The first films you ever saw in the cinema

[tee rex]

Probably not the first, but Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was especially memorable because it had an intermission. Perfectly timed too: it was the moment the car went over the cliff, and they were all doomed. A traumatic time, waiting for death, eased only by a vanilla tub with splintery wooden spoon. SPOILER ... Chitty lived.

[Satchmo Distel]

First film - Bambi

First new film - The Land That Time Forgot

Doug McClure was the first actor I idolized

[Femme Folle]

First Film - Puss In Boots, circa 1961.

[treibeis]

If ex- Fräulein treibeis' son ever contributed to this thread, he'd say, "When I was about seven, I kicked up such a stink one Saturday afternoon about not being allowed to go and watch HSV that the twat my mother was seeing at the time said, 'For crying out loud, before I end up tearing my fucking ears off, let's go to the fucking pictures.'

We got to the multi-screen late and he ended up buying tickets for 'You Don't Mess With The Zohan'. The film had already started when we went in, and the first thing I saw was Adam Sandler's bare arse and him making thrusting movements from behind. My mother then called the twat she was seeing a 'thoughtless arsehole', grabbed me by the wrist and yanked me back to the bus stop. It's the only time I've ever heard my mother swear.

The thoughtless-arsehole twat stayed put - twenty-five euros down but, more significantly, still holding the big bag of sweets I'd selected at the pick & mix."

[Benjm]

Harsh. You Don't Mess With The Zohan is many people's second favourite hairdressing comedy after Shampoo.

Slight diversion, but I've never been able to watch Down & Out In Beverly Hills after suggesting it as Christmas Day post-meal entertainment for all the family, including great-grandmother and two great aunts one year. An early sex scene showed this to have been an unwise choice and my mum put us all out of our embarrassed misery after ten minutes or so.

[Guy Profumo]

Lady and the Tramp

Odeon Cinema, Doncaster

(My mother still claimed that this was impossible, as "there wasn't an Odeon in Doncaster, it was a Gaumont"


Yes it was. The Odeon was half way down Hallgate, the Gaumont was the big posh cinema at the top at the junction with Thorne Road.)

[Aitch]

I thought I was another one to have the Jungle Book as my first film but as Wiki tells me it came out in 1967 my first cinematic experience must have been the 1966 film of England winning the World Cup. The memory of Nobby Styles dancing about without his front teeth still brings a smile.

[Gangster Octopus]

My first non-documentary that I remember was in 1963 in the Glenelg village hall I saw a Charlie Drake fillum, almost certainly Petticoat Pirates. I've never found cross-dressing a source of amusement...

[Duncan Gardner]

Thoroughly Modern Millie- my Mum was a big fan of musicals.

ps I probably saw old Laurel and Hardy stuff slightly earlier

pps Ursus's fave Father Goose featured in a recent extended BBC doc on Cary Grant. He said it was closer to a self-portrait than any of his other films

[G-Man]

First movie: The Disney Robin Hood one.

First movie on my own: The Spy Who Loved Me

First movie I went to see twice: Stripes (in German: "Ich glaub', mich knutscht ein Elch")

First movie I saw in English: Gandhi

First movie with my future wife: Either Ghost or Reversal of Fortune

First movie with my son: The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland

Last movie I went to see: Les Miserables

[Amor de Cosmos]

Lady and the Tramp

Odeon Cinema, Doncaster

(My mother still claimed that this was impossible, as "there wasn't an Odeon in Doncaster, it was a Gaumont"


Yes it was. The Odeon was half way down Hallgate, the Gaumont was the big posh cinema at the top at the junction with Thorne Road.)

We watched G.I. Blues in Doncaster while waiting for a coach connection. Can't remember the cinema. My sister whinged constantly, while I had early pubescent fantasies about Juliette Prowse.

[WOM]

Probably not the first, but Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was especially memorable because ...

When I was around 10, I looked forward to CCBB all week when it was going to be on The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night. About ten minutes in, the power went out and I felt reality come crashing down around me.

[colchestersid]

Lady and the Tramp

Odeon Cinema, Doncaster

(My mother still claimed that this was impossible, as "there wasn't an Odeon in Doncaster, it was a Gaumont"


Yes it was. The Odeon was half way down Hallgate, the Gaumont was the big posh cinema at the top at the junction with Thorne Road.)

