Inspired by drastic_quench’s similar thread about Silence of the Lambs. That thread reminded me that I had always wondered the same thing about each of these three excellent horror movies.
Alien was one of the very first movies I ever saw on a video recorder. I saw a pirate copy (I think) at home about six months after the movie’s release, and it scared the holy crap out of me. I was about 24 at the time, and I watched it by myself. At home. In the dark. Dumbass.
I only saw the other two movies very recently, like within the last two years or so. I loved them both, even though they’re so intense that I’d have to be very mentally prepared to sit through second viewings. I wish I had had the intestinal fortitude to see any of these three in the theater, but I’ve always been a horror movie wuss.
So, did the audience piss itself when the alien was discovered to be snoozing in the escape pod? Or when Jack Nicholson well and truly flipped his cookies and started wielding the axe? Or when The Thing revealed itself in an unexpected person and became a crab-head-monster thingy?
I think I’ve told my “Alien” story somewhere here before, but here goes.
I was in high school when it came out. A friend and I went to go see it at one of the big movie theaters that showed blockbusters in 70MM Dolby with a screen so wide it actually had a curve to it. We got there late and the show was almost sold out. The only two seats we could find together were about three rows back from the screen. I had to crane my neck back and constantly move my head left and right in order to see everything.
So, when that alien popped out of the egg and onto John Hurt’s face, I just about crapped my pants.
The only one I saw in the theater was Alien. I nagged my sister into going with me because I think I was too young to go to a rated R alone. I don’t remember the audience reaction much, just my own and my sister’s. I thought it was scary, but I got a huge laugh out of my sister, and then got just a little irritated. She basically put her hands over her eyes as soon as they got to the planet, and kept them there the rest of the movie. Funny at first, but then I was like, “oh c’mon! You’re missing the whole movie!”
And she pretty much did. Bless her heart for sitting through it with me though.
Alien – I was expecting something wholly different before I went in. The pre-production sketches I saw in Cinefantastique dated from before H.R, Giger’s involvement, and showed completely different ships (both human and Alien) and settings. They had rented a huge triple billboard in Times Square for months before the release, and it hinted at something very different as well. The TV commercial showed a large egg cracking open, and light coming out, then the tagline “In Space, no one can hear you scream” (although they can in an air-filled ship)
When I finally saw the film, I was disappointed. It was hard not to see the 1950s Jerome Bixby film It! The Terror from Beyond Space in it, but with a lot less logic and consistency. But Ridley scott is a great director, which went far in reclaiming the film’s flaws. And H.R. Giger’s designs, I’m convinced, are responsible for the film’s success. No one would remember it today, I think, if he hadn’t adapted his biomechanic nightmares into that idiosyncratic xenomorph.
The Shining – I love Stanley Kubrick, and his 2001, Clockwork Orange, and Barry Lyndon were stunning triumphs of cinematic vision. But I must admnit that I was disappointed by how far it strayed from Stephen King’s original story (which I’d read), and even Kubrick’s re-imagining didn’t make up for it. It’s not just a matter of not having the Hedge Animals (which wouldn’t have worked in that pre-CGI era, and I don’t really think would work even today) – he changed too much of the basic story and logic. The Thing – I saw it in a drive-in, and sat through it twice. Much as I love the original Cjhristian Nyby/Howard Hawks version, it was really great to see John Campbell’s original story translated to the screen. Carpenter’s 1982 film is unusually close to the source story, and Bill Lancaster’s script is good. I’m not fond of the tacked-on downbeat ending, though. But this is still one of my favorite films. The other two here aren’t.
Alien was the first R rated film I saw, I was only 15 and technically not allowed in the theater with without an adult. I thought I was big time sneaking in, but the girl running the ticket booth didn’t care.
I saw Alien in theaters. It was actively unpleasant and I kept screaming at the actors for being such morons. The monster out of the chest was the last good moment of the film before it devolved into utter stupidity and cheap scares.
As for The Shining, it was pretty dull. Nothing really scary happening, though nice with the mood. I was disappointed; it wasn’t any better than Barry Lyndon and I wondered if Kubrick had lost it.
I saw Barry Lyndon in the theater. I was still married then, and I think my husband was bored. But at the point where you see the little boy’s funeral procession, with his coffin borne on the little cart he used to drive, and the music swells up, OMG, I turned my head and laid it down on hubby’s shoulder and started bawling like a baby. My reaction surprised the heck out of me later on. To this day I’ve only cried in one other movie as an adult.
Alien scared the crap out of me. I judge it to be scary because even after multiple viewings I get scared. When the critter started to uncoil in the shuttle I admit I shrieked like a banshee. The only thing that seemed to be missing was the death of Dallas, down in that tunnel. Later on I skimmed the novelization, and it turns out Ripley offed him. The xenomorph implanted him and had him stuck on the wall, so he was still alive when Ripley found him, and he begged her to kill him. She used the flamethrower.
The Shining was kind of disappointing, with how they changed the story so much. But I’d love to stay in a big, old-fashioned hotel like that!
