I 100% agree with this.

There was an atmosphere about going to the movies when I was a kid. I remember begging my parents to take me and my brother to the movie theater to see Star Wars, for example. When we got there, the line was out the door and all the way around the building. It was an event.
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I loved going to the movies when I was a kid, especially high school in the early '80s. So many of what would become my all time favorites came out back then (Star Trek II, Excalibur, Conan, Blade Runner, Raiders, American Werewolf in London). I was the movie critic for my high school newspaper, so I saw a bunch of them.

The main movie theater in my home town was an old vaudevillian theater built in the 20s, which sadly was torn down many years ago. Had a nice, dark balcony that was great for dates. They also showed midnight movies; often double features. We'd sneak booze in and get roaring drunk. It was great.

Those were the days.
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We had a similar style theater at school in college. Loved that place. The upper balcony was a great place to watch a movie. And bring a date.
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When Star Wars came out I lived in Jefferson City - the main theater there was the Ramada 4. It played there for a year and a half. They put "Star Wars" up over the door in big, blue wooden letters. They stayed there so long that when it finally stopped showing and they took the letters down, the paint had faded around them so you could still make out the words for another couple of years until they repainted.
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Yep. The anticipation was high for most stuff. And a lot of us went in blind. Behind the scenes access wasn’t as available as today. About the only thing I remember reading was ‘Starlog’ magazine back in the 80s.
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My dad took us to see the original Alien movie in 1979 at the Ranch Mart theater in Overland Park. The movie theater was nearly empty, as it was just me, my younger brother and Dad, along with another young couple, probably late teens or early 20's.

For those who weren't around back then, we pretty much knew nothing about movies beforehand. Critics were seen as assholes so no one paid attention to their ramblings. Obviously, the internet didn't exist, nor did endless trailers for films. For the most part, you pretty much went in blind because even the marketing was lacking back in the day.

So anyway, we're sitting there in a fairly large theater with only five people when the infamous stomach scene happened. The girl in the theater screamed so loudly that it was absolutely terrifying! She began screaming and crying during that scene and even 40+ years later, I remember that like it was yesterday. It was just sheer terror on her part.

There was something about the naivete of audiences in those days that just doesn't exist today. Everyone has seen just about everything the imagination can think of in film and TV - and with way better visual effects - which kind of takes the horror out of horror.

I doubt I'll ever have an experience like that again.
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Sadly, I was just a bit too young to see Alien in the theater (neither mom or dad would take me to see a sci-fi movie), so I missed out on that one.

Jaws, OTOH - the person screaming was the 10-year-old me. Well, me and everybody else. That fucking movie traumatized me for life. During the scene when Hooper was in the cage, I actually crawled under my seat.
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I was like 13 and my brother was 11. My Dad didn't worry much about the ratings.

:-)

I didn't see Jaws in the theater, thank God! I saw it years later on HBO and it scared the shit out of me to this day, although it's still one of my all-time favorite movies.

We did see The Deep in June of 1977 at the Independence Center theaters about a month before we moved back to Kansas. While it wasn't as scary as Jaws, the shark scene and especially the eel was scary enough. Plus, that film was so claustrophobic when they were exploring the sunken ship, which made me a bit uncomfortable.

While my Dad has dived on many a sunken ships across the world, I don't think I could do it.
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Two weeks after seeing Jaws my mom took me to Florida for the first time. I wouldn't go out in the water past my knees. I had nightmares about it for months afterward, and to this day I don't like swimming in water, any water, where I don't know what else is in the water with me. Even though I was in the Navy, and have been to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, I can count on one hand the number of times I swam in the ocean. I could just never get that Jaws shit out of my head.

Occasionally on Sundays when we were out to sea, the weather was nice, and our schedule permitted, they'd stop the ship and announce swim call - put nets over the side and people could swim. In the middle of the ocean. At that point, it wasn't the image of Hooper in the cage that got me; it was Quint's story about the USS Indianapolis.

Yeah, fuck that. :-)
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:-)

I'm with you, 100%. Jaws so terrified me that I won't go much past ankle deep on our beaches in SoCal.

I did some snorkeling in Bora Bora, which was amazing. But on a jet ski trip around the island, I ran into a Tiger shark in a lagoon.

Suffice to say, I couldn't get out of there quickly enough.
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I was on a supply ship. We'd run lines to other ships running alongside us and send stuff over. The area between ships was calmer than the surrounding sea, and the sea critters enjoyed it. We'd almost always have dolphins traveling alongside in that area, and sometimes flying fish.

But one day there was a big shark in that area. Huge. Looked to be well over ten feet long. I can't say for sure what type it was; by the size, I can only assume it was a great white. I was not inclined to paddle out for a closer view.

Needless to say, there were no dolphins or flying fish around that day. :-)
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Wish you had taken a pic of the shark; i might've been able to figure out what species based on head shape and fin shapes.

Out of curiosity were you in tropical or temperate waters?
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We were in the Med; IIRC it was summer.
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Great whites are pretty rare in the Med, but they have been seen there. They don't usually track ships though.

Shortfin Makos are definitely in the Med and look like a smaller version of the GW; they can reach sizes of 12-15 feet long. Makos will trail ships looking for straggling fish or even porpoises that have schooled up behind a boat.

Blue sharks and oceanic whitetips are the usual ship trackers in the Med. But blue sharks are pretty easy to spot because of their extra-long fins, and white tips don't usually get big enough to be mistaken for a GW.

The rest of the 'dangerous' sharks in the Med that could be mistaken for a GW aren't really pelagic, IIRC.

I'd guess you saw a big Mako.
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I'll take your word for it. FWIW, I did two seven month deployments in the Med and that was the only time I ever saw a shark or heard about anybody else seeing one, so I guess it's safe to call it a rare occurrence. It was a big deal among the crew; the only reason I saw it at all is because other people were talking about it. Most of the crew would have been in the right age group to have seen Jaws when they were kids.

All I know is I'd have opened up on the fucker with a .50 if they'd have let me. :-)
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