What's the worstestest cinema experience you've encountered?

The theaters around here are relatively new. The ones I have been in are pretty well maintained. I recall one in Los Angeles that was pretty nasty, but that was about 50 years ago.

No really horrible disasters, but....

I live way out in the middle of open countryside nowhere near a city. The primary town within reasonable driving distance of my area has a branch of the main theater chain that serves nearby cities.

There is also a nearer, smaller, town that has a branch of a different chain of theaters that primarily serves small towns.

I saw Tarzan 3D this summer at the smaller nearer theater. I noticed that the 3D previews were in 2D double vision (as if I wasn't wearing my 3D glasses, even though I was). I figured it was just a glitch with the previews. Then the movie started, still in 2D double vision. I was unsure if my glasses were faulty or if they were projecting it wrong. Someone else in the theater left, I hoped to complain, but I didn't know them and didn't know why they left. I got up and considered complaining, but when I poked my head out of the theater there was a big line. There was also an "employees only" door that was open and clearly led upstairs to the projector room(s). I spent a couple minutes watching the blurry movie from the entrance of the theater room trying to figure out what to do. After a couple minutes the other person came back, and shortly thereafter the 3D was turned on.

I like spoilers and had therefore already read the plot of the movie, so I was able to survive having the beginning of the movie disrupted.

I figured it was a fluke. I've been to that place now and then over a period of decades, and this was my first problem with them.


A week or two later I was at the same theater to see Star Trek 3D. I noticed that the 3D previews were in 2D double vision (as if I wasn't wearing my 3D glasses, even though I was)....

This time I got upset and had an urge to boo and yell in dissatisfaction. I held back. As the movie started in 2D double vision, someone started tapping their foot loudly in a highly irritated manner that echoed through the theater. Someone else got up and left (hopefully to complain). I realized that the loud dissatisfied tapping was coming from MY foot and stopped. The other person came back, and shortly thereafter the 3D was turned on.

At the end of the movie, the 3D stayed on through the big credits with a graphical background, but once the small-print credits started rolling it appeared to me as if someone might have switched the 3D back off (meaning that they would have to remember to turn it back on for the next showing).

I'm thinking now that I'll only use this smaller, nearer theater for 2D movies, and will be heading to the larger town when the next 3D movie is on.

Good question. You and I are from different eras, but not entirely. I still mildly follow, and you still wouldn't be enthused about my favorites. But, re theaters, I've memories of bests, which is not what you are asking. I don't remember a true horribiloma theater, but I remember faves.

On the other hand, I've an extremely diminished sense of smell.

Do you remember the smellovision cinema thay had, probably back in the 50s, osso, shortly after the firswt 3Ds, and Cinerama and Cinemascope. Thankfully, it was a brief fad. They put something under some of the seats, that would periodically sned out something odorous that smelled vaguely like what was on the screen. Since mostr films don't focus heavily on smell, it died a quick death. I think mainly they issued a few travelogues. I think I remember one that was from Asia, and had a scene with those small houseboats in some Chinese harbor or similar, and smelled like a harbor with a lot of stuff rotting in it, followed by something that smelled sort of like fried rice. I bet soeone lost their shirt on that venture..

Ok, I'm going to set the bar high.

A former long term bf was a movie theater manager. So I saw a million of the movies made during the 80's. At one point he managed the old Miracle Theater in Coral Gables, Fl. The old style kind where their were 2 small side sections and a huge middle area. That's the set up.

I met him there one afternoon, we were going to go to dinner during his break. He was busy, so I went to watch a movie. A movie with 12 year olds as most of the cast was just starting. That theater was mostly empty. I guess not a popular film.

So I'm watching and some guy comes and sits next to me (yeah, you know where this is going). I was kinda actually into the movie, so remember just feeling annoyed for a second.
A few minutes later, something really funny happened in the film, and I turned to him and started to say "That was pretty good" or something.

Well, as you can imagine, he was going 60 miles per hour. I looked at him, and he had these absolutely dead eyes. Suddenly I realized, he doesn't know I'm a grown woman in her late 20's. He thinks I'm a 13 year old. THAT mad me mad. I punched him in the chest as hard as I could and said asked him what the HELL he thought he was doing.
He didn't miss a beat. I knew if I went to the right, I'd have to go through too many seats, and he'd disappear. Plus, We were only maybe 5 seats from the end. So I had to climb over this masturbating guy, who just kept at it the whole while.

I ran to the door of the lobby and caught bf's eye, going "PSSSST! PSSSSST! GET OVER HERE!"

