Talking with some co-workers the other day, and this topic came up. I thought it was a pretty common thing for kids to do, but only 2 out of the 5 of us had ever done it.
When I was 15, 2 friends and Ibought some tickets for some mediocre PG rated movie, then proceeded to head into the theater to watch Barb Wire. Truly awful movie, but as a 15 year old boy it was well worth wasting 1 1/2 hours of my life for a 30 second shower scene with Pamela Anderson in her prime. That was before the sex tape thing, so her boobs weren’t as easy to find back then.
The only other one I snuck into was Private Parts, when i was 15/16. I really don’t even think that movie deserved to be R rated. As a huge Howard Stern fan in high school, we were definately expecting more nudity though. At least the movie was above-average overall, not a complete waste of my time as Barb Wire.
So I’m curious to find out what movies the rest of you might have gone to the trouble of sneaking in to see. I’m expecting a lot of replies for Showgirls, that was the other movie that came up during the initial discussion at work.
Bah! When I was young they didn’t have ratings. I got to see titties every time I got dropped off at the theater. I turned 18 just in time to see Behind The Green Door at a theater in LA. So I don’t think I’ve ever sneaked into a movie in my life, for that reason at least.
Oh, all the time growing up. Mainly horror. Only one that stands out is The Gates of Hell, as my brother gave it this big send up, and it turned out to be crap.
When I was a kid, I usually went to movies with my brother who’s 10 years older than me, so I don’t remember there ever being a problem with going to rated R movies. There may have been 1 or 2 times when the guy who rips the tickets tried to raise a stink, but they’re usually more on the lookout for bands of unacompanied 14-year-olds than a 14-year-old with a preppy 24-year-old.
Though, the first R-rated movie I ever encountered was pretty damn frightening.
My brother had rented “Hideaway”, and it was made known that I wasn’t allowed to go downstairs while he watched it (release date indicates I was 9). Loving to buck the rules, I snuck halfway down the stairs to try and see the R-ratedness through the bannisters, and what I saw was a guy praying to the devil, killing himself with a spring-mounted knife or something, and then going directly to hell.
I never had to sneak in. I can remember only once a theater actually enforcing an R rating. My mom, who had dropped us off was just driving past when we were told no. We waved her down, she shouted at the cashier from the car that it was ok and he let us in.
That night me and my best friend saw Black Widow. So I’d have been 12. That was the day I learned that while I enjoy looking at naked women, I don’t particularly enjoy doing so in the company of my male friends.
I snuck into The Matrix when I was in middle school with my friends. It was a lot easier than I thought; not much sneaking at all. We bought tickets for EDtv and just hurried into the other theater. The ticket stub guy knew what we were up to but let us through anyway.
No sneaking necessary here - My neighborhood had a drive-in next door, so you could walk to a certain street, and stand there and watch the movies from outside… Boxcar Bertha, The Cheerleaders series, Double Agent 73… all watched from the street. During the day the neighborhood kids would sneak in and turn the volume up on all the speakers near the fence so we could hear. And when movies like *The Cheerleaders *were playing. men of all ages, from teens to granddads, would find reasons to walk the dog past the theater. Ah, good times.
True.
Ah the good old days…although back then, the Catholic Church had a listing of “forbidden films” that you were supposed to never, ever watch and had a take a solemn oath in church to avoid them at all costs, for fear of eternal damnation. They even printed the listings of films and passed them out in church.
Guess which films were at the top of my list to see when I got older?
Ah yes, “The Legion of Decency”. The rating were something like “A”, “B-1”, “B-2” and “C” for “Condemned”. You could rely on the L of D to provide you with a succinct list of movies that you really wanted to see.
I can still remember that the first R-rated movie I saw in the theater was Rambo: First Blood Part II, and the first one I got into without an older person was Commando, the Schwarzenegger movie. For both of those, I believe I was 12. Apparently I liked action movies back then.
There was no “sneaking” involved, though; I was always a big kid, six feet tall by the time I was 11, so I bought the Commando ticket myself and didn’t get hassled.
Alien, when the original was released I was 15 and the movie was R so I was three years under age. I did “sneak” in but in truth the empoyees could not have cared less.
This is very strange. I remember explicitly reading that they wanted the sequels to be PG-13 like the original to have a wider audience, but because someone kicked someone else in the head, it was an automatic R. I wonder if I’m memory-hallucinating that.