Having seen Alien in 1979 in large screen, the effect was very real. The space/ship porn needed the large screen, and the egg field in the large cavern needed a large screen for full effect. On a similar note, Cloverfield works better on a large screen.
I saw The Shining in the theater, twice - I was 12 at the time. I was really irritated at the audience who, for some reason, kept laughing at the date cards.
Thinking about it, they were probably stoned.
As for me, I loved the movie and didn’t really worry about how it deviated from the book.
The only one I saw in the theater was The Shining. I was like 13 or 14. I hadn’t read the book yet. I remember the mood being effective. The biggest jump from the audience was when Nicholson killed Scatman Cruthers.
[/QUOTE] The Shining was kind of disappointing, with how they changed the story so much. But I’d love to stay in a big, old-fashioned hotel like that!
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If you’re near the White Mountains of New Hampshire, the Mt. Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods would fill the bill.
The inspiration for The Shining came from the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, CO. It is open year round, and does give ghost tours…
A number of deleted or simply unfinished scenes are included on at least some of the DVD releases. Mine has this one amongst others.
I saw Alien when I was about 8 years old. Parents refused to take me to it. I snuck in with friends and had to leave partway through. Gave me nightmares and for about two weeks afterwards I wouldn’t go into a room without turning on the lights and checking the ceiling out first.
My husband saw Alien in the theater when he was around 8 or 9 - his teenage sister took him. He loved it, though it was the scariest thing he’d seen, and had nightmares for a week straight (and after). The chest burster scene was scary, but so was pretty much everything about it - the atmosphere, the aliens, all of it. It also started a fondness for the series and Giger’s work that went on for many years.
I saw *Alien *on the big screen. Well, part of it.
The girl I took was frightened and disturbed pretty early on and had her hands over her face most of the time when the egg hatched and the critter wrapped itself around the guys neck. When it finally popped out of the guys chest, she stood up and made a beeline for the exit, me in slow pursuit.
I watched a bit of them chasing the critter around before I hit the doors and couldn’t convince her to go back in. It was a few years later on HBO when I finally saw the whole thing. She later told me that she had watched it too on HBO and thought it was stupid and silly.
Only time I can recall ever having walked out of a movie.
The only one of the three I’ve seen is The Shining. What I remember more than anything is the trailer I saw about a month before it came out. IIRC it was a still shot of the elevator doors with some creepy music playing and maybe some titles. This goes on for a couple of minutes and I was wondering what the heck this had to do with The Shining and if anything was going to happen and then blood came gushing out of the doors, flooding the lobby. My best friend and I looked at each other with absolute glee knowing we were going to see that for sure and we counted down the days until it opened. Now I have it on DVD and have seen it so many times the memory of the first viewing has been obscurred for the most part. I do remember waiting in horrified anticipation for the Room 217 scene and it did not disappoint. I also found the end sequence with the shot of Jack Nicholson in the photo to be very haunting and it’s still vaguely disturbing when I watch it today.
The one thing I remember of seeing **Alien **in the theater was the chest-burster scene, and the whole audience going “OOOhhhhhhhhhhh”.
It really was frightening while you were in the theater, but once I walked out the fear was gone. The contrast here was with seeing Jaws in the theater. That was just as intense (if not more so), but people came out of the theater and changed their summer plans to anywhere that wasn’t on the water.
Side Note - my summer job in college was working on one of the ferries that ran from Wood’s Hole out to Marthas Vineyard, where Jaws was filmed. I worked the summers of '75, '76, and '77. Jaws came out in '75, and some of the old-timers talked about the summer crowds being down. You couldn’t tell by me though - it still seemed mobbed, including the beach used for some of the scenes.
Not me, baby. That hotel creeped me the hell out. How Kubrick managed to make it feel simultaneously cavernous and claustraphobic is a tribute to his skills in cinematography. Even before the twins showed up, the long, bleak corridors in deep focus were giving me the willies.
With The Thing, I tried to watch it once a few years ago, but the dogs in the kennel scene horrified me too much to continue. Animals being hurt is my Achille’s heel, and I just couldn’t go on. However, the transmogrifying Thing still intrigued me and I was able to make another attempt a year or two later, and I was glad I did.
However, I’ll never be able to think of Wilford Brimley as a down-home, comfortable kind of guy again.
I saw the European Premiere of Alien at the Edinburgh Film Festival. It was a relatively late start (I had been to see Rockers earlier in the evening) and there was a real buzz about it. There hadn’t been much info around about it, although I may well have seen the Cinefex Cal mentioned upthread… We were in the balcony and at the chestburster scene, iirc, there was a bit of a commotion downstairs in the stalls and somebody was helped out. Turned out some guy had dropped acid before the film… not clever! As it happens, I was offered my first tab that evening but decided that taking it before a major sf/horror film I knew little about wasn’t sensible! And it turned out I was right!
I saw Carpenter’s The Thing at a mid-morning press show before it opened with maybe 10 other people in the audience. Pretty good, but having the cinema so empty imade it feel a bit odd and drained any sense of fear from it…
Still haven’t seen The Shining properly…just various bits on tv.
