For me, it was “National Lampoon’s Class Reunion.” I was in college and went with a high school acquaintance I’d reconnected with, and we were puzzled as to why so few other people were in the theater, this being a National Lampoon movie.
Hoo, boy, did we soon find out! Leonard Maltin rated it “BOMB” and said, “If you went to high school with people like this, no jury on earth would convict you for turning homicidal either.” It also had a cast of no-name actors.
She also turned out not to be as nice of a person as I had thought she was.
I was watching the Bruce Willis movie The Jackal, by myself. I had to pee badly, but I didn’t want to miss anything. I had no one that could catch me up. In the bathroom I forced it out hard and promptly passed out due to Micturition Syncope. I was woken up by a theater employee and decided to go back into the movie. To this day I have no idea how much I missed.
The OP reminds me of the chapter Violence in the brief piece The 3 Most Important Things in Life by Harlan Ellison. I read it in 1978 and still recall it fondly.
Remembeer all those black power films in the 70’s? I saw a lot of thosse in Africa, where the audience cheers like at a football game. Then when the lights came up, I was the only white guy in the building. It’s an unsettling prospect, but nothing was ever said or done that made me feel threatened.
1.) College showing of Emmanuelle in a room not intended to be a theater. A lot of sweaty, horny students crammed in to watch an X-rated movie (for some of them undoubtedly a first). But the film had been liberally butchered, re-assembled in the wrong order, and with pieces of other movies and trailers spliced into it. I think they cut out most of the sex scenes.
2.) Went to go see Mystery Science Theater 3000 – The Movie at the Art Cinema in Cambridge*. They didn’t even start running the movie when the fire alarm went off, the house lights went up, and the strobe lights started flashing. It turned out to be a false alarm, but it took them forever to get the emergency lights an strobes shut off. And then, of course, the movie itself turns out to be shorter than a typical episode of the TV show (and with a large chunk of the movie missing).
My daughter and I attended a mid-day showing of Avengers: Infinity War a week or so after the initial opening (work and dialysis commitments kept us from our usual opening night attendence). Not too many people in the theater. Unfortunately, some asshat guy sat a row down from us and felt the need to explain the movie to us. After the first time he turned to us to explain what was happening, I said “Dude, just don’t. We love Marvel and do not need explanations”. After the second time, daughter simply told him to shut up. Third time, both her and I loudly told him to shut the fuck up, which caused him to get pouty and offended “I was just trying to help…”. It kind of turned into a thing, as I can’t deal with that kind of jerkishness. I said we’ve asked him multiple times to STFU, but nooooo he felt the need to keep on going, we’re just trying to enjoy the movie but he was making it impossible, so thank you moron. He came back with “Just how much can you two know about Marvel?” Like it was a pissing contest.
Daughter went out, got an usher, guy was moved, but it ruined that viewing.
First and only blind date - we went to see The Omen.
I hate horror movies, and this was no exception. I don’t think my date was too impressed either - at least not with me. I never saw him again. Nothing horrible in particular happened, so I guess I’m lucky that was the worst for me.
Mine was in January. A guy got mad because I turned my phone on even though I was sitting 5 rows away. He told me not to do that. I said “are you my mother?” and then he started cursing me with stuff like “you are a moron , piece of fking sht” and stuff like that for about 2 minutes. What made it really funny to me was his wife and young kids were standing next to him while he went on this rant at me filled with 4 letter words. I did not respond after the rant.
Well, there was this one time I set off a bottle rocket during a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show…
Nah, actually it was the time I went on a first date with this guy and we went to see Little Shop of Horrors. I was really digging it, but my date apparently hadn’t realized it was a musical and thought his penis might fall off if he voluntarily watched a movie with singing in it, so we snuck into a different movie (the Star Trek one with the whales) and it just sucked.
I’ve gone to movies that have had sound problems or the film broke, but the most memorable was probably going to see the movie “In The Bedroom” and there was an old woman snoring loudly on and off during the film. No one wanted to be the one to wake her up, I guess.
I once fell asleep during a midnight showing of “Eyes Without A Face”, so maybe I shouldn’t be the one to criticize.
