I was a bit younger than you when my mom took my brother and I to see Psycho. She had no idea how out there it was going to be. We loved it, but she was kind of horrified.
I didn’t see SotL in theaters, but I remember being freaked the hell out at that scene. I was so not expecting it; I was just sitting there tensely, thinking “Where the hell is Lector? Why are they bothering about the cop in the ambulance? No one cares about him.” Then when he stands up and peels his freaking face off, I just about lost it.
I saw Silence of the Lambs at an advance screening with absolutely no advance knowledge of the book or the previous film (Manhumter).
At the reveal, you could almost feel the air get sucked out of the room.
Its pertinent to mention that Hannibal is only on screen for 16 minutes of that film. That blows me away to this day.
Strange for me, because all of the courthouse scenes were shot at this building. It was right next to the Pitt campus, and I walked right by filming every day for more than a month.
I saw Jodie Foster, who I recognized, and Anthony Hopkins, who I did not recognize until the movie came out.
There were other scenes around Pittsburgh that were recognizable - the mental hospital was a real asylum near Canonsburg. But the fact that I walked by these powerful scenes for weeks and didn’t know anything except that some kind of movie was being filmed was pretty strange when the movie came out and was such a blockbuster.
Saw it on opening weekend and just remember how hard my heart was pounding during the basement night-vision scene.
So, for you the movie had a happy ending?
I’d seen trailers, featuring a closeup on Hopkins’ face during an intense dialogue, and I knew that I wanted to see this on a big screen. I wasn’t disappointed. There was something positively terrifying about seeing his face filling the screen. I felt like prey being hypnotized by the gaze of the predator.
Unfortunately, the movie had left the larger multiplexes and was playing a smaller local theater. I went on a Saturday afternoon, and there were fewer than ten people in attendance. By the end of the movie I was acutely aware of how isolated we all were, and how no one would notice if one of us suddenly went missing. And yeah, I probably had more lights on in the house that night than I really needed…
I saw SoTL by myself on a week-day matinee (my wife had no desire to see it) and had to walk by myself back to the car in the parking ramp. Even though it was about 4 in the afternoon, I caught myself glancing around and under cars as I walked past them.
So, yes, it was a scary movie.
I was going to mention these two films (and specifically the dessert egress scene). 2001 is also a film that has to be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated, as does Bladerunner.
I remember seeing Silence of the Lambs in a relatively small college-town theater, and while I thought it was a good movie I didn’t find it as shocking as some. The “big revelation” of how Lector had escaped was obvious to me. I was more thrilled when Clarice entered the storage garage with the door jacked up (expecting it to fall at any time) and of course the showdown with “Buffalo Bill”. (Seriously, I would have gone back upstairs, covered the exit, and called for backup, and too hell with the the screaming senator’s daughter; Clarice had a pair of brass ones to follow Jame down into the cellar maze.)
Stranger
The only similar movie experience I’ve had was seeing Final Destination 2 in the theater. Not exactly a stellar movie, but the theater was packed and the audience was incredibly engaged. During the particularly shocking death scenes the audience went absolutely berzerk with screaming, crying, wailing, and made it quite intense.
I saw this with a few other people, all of whom had read the book and knew what to expect. There was a woman behind us who was there by herself and had no idea what to expect. At the end of the film, she was frozen to her seat and would not leave. The usher asked us to help get her out and we finally walked her to her car and waited while she started it up and was convinced that nobody was in the back seat.
I have to second The Sixth Sense as my most memorable “went in knowing nothing and everything in the theater was totally stunned in unison” moment. Remember, now we know that M Night’s big gimmick is that there’s a big twist, and now we’re used to movies where you don’t really know who’s dead, who’s the ghost, etc. But I managed to avoid being spoiled even as to the existence of a twist ending, and it was totally shocking.
I also second the Keaton/Burton/Nicholson Batman as a movie which had a particularly excited audience. It was the first really big budget really good superhero movie in a long time (afaik), and it was HUGE. (And holds up very well, imho).
I took my girlfriend to see Silence of the Lambs when it first came out (junior year of college, I think). We knew nothing about it, other than that it had gotten an enthusiastic thumbs up from a friend. My girlfriend Anne was a psych major, and as the plot unfolded she got increasingly worked up. She started crying during Hannibal’s escape – not the facemask in the ambulance but the reveal of the flayed policeman – and started whispering to me that she wanted to leave. By the time the lights went out in the basement and Buffalo Bill with his night vision goggles started reaching out to touch Clarice – well, that was enough. Anne couldn’t take it any more and stood up to march out. I started to tell her that I’d meet her in the lobby as soon as it ended, but, being the loyal, chivalrous (read: fawning) boyfriend I was, I walked out with her and spent the next few hours calming her down.