I remember while climbing over him thinking "oh please god please don't, just don't"

It's back.



http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DX
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_4DX_motion-enhanced_films

They'd better have improved the smells by about a thousand percent, if they think they're gonna make a go of it. the old ones really reeked and were barely recognizable. Now that I think about it, there's a movie theater near me that celebrated its centenary a couple years ago, and 100 years odor of buttered popcorn has seeped into the walls thoroughly, so it's almost impossible to get through an entire morie or concert without that subliminal odor saying , "POPCORN, POPCORN NOW!" to you. That's in the 100 year old main theater. There are four, I think, smaller newer screening rooms only a decade or so old, and it's much easier to avoid the trip to the concession stand if you see something in them. The subliminals don't work on you so much there.

In the old theaters the film occasionally broke. When I went to see Gone With the Wind, the projector broke down. I had to come back the next night.

No, but my uncle (the rich one) was treasurer of Cinerama. He might have been involved in the debacle, or not. Parts of my family rarely talked for good reasons of sheer hatred starting decades earlier. I say this as an observant kid.

My mother and aunt were warriors, and part of my miserable life as a teen, the arguments being about earlier family stuff and not re Cinerama. I do remember being invited to go to some opening.

There are no 4DX theaters in my area so I can't testify.

I have DBOX available though, and have experienced it for a few movies. With DBOX the chairs lurch and vibrate to the movie, but you don't have the smells or the water splashed in your face like with 4DX.

I can advise people to *not* put their DBOX setting at maximum unless they are the sort of person who would enjoy going over Niagara Falls in a barrel 100 times in a row. Leaving the seat on normal setting is OK though. (I've never tried minimum setting because normal is fine.)

I don't know that DBOX has made a "huge" improvement in my movie experiences, but so long as I leave the setting on normal it certainly doesn't do any harm. I'm happy enough with the DBOX experience that I plan to buy DBOX tickets again the next time a movie I want to see is available in DBOX.

When I was 14 I worked in a downtown theatre, a multiplex. The biggest screening room held 75 people, the smallest 12 or 9, can't remember... it's now an immigration office.
Anywho, it had a lot of hallways, stairways and dead end storage areas, offices etc. For a couple of months, we had a flasher who would surprise women with his thing and the screaming would start. He always had a backdoor, so escape was easy.
One day he got me. Instead of screaming I pointed and laughed. I asked him if he was seriously showing 'that' off, cause it wasn't that impressive. I was an innocent catholic schoolgirl virgin and even I knew that.. lol

He never came back. Wonder why?

Yay Ceili.

Yeah folks, that's what we need here, more men exposing themselves and masturbating stories.

When old bf started off working in theaters, he was a projectionist. There's a lot of stuff going on up there, especially at a multiplex. One of those things was us having lots of sex behind whichever projector was next to have the reel changed during the film.

To this day, whenever I go to the movies, I always turn around at some point and look at the projection opening and wonder if anyone is getting laid up there.

It's a happy thought.

Oh God Chai, that happened to me when I was 18 and took my 11 year old brother to see a 4:30 afternoon film. I remember grabbing my brother telling him we had to go then running into an usher in the lobby, me with a bright red face trying to tell him that something awful was happening but too embarrassed to use the necessary words. Plus I was naive enough to worry that I shouldn't use such words in front of the 11 year old. I wish I had punched him in the face, you're my hero. Plus if I had hit him my brother would have been convinced I was a badass.

Plus in the summer at 4:30 the theater had only about 5 movie viewers.

The LOBSTER, a aupposedly dark comedy of a dystopic future wherein folks had to have mates was, in our estimation, a total waste of time. The critics fell all over themselves to heap praise on it and we found it amateurishly done with two polar halves of the movie that confuse and frustrate the honest movie goer.
If you like this movie, I think you should be examined for cognitive aphasia, wherein you make up bridges about unconnected times of your supposed experience, and you live like that.

30 bucks down the toilet an no 2 hours back. Im getting to be old an my time is precious.

I dont think folks should have wasted any money on this POS. I see that its out on flix and other stream services. Go ahead , waster your time

Glad you gave your review on the Lobster. I was considering it.

I loved it.

I think it was around the early 1980s. The movie Police Academy was just released in the theater as a brand new movie. Me and a three or four of my friends and family went to see this movie. We got there kind of late. The trailers and previews had already finished. The movie had already started. It was dark and we couldn't find any seats the four of us could sit together, because the theater was packed. We ended up sitting in the very front row. We were so close, that we were almost kissing the screen. We had to lean our head back and look up for the entire movie. I prefer sitting at the back row or near the back row in the center of the screen.

I went through an unexplainable phase in my thirties where I really loved sitting close to the screen (within the first 3 rows/center).

With the exception of IMAX (where I try for the center), I'm still in that phase.

I think I get it from my rock concert years. I always tried to get as close to front and center as I could at rock concerts.