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X-E’s ’08 Summer Megaparty: Movie Madness.

In 1989, my mother chaperoned a trip for my friends and I go to see No Holds Barred. No Holds Barred starred Hulk Hogan, who essentially played himself, fighting for freedom against the twin terrors of corporate soullessness and a giant, dark-skinned monster named "Zeus." It was all very Shakespearean.

I'm very conscious of the fact that No Holds Barred is one of the worst movies ever made, featuring everything from shady Cadillac drivers shitting themselves to Rob Lowe's sidekick from Wayne's World somehow managing to electrocute himself in protest of a wrestling match's outcome. Still, No Holds Barred was spirited if nothing else, and as a ten-year-old with a bucket of popcorn and a bunch of fellow wrestling nuts, I had a great time.

Only thing is, I made my mother sit like ten rows behind us, by herself. My crew wanted to maintain the illusion that we went to the theater on our own. I guess the cool kids were doing it.

That must rank among the top ten cruelest things I've ever done. It's bad enough that I roped my mother into seeing No Holds Barred, but to force her to pretend that she went to see it by herself? Beyond cruel. I probably extended my purgatory sentence by a good seven years on that afternoon alone.

This is your random survey of the night: Discuss some of your weirdest movie theater experiences. I have plenty of them, and will post a few in the comments once I zzz zzz zzz myself back to full health.

Posted by Matt on 07/21/2008. E-mail me!



Discussion Thread: 226 comments

Before I saw ‘Elf’ in the theaters my friend had told me about the part where he gets hit by a taxi, well while I watching the movie and he started to cross the street I was thinking ‘fuck yes here it comes!’ and it didn’t. So the second I thought ‘Oh I guess its not this scene?’ he got hit by a taxi right after that. It was such a surprise that i burst out laughing so hard, that my girlfriend at the time punched me in the side and told me to stop laughing, apparently I litterly ‘blacked-out’ laughing so hard that I had been laughing like a madman for ten minutes and everbody turned around and was looking at me.

Chestnuts roasted by flabslapper @ 07/22/2008 7:15 AM

Cree’s Baby story wins. Or at least it would if this were a contest with me as the sole judge.

I have a couple stories, though not quite as good.

A retarded woman sat behind my mother during Cool World. All throughout the film she moaned and yelled gibberish and kicked my mother’s seat. When she spilled soda all over my mom she was finally taken out of the theater by the people she came with. She ruined Cool World for all of us! How dare she.

When my family and I saw Gremlins 2, a gaggle of old ladies sat in front of us. They had overdone it on the perfume, as elderly women are wont to do. I suppose they need something to mask the rot as they’re nearing the grave. Being engulfed in a cloud of that sickly sweet mist made it quite difficult to breathe. And it tainted our popcorn! I hope no one here ever has to experience the vile taste combination of movie theater butter and 70-year-old woman. Luckily, the living dead exited about 15 minutes in. One of them exclaimed “I think we’re in the wrong theater!” They managed to drum up enough energy to pull themselves out of their seats and then shambled on out. Their stench followed along shortly after.

Chestnuts roasted by Throat @ 07/22/2008 7:30 AM

I went to see Signs on a date…we walked out 30 mins into it.

Went to see The Big Hit after a few drinks. Luckily it was a small empty theatre because we couldn’t stop laughing at everything.

And I saw Pinocchio with my parents when I was like 5. I remember my dad leaving to sneak into a better movie. I don’t blame him. It was freaking Pinocchio!

Chestnuts roasted by DC @ 07/22/2008 8:11 AM

Going to see Cheaper by the Dozen at the dollar theater. The film was adjusted wrong so that the boom mike played a larger role than Steve Martin, and there was either a huge sentient bit of fluff on the lens or an overactive spider. It was all a bit surreal.

Blarg, it’s going to be 102 degrees and humid today. Somebody please kill me.

Chestnuts roasted by Jedoc @ 07/22/2008 8:12 AM

When I was 7 I remember going to see one of the Care Bear movies with my dad and some friends. Toward the end of the movie we all went to the next theater over to watch Monster Squad (a PG13 movie when you are 7 is a HUGE deal).

I’m pretty sure if we went with my mom instead of my dad this wouldn’t have happened.

“Wolfman has nards!”

Chestnuts roasted by Ryle @ 07/22/2008 8:21 AM

Honey I Blew Up the Kid at a dollar theater! I remember having a discussion with my friend on the way home about how it was “pretty good”. What the blazes?

Chestnuts roasted by Ricky @ 07/22/2008 8:46 AM

Oh, yeah, and I got stuck watching Getting Even With Dad in some rinky dink theatre. I was a camp counselor and it was one of the trips we took the kids on. It was horrible!

