Childhood Stories: At The Movies

Earlier this week, Carlos and I were watching a new series on the Turner Classic Movies channel called TCM's Night at the Movies, with the first episode concentrating on Thrillers.

Other episodes - that have been aired, but we haven't seen yet - are entitled:
The Horrors of Stephen King (which I'm looking forward to)
The Gigantic World of Epics

The discussion of thrillers and movies reminded me of a couple of stories from my childhood.

When my sister Christine and I were kids, our parents thought that the movie theater was a great babysitter when they got tired of us and couldn't send us off to the local swimming pool.

Our mom would bring us to Lakeside Theatre, pick out a movie, and come back for us two hours later.

I remember one specific time our mom was trying to pick a movie for us to see, she saw the title The Boys from Brazil. Since she usually picked our movies by the titles - she rarely read about them beforehand - she remarked: "That sounds like a great adventure movie."

The plot to The Boys from Brazil: "In this thriller based on Ira Levin's novel, young Nazi seeker Barry Kohler (Steve Guttenberg) stumbles on the trail of the infamous "Angel of Death," Dr. Josef Mengele (Gregory Peck), who is planning to resurrect Hitler's vision in South America. But when Kohler shares this information with seasoned Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Sir Laurence Olivier), Lieberman doesn't take the information seriously until he makes his own grim discovery."

I was 10 years old.

Lucky for us kids, we decided on another movie.

---------------------------

Growing up, our family didn't bother with the concept of movie start times. Whenever we were ready to see a movie, we would all pile into the car, buy tickets for the movie we wanted to see, and walk into the theater. 

More often than not, we were walking into the middle of the movie. No worries. We would stay until the end of the movie, wait during the break, see the movie from the beginning to the part that we had walked into - and then leave.

I didn't realize until I was in high school that movies were much more enjoyable in order.