One hot August afternoon, my wife and I decided to beat the heat by hitting the movie theater to see one of the Matt Damon “Bourne” movies. About halfway through the movie, the fire alarm went off, and we got to spend about 30-40 minutes standing around outside in the heat and humidity until they decided it was safe for us to go back in. So yeah, that worked out really well.
I don’t remember sleeping though Gosford Park but I don’t remember much else about it, either, except that it was tedious almost beyond endurance, and I like atmospheric films.
It’s a good example, in my mind, of a distinction between “interestingly bad” and “terrible” art: I once saw the premier of a film so obscure that was its only showing. It doesn’t deserve any more acclaim, or much more opprobrium, so I’ll just say that it’s an example of why most inexperienced filmmakers shouldn’t try to imitate David Lynch. It is, however, more interesting than Gosford Park because it’s something new, something unusual, and something which is, by God, trying to be more than its creator can actually manage. Gosford Park is exactly what it intends to be, something well within the scope of its creator, and the fact is Altman achieved precisely the boring and affected film he set out to create. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all was very soon forgotten. That is a bad movie.
The other bad film experience was in the cold months of 1998-1999 when I was living in Worthington, Minnesota. My family took a vacation to the North Woods, where it was appropriately quite cold, and watched Patch Adams (a bad enough film already) in a theater in Ely, MN, the owner of which didn’t believe in heat. It was the only time I’ve ever been able to see my breath inside a commercial building which was open for business.
While in high school, forced to take my date’s 10 year old brother to the movie theater with us. We had planned on seeing The Exorcist and knew her parents would have said no. So we claimed we were going to something else. Ended up watching an animated movie.
Back in the early 70’s I was taking third year Spanish in high school. Our teacher was quite young, and really pretty.
She told us she was the youngest child in a large Hispanic family, and the parents were old fashioned. Their kids had to have a younger sibling as a chaperone on dates, and she made out like a bandit as she would take the bribes to “Go on over there for a while” By the time she was old enough to go out there were no younger sibs, so the folks gave up and let her go out by herself.
An odd experience for me: Two of us went to see Dog Day Afternoon while our team was in Guatemala. It was in English with Spanish subtitles, but the subtitles lagged behind the dialog. So the few times there was amusing dialog, like when Pacino asks his accomplice what country he’d like to go to and the guy replies “Montana”, we would laugh like loons and everyone would turn to look at us like we were crazy.
So, aside from the enjoyment of the movie itself (which should be a given, after that OP), I have also had a fire related interruption. Not the afro-burning kind, but the theater-evacuating kind, exactly at one of the critical points towards the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, when Luke Skywalker appears to confront Kylo Ren. On the opening weekend.
There was also an interruption worth mentioning, not at a movie theater but at an opera performance of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, by the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.
I was just out of college and my girlfriend was a graduate student, so we weren’t flush with money. But there was a student discount package for a mini-season subscription to City Opera, and we got one to see six performances that year in some of the cheapest seats in the theater - it was center view, but way up in the highest section, and fourth from the furthest back row.
City Opera was great, but still not to be confused with the famous Metropolitan Opera that performs at the main venue of Lincoln Center, and let’s just say that may have played a factor in what I’m about to relate.
We were seated that evening next to two other young M/F couples about our age. I don’t know if they knew each other or not, but just after the chimes sounded to tell people to get into their seats and to settle down and be quiet, the two guys, seated next to each other, started bickering. Apparently one of them felt the other one had stepped on his foot and demanded an apology, while that fellow denied stepping on anyone’s foot and in any case it was stupid to get so bent out of shape over it, and so on. Some shoving ensued and the two began to rise from their seats, when both of their mortified dates tugged on their arms and shushed them because the music was about to start.