Chestnuts roasted by DC @ 07/22/2008 8:51 AM

1. In a crowded theater watching The Big Lebowski, the old man in front of me “had an accident” in his pants and spent the entire movie shifting around on his depends.

2. Late night showing of Shaft (yeah.) a mom brought her four small children and sat them right in front of me. Four small kids at the midnight Shaft show. Good Parenting 101.

Chestnuts roasted by Rev. Back It On Up @ 07/22/2008 8:53 AM

Carity I actually somewhat enjoyed that movie since I have seen the show. But I have to agree with you that a lot of weird people go see those type of films. I mean when I went there was a lot of giggling fan girls and a couple of very obese people. I thought one of them was a kid but my brother told me it was a full grown man.

Chestnuts roasted by Andre @ 07/22/2008 8:53 AM

The year is 1990.

The movie is Total Recal.

I am 7 years old, and for some reason no one thought it would be a bad idea to bring me to this movie. Mental scars? Yeah, I’ve got ‘em.

Chestnuts roasted by Alison @ 07/22/2008 9:00 AM

So, for whatever reason, due to scheduling conflicts, I saw “Titanic” first with my Mom and then when Mom said how great it was, I went back to see it again. I swore how much I liked the movie after it hit the iceberg; didn’t care much at all for any of the romance.
So then my uncle wanted to see it and we go AGAIN. We get to the part that I’m actually looking forward to, and there’s this scene when they tell the captain the ship is definitely going to sink because X number of hulls have been breached AND the picture on the screen froze on his reaction shot and melted. After 15 minutes of wrangling, the theatre decided to give all of us free movie passes to come back. I never did and to this day I’ve only seen “Titanic” 2 1/2 times. Probably 2 1/2 times too many.

Also, my friend used to be way bored in movies since there was a spell when we’d go weekly. Once he took a leatherman and handed me a seat cushion that he had cut out of the chair next to him. Okay, maybe we were just thugs.

Chestnuts roasted by Beckner @ 07/22/2008 9:07 AM

… left out “went back to see it again WITH MY DAD.”

Chestnuts roasted by Beckner @ 07/22/2008 9:08 AM

Goob: Not sure I understood what you meant by that, “the art of finding movies online while they are still in the theaters.” Also, thanks for noticing me. Was beginning to feel like a ghost on this site.

Chestnuts roasted by BJ @ 07/22/2008 9:09 AM

When I went to go see Star Wars Episode 2, when Yoda’s shadow first appeared on the screen a few people started cheering and clapping, and by the time he started kicking ass, the entire theater was on their feet going crazy.

I also got to see Fantasia 2000 in an empty theater with my dad, which is an awesome experience for anyone that it hasn’t happened too yet.

Chestnuts roasted by Pudge @ 07/22/2008 9:11 AM

On at least two occasions (I think they were Small Soldiers and the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre), some people brought their babies to the show. During the former, the baby cried all the way through the movie. I wonder if that kid suffered hearing damage.

Another time for some kiddie movie (it might have been Sesame Street’s Follow That Bird) the film broke.

Chestnuts roasted by The Real Andrew @ 07/22/2008 9:17 AM

I don’t actually have cinema (read: movie theatre – I’m a Brit) experiences. I usually used to wait for them to come out on video cassette. No, I lie, I used to wait for them to come on TV; My family was cheapskate like that.

About the only thing I can think of is when ‘E.T.’ came out, circa 1982. I was 4, and my parents took me to see it. For 99% of the film, I wasn’t bothered with what was happening on screen, but was more interested in the little star-like lights on the ceiling of the theatre. Hey, I was 4!

I didn’t see the film ‘properly’ until it came on TV years later. I guess I was fated to see movies on TV and nowhere else.

Chestnuts roasted by Jay Firestorm @ 07/22/2008 9:31 AM

When we went to see Matrix Reloaded, the film was not centered or something (memory is a little hazy on the first part). No big deal…they fixed it after about showing the first 10 minutes and started it over. Then during the whole rave scene, a fight broke out in the aisle. Yeah it was a stupid scene, but no need to fight to leave the theater :)

Chestnuts roasted by perun99 @ 07/22/2008 9:37 AM

Simon, that was the Rocky Horror Picture Show most likely……….

Chestnuts roasted by Brian @ 07/22/2008 9:42 AM

when i was like 5, i had a HUGE crush on Michael J. Fox. my mom took me to see back to the future and when marty hit his head on the door of the delorian after crashing into the barn, everyone laughed. i yelled “that’s not funny!” and everyone cracked up. i cried.

Chestnuts roasted by bitchpants @ 07/22/2008 9:48 AM

When trying to go to the bathroom, I went out the fire exit by instead during Saw! (one)

Chestnuts roasted by Abi @ 07/22/2008 9:48 AM

The Mom part of your No Holds Barred thing reminds me of how often when I was a kid I dragged my Mom to movies she had absolutely zero interest in.

