I can’t remember exactly which was first, but since my dad had weekend visits with me, one of the things he’d do is take me to the movies. These all sort of blend together:
*Star Wars
The Jungle Book
The Muppet Movie
The Cat From Outer Space
Superman *
I think the Muppet Movie really got me, though. I had the LP (and, at the time, knew every single song), the Kermit puppet, the Miss Piggy lunchbox… and every Saturday evening I was firmly planted right in front of the TeeVee for The Muppet Show.
I imagine it might have been a Disney movie: “Gus”, “Herbie the Love Bug” or one of the animated ones (101 Dalmatians?). I really can’t do more than guess.
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Since a couple of you have mentioned Godzilla movies, I’ll mention that my brother and I were big Godzilla fans (the older older one, who posts to this board a lot, still is). We really wanted to see this Godzilla movie we heard about, and I’ll never forget my dad putting quite an effort to try to find it for us–poring over movie listings, calling a couple of places. No such luck.
It was Godzilla vs. Bambi. :eek:
We saw it about five years later on cable.
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I had to have been five or six (this was in 1963 or 1964). There may have been others before that, but it’s the first one I remember paying attention to all the way through. I might have seen The Absent-Minded Professor (Fred MacMurray) but I was small and didn’t stay awake long after the lights grew dim.
That sounds like Scavenger Hunt with Tony Randall, Richard Mulligan and uh, the guy from Battlestar Gallactica. No not that guy, the other one.With the hair.
I remember seeing it on TV. It was pretty funny.
Some good lines from Scavenger Hunt
“Van-illa”
“We keep Montclair”
“You killed Buzzy!”
“See kids? Those are beehives.”
Oh yeah, my first movie was Star Wars.
First run but not opening night.
My first movie was at the drive in. It was The Apple Dumpling Gang. It was a Disney production, a western/comedy thing that I believe had Don Knotts in it. I don’t remember much of anything about it, but that is probably a good thing.
Interesting bit of synchronicity here: I followed ReservoirDog on the MST3K thread, and I follow him again here. The first movie I remember seeing in the theatre was, like him, The Apple Dumpling Gang, when I was 6. I might have seen something before then, but I don’t remember.
Then I have a memory gap until 1977, when I distinctly remember seeing Star Wars several times in the theatre. I also saw Candleshoe that year, as part of a birthday-party field trip.
The first movie I saw at a drive-in: Laserblast, a truly horrid film with Roddy McDowall.
The first R-rated movie I was taken to see: Bustin’ Loose, with Richard Pryor, when I was 11 or 12.
I vaguely remembering going to the drive-in, but don’t recall the films. The first movie I do remember going to see is Planet of the Apes. Believe me when I say that the first shot of the gorilla on horseback will get your attention on the big screen (particularly if you don’t know a damn thing about what’s going on and you’re a young kid).
I guess the earliest movie memory for me is going to the Belle Meade drive-in in Nashville to see “What’s New, Pussycat?” I remember liking the opening credits and Tom Jones singing the theme song, but the movie put me to sleep. (I was only three.)
Later, we moved to Clarksville, TN, and we used to take a big bag of popcorn and some lemonade to the Moonlit drive-in
where I remember seeing True Grit, The Omega Man, MASH, and
After The Fox, among others. It had a playground up by the screen for kids to amuse themselves before the picture started.
The first time I went to a regular movie theater was when my mom took me to see “The Jungle Book” for my sixth birthday in 1967.
Boy we sure have a lot of young whipper-snappers in here. The first movie I ever saw at a theater was Bambi when it was first released. And I have been told that I cried so long and loud when Bambi’s mother was killed that my parents had to take me out of the theater.