I didn’t get to see Alien on the big screen until the last restoration with the new footage and stuff, about 5 years ago or so. But when I heard it was going to be shown, I knew I had to see it.
It was awesome.
They’re all great.
My Alien story - when my niece was 13 or so, Alien was showing at an old neighborhood movie theater and she was dying to see it because she’d heard about how scary it was. Having seen it numerous times, I agreed with the concept that she needed to have the snot scared out of her, so I took her.
We got the last two seats and they were in the balcony. The movie’s charging right along, still scaring everyone after all these years, and we are to the point where we’ve had the chestburster scene and they have gone looking for the critter. Ripley is searching a room when the body left behind from the first morphing falls on her shoulder. Remember that scene? Big scare for everyone. The next scene opens with them tossing the body into a dissection tray and cutting into it with the attendant ooze. It’s nice and quiet, giving everyone a chance to catch their breath.
When the cut and the ooze happens, my niece says loudly, “OH, GROSS!” The entire audience busted out laughing. My niece tried to hide under her seat from embarrassment.
I saw Alien and nearly had a cardiac arrest when the egg’s contents jumped out at John Hurt’s face, and again later when it burst out of his chest.
The Shining was pretty creepy, though it was weird to be sitting there watching it with my neighbor while she breastfed her baby.
The Thing was icky goodness.
I was doing fine with The Silence of the Lambs until the last half hour, when some idiot brought her three-year-old into the theater with her and I was distracted and unhappy with the presence of a small child at an R-rated feature.
I had to leave the theater midway through Alien; I just could not handle it, and I’ve never had such a reaction to any other movie. I’d stayed up all night studying, had just taken the last final of my freshman year in college, and hadn’t seen any trailers, so I really had nothing to go on other than the fairly ambiguous poster and word of mouth. I was close to losing it after the John Hurt Moment™, and at some point while they were looking for the damn cat, I just told my friends I was leaving. Someone else had driven, it was bright, sunny afternoon, and I walked three miles back to my dorm.
I eventually watched the whole movie, but it was on cable about ten years later. I actually saw Aliens and Alien 3 in theaters before getting around to watching the rest of Alien. (This was back in ancient times before cable was popular, and IIRC it took about 20 years for Alien to come out on DVD).
Being a total pussy, I have not seen The Shining or The Thing. (I have never seen E.T., either, but that’s probably for a different reason).
Alien scared the crap out of me and everyone else in the theatre. I went opening Friday night, the theatre was packed, and everyone was screaming like maniacs at all the scary parts. It was AWESOME!
The Shining was so different from the book that I was pre-occupied. I jumped at a couple of things, but the axe thru the door part wasn’t one of them. Most of the rest of the audience was proper scared tho.
The Thing was another opening night flick for me (I like to see movies with a big crowd when I go to the theatre, and I like to go before word-of-mouth starts to leak plot details). I had not only seen the first film version but was very well acquainted with the original story. I was shocked at how much better it was than the first version and how closely it stuck to the story. I was also shocked and scared as hell at all the creepy shit. I distinctly remember a guy in the audience shouting “OH HELL NO WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT???” when the stomach-clamp-cum-spider scene played out, right before Kurt Russell yelled nearly the same thing onscreen. Gave us all a good laugh… then the spider reared its human-ish head and everyone freaked out again. Good times.
Forgot to add: I thought (and still think) the realistic, tho downbeat, ending of The Thing is among the greatest endings in sci-fi/horror movie history.
I saw the original Exorcist in a cinema in Valetta, Malta when it came out.
There had already been an incredible amount of hype in the media about people having fits,fainting,throwing up and even becoming the victims of curses while watching the film, so showings had special first Aiders in attendance etc.(This in the U.K. for gods sake).
Malta was at that time an incredibly Catholic country where the Bible etc. was taken as being totally word for word true.
(Might still be for all I know but haven’t been there for years so I dont know)
Me and my mate sat there in the front row,watched it from beginning to end and were bored stupid by it,it seemed to be designed to shock “young people” so that they could talk about it afterwards.
Such is the power of suggestion that there was quite a large quota of audience faintings,retching and hurried exits most but by no means all young women.l
I saw Alien and The Shining in theatres. (I haven’t seen The Thing at all.)
I don’t remember anything in particular about Alien in the theatre. It was a pretty straight forward horror movie in a SF setting. The “jump” moments are all standard for the genre - how many horror movies don’t have the monster coming back in the final scene after his apparent demise? I do remember being impressed by the Nostromo for looking more real than the sterile starships in Star Trek and Star Wars.
The two things I recall theatre-wise about The Shining were the early helicopter shot that followed the family through the mountains and then to the hotel and the scene of Danny driving his big wheel through the hotel corridors worked better in a theatre. It was lifesize on a movie screen which made it seem more immediate.
