Worst Movie Experience?

Cafe Society
1

I was asked today about my worst experience in a movie theater. Off hand, I could only think of two.

The SECOND worst was that time back in '81 during the Rocky Horror Picture Show, when during the part where they’re singing “Over At The Frankenstein Place” and everyone holds up their lighters?

Some vapor brain shot off a bottle rocket.

It went FSSSSSSSSHH up, bounced off the ceiling of the theater, and directly into some guy’s Afro, way up in the fourth row or so.

I had a clear view of this, and thought, “Wuh oh,” right before it exploded. It literally blasted a chunk of the guy’s Afro clear out of his head. I could see it go flying in the light from the screen.

The guy leaped to his feet and screamed.

At this point, I noticed that in addition to an Afro that looked like it was easily two feet across, the man stood over six feet and looked like he could have played defense for the Packers. Assuming he could fit all that hair in the helmet, anyway.

He screamed again. And then he turned around and screamed, “WHO DID THAT?”

Everyone in the theater went dead quiet. This did not suit him. He struggled out to the aisle, and came storming up the aisle, pointing at people, shrieking, “DID YOU DO THAT, MOTHERFUCKER? DID YOU DO THAT?”

The hole in his hair was still smoking. I think there might have been something still smoldering in there. He did not care. He grabbed one guy sitting in an aisle seat by the lapels, and yanked him out of his seat. “DID YOU DO THAT, MOTHERFUCKER?”

A manager type showed up and asked him to go back to his seat or leave. The guy screamed at him, “I’M GONNA FIND OUT WHO DID THAT AND I’M GONNA MAKE HIM EAT HIS TEETH!” And when the manager threatened to call the cops, the guy punched him, grabbed him, dragged him up to the main exit, threw him out, and then began interrogating the back row.

“DID YOU DO THAT, MOTHERFUCKER?”

This went on for a good ten minutes. The guy continued to storm up and down the aisle, screaming at people, and making it pretty clear that he did not mean to leave until he found the guy who shot off the bottle rocket and beat him stupid.

The cops showed up and asked the fellow to step outside with them. He refused, and a brawl promptly broke out, and ended a moment later with the cops dragging the guy out kicking and screaming.

I could not tell you what happened after that. NOBODY was paying attention to that movie with THAT going on.

The FIRST worst movie experience was Ang Lee’s “The Hulk” with the young mother with the baby who was shrieking like a banshee with kidney stones, but she refused to get up and leave the theater, and I have no idea what happened in the middle of THAT movie, either.

But it’s way less entertaining than the football player with the smoking hole in his Afro, looking for someone to beat up…

It was only well after I had posted at length about all this that the questioner said, "Actually, what I meant was ‘have you ever really been in a really bad movie?’ "

But rather than waste it all, I decided to ask all of YOU: What’s your worst experience in a movie theater?

2

Paying to watch Ice Pirates.

3

The Aussie film the Last Castle.

4

First week as a usher at a cinema. It’s Christmas week, and we are haling butt, with sold out houses everywhere. Getting ready to dump and clean a house when a woman ran out, green. No path to the bathrooms, lobby packed. Pulled out the 55 gallon trashbag in my back pocket out, snapped it open and got her face in it before she exploded. Can you say Norovirus? I was sick for a week.

Years later, I was a manager of a cinema complex in a resort area. No sooner had I returned from the bank run when one of the 3 phases of power on the pole outside exploded. This shut down the bulbs in the projectors, but depending on exactly how the houses were wired some houses shut all the way down, some had the emergency light come on, some were all the way dark, and I’m standing there with no cash in the cinema for refunds, and people were not that interested in rain check tickets. Fun times!

5

Movie night in the open central area at the Campus Centre at Waterloo University. They had scheduled “Pink Flamingos” by John Waters. I was 18 and in the first few months of my first time away from home. I made it less than halfway through before I left, fearing that I would throw up.

Edit: on the positive side, it was free.

6

I was 5 or so, and our family went to see Swiss Family Robinson. I asked to go to the bathroom, and my dad gouged my eyes with his fingers. Or maybe he was raising a finger to shush me and it accidentally brushed my eye; I forget. I do remember being afraid to go to movies for a while after that.

7

…didn’t occur to me that some among us might have worked in the biz.