The main reaction I remember was when Miggs threw his jizz at Starling. Several people screamed, some totally didn’t understand what had just happened, and some (including me) were thinking “Jeezus… did they really just go there?” (Cum is rarely actually seen in movies- Something About Mary is the only other mainstream one I can think of- and this was a first for all of us. Some walked out after that scene.
I also- true story- had to explain to a woman (co-worker and a bit sheltered) I was with how Buffalo Bill had tucked his penis between his legs. She actually didn’t understand that “it’s between his legs… it’s still there… he didn’t tuck it in (ouch) or anything like”, to which she was saying “I didn’t know men could do that!” I told her “It’s really not routine, but I’m sure it’s possible for most”. (Of course since then it’s been parodied by Jay (of & Silent Bob fame) and Ryan Reynolds and several others. Reynolds is the only one on whom it’s almost kind of hot, but that’s because Ryan Reynolds would be hot in a BIG BIRD suit.
I also remember the theater going nuts at Hannibal’s “I’m having an old friend for dinner” line.
I remember watching with the 35mm projector clattering away making quite a racket in my left ear, with the movie sound blaring from a monitor speaker into my right ear.
And the projection booth lights were on as well.
It was still spooky, but I think my viewing technique cheated me out of much of the magic.
ETA: Agree with folks on Batman. I remember staying up until three in the morning the night before the release so we could have a private showing at the theater for staff. Boy that hurt the next morning at my day job, but it was kind of cool to say “I already saw it” to my co-workers.
I went into The Matrix knowing nothing about it except what was on the poster, because I missed the start of the movie I’d come to the theater to see. Maybe I was just out of it at the time, but I remember almost no hype about that film before it came out, which seems sort of bizarre for a big budget action flim, and because it certainly was hyped after it came out.
But anyways, all the cool kung-fu freeze frame effects that have been copied a million times were pretty awesome to see on the big screen the first time around.
I first saw Jaws about three weeks after it opened. It was at a midnight showing that was still packed, the movie was that popular. I thought I’d heard all the spoilers, like the head coming out of the hole in the bottom of the boat.
But I HADN"T heard about the chumming scene. When that shark roars up out of the water, and Roy Scheider walks backward to utter his famous line to Quint, the whole audience screamed and sort of pushed backward with their hands. I know I did.
I think SotL was the other scariest film I’ve ever seen. Anthony Hopkins was terrifying and I had to keep telling myself “It’s only a movie”
In 1977 I saw Star Wars on it’s first run. Perhaps the most impressive scene was that very first one, in which the battlecruiser keeps on coming and coming overhead. I’d never experienced a shot like that before.
SOTL: Didn’t see it in the theater, unfortunately, but the reveal in the ambulance is one of my favorites.
The Ring: Just when you think things are over and they’ve laid the ghost to rest, and Rachel tells Aidan that she set Samara free…and Aidan’s eyes grow wide and he says, “Why did you do that?? You weren’t supposed to HELP her…!” Cold chills down my spine, and the girl I was seeing it with said “Oh fuck!”
Jurassic Park: T.rex breaks through the fence. Utter silence in the theater, then some guy about four rows ahead of me says “Holy shit…!” Awesome.
The Descent: Night vision on the camera, the first clear shot of one of the Crawlers. In a full theater, I heard what might have been 6 or 7 women scream.
Saw it on the first showing of opening day. The audience freaked out during the “night vision” parts towards the end, but the biggest shrieks came when it was revealed that the killer had been tracked to Calumet City, Illinois, which just happened to be the same town we were currently watching the movie in. 
Took about five minutes before everybody finally calmed down. 
Why is this terrifying? I’ve never understood that. Because they helped Samara, she can now do …
…exactly what she’s been doing all along!
Helping her doesn’t relieve the problem, but it doesn’t make it any worse, either. So why should people be scared of this?
I never intended to watch Silence of the Lambs. I’m a big wuss. I ended up watching it during a double period of Legal Studies when I was in eleventh grade. Someone had popped off campus at lunch and bought it as a new release, and the teacher decided that it had legal concepts in it and was way more fun than torts. So. I remember very little of the actual plot, but I do remember being horrified at a sense of sheer inevitability of bad things happening.
The rest of the class was pretty quiet for a bunch of seventeen year olds. I don’t recall anyone doing much more than gasping loudly at the startling bits.
On another ‘seeing something for the first time’ note, when I was a teenager, one of the little old ladies (my perception) at church told me that when SHE was a teenager, her mother wrote her a note to get out of school so they could go to see Gone With the Wind together. Which was the first time it occurred to me that parents might fake sick notes for their kids for other reasons, AND the first time it occurred to me that little old ladies might once have been teenagers sneaking off to the cinema. She said the movie was incredible and really swept them off their feet. Totally worth skipping school for!