Right, I've got to the bottom of this whole Odeon/Doncaster fiasco

The Gaumont was turned into an Odeon in 1987 whereas the original Odeon on Hall Gate was closed in 1973. This Odeon had before then been the Ritz. Not strictly relevant but, before the Gaumont was the Gaumont, there was another cinema on that site called the Majestic. The Majestic of course started out as the South Parade Cinema but that was in 1920 so I doubt your mum would remember that

On a completely separate note (and probably would need another thread) I've only ever seen two films at the cinema where I was the only one there. 1996, Sudden Death with Jean Claude van Damme at the Warner Village in Doncaster was the first. (The other was in Salta, Argentina - Little Miss Sunshine - 2007)

[treibeis]

First movie with my future wife:

Ooh, good one.

The first film I saw with my (not your) future wife was Ulrich Seidl's "Paradies: Liebe", at my behest. I reckon it was a deal-sealer.

[WOM]

The first movie I ever took my daughter to was The Wallace and Gromit Movie (which she kept calling the Wallace and Grommie Movit). She also kept calling it a the-ATE-er. Now she goes to the same place and sees those awful low-budget horror movies that all make $130 million and spawn 4 sequels.

[San Bernardhinault]

I think the first movie I saw with my then-missus-to-be was Michael Haneke's Caché, when we were both pretending to be a little more intellectual than we actually are.

[Benjm]

Looking at the releases for the relevant year, the first film I can remember going to with my wife is Monster's Ball but I think the tried and tested art house approach was taken with a showing of The Leopard at the NFT before that.

[Lang Spoon]

Classy, Benjm.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Don’t remember specific films but definitely Saturday morning kids’ matinee sessions at the RAF camp cinema in Singapore.

The kind of near-riot audience watching Tarzan, Laurel n Hardy, Children’s Film Foundation and cartoons with two harassed usherettes for crowd control.

I loved cinema going so much I got dropped off solo for adult films (westerns, war films) from an early age, too.
And I can remember a trip to Singapore City to see “The Battle of Britain”.
1st film with Ms Felicity was a daytime double bill at Wolverhampton Odeon: “Gregory’s Girl/Capricorn One”

[Patrick Thistle]

You all set the bar too high. The first film Mrs Thistle and me saw together (before we were going out) was The Lion King. Our first date was to see a comedy called Airheads with Brendan Fraser, Adam Sandler and Steve Buscemi as a thick rock trio.

[Satchmo Distel]

I have an embarrassing memory of me and two mates, all of us aged 14, sneaking into a double bill of Flesh Gordon and Jungleburger. Both incredibly bad and the latter unbelievably racist.

[G-Man]

It would have been amusing if steveeeeeeee had married the woman he went to see Madagascar with. "And every year on our anniversary, we get a tub of popcorn."

[Felicity, I guess so]

Very vivid memories of going with both parents to “Planet of the Apes” in Elgin, maybe 74 or 5, I think it was a ‘AA’ so I would’ve been too young but we did have school/church connections to a fierce usherette in that cinema.

I used to ask lots of questions when I was excited (‘like a chipmunk’) so recall asking if she (Nova) was going to be experimented upon and stuffed, too - which reduced them to fits of laughter I maybe, vaguely, got the reason for (70s sitcoms taught us young about sexual innuendo).

Loved that film and still do.

[Benjm]

1st film with Ms Felicity was a daytime double bill at Wolverhampton Odeon: “Gregory’s Girl/Capricorn One”

That's an odd pairing. Was it the sweet romantic or the paranoid conspiracy theory half of the bill that made Ms F think that you were a keeper?

[Guy Profumo]

When I was around 10, I looked forward to CCBB all week when it was going to be on The Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night. About ten minutes in, the power went out and I felt reality come crashing down around me.

When I was slightly younger, we had a "day out" from near Lincoln to the "big shops" in Nottingham.

As part of the quid pro quo we were going to see CCBB at the "big cinema" in Notty.

Queue was too big, so we didn't get in.

Bought the Corgi® car as recompense.

Saw the film later in Lincoln, felt cheated as the entire narrative of the film was [spoiler]"it was just a story", even more lazy than "it was all a dream".[/spoiler]

And this was as an eight-year old.


For years I thought Colin Jeavons played the part of the childcatcher - I'd no idea who Robert Helpmann was.