Heaven only knows. Almost certainly something on HBO after my parents went to bed.
I think it was *Blue Thunder *(1983); it came out shortly before I turned 14.
I’m pretty sure it was *Saturday Night Fever *(1977) - I was 13. I remember thinking how cool it was to hear Barbarino say “fuck.”
Obviously, edited for TV does not count. We’d seen edited movies on TV plenty.
But, wow do I remember the day my parents came back from Blockbuster with two tapes. One was Batman(1989), which we had not seen and were pretty excited.
My Dad had another tape, though. Terminator 2. We could NOT believe it. I mean, my parents didn’t even rent R rated movies for themselves. We even checked to see that…yes, it said “R” on the side of the tape.
My parents obviously wanted to see it super badly. My mom said, “We just figured we’d try it and if it is too bad, we’ll stop it.”
We watched it that night and of course, it is pretty tame. Still, we thought the whole experience was awesome. I’m sure my Dad had heard people talking about it and its effects at work and wanted to see it.
I was 16 and refused admission to the theater. Most embarrassing first date ever.
(I saw it eventually and hated it.)
It’s got to be either Halloween or Friday the 13th. Both were in heavy late night rotation on HBO and Cinemax and I remember late night sleepovers with my friends when we’d stay up late watching those type of films. If I remember correctly, the first sequel to each of those films had been released as well. 8th grade, staying up late and wired on way too much Pepsi. Those were the days.
When and where did you see it? The original US version from 1972 was rated X and an R-rated cut was released later. Then the R-rated version “disappeared” from release except for some home video releases. Then the original was re-rated down to R. Other countries mucked around with it, as well.
Animal House. Not living close to a movie theater, movies was not something I did, but my cousin invited me to take a trip ‘to town’ to see it. I was quite surprised, as I had no idea you could show a topless woman in other-than-x-rated.
And unless you were watching some African documentary, it was exceedingly rare to see boobs on the boob tube.
Are you quite sure about that? I don’t recall toplessness in the original Hawaii
(which h, as you recall, wasn’t rated – the MPAA system didn’t kick in for two more years).
I suspect you’re thinking of the sequel The Hawaiians (1970) , which DID feature toplessness. It wasn’t rated R, though. It was rated the newfangled GP*, which soon became PG, apparently because too many people thought “GP” meant “General Patronage”
*One comedienne at the time said that, to her, “GP” meant “Get Popcorn”, which is what she sent her teenage son to do when the seminude scenes came on.
Magnum Force, Clint Eastwood’s second Dirty Harry movie. In a theater. I don’t think I was old enough but walked right into a Saturday matinee with no problem.
Like you, I’m going through the 70s, surprised at what I’m finding…
“Oh, the answer has to be Billy Jack! Had a rape scene, people were getting killed, saw it when I was 6 at a drive-in… huh. Rated ‘PG’. Did not know that.”
“Hell, it’s gotta be Jaws! 8yo, taken by my father… cursing, violence… well, look at that. It, too, is ‘PG’.”
“The Deep! Holy mother of God the swimming scenes alone… fuck. Did I ever see any R-rated movies in the '70s?”
So, honestly, I have no idea. We had little restrictions on what we could see (obviously), so it could be that I was taken to some boring film like “Tess” and slept through the thing.
Huh… here’s a list of R-Rated movies in the 1970s.
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls062959502/
Aha! The Omen. Definitely saw that one in the drive-in. Was it my first? Who knows!
In the US and in '72, I’m sure so It must have been the “X” version. But, in any event, I just remembered seeing “Midnight Cowboy” a few years earlier but that one was an “X” as well. So it kind of seems that I’d seen two "X"s before my first “R”.
I’m now trying to remember my first “R” rated movie I saw in the theater(T2 was my first on tape).
I’m embarrassed to admit how old I must have been, but I did not go to the movies very often. I saw:
Scream - 1996
I can not guarantee I saw nothing before that in the theater with an R rating, but that is the first I can remember. Would have been 17 or 18 upon release.
Meanwhile, my friend’s parents took him to see EVERYTHING even when he was a little kid. All the horror movies, all the hard-R comedies. You name it, he saw it even younger than 10.
Commando. I saw it on TV at my grandparent’s place when I was around 9 or 10–they must have had HBO or Showtime or something. They never seemed to care in the slightest what I was exposed to.
In the latter half of the 70s the parents took us to the drive-in frequently, and we saw many B-movies with nudity and violence. The only one I remember the title of is “The Redeemer.” In my young head it was so violent that I still can’t get scenes, as I now remember them, out of my head.
The first in a theater was “Animal House.” The old man wanted to see it and took me with him. I recall thinking that it was going to be a nature documentary because of the title. Turned out it wasn’t.
Yes, I’m sure. Here’s what IMDB’s Parental Guide offers:
“Topless female nudity in most native people scenes. Incest and adultery are accepted parts of local culture. Sailors carry off a girl with the intent to rape her.”
Marathon Man - probably late 1976, at the movies. It was R-rated and we went intending to see as much naked flesh as possible. In retrospect when its main stars were Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier I should be thankful that there was no nudity, but remember being very disappointed and feeling ripped-off at the time.
As always, the same thing happened on the Simpsons.
1976, at the intersection of “Let’s see some skin” and “Let’s see the latest Olivier movie”. At no other point in human history could the previous two requests have resulted in the same decision.
I believe it was “The End”, a Burt Reynolds/Dom DeLuise 1978 comedy. I was 10, and my dad took me to see it.
Perusing that list, it looks like Slap Shot was my first R-rated movie. This is all conjecture at this point - I can’t remember shit - but Slap Shot came out in February of '77 and Saturday Night Fever came out in December of that year. I am precisely 66.7% sure I saw both in the theater when they opened, so my super-sleuthing skills tell me that I saw titties on ice before I saw titties in disco.