When I was 10, (one month away from eleven) in late October 1988 we were standing across the street from the movie theatre waiting in line for some lame ass Kiwanis Haunted House. My Mom knew I was big into Halloween and horror movies and I think this was her attempt at doing something she thought I would like. Except while my brother and sister were up for it I had no interest in some weak ass Haunted House.

Across the street in the theatre though was A Nightmare on Elm St 4: The Dream Master. I was definitely a huge fan of Freddy at this point. I was a more mature kid and could handle those movies and wasn’t immature about the nudity in either film. My Mom HATED horror movies. Not in the censorship type of way but in the, “this is not my thing, I really don’t like seeing gore” type of way.

But I somehow convinced her to take me to NOES 4 in the theatres at 10. I now have a 10 year old myself and I am pretty certain that I would be a super hypocrite and not take my son to that movie even though I begged my Mom to go.

Of course my son is into different things… Pokemon, GI Joe, Transformers (of course he would like retro cartoons after all would I come to this site if I didn’t relish my childhood a little too much? :) ) aren’t anything like watching someone get sliced up and stabbed to death.

Plus unlike his pops he’s not into the scary at all. I tried to get him to watch Poltergeist once, figuring it to be scary for kids but lacking nudity or language that would be offensive to allow kids to watch. He didn’t make it through the ghosts coming through the TV and punching into the bedroom wall while the parents were asleep.

Thinking about it now, I am pretty certain him watching that tree try to eat Robbie or even the clown scene would have f’d him up for a long time.

Rp

Chestnuts roasted by MessiahRp @ 07/22/2008 9:54 AM

BJ No problem! I read all of the comments before I post mine. I know how it feels when you post and post and post and no one replies.

What I meant was if you know your way around the internet you can find movies that are still in the theater. Joox.net is a good start. Some are bad cam quality but if you wait about 3 weeks to a little over a month you can get a dvd rip of the movie. That is handy for people that loathe going to the theater. I just thought I would mention it.

Alison I saw total recall in science class in high school. The class was about planets. Gotta love alternative school. I brought the VHS tape actually because a guy mentioned it and asked the teacher if it was appropriate to watch it and explained why it was related to what we were learning. The teacher sat in the back doing paperwork.

All the guys cheered when the three breasted lady flashed and looked back at the teacher. The teacher just looked up and smirked. We saw a lot of inappropriate movies in alternative school. Like the Matrix, there is something about mary, baseketball, halloween h20 etc.

Because there was a day we would get our grades, go over our credits and then decide what class to take next. The rest of that day we would go into one of two rooms. There was always two movie choices, one was different then the other one.

But my regular health teacher made us watch 16 candles for our final cracking up the whole movie. That made me love that movie. I never seen it before that.

Chestnuts roasted by Goob @ 07/22/2008 10:00 AM

Easy- My mom took my brothers and I to see Ferngully cause we kept saying we wanted to see it (the animated rainforest movie…it looked cute at the time) She was confused what the movie was called though and accidentally took us to see Where the Red Fern Grows (where the dogs die at the end!) and she had to deal with what started as 3 confused children wondering where the cartoons were and by the end had 3 screaming crying kids horrified that these dogs died…

She has not voluntarily taken us to the movies since and were all in our 20s now…

Chestnuts roasted by Jessica @ 07/22/2008 10:02 AM

Oh man, I have a couple/few. See how it goes.

I saw the movie Remote in the summer of 1993. Even then I thought it was pretty bad. We got in trouble for tossing Skittles at people from the back row.

Back to The Beach was pretty bad as well. I think it was in the late 80′s and I remember not being interested in it at all. I played the ROTJ game in the lobby the whole time.

I saw Cats and Dogs while in Kosovo at a makeshift theater. It was a combat base so I had to wear all my “battle-rattle” with a M249. I seriously considered shooting up the screen about half way through.

Chestnuts roasted by Bill @ 07/22/2008 10:05 AM

I lit a fart with a Bic lighter while watching FLATLINERS. It was a sparse crowd in the theater, but the quick flash of bright, blue flame (and the accompanying sound) was noticed by all. I made sure I did it during one of the quieter moments in the film as well. My friends and I were laughing so hard that I couldn’t even remember what had happened during the remainder of the film. To this day, I never have seen that movie again and have no idea how it ended, but it is one of my fonder movie-viewing experiences. I can’t believe that none of the other theater patrons complained. And oh yes, I *did* singe some hair down there. I suffered for my art back then.

Chestnuts roasted by FileUnderCS @ 07/22/2008 10:05 AM

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