Audience Reaction

[Bruce Southerland]

If you could go back in time and watch one film during its original

theatrical release, just to observe the audience reaction, what film

would you pick & why? (sounds like a "Miss Film America" finalist

question doesn't it?)

[John Holland]

Its not really answering your question , i saw The Exorcist when it first opened in LA , in the lobby the Red Cross or something like that were on duty . In the Cinema i have never seen so many stupid people fainting and well just being weird and this was before the film started , half way through it got much worse . Very scary and that was just the audience !!!

[David Mullen ASC]

There would be a couple of movies that had a big impact on the audience when released... for example, "The Jazz Singer". "Gone with the Wind". "This is Cinerama". "Psycho". "2001". "The Exorcist" -- after that, I was a teenager when "Jaws" and "Star Wars" were released, though I was personally more affected by my first screening of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind".

[Scott Larson]

The showing of The Blair Witch Project I was at was unlike any other I've experienced. The movie had some improvised humor which the audience laughed at, but cut immediately to black footage with strange sounds in the distance. The audience instantly went from laughter to total silence.

[Dom Jaeger]

I imagine Psycho must have caused the audiences of the time to emit copious squeals of terror, likewise some other early horrors that even now have their unnerving moments, like Nosferatu, Freaks or Les Diaboliques.

 

It would also be interesting to have been at the first screening of Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, which so revolted audiences that it destroyed his career.

[Chris Millar]

fun question !

 

Yeh, I think The Exorcist and Star Wars would have been interesting ...

 

To vary it slightly I've often wondered about taking films 20+ years to the past so for instance people in the late 50's seeing Star Wars, it can be looked at for both the movie content aspect and the for instance the effects capability.

 

What would Starwars fans in the 80's see in say Avatar and so on.

 

Would expectations be raised and filmmakers up the ante in turn or would the effects just be technically incomprehensible ?

 

 

Maybe some films were like this - 2001 etc...

[Hal Smith]

I was out in California visiting my Grandmother Smith in North Hollywood when I was a young man. We were going to go to a movie somewhere not too far off on a Friday or Saturday but she wasn't feeling too good and lent me her car to go off by myself. I drove over to Hollywood and decided that a movie that had just opened looked pretty good.

 

And had the incredible luck to see "Lawrence of Arabia" first run in one of the great Hollywood theaters.

 

I liked it...so did the rest of the audience...and the rest of the world.