Remembering Your Childhood Movie Walkouts

09/26/2011 1:00 pm by

LionKing3d Remembering Your Childhood Movie Walkouts

We took our kids to see The Lion King this weekend. It was never one of my personal favorites, but you know. Everyone was bored and antsy and after a summer of mostly-successful family movie outings, we’re up for anything with a G rating.

It was a disaster. We couldn’t find a conveniently-timed 2D showing, so decided to take the plunge and try for the 3D version. (Which we’ve studiously avoided ever since my son opted to watch the entirety of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs blurry and migraine-inducing rather than wear the stupid glasses.) Mistake #1. Nobody wanted to keep their glasses on; nobody seemed at all impressed with the 3D effects — if anything I think they found them unnerving and distracting.

Mistake #2 was forgetting the basic plot of The Lion King, so my almost-three-year-old freaked out over the stampede death of Mufasa, like “you GUYS, this is AWFUL, why am I HERE?”, and then my almost-six-year-old lost HIS shit when Simba suddenly grew into an adult lion during the final 10 seconds of Hakuna Matata. (He’s having some “I don’t wanna grow up” issues right now, I think, and was creeped out by the idea that OMG, you can just GROW ALL THE WAY UP in montage form, JUST LIKE THAT.)

“I HATE THIS MOVIE!” he howled. “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE.”

So we did. Finally joining the ranks of parents who simultaneously feel terrible about inflicting cinematic upset on their children, and also REALLY GODDAMN ANNOYED over shelling out that much money on fucking 3D movie tickets and really? REALLY? Simba grew up, is all! You guys like freaking Star Wars and Harry Potter! Chill out, children.

That said, I think we’re doing pretty well, movie-wise, because I remember making my parents bail on plenty of movies:

1) The Sword in the Stone. My dad took me to this one, but I quickly deduced that it was a Boy Movie With No Princesses and found it boring. Then…something scared me. I don’t even remember what, exactly. But I clung to my dad and buried my face in his side and he asked if I wanted to leave. I did. I always felt kind of bad for ruining our father-daughter day, though when I brought it up later, he admitted that until I grabbed onto his arm in terror, he’d actually been sound asleep.

2) Superman III. I was five when this movie came out, and apparently the only reason I was in attendance was because my parents had promised my older siblings that they would take them and figured I wouldn’t pay much attention to it. I made it all the way to the part where the woman gets sucked into the supercomputer and turned into a cyborg before screaming NO THANK YOU and running out of the theater as fast as I could. My mom and I spent the rest of the movie out on a bench in the lobby. I cried for awhile. She bought me M&Ms. Still haven’t rewatched this shit since.

3) The Neverending Story. I almost didn’t include this one because I didn’t walk out on it in the theater…but I did bail on it during a special VHS showing in my fourth-grade classroom to go cry out in the hallway until my teacher came out and basically shamed me back to my seat. I’ll…let you guess which scene did it.

4) Pinocchio. Goddamn you, Disney! I have no idea how old I was (probably too old), but I guess there was a cinematic re-release one Christmas, so for my birthday I went to see this with a bunch of my friends. I completely lost my shit—in an embarrassing, over-the-top manner—during the scene where the naughty little boys get turned into donkeys and sold into slavery to the salt mines, all while crying and begging for their mommies. And holy shit, I just typed that sentence about a DISNEY CARTOON. Jesus Christ, I need a drink.

(Again, may I remind you: I ran sobbing out of this one during my BIRTHDAY PARTY. I was super cool after that.)

Any other cinematic chickens out there? Did you ever make your parents leave in the middle of a movie? If so, which one(s)? Or were you the type to just suffer in silence while Disney brutally taught you that everything is life is terrible?

 

TOP POSTS
About Amy Corbett Storch

Amy blogs at amalah.com, and can be found on Twitter @amalah. She is Team Zombie, though sometimes she is known to side with the Plants.

Filed Under: 80s, Merciless Killing Machines, Movies, Nostalgia, Parenthood, Theater Tagged With: , , , ,


From Our Partners

  • HeidiT

    I don’t have any but a big story when we were kids was my sister (5) went to see ET with my mom and stood up when ET dies and said loudly “We have to go now! He died.”

  • Anonymous

    I did not like E.T. at all.  Anytime he was on the screen, I looked away in terror and started whining.  I was like, 7??  At some point, my parents had enough and asked if I wanted to leave. 