They sat down, glowering at each other, while the overture to The Barber of Seville played:
The overture was immediately very, very familiar - for its entirety, I could not stop playing the Bugs Bunny cartoon *The Rabbit of Seville* from the video jukebox in my head, implanted over many viewings on 1970s cartoon reruns. I even started murmuring BB's lines under my breath, "[Welcome to my shop, lemme cut your mop, lemme shave your crop... daintily, daintily...!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGhwdJZU3RQ&list=PLRr2nx0BVhjhPbxbHDKVjbSMkfuIdksxA)", until my girlfriend elbowed me sharply. After that, I kept it in my head.
After a while, I noticed the two guys were not only still glaring at each other, but playing a game of footsie of sorts. I assume the “steppee” felt the best apology was tit-for-tit revenge and silently stepped on the other fellow’s foot during the overture, who responded with a glare and a kick, receiving one back in kind. Their dates eventually noticed this and both whispered something at “their” guys, no doubt to STOP THAT RIGHT NOW, and they settled back to simply the occasional stink eye.
Then… The crowning moment.
Right at the very, very end of the overture, there is a very brief pause - around 7:38 in the YT link to the overture I gave earlier. I knew it was coming, as I was familiar from childhood with this overture.
And the accused foot-stepper must also have this knowledge, because in that less than one second pause, he bellowed out: “ASSHOLE!” to his neighbor.
Who could not reply in kind because the final crescendo of the overture immediately followed, and then the audience applause for the overture, and the curtain lifting as the opera performance began. He was well and truly checkmated.
We were very broke newlyweds living in Germany where my husband was stationed with the US Army. We were friends with another, even more broke than us, couple. Armed Forces television was in its infancy, and just as cranky as an infant. We relied on the Post theater for cheap entertainment: 25 cents apiece.
After watching one week’s feature, we saw Coming Attractions. Mr VOW (Sgt VOW) and I are big science fiction fans, and the movie featured the next week appeared to be SF.
I kept mentioning all week long that Coming Attractions had mentioned “animated.”
Sgt VOW said, “Oh, that just means they’ll show a short cartoon before the movie.”
Next week, we go with the other broke couple, pay our quarters to get in, and wait for the movie.
Uh…
The main feature was indeed animated. It was called “Fantastic Planet.” I’d call it terrible, but it wasn’t even that good. It didn’t take long before I started bitching.
Sgt VOW was strangely quiet. I think he kept hoping the “real” movie would start.
I said, “I want to leave.”
The husband of the other couple told me, “If you leave, I’ll go with you.”
Technically, not in a movie theater, but… I went to see Blade Runner at a revival house. When I came out, someone had slashed the tires of my car. I have thereafter referred to this film as Tire Slasher.
In my misspent youth, I attended a triple bill of films directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis, so-called “Godfather of Gore.” At the time, not a lot of people outside the South had seen these films. First up was a 1961 “nudie film” called* The Adventures of Lucky Pierre* starring Billy Falbo, a Chicago nightclub comic. It remains the worst movie I have ever paid to see. After 20 minutes of relentlessly (and painfully) unfunny hijinx, someone in the audience got up to leave. His friend told him, “wait, you’re gonna miss the good part.” Everyone in the theater cracked up. It was the only laugh during the film.
Different theater, different triple bill, same director. After making it through* Color Me Blood Red* and The Gore Gore Girls (starring Henny Youngman!), they showed The Wizard of Gore. It was predictably godawful, but with maybe 20 minutes or so to go, a reel was repeated. It was too much awfulness and we left. To this day, I have never seen the end which some people claim is the best part.
A packed screening of the most pristine print of Kiss Me Deadly I have ever seen was tainted by some jerkwad standing in the back of the theater obsessively jiggling the keys in his pocket. Dude, if you have to masturbate, do it somewhere else!
I was invited to a screening of* The Rescuers Down Under* in a small theater (seating capacity: 20-30) on the Disney lot. A co-worker and I were chatting amicably when the distinct odor of cigarette smoke permeated the space. We turned around, only to discover it came from the cigarette of Roy Disney. Without saying a word, we got up and changed seats.
Lastly, a potentially bad experience that was thankfully avoided. We were in line at a revival house when a limo pulled up to the curb. Out-stepped all seven feet one inches of Wilt Chamberlain. We prayed he would not sit in front of us…and our prayers were answered.