I LIKE it!

8

I don’t think I’ve had a bad experience at the movies, but two stand out:

When I was ~15 I went see Bio-Dome with a friend. Halfway through the movie something happened to the projector and the screen went blank. They had to give everyone a rain check. The worst part was the fact that my buddy had fallen in love with Joey Adams as soon as he saw her on the screen, so I had to spend the rest of the day listening to his bellyaching about how he missed seeing the rest of her scenes in the movie. Moron.

I saw Gosford Park when it was released and it was so fucking boring that I fell asleep – the only time I’ve ever slept through a movie.

Years later, after I got hooked on Downton Abbey, I gave it another try. I stayed awake this time, but it was still stupid and boring.

9

2 experiences:

  1. Sling Blade. Holy shit I hated that movie. It was agony sitting through it with my husband, but I did. The film broke with maybe 10-15 minutes left to go. We went back another night so that he could watch the ending. I watched the entire thing again.

  2. Firefly. I was watching with my son and husband. My son was an infant and up to about 6 months he followed normal baby protocol. It’s dark and loud? Am I swaddled with a full tummy? Check and check. He would sleep through things. With 15 or so minutes left in Firefly, he outgrew that. I took him out when he started crying and have never seen the end of that movie.

10

Sat all the way through Cheyenne Autumn. What do I win?

11

I believe the worst film I have paid to see in a proper cinema was Pet Sematary Two.

I also saw the third installment of the Karate Kid series the same day. It was not a pleasant experience.

12

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I hated Kubrick’s “The Shining.” Read the book. If I hadn’t read it, maybe I wouldn’t have expected anything. But I did read it. Blood gushing around the elevators…seriously?

13

I’m a huge Zappa fan, but sitting through 200 Motels at the theater was… tedious. Couldn’t wait for it to end.

14

Bucharest, 1960s. Rol lthe newsreel, it’s Brezhnev arriving at the airport, being given the welcoming air-kiss thing bt Ceausescu. Someone yells “Don’t forget to kiss his ass!” Reel flickers to a stop, house lights go up, we’re all given a stern lecture by the attending party commissar. “Now let’s try it again, and show some respect.” Whole boring reel restarts, and at the lovely moment, “. . . kiss his ass” shouted by the whole audience in unison. Those were before Ceausescu’s really bad days, so we were all just sent home without refunds.

15

That is priceless!

16

I think I have to agree with this one. It was just ugly all around.

17

I went through this period where every movie I saw featured some kind of running water toward the end. A waterfall, a babbling brook, someone filling a bathtub, someone obsessively washing his hands 27 times (I think this was As Good As It Gets).

Hello, filmmakes, do NOT put running, rushing, babbling, liquid water in the last 10 minutes of your movie, grrr! People have been drinking giant drinks. It looks like you want them to either miss the end of your movie or sit there in torture. I can almost see them chuckling about it. “Yeah, here’s where we’ll open all the fire hydrants, heh hey.” Sadists.

The only movie I walked out of and never went back wasthe original True Grit. I was really annoyed by the movie, but the actual reason was that the theater, in Dallas, Texas, had the AC set to STUN and I was turning blue.

Outside, it was a nice toasty 100 or so degrees with lots of humidity. Felt good. I did not go back. By the time my friends came out I had thawed out and was in a pretty agreeable mood, but I did not mind missing the end of that movie.

18

I really appreciate the way you can tell a story. Superb!

19

I see your giant soda drinks and raise you!

Same cinema, which started out life as a bowling alley. We got the candlepin lanes, the owner kept the 10 pin lanes. Well, he decided to abscond with all the money to somewhere with no extradition treaty, and eventually the power company turned off the juice to the other half of the building. Unfortunately, the water booster pumps for our side drew power on his side of the building, which we found out when the toilets wouldn’t flush. More fun times explaining that everyone would have to hold it after slurping down that 32oz soda.

20

watching the Val Kilmer batman movie sitting on the theater floor because 1 somehow they oversold the movie and 2 assholes wouldn’t let people sit beside them there were 4 or 5 people who was “holding seats for others”

I think at some point the management got involved and gave the seats to other people but by that time it was too late

oh, and did I mention only half the theatres had AC? in the middle of a Mojave desert summer? take a guess which half we were in …