      

  • Jen Talley

    I totally left during “Sleeping Beauty” when it was re-released, and I think I was, like, 12. But dude. That one scene, where Malificent calls upon all the powers of Hell and then turns into a giant black dragon? That’s scary shit. I still can’t really watch it.

  • Becki Johnson

    The Little Mermaid. AKA the most terrifying freaking film in existence. Uhg. I hate it so much. So of course I have my 21 month old watch it regularly. I’m a good mom.

  • Anonymous

    I had a very similar experience with the Lion King in 3D and my not-quite 2-year-old.  She, however, clapped and cheered through the stampede scene, and while Mustafa was dying kept shouting “Daddy’s at work!” so that Simba would stop asking his dad to wake up, cause damnit, I TOLD you Daddy wasn’t sleeping.  Hakuna Matata caused her to start dancing in her chair and when I gave her the choice between sitting down and leaving, she said she was “All done movie!” and we went home.  That was the first time I had ever walked out of a movie.

  • Danielle Todd

    I don’t have any traumatic childhood movie walkout experiences. I do recall leaving the theatre during “Spies Like Us” in the 5th grade though. It was just really boring and I didn’t get it.

  • Anonymous

    I think this beats your Pinocchio experience.  It was the first Carebears movie.  Something in that movie scared me to death.  I went, wailing, out of the theater. 

    • Colet Bostick

      Was it professor Cold Heart? Because he is like a blue serial killer and I still hear his song in my head.

  • http://twitter.com/poobou Cindy W

    I don’t remember walking out of a movie, except when they re-released Cinderella at some point, we went to see it and had to leave after the first 20 minutes because my little brother apparently had a stomach virus and puked his popcorn in the aisle. I was PISSED.

    Oh, remember “The Fox & The Hound”? My mom took my brother and I to see that one (I think we were like 4 & 5, respectively), and she said that at one point she had a kid on each leg sobbing into her chest. She was cursing Walt Disney’s name pretty hard after that.

  • http://twitter.com/hpstrawberries hodgepodge

    I never ran out but that’s only because when I’m super-scared I freeze solid (like a rabbit in headlights), and I can’t run out because I’d have to put my feet on the floor and move. Which I can’t. To this day, when I see the wicked queen in Snow White drink that potion shit that turns her into the creepy old woman and she looks up over her shoulder with her one googly staring eyeball I get nervous.

    And E.T., oh my. My sister and I were both in sobbing hysterics by the end… then on the way home, our one and only car broke down and my mom had to flag down a total stranger for help while two very young kids bawled and cried in the backseat because E.T. was gone.

    We (stupidly) took the boys to see Rango. The 3 year old melted down 10 minutes in and was taken to the lobby by daddy. The 5 year old came apart about 10 minutes after that and we actually ended up with four free passes to another movie because we’d seen so little of it.

  • Kelsey Peters

    ET petrifies me… To this day. I also remember going to the Fox and the Hound with my mom and a friend and bawling, like shuddering, full body sobs.

  • Issa Crazy

    Willow. I think I was 8 or 9. It freaked me the fuck out. I generally just freaked at home and stopped watching things. But that one I remember asking to leave the theater. 

  • heidi davis

    That scene in Pinocchio scares the crap outta me. Always has.

  • Jana Tigchelaar

    Apparently my parents really wanted to see Ghostbusters when it first came out, enough to go even though they couldn’t find a babysitter for my brother and I…who were 4 and 7 at the time. The scene in the library TERRIFIED me but my cheapskate parents refused to leave. I do remember getting to eat M&Ms while I sat backwards on my dad’s lap, facing his chest, for the rest of the movie.

  • http://www.facebook.com/caitlin.lenon Caitlin Lenon

    Those scary rats in The Secret of NIMH gave me the creeps.  And our 6 year old still leaves the room when the ching ching monkey from Toy Story 3 is on.  She had to be carried out of the theatre when he appeared.

    • jbg717

      That monkey is fucked up.

  • Anonymous

    Return to Oz

    I was in preschool and we were taken as a class trip.  Apparently no one realized that when the movie start Dorothy is in a mental institution because everyone thinks she’s crazy.  Then, she returns to Oz and everything is different and awful!  There is a queen with heads she changes out.

