Are you Bijou Drains’ mother?
My three worst experiences in a movie theater? Star Wars, Episode 1, Star Wars, Episode 2, Star Wars, Episode 3.
That sounds like an awesome time not one of the worst!
Went to see Andy Warhol’s Bad. It was. We left.
No, thank goodness.
I lived in a small town in Slovakia in the early 90s, studying and teaching English. There were eight foreigners in the entire town, five of whom were my fellow very young teachers. It was winter, and nearly everything was closed. We had no TV and little access to English language books or music, and we were bored out of our minds. So we went to the single-screen cinema for every showing they had.
The thing was, because nobody else in the town could speak English and just read the subtitles, the cinema had the sound down really low, so we couldn’t catch a word anyone was saying. Still, there was nothing else to do, so we went for multiple showings of the same movies.
The third time watching Dumb and Dumber with no dialogue, I could feel my brain liquifying and draining out of my ears.
OTOH at the same time I had ne of my best movie experiences, at an old cinema in Poland where, instead of subtitles or dubbing, they had an old guy standing at the side translating every character on the spot. He did the women, the men, everyone. We couldn’t understand a word he was saying, of course, but even so we could tell that he was getting drunker and drunker as the movie went on. I have no memory at all of what movie we saw, except that I think it was a serious one - I only remember the drunk translator doing high and low voices and interrupting himself and using moments in between to down more vodka. It was hilariously weird performance art. The rest of the audience did not appreciate us laughing, which of course made us laugh more. Brilliant.
Thought I was the only one who remembered this movie. LOVED it as a kid. Watched it recently. I was a dumb kid, apparently.
LOL. If only you had collectively thought to shout, “kiss his ass, YOUR EXCELLENCY, SIR!” (or something “respectful” like that added at the end)
That OP is the funniest damn thing I’ve ever read! Pissed myself laughing!
Then I thought about The Blair Witch Project and became homicidally violent. Goddammit! I STILL want my money back!
FTR, “Ice Pirates” is a great movie for watching on a Sunday afternoon in college in the midst of several beers with your buddies. I wouldn’t pay to see it in the theater though.
Mine was “Return to Oz” in 1985. I was 12, almost 13, and a friend’s mom had offered to take him and his gang of friends to the movies. It was early July, so we were kind of thinking “Back to the Future” or “The Goonies”, or less realistically, “Red Sonja” or “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome”.
But buddy’s kid sister was involved, so it was decided that we were going to see “Return to Oz.” There wasn’t any escape- we couldn’t just bail and go hang out at the arcade, nor could we just leave. So we… endured it. I fell asleep for a big chunk of it, and was reckoned to be the luckiest of the gang. Mostly what I remember is that it centered around a boring story, a little girl, a weird-ass pumpkinheaded creature, and a weird bronze robot.
So, no one has had the experience of a movie theater being the place a girlfriend or boyfriend decided to dump you?
More amusing to me, but bad for the people sitting near the guy.
Saw Arthur 2: On The Rocks at dollar night at the local second-run theatre. Movie was horrible, but hey, only a dollar and we all liked the first one. Some guy in a few rows ahead and in the section to our right (this was an old sloped-floor theatre that had an aisle down the middle) decided to drink along with Dudley and was constantly taking swigs from something in a bag. Eventually we heard him mutter “aw shit”, followed by a loud glass clink, then roll-roll-roll as the bottle rolled under the seats down to the front of the theatre.
About 10 minutes from the end of the film, he loudly barfed on the floor in front of him. Everyone to the left and right scattered, screaming “what the fuck, dude?”
A few minutes later an usher escorted him out. They let the movie finish, then turned up the lights as soon as the credits started and sent in a crew with mops and buckets.
I used to be very prone to bad headaches at loud noises. My Dad took me to see Bridge on the River Kwai. At the final scenes (loud), I was in pain & asked to leave. Of course he wouldn’t. I crouched down on the floor weeping until it was over.
I have seen this several times and personally think it’s an excellent movie, even though I’m not a big sci-fi fan, but it’s certainly not to everyone’s taste.
I had a comparable experience, only in this case, we also saw something that was hardly a date night movie - “The Color Purple.”
He actually seemed like a nice man, but yeah, that date was a disaster, for other reasons as well, and I never saw or heard from him again either.
Besides Phenomenon which my friend and I walked out of because it was so fucking stupid, Return of the Jedi when I was 7. Went to see it for a friend’s birthday party, and during the climactic scene where Luke and Vader fight in that dark room, right when Luke goes hiding under the stairs, the projector died. Theater was dark for a solid 5 minutes. Nobody came and told us anything. Half the audience just left. Eventually it came back on but it really ruined the whole experience.
We went to see That Thing You Do and the projectionist accidentally rolled Space Jam, instead. We watched about 15 minutes of Space Jam before they straightened it out. When an audience member interjected “Eh, what’s up doc?” into the dialog, it got a mild chuckle from the room which only encouraged the Mel Blanc wannabe. After “Sufferin’ Succotash!” and “You’re dithpicable!” his companion got him to shut up. Two minutes later, from the other side of the auditorium, someone else yells, “I taut I taw a putty tat” just as Liv Tyler makes her entrance. By the end of the film about a dozen audience members were playing this game. The really galling part is that my wife (falsely) insists to this day that took part in this childishness.
Back when Titanic came out, my wife and I went to see it the theatre. Quite liked the film actually. But after the ship sank and Rose and Jack were hanging on to a piece of wood for their dear lives, we saw a strange yellowish light coming from beneath the water. What the hell? Is that a u-boat or something? Suddenly the film literally melted on the screen. It bubbled up and changed to the plain white of the projector. The film had melted, maybe because they were running the projector too hot (it was a long film with big reels). In any event, the movie ended for us with about ten minutes to go. We got free passes from the theatre which we later used for the Mask of Zorro. I called up a friend of mine to find out what we missed at the end of Titanic.
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Moving thread from MPSIMS to Cafe Society.
PastTense, sounds like you have a story to share?
Your question takes me back to 1981 and a showing of Tribute with Jack Lemmon. It was just torture to me when I found to my dismay that Jack Lemmon had a nails-on-a-chalkboard effect on me. His looks, his voice, his jokes, his smarminess, everything he did in the movie–I’m squirming just remembering it.
What made it worse was that my then-boyfriend thought that it was one of the most amazing and inspiring films he’d ever seen! He dumped me not long after (but not in a movie theater), having realized how incompatible we were before I did. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have figured it out myself that day and dumped him then and there.
There used to be a second-run movie theater near me. It was pretty nice and they had a card you could buy that every tenth punch (one per movie) was a free movie. My sister and I unwisely chose to see the 2002 version of Scooby Doo for one of the free movies. Major, major mistake. We sat there wondering if we could get our free punches back.