Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
When I was eleven, my parents took me, and me alone, to it. It was the first movie I’d ever been to without all my seven of my younger siblings trailing along, and I felt very grown-up and adult about it.
Sean Connery as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever.
St Paul, MN, on Friday, 17 December 1971. My first date with, like, a real girl. We were both 16.
Hiya, Kate! 
Not sure where you’re going with the “adult context” definition… do you mean first movie I saw that was primarily for adults, or the first one I went to that I didn’t go to just because it was a kids movie? Or the first adult movie I went to without my parents?
Whatever movie you went to where you felt that you were an adult going to watch a movie just like grown-ups do. However you define that is fine with me. Actually being an adult or watching an adult movie is irrelevant.
Probably Under Seige. It was just me and my one-year-older cousin, both of us under 18, and I thought for sure the theater would check our ID (they didn’t), and that our parents would want to ask us about what the adult material was (they didn’t).
The Hawaiians , with Charlton Heston, from 1970. Ir was the first movie over G I saw when movie ratings were first introduced. It was M, what would now be PG I think. I was fifteen. First female frontal nudity I saw on film, a brief scene where a girl is getting out of a Japanese bath.
I graduated to being a “grown up” movie-goer when my mom took me to Bonnie and Clyde when I was 13.
I had an older aunt who entrusted her little sister to take her daughter to an appropriate movie. I remember being 12 years old watching Kentucky Fried Movie and thinking, “This is not appropriate for me, much less my 8 year old cousin.” I was 12 at the time.
My Dad let me see “Planet of the Apes” when I was 8, which made me feel pretty grown up.
Dr. Strangelove when I was twelve, but that’s just the earliest I remember. There were probably others earlier.
Animal House. Nothing special about it, I just hadn’t been to the movies in a while except for Star Wars, and I didn’t feel like an adult going to see that. After I saw Animal House I didn’t feel much like an adult either.
My parents took my brother and me with them to see In Cold Blood. It was a big story for anyone who lived in Kansas. I must have been 11. It scared me because we lived on a farm less than a mile away from the prison where the killers met (and were later executed, which made me feel better back then). I talked my mom into buying me the book and it was the first “grown up” book I read too.
When I was 12 I saw (alone) a double feature of Bonnie and Clyde, and Bullitt. Mom dropped me off at the theater. I was never asked what I thought of them, but I was electrified.
Maybe she thought u were a Catholic High School Girl in Trouble…
Mine was Serpico. I remember raising my eyebrows when Pacino called someone a ‘scumbag’.
I felt like that was the worst, most vulgar insult you could hurl at someone.
mmm
I should add that Dad took me to see “2001” the year before, but I didn’t get it. At all. Which didn’t help me feel grown up.
I took a six year old child to see the PG rated “Flash Gordon” in 1980, when it was in the theaters. We’d been supposed to see Disney’s The Aristocats but it was sold out. Now, I’d seen Flash Gordon already and didn’t think this kid would be squicked out too much, the few double entendre’s would go over his head. Sure enough, when we got hom(kid was my cousin’s child) he ran around poking everyone in the back, in imitation of the death of the Emperor Ming. Gotta love that blue blood. I wonder if he remembers the movie as being his first grown up film?
It was Bullitt with Steve McQueen in 1968. I was 13 and talked my 18 year old uncle into taking me. I still remember the collective gasp of the people around me when he said BULLSHIT.
What a different world we live in now. You can hear that word on television regularly now.
As overprotective as my mother was, she never cared less than what movies / books / plays that I was interested in. So, I’d seen many growing up. For example, I vaguely remember catching a glimpse of a naked woman’s butt on TV in some Telly Savalas movie from the 70s. I was really little, so I’d say anywhere between four or five to nine. Wonder what it was?
But what made me feel grownup, was my then boyfriend (in 1987) taking just us to see Fatal Attraction. My sheltered self was a bit stunned at the relationship implications, but I was hanging okay. He, on the other hand, said he didn’t know if he was old enough to watch anything that adult. We were both 18-19 at the time.
After my parents divorced, my dad moved in with his parents for a bit. My older brother and I would go spend weekends over with him and my grandparents.
One night, my dad’s sister (the “cool aunt” because she was only 10 years older than my brother) told him that she wanted to take us to go see an R-rated movie. She said it was rated R because of “one word, and it’s said like 1-2 times.”
My dad said okay.
We got in her car, and she said she lied to my dad. There was a lot more profanity than one word. But she was taking us to see it anyway, because it was an “important” movie, especially for the ages we were at the time (I was 12, my brother was 15).
So she took us to see “The Breakfast Club.”
Magnum Force, the second Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movie. It was my first R rated movie. My mom dropped me off to see a different movie but I walked into the R rated one and nobody challenged me. I was 14.