before we were said it wasn’t for us and left.
Ditto. I had actually gone to the theater to see Quadrophenia, but my then-girlfriend surprised me by wanting to stick around for the midnight showing of Pink Flamingos. Eventually she got sick of me sitting there with a “who needs this shit?” look on my face and we left. She was weird.
We walked out of Eyes Wide Shut about 3/4 through it.
But I loved Pink Flamingos!
The Last Temptation of Christ had a very high number of walkouts, all six times I saw it in the theater. The Jesus/Mary slash pairing was a big trigger (naturally) but so was a later scene where Paul says to Jesus: “So what if what I say isn’t the truth? I created the truth based on what people want to hear! You don’t understand how many people NEED God.”
Larry Clark’s Kids had a fair number of walkouts as well.
Pulp Fiction WAS a comedy! Especially the scene where the 4th guy jumps out of the bathroom and screams: “DIE MOTHERFUCKER!!!” BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! click click click…(oh shit…) I never laughed so hard in my freakin’ life.
For what it’s worth, I thought “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” was a comedy too…but that’s just me. 
Huh? There are 152 reviews, and they’re pretty much uniformly positive, leaning toward the superlative.
Since we are moving into the world of at home ‘walks outs’… I bought Zombi 3 sight unseen from Blcokbuster. I love zombie movies… This one…
After the third five minute sequence of characters wandering around and zombies jumping out from around corners… I just shut it off. The breaking point was when they showed a zombie on top of a flag pole just hanging out apparently just hoping some human would happen by and not look up in time. I returned it and said “This movie is terrible, give me another one.” I think I ended up with House of the Dead (which is brillantly awful).
Normally, I’m a “hang in 'til the bitter end” sorta guy. However, I have my limits…
What About Bob. To my knowledge, Bill Murray’s only serious misstep.
The Stupids. What were we thinking? I dunno, don’t ask (at least we got our money back)
I apologize for my imdb incompetence, but I stand by my statement that Waiting is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s mean-spirited and insulting.
But don’t take my word for it. Rent it and see for yourself. You’ll regret it.
Seriously, they should add that to the DVD cover.
One of the few movies I wanted to walk out of was The Good Son. The only reason I didn’t is because my then-girlfiend (typo, but I’m leaving it) was willing to put forth an incredible amount of making out to keep me in my seat.
Oh, and during Armageddon, I went out to the lobby about halfway through to see if the theater we were in had video games. (They didn’t. 
)
