Do drive-in theaters count? Because if they do, I’ve got some stories…
Yes! The plot of The Blair Witch Project: “I’m afraid of the woods. I’m afraid of the dark. I’m in the woods. It’s dark. I’m afraid.” At least Robot Monster was good for a laugh.
My most uncomfortable experience at a movie: I was probably 17, went to our local movie theater to see Hawaii. In the ticket line I ran into two cute girls (sisters) from my school, we started talking, continued our conversation as we walked in, so we sat together. And then came a scene where many young (and topless) Hawaiian girls ran down to the beach. And we didn’t exchange another word for the remainder of the movie. Nor at school the next day, as I recall.
The only projectors I’ve ever seen that could rewind a film were home Super8 or school 16mm.
The now-obsolete cinema platter systems were very much like 8-tracks and could only dispense the film forwards. The film came off one platter, guided to the projector on an assortment of rollers, then came back to a take-up platter. At the next showing, the film would be fed from what was the take-up - no need to rewind, or move platters around. The projectors also only ran in one direction.
And yes, a head wrap, aka brain wrap, would ruin your night in the booth. Movies are now shipped on hard drives, so pretty much the only thing to spoil the fun is if the drive got smashed in transit, or if the decryption key didn’t get sent.
Two experiences:
First: I went to see “The Jerk” on opening night with a high-school friend who was home for winter break in college. Neither of us had thought about where we chose to see the movie or any details it turned out that my friend was the only black person in an audience of about 600 or so people. When the film opened with the line “I was born a poor, black child,” all the self-concious white suburbanites gasped and turned to see if my friend and I were laughing before they determined it was okay to laugh at the funny joke too. Jeebus Karen, lighten up! That reaction bothered me so much that I didn’t really enjoy what is an excellent comedy.
Second: I learned to never, never go to the cinema on New Year’s Day. Especially to a big multi-plex. It was crowded, sticky, dirty and the restrooms were filthy without toilet paper and eventually without paper towels too but with huge lines of people in heavy winter coats guiding their children and we all needed to pee. It was a miserable experience outside of the movie itself.
So, did this projectionist realize what he’d done before it was too late?
This was not the worst experience for me, but I’ve always felt a little bad about it.
When I was an 18-year-old senior in high school back in the '70s, some buddies and I decided we wanted to see a porno. So, we went to the nearest porn theater. When we arrived, before the lights went down, there was one of our teachers. In this case, he was really a good teacher that everybody liked. So, what did we do? We went down and sat next to him and started talking to him. The poor guy. As soon as the lights went down, he excused himself and left.
As far as I know, no one ever said anything about it and I know he continued teaching. We all liked the guy, but he really gave us a lot of room for the rest of the semester before we graduated. I don’t remember the movie now, but I still regret putting him in that position.
Sorry, Sammy.
I guess the worst in a theater was watching “The Cable Guy.” I think I cheered a little bit when he fell there near the end…
The worst movie experience happened at some friends’ house. I was forced to watch “Sense and Sensibility.” I was beyond weary at the time and I had to stay awake through the whole thing and that was neither pleasant nor easy. I really can’t think of anything that could make me enjoy that snooze of a film.
Back in '88, I went to see local premiere of The Last Temptation of Christ. I got yelled at by protestors while in line that I was going to Hell and the usual. Partly through the movie, the projector stopped and the house lights came up. There was a bomb threat and they had to evacuate the theater. We waited outside while they searched the theater. Of course, nothing was found. A person I was talking to outside remarked that he was from Lebanon and this reminded him of home. The scene that the film stopped on was an intense one where Jesus exclaims that he came with a sword. The movie doesn’t really follow that up, so it felt like an enormous mood change coming back. After the movie, I got interviewed by a journalist about my thoughts.
Not as bad, but more excruciating was when I went to see Avengers Infinity War opening night and the film stopped right when Thanos was about to remove the stone from Vision’s head. The entire theater, all screens, had a power failure so we had to get rain-checks to finish the film. Ugh.
