Most memorable experience in a movie theater (1 Viewer)

[Dave Poehlman]

I remember being a 9 yr old back in 1977 and watching Star Wars with my mouth agape. (I went back 12 more times)

I also remember seeing Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time back in 1987 with my mouth agape wondering what the hell was going on with the audience. (I went back 4 times)

Also, seeing Godzilla as a kid at my small town's local cinema. The place was a dump and the roof leaked.. I got dripped on during the whole show.

Going out to the dollar show as a teenager at one of Milwaukee's historic theaters (now closed :frowning: ) with about 6 bottles of Meister Brau hidden in my coat. I set one of my empties on the floor and it tipped over and rolled all the way up to the front... everyone in the theater snickered. Ahhh to be a kid again.

 

[Ted Lee]

hmm....it's gotta be ghostbusters

i was on a date with this girl i was sorta seeing in high-school. as we were watching the movie i pulled the arm-around-her-neck move.

she leaned in...so, i went for it.

yes, folks -- the very first time i copped a feel, i was listening to ray parker jr.

 

[Joey Gunz]

Years ago, when I was a kid, my friend invited me to go to the movies with him and his mother (who's a very nice lady). The movie was that bad Ryan O'Neal comedy So Fine. Anyway, the theater was packed but the audience wasn't laughing much... except for my friend's mother who apparently found the movie to be absolutely hilarious. She just wouldn't stop laughing. She had a very hard and loud laugh, and the fact that no one in the audience was laughing made her very noticeable. Everytime she laughed, me and my friend (getting more and more embarrassed) would sink deeper and deeper into our chair hoping no one will notice us. I remember at the end of the movie, when the lights finally came back on, my friend just bolted right outta the theater leaving me and his mother behind.

 

[Scott_Jua]

Coolest movie moment ever: SE Empire Strikes back first showing first day... Entire audience Raised arms and said "YAAAAAYYYYY" in unison when it was announced that the First Transport was away. It was the single most awesome disply of one way thinking I have witnessed.

one of the worst: Watching a Cuba Gooding Jr. movie (something about him being a boxer) and feeling a wet sleeve. I thought that my friend was messing with me at first and was dripping water on me. As I progressively got more wet I though the ceiling was leaking. Finally when I realized my entire arm was soaked I touched it again and it was sticky...so I got up to go see what the hell it was. It was blood. my own blood. As I walked out to see, I was dizzy and almost fell over. When I finally got to the bathroom, my entire arm was covered in my own blood. Freaky yes, but worse was taking off my shirt to find that it was only a tiny pin prick like hole in my arm jsut bleeding like mad. No earlier injury, so sign of damage...jsut this tiny hole bleeding profusely. It ruined my day...but luckily I applied enough pressure to get it to stop bleeding before I passed out.

Weird...

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Scott, your blood story reminded me of another theater experience.

I was a young kid... and my family was at the mall theater (probably seeing Star Wars) and on the way out, I said I had to go to the bathroom. The bathrooms were up some stairs (this was a messed up theater) and down a hall. Anyway.. I came back out to the lobby to see my family walking away into the crowded mall. Panicked that I would be lost and have to live in the mall forever, I bolted towards them.

I ran into a glass door... breaking my nose.

About a week later they put some silver little circles on the glass so idiots like me could see there was glass there. :b

 

[TheLongshot]

A few:

Seeing ANH:SE at the Uptown with friends. The most memorable part wasn't the movie, but the trailer for Jurassic Park before it, which the theater used strobe lights to go along with the dino footfalls. Very effective.

The first time seeing Superman: The projector bulb went out while Superman was entering Lex's lair. The vocal track was still running, so I just thought it was damn dark down there.

Jason

 

[Kami]

I've been in theaters where there was applause before, but the only time I've seen a standing applause with people yelling and whistling was on my first screening of FOTR on opening night. There were tons of hardcore fans there, and the applause went on forever.

 

[Dave_Brown]

Most memorable: Don't remember my exact age but it was when ET hit the screens. I was a farily young kid, probably around 10 and the reason it stands out was because this was the first time I remember standing in a line for a movie that went all the way around the block and then some just for the tickets. This was a small town theater and my parents had dropped off my sister and me to watch this movie. First time we got to go to a movie without our parents and boy did we feel cool!
Turns out the theater only sat 300 people and they had to come out and do a count for the remaning tickets. I was getting pissed after standing there for over an hour and thinking we wouldn't get in. As the lady came down counting you could see everyone getting pretty testy. My sister and I were 297 and 298. Just barely made it in. And yeah, it was probably the first movie I cried in.

Least proud moment: At the end of the first Mortal Kombat movie with an army buddy of mine. I had a wicked case of stomach rot going and had tried to hold the gas in all movie long. Finally as we were standing up to leave I couldn't take it anymore and one slipped out. It was terrible, had my eyes watering. My buddy turned around a couple seconds later and all he could say was "Man, can you------ulp!" before he couldn't breath. So then I started to bust out laughing and we just bolted. Finally make it out to the car and fresh air and he was cursing me out. He says, "I was gonna turn to ask if you thought someone busted ass in here only to turn around and find the source!"
Anytime we need a good laugh we just think back to all those poor folks behind us that had to walk through that cloud.