    Anyway, I think we were all scared to death and the entire class walked out.

  • Mrs. Higrens

    You don’t know how happy I am to read that so many others had issues with ET. 

    Family legend has it that I had to be taken out of the theater during “Cinderella.”  Wicked step-sisters anyone?

  • Claire Mischker

    Movies my mother *should* have walked out of because I cried through BOTH entire movies: ET & Bambi. I began weeping when they were chasing ET through the woods at the beginning, and I never stopped, only fluctuated the degree. Something at the beginning of Bambi made me sad (can’t remember now) & I cried all the way through it as well. I was a cryer, obv.
    To this day, I can only make it through ET because I KNOW he doesn’t really die in the end. Both of these were when I was quite young, maybe around 5, so after that, I honestly don’t think my Mom took me to a movie until Princess Bride. She learned to just rent them & pray I’d hold it together, (ie: Neverending Story & Willow, but not so much with the holding together).

    • Anonymous

      Bambi’s mother dies at the beginning. Thanks, Disney!

      My mother took my sister and me to many inappropriate R-rated movies when we were young. I had nightmares for years about a couple of them. Can’t remember ever leaving a movie, though.

  • Tracy Hilgendorf

    I am pretty sure that we actually stayed for the whole movie, but I was about 4 or 5 when the Little Mermaid came out and my parents took me to that.  I remember cowering on the floor (EW!) behind the seat in front of me bawling my eyes out when Ursula grows to this huge screen-covering size while laughing her evil laugh.  Apparently my parents were fine enough with my traumatized, sticky floor state to stay for the rest of it.

  • http://twitter.com/arodenha Alli

    I remember losing my shit the first time I saw Fantasia — that “Night on the Bald Mountain” sequence, with all the ghosts and goblins and demons? Yeah, no.

    • http://twitter.com/ryenerman rynerman

      Sweet Jesus me too.  That was far too scary for me.  Damn you Disney!

  • Angela Nilles

    Let’s see… Lion King, too sad.  Little Mermaid, way too creepy.  I saw the Neverending Story at my very first sleepover, and I can’t remember what it was but I thought it was the scariest movie in the world, and I walked home!!

  • Denora Carpenter

    I feel SO MUCH BETTER now that I’ve read I’m not the only one with problems with E.T. I saw it in the drive-in with my mom right after I had turned 3. My mom, who was 8 months pregnant with my sister, was unable to hug me due to the giant belly meeting the steering wheel. So all I remember is being TERRIFIED and my mom just kinda sitting there not making things better. (That’s actually my very first memory. Awesome.)

    I have never been able to watch that movie. Seeing a commercial for it is enough to give me panic attacks. I’m 32. It’s fabulous.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_36GDZVJIQTLALBZOUSEKXYQKW4 b s

    The two I remember freaking out about are the Wizard of Oz (FLYING MONKEYS!!!!!! GAH!)  and Pinocchio (Don’t remember why with Pinocchio, but it was bad.) 

  • Cheryl McLaurin

    It wasn’t at the theater, but the KidCatcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang freaks me out.  I hid behind a pillow while babysitting my cousins when they demanded to watch that movie.  I think I was 12-ish.

  • http://twitter.com/papersquared carolyn

    My movie walkout as a kid was The Fox and the Hound. I don’t remember why, I haven’t seen it since. But I remember sobbing and my grandmother saying it was okay, we could leave. 

  • Shawnna Householder

    I’m 32 and that monkey in Toy Story 3 scares me!!

  • http://lauriemrauch.com Laurie M. Rauch

    I wasn’t too much of a kid – high school – but I *wish* I’d walked out of David Cronenberg’s Crash. I was there with a friend who wanted to be more than friends, though I didn’t, and there’s a lot of sex in that movie.  Awkward…

    (I kind of wish I had a better “I freaked out and left a movie” story, but I honestly don’t think I ever did. Though we weren’t allowed to watch Scooby Doo as kids because it scared my little sister. :( )

  • Anonymous

    This is a case of my parents making us leave the theatre. They had planned a special evening to take me to see “Where the Red Fern Grows”. They should have realized something was up when the ticket taker said “You’re taking HIM in there?” For one thing…I’m a girl, but apparently looked quite manly in my green snowsuit with my pink pj’s peeking out underneath. They indignantly replied “Of course” and proceeded to buy me a tub of popcorn and candy. All set in our seats the opening music starts playing…and it’s very ominous sounding, and my parents look at each other over my popcorn chewing head…and the credits roll…and it’s THE EXORCIST…and we left very quickly. Never have seen EITHER of these films.