In the nick of time. I was told that story to impress upon me the importance of labeling the prints.
“Mommy, mommy, whats he doing to her up against that tree…”
My kids in the theater story involved the last re-release of ‘Song of the South’. Sister theater two miles up the road was playing it when the sound went south. I got the call and flew up the road, toolbox in hand. I knew what was wrong, admonished the projectionist who should have known better, and fixed the sound in about three minutes. Then I started everything back up.
My nasty surprise was the idiot running the booth kept turning the sound up as it faded away.
To 11.
Dammed near blew children through the back wall of the theater. Hurt MY ears, behind a sound proof wall. I rapidly retreated to my theater, after resetting the sound to 2.
Amen to this! Total waste of film, IMHO. If I had seen it before I read the book, I probably would never have read it and the last 40 years would have really sucked without my Stephen King books.
My mother would tell you that her worst movie experience ever was “Borat”. I, on the other hand, loved it. I laughed so hard that people were turning to look at me. Damn near left my lungs on the seat beside me, while Mom sat there and scowled. I’m guessing I added to her embarrassment, but she wanted to go based on reviews we had heard, and we truly had no idea what to expect. I remind her of it every now and then, just to get a rise out of her.
My aunt saw “Deliverance” in the theatre way back when and spent an entire summer trying to recover from the rape scene. (She thought the rest of the movie was great.)
My cousin saw sharks EVERYWHERE after seeing “Jaws”.
“Stay the blazes home” - Stephen McNeil, Premier of Nova Scotia
I observed a Los Angeles cinema playing NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (when it was fairly new) every Saturday midnight to the same odd-looking crowd. I didn’t want to know them.
Part of my senior HS year was spent in a juvenile hall that shut off TV’s at 9PM. Unfortunately the first-run STAR TREK TOS aired 8:30-9:30 so I never saw the endings till reruns, years later.
One neighbor in my early grade-school years played Timmy on LASSIE. He was a snot. Our class was taken to a studio showing he attended. We all threw stuff at him. He ran off. We scoundrals were sent home but I wasn’t spanked so OK!
I recall only one theatrical film I walked from partway. I’ve repressed the name but it featured the Keach (?? or Bridges ??) and Carradine bros as the James and Dalton bros being bloodily shot up.
Then there was the drive-in I was tossed from after sneaking in to snoop around the cars, watching couples coupling while Vincent Price stalked the screen.
BAD experiences in cinemas? Some boredom but no barfing, fires, protests, power outages, etc although one of the latter would have been welcome during 200 MOTELS or RAINBOW BRIDGE.
I took a date to see Batman at the drive in. I accidentally sat on my nachos.
She married me anyways.
The only movie I ever walked out of was “Lawnmower Man 2”. I was just like… this obviously isn’t going anywhere interesting, I’m outta here. I walked out and ducked into a different theater to see something better (maybe Tank Girl, maybe a new Bond flick, not sure).
Toward the end of an externship I was doing in Oklahoma City, I fell hard for a local nurse. We developed a great rapport and I was head over heels for her. We flirted and managed a few lunches together. I finally got the nerve to ask her for a real date. I had to work fast because I was flying back to Philadelphia for good the following week.
I planned a romantic evening, starting with a movie, followed by a late dinner and hopefully an invite to her apartment for a drink and some mutual affection. I figured if all went well, we would click and could embark on a fruitful long-distance relationship ultimately leading to marriage (yeah, I was a romantic dreamer back in the day).
So, the date night arrives and I presented her with a single red rose. She gushed. She was gorgeous, dressed to the nines! I asked what movie she wanted to see. She said there’s a new movie called Terms of Endearment she wanted to see. So be it.
The movie starts and my date slips her hand into mine. This gave me courage to put my arm around her shoulders and we snuggled. I was in heaven. Looking forward to that after-date kiss and plans to fly back to Oklahoma City someday soon to build a lasting relationship.