Just saw an ad for Alien on TV.It reminded me of some other things about the film
I really hate how Ash The Robot came out of left field. First of all, how the hell did he get in the “Mother” telephone booth while Ripley was in there without her hearing him? Why try to shove a rolled-up magazine in her mouth? But then I was REALLY confused and annoyed when she knocks his head off, like a Rock-em, Sock-em Robot and goop comes out. Your first thought is thayt this is another manifestation of The Alien, but it turns out that, no, Ash is just a robot.
a Robot? Talk about inadequate set-up and foreshadowing. They never mentioned a word about humaniform robots in this film before this point. It seems like a major cheat, and it is.
The film’s troubled past lead to a cobbled-together feel to the thing. One idea they were going to use was having “Mother” the computer slyly helping the Alien along, but they then transferred this to Ash (he opens the lock, letting thm bring John Hurt in with the Alien on his face. Then he hides the fact that there’s a baby Alien gestating inside him from the others, even though it’s visible on x-rays. Finally, he urges them not to kill the baby when it emerges). Originally it was supposed to be because Mother or Ash saw the Alien as a superbly designed creature, and decided to take sides with it against the humans (Ash loves the face-hugger as he dissects it), but later on in the series, they decided that The Corporation (it wasn’t Waylend-Yutani until later) Actually diverted the ship to the planet to unwittingly collect specimens – a pretty stupid and sloppy way to do things, IMHO.
It never really fit together well, and the film annoys me to this day. Ash’s detectors work on micro-changes in air pressure? Fine, the damned things ought to be constantly going off. But if they’re so damned useful at locating Aliens, why do they stop using them? Stay in radio contaxct with Captain Dallas as he goes galumphing through the air ducts so you can warn him? Great. So why not tell him what direction the damned Alien’s coming from?
Aliens made a helluva lot more sense, and I do like that movie, but it had a more consistent and SF-based view. I didn’t care for any of the sequels. Especially the most recent, AVP, which seems to be mainly an exercise in pointless mayhem and sadism.
I liked that as well. Most SF that I’d seen (I didn’t see Alien until at least a few years after its release) was either portrayed as a prettied-up version of modern day tech, or as slick and beautiful advanced future tech. Alien really fit what I could see a future cargo ship to look like - very industrial, bare-bones in spots, nothing too outlandish in what you might expect our technology to become.
1979 - I was 11 and I saw Alien opening weekend. I went with my dad and a couple of his friends; none of us had any idea what the movie was about, other than that it was a Sci-Fi movie and the TV ad made it look kind of scary. Well, it turned out to be the scariest movie-going experience of my life and remains so to this day. Thankfully, I went to the restroom before we sat in our seats, or I would have certainly pissed myself and had to leave the theater long before the movie ended. I saw it at Hollywood’s Egyptian Theater, which was huge, with a big curved screen and state-of-the-art sound system. There were also models of the Nostromo and other things from the movie in the lobby. It was altogether awesome, and Alien remains one of my favorite movies to this day.
1980 - I saw The Shining opening weekend. It was at The Chinese Theater in Hollywood, which was also a huge theater like the Egyptian with similarly state-of-the-art equipment and giant screen. I loved the book and liked Kubrick movies, so was fully anticipating a great movie. I went with my mom and aunt and a couple of their friends. We were all pretty disappointed, mainly because we were expecting something we didn’t get. I’ve re-watched it since then and decided it’s a pretty good movie, it’s just not the movie I wanted it to be.
1982 - I went to see The Thing with my paternal grandmother. We had both read the original Campbell novella, which is still one of my favorite Sci-Fi stories, and I had liked the two John Carpenter films I had seen. We saw it at a theater in Santa Monica a couple of months after it opened. The theater was half-empty and had good sound and a decent sized screen. The movie grabbed me from the very beginning, and it is still one of my favorite films of the genre. In fact, I think it’s just about perfect.
Shit, I saw Thing at the theater when I was just 13 years old. Mother of my neighbor friend worked at the theater and got us in to see a late show.
SCARED the hell out of me…I loved the movie though. I’ll never forget that experience. The only other movie that physically scared me we Poltergeist, probably because I saw them when I was fairly young and hadn’t seen any other movies on the big screen up to that point except Pete’s Dragon.
Dude, your grandma is hardcore. I can’t even get my husband to watch it with me.
I saw both Alien and The Shining in theaters at 11 and 12 respectively. It was probably the first time I had seen something like Alien (sci fi plus monsters plus gore) and it was quite creepy and made a big impression. But The Shining scared me shitless, probably because a crazy person with an axe was so much more real of a fear.
I slept through the night from birth and the night I saw The Shining was the first time I had to have my mom get up and come sleep with me.