 

[Scott Walburn]

I'll chime in on this one. When I was 14, and Terminator 2 came out. I've never left a theater with such a jaw dropped expression in my life. To this day, this the greatest theater experience. Everyone, in the theater was silent, and hypnotized by the movie. To this day, I compare all other movies I see in the theater to T2. The only movies that have come close to the feeling I had after that one were the LOTR and the Matrix. However, when T2 came out I was a lot younger, and it captured my impagination like no other movie. Now, Im a little older and a lot more cynical, but I'll always appreciate the WOW factor of a James Cameron movie. They may not always be the best movies, but there is always something that just makes your jaw drop and makes you go WOW.

 

[Dome Vongvises]

Anytime I watch a Star Wars movie, it's an event. People clapping and cheering. I love that kind of experience.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Hmmm... there are a few.

Among them, Return of the Jedi: SE at the Madison. First and only time that I'd seen an OT film in theaters and first and only time that I'd seen an OT film in widescreen. Amazing experiene.

Also, Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back opening night at the Spectrum. (A Kevin Smith crowd, like the one the previous poster mentioned)

And Episode I in theaters, the first time.

 

[KevinRB]

When I went to see X-Men, it was in the middle of a thunderstorm that was getting increasingly worse. Once I got in the theater I didn't think much about it, until they shut off the movie and raised the lights in the middle of an intense scene. Then a theater employee comes in (think pimply teen from Simpsons) and announces that a tornado is heading toward us, but the theater is a secure location.

Instead of panicking, people booed him and shouted "We want X-Men!" or "Turn it back on!". They started it back up and everyone was happy. When I got out I noticed a few branches were broken off trees, but nothing serious.

 

[Mick Wright]

My best single moviegoing event has to be this night. I had to kill some time in Austin with my brother-in-law so we decided to check out the Alamo Draft House because they served beer. I ended up watching Star Trek II sitting behind Quentin Tarantino. His intro to the film was the greatest, and the film rocked the house.

 

[Vickie_M]

Still... a theater full of children seemed like kind of an inappropriate place for that.

What? It's a very appropriate place. Children don't sexualize breasts. Adolescent boys and men sexualize breasts. Despite what advertising and popular culture lead you to believe, breasts do serve a very useful purpose beyond causing guys to drool. They're food containers. Fleshy tupperware.

(Birdy paraphrased)
They're mammary glands, that's all they are!
(/Birdy)



My most memorable experience was much like KevinRB's. Only in ours, when the tornado warning went off, we were all bundled down to the basement of this small town movie theater. It was pretty fascinating down there, and I was far too busy looking around at the old film reels, signs and whatnot to worry about the tornado. (This was in Leavenworth, Kansas in the early 70's) I don't remember what movie it was though.

 

[Cagri]

I remember watching We Were Soldiers in a 40% full theater with two grannies in their 80-90s at the back row. They kept crying and sobbing, and speaking to the characters in the film like "Don't let him go!" or "Stop him!" or "Careful he's right behind you!". I didn't mind, neither my wife did because they were so sweet and funny and we didn't care for the film too much anyway. At one point they started to cry so loud that I was sure that they weren't aware they were in a theater

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

One experience that I remember quite well wasn't really a movie-going experience.

My father used to be in the fire service, and part of his job was an educative role. When Backdraft came to our town, my father set up a fire safety display for movie-goers to look at, and I was helping him.

Anyway, I ended up talking to the theatre employee for quite a long time, and learned a lot. That was when I first learned about the reel change markers.

 

[Mike Blais]

watching twister at the drive in, storm was coming in and there was a few points where it looked like the screen matched the sky perfectly. pretty creepy considering we dont't get tornados or anything like that here.

seeing transformers the movie. I had never been so excited to see a movie and then there was even a swear word, that made my summer, just couldn't believe a cartoon swore.

 

[Mario Bartel]

While attending university in Ottawa in the early '80s, Apocalypse Now came to town for one of those special 70mm, surround sound screenings at the big concert hall in town. Some buddies and I went down to the allegedly sold-out show, hoping to score some last-minute tickets, and we ended up in the Royal Box, the box seats up on the side where the Queen sits for command performances. Hearing the helicopters come from the back of the hall was pretty cool too. Of course, now I can achieve that same effect in my own apartment!

 

[Richard_D_Ramirez]

It was pretty interesting to see and hear an entire audience of hard-core book fanatics cheering in unison when Lurtz, an entirely made-up character never in the books, has his dome lopped off in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and yuppers, I was one of those book fanatics cheering, "Yeeeeeaaaaaah!" :b

 

[Steve Lockwood]

And just last weekend, at Revolutions, this woman in front of me kept jumping out of her seat and yelling at the screen during a tense scene, instructing the characters what to do: "Close that hatch!!! CLOSE IT!!!!" All these people seemed perfectly normal before and after the film, but during, they went cuckoo.

This is damn funny!