  • Annabelle Archer

    Oh gawd…I am so happy to see other people mention Fox and the Hound.  I was so upset by that movie as a child I refuse to watch it now.  Nor do we own a copy for the kids. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/amylpeel Amy Greenlese Peel

    When Gremlins came out my mom took my brothers and I to see it.  I was 9, which would put my brothers at 6 and 4, and they were both so scared that my mom took us home.  I’ve never admitted to any of them, but I was SO GLAD WE LEFT because I was terrified but I wouldn’t say anything.  I hope they don’t read this site :)

    The only other movie I’ve ever walked out on was Bone Collector, but that’s because it was so stupid.

  • http://crabbyappleseed.blogspot.com/ crabby appleseed

    Um, because that was some seriously effed-up shit in Pinnocchio. The kids screaming for their moms and turning into donkeys?  I am 35 years old and I STILL hate it.  I have no idea how those early Disney movies became classics because they’re all just awful.

    I also cried all the way through ET, but I wasn’t sad, I was scared.  Of ET.  The only kid in America, I think.  Also: I think I read somewhere that Drew Barrymore thought ET was real, and when she was sobbing on his coffin, she thought he was really dead.  And we wonder why she was snorting coke in between recess and Girl Scouts.

    • Erin Smith

      No!  You’re definitely not the only person freaked out by ET.  I HAAAAATED ET when I saw it as a kid, and haven’t seen it since.  I’m shuddering just thinking about it.  Gah.

      Frankly, I am comforted by the fact that so many people in my age range found ET disturbing.  Most of the time when I tell people that, they respond with, “What?!  Really?!”  I have found my tribe.

    • Anonymous

      A lot of old stories are pretty horrible, and these movies were based on them.  Aesop’s Fables have terror in them.  Heck, even Little Red Riding Hood – damn wolf eats grandma, and then the hunter cuts him open and grandma comes popping out?  Hansel and Gretel, with the witch wanting to eat them, and then they shove her in an oven?  Good times…

      My kids are loving the old Warner Brothers cartoons, these days.  One of them has cats at the Pearly Gates, trying to get in.  They all bore the markings of how they died.  One was flat and had tread marks going up his back.   The most depressing of these dead cats were three kittens in a bag, soaking wet – clearly having been drowned.

      Good, light-hearted fun for the kiddies, right?  NOT!

  • Lora Freeborn

    For future reference, if you leave before the movie is half over and you go to the customer service desk/box office, you can usually either get a refund or movie passes.  Ask me how I know this.  I have left more movies than I can remember because my son couldn’t make it much past 15 minutes of any G-rated movie until he was 5 or 6.  Every little thing scared him.  Hence the visits to the box office for refunds!

  • http://twitter.com/kuchen kuchen

    Ok – I am glad I am on not alone with Return to Oz… My dad took my sisters and I to the theater when that came out and I still haven’t seen the end of it. The Dark Crystal was also a walkout, but since it is my husband’s favorite childhood film, I have had to get over that one. There wasn’t anything about that movie that didn’t scare me.

    As far as scarring my own children goes, we rented James and the Giant Peach, which for some reason scared the bejesus out of our son… Not a movie walkout, but still emotionally damaging.

  • http://twitter.com/ryenerman rynerman

    I had to be carried sobbing out of Watership Down.  I remember crying the entire car ride home.  That book still makes me sad as hell.

    As an adult I had to visit the lobby for a large chunk of Pulp Fiction and just plain left the theater during The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover.  Too much for me.

    • Cooley Horner

      My BF and I had never seen “Pulp Fiction,” so we Netflixed it last month to see what the big deal was. We only made it thru about half of the film. I can kinda get the appeal, but I’d rather just watch “Inglorious Basterds” if I’m going for a Tarantino flick.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Natalie-DeRiso/7401740 Natalie DeRiso

    I still get made fun of by my mom for this…I was about 5 or possibly 6 and we were at the drive-in…it was a double feature showing and we watched the first movie (not sure what it was) but during the second movie, Ernest Goes to Jail, I apparently lost my shit and started screaming that something was “in the trees” to the side of the drive in…I don’t think it was the movie but rather a combo of being up late and being outside (I was super afraid of the dark). Can’t think of any other film though…

    But Sword in the Stone and and also the Disney Robin Hood are my two favorite disney movies

  • http://twitter.com/sshabein Sara Habein

    I don’t think I’ve ever left the theater as a kid, BUT THANKS FOR REMINDING ME ABOUT NEVERENDING STORY. GAH.