We laughed at Jack Nickolson’s antics and were thoroughly enjoying the movie. But, then the movie turned sad. Really sad. My date un-entwined her hand from mine and began blotting tears from her eyes. She said the movie hit too close to home with her. Then she started bawling, loudly. She said she had to go home right away.
I tried to comfort her on the ride home. She apologized profusely for being so emotional. She gave me a peck on the cheek at the door. I called the next day and she apologized once more and said she’d like to see me again.
I flew back to Philly a couple days later.
We kept in touch for a couple months, but without a foundation built, we soon fizzled. I never returned to Oklahoma.
So, thanks Shirley McClain and Debra Winger—you ambushed the woman of my dreams! :mad:
When I first started dating my now ex-wife, one of the first outing I’d had with her family was a lunch and movie outing one afternoon. Someone chose Klippendorf’s Tribe. So there I am trying desperately to impress my new girlfriend, and to come off well to her family, and I’m watching this utter piece of shit flick next to my future mother-in-law, who is laughing her head off.
It doesn’t sound that bad, but I literally can only remember bits of the movie because I spent the better part of an hour and a half inside my head knowing sooner or later I’d have to say, “Uh, yeah, it was pretty good, heh heh, uh, yeah, so …”
The OP’s story reminded me of a movie experience I had, though it’s not quite as dramatic. I went to see ‘Rambo III’ with a friend and a guy watching by himself kept loudly yelling things like “FUCK YEAH! KILL THOSE RUSSIANS!! KILL 'EM ALL!!” This went on for awhile-- seemed like half the movie but probably no more than 15 minutes. Finally a couple workers showed up and asked him to leave. At first he refused and loudly threatened to kick their asses, but soon he went off with them without too much trouble. He was all bark.
My friend really wanted to go see Batman and Robin. I had heard about all the advanced buzz on it and read the reviews saying how terrible it was but he still wanted to go. On opening night. So a small group of us went to the movie and it was packed and it was a little too warm in the theater. At some point, a couple ushers come out to speak to us and the first one starts talking about equipment problems with the projector and it’s going to be 20 minutes or so but fortunately for us, his companion is about to go off to the performing arts school and she can sing to us. So she sings something from HMS Pinafore (I believe) and it was… not great. Certainly better than I could do but it just seemed like someone with a decent voice singing a song. She finishes and got really good applause and then we had to sit there for another 15 minutes or so and finally the movie starts. And it was Batman and Robin and it was as terrible as I thought it would be.
More recently, my family went to see Dr. Strange (or possibly Thor: Ragnarok) and there was an older Indian woman sitting a couple seats to my right and every time something happened on screen she’d exclaim “Oh my!” or “Wow! Oh!” or something along those lines. She did this through the whole movie on every action sequence, exciting moment, and even during some of the dialog. I really should have asked her to be quiet but the more I thought about it, the more I felt like I’d look like a jerk for doing so. So I just sat there and seethed. Next time, I’ll ask her to be quiet for sure.
The above just triggered memories of that shit I dreaded in the early 90s. There was one chain, I think it was United Artists, that would start the trailers, followed by an ad for some charity. Then they would stop the presentation, turn up the lights and several poor ushers who really did not want to be there would pass a fucking donation can up and down every single row. Once done guilt tripping the audience, they would leave, the lights would go down and the trailers would resume. They lost of most of my business, as I would only go to a UA theatre if it was the only place showing what I wanted to see, which happened unfortunately fairly often back in the days when a “big” multiplex had only 6 screens.
Well, at least it wasn’t Gone Girl.
There was a theater in north suburban Chicagoland that did that for La Rabida. Amazing that I remember the name some 30-ish years later!
My bad movie experiences are pretty tame compared to other tales of burned film, power failures, etc. Back in 1997, it was planned to go to a 20th anniversary showing of Star Wars. At night, after work. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, zzzzzzzzzzzz… :smack:
And then there was some dreadful movie set on Mars - probably Ghosts of Mars. About all I can remember is endless train rides or something similar. My partner at the time apologized afterward, and there was a brief mutual tizzy of “That was awful! Why didn’t you say it sucked? We could have left!”