    *SOB*

  • http://twitter.com/sshabein Sara Habein

    Also, seconded-thirded-eleventy-billionthed on old Disney movies being fucked up. I’ve already informed my kids that there’s no way they’re watching Dumbo.

  • http://ok-state-kellys.blogspot.com/ Amanda Kelly

    In 1st grade we watched Where The Red Fern Grows at school. I cried for the rest of the day. For an entire week after that, every time I saw a dog I started bawling. My son seems to have caught this from me. He tried to watch Santa Buddies at my parents’ house and LOST it. Yet he’s  fine with The Land Before Time, which is totally Bambi with dinosaurs. So odd. 

  • Anonymous

    I am a weirdo. I didn’t have a walhout per se since it was a TV movie, but I was an avid reader and my mom loved unsolved mystery-type books… so one day we decided to watch this: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101345/

    I ended up with a parent on each side of me, trying to stop my hysterical crying and arm flapping. Baby’s first panic attack, aww :/

    I did cry at ET and I refused to watch Old Yeller, and I cried when Bob on Sesame Street did a song-and-dance number in a yellow raincoat and Wellies. I still don’t understand that one.

  • Cooley Horner

    I used to be TERRIFIED of the Wicked Witch in “The Wizard of Oz.” I’d employ my dad to be on hand with the remote to fastforward the scene whenever she came on. Of course, now, as an adult, she’s my favorite character in the film and I find her hilarious. Go figure.

  • http://www.facebook.com/CreepyMommy Amanda Lore

    My mom took my brother and I to see Edward Scissorhands when we were around 7 and 8. Everything was great until Edward pushed the younger brother out of the street saving him from drunk driving Anthony Michael Hall. after Edward saves him, he’s accidentally cutting up his face (that doesn’t sound right at all) trying to make sure he’s alright. Well my brother and I popped up in our seats, sobbing hysterically, crying our little eyes out and shouting, “He doesn’t mean it! It’s an accident! He’s just trying to help him! He saved him!” A couple of freaking lunatics I tell ya, but I can’t remember if we left after that or not….

  • http://twitter.com/txtingmrdarcy Brooke Shelby

    “The Witches.” That movie scared the everloving crap out of me and I have never watched it or read the book since.

    My mother probably should have taken me out of Jurassic Park, but apparently 8 was old enough to see it…. and then keep my parents awake with Raptor nightmares for the rest of the week.

  • http://twitter.com/ladyphlogiston Caitlyn

    my parents were pretty careful about what we watched.  I do remember leaving Honey I Shrunk the Kids at a summer camp or something (giant bugs, I think?) and my sister insisted that we walk out of Minority Report.  She’d have been 14 then, so I’m not sure what the issue was, but it sure did bug her.

  • D.B.

    Ah memories.  I was a nanny to a 10yr old and 6yr old the summer The Lion King originally came out. (I was 16). After much begging, their parents let me take them to see it on opening day. It was a really big deal, maybe their first time at a movie theater? It was such a huge movie, we had to wait in line for almost 2 hours to get in.  This was a matinee showing with nothing but kids, SAHMs, babysitters like me etc. Movie starts, everything’s great…cue the scene where Mufasa dies. Holy shit. If you could have heard all the wailing and sobbing and freaking out going on in that theater. I’m not kidding, about 1/3 of the kids had to be taken out. I will never forget that! My first (and only) experience with mass hysteria.

  • Anonymous

    Pinochio was effed up. I still hate that movie. 

    I had to be taken out of the theater when Christopher Lloyd’s fake eyes popped out in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? The combination of the creepy red eyes and the shrieky voice gave me nightmares for weeks. 

  • Silly Goose

    I don’t remember much of my childhood walkouts, but I was stoooopid enough to watch Dumbo whilst pregnant.  I sobbed my way through so much of it, my husband told me I wasn’t ever allowed to watch it again, my reaction totally freaked him out.