Scary Movies

We see a lot of movies. I love everything about going to the movie theater: the huge screen, the great sound system, the popcorn. I especially like how much it still feels like going out on a date with my husband. Even if the movie turns out to be not so great, I still enjoy the experience of having gone. I can recall only three exceptions.

The first completely unredeemable movie I went to was Alien. I saw this movie before I met Ron. I love going to the movies, as I said, but I don't like scary movies. Alien had all the elements that I hate in scary movies: tension that starts high and builds, things that jump out unexpectedly, and gross things depicted graphically. What I remember most about this movie is unrelenting terror followed by nightmares that lasted for weeks. I did not marry the guy who took me to see this movie.

The next memorably bad movie I saw was one of Jamie Lee Curtis's slasher movies. I'd seen a couple of bad slasher movies (with other guys I did not marry) and had no desire to see any more. But Jamie Lee Curtis's were supposed to be "good" ones, so the buzz went, and I asked Ron to take me to see her latest—Halloween II. We were dating at the time, and because I'd told him previously that I didn't like scary movies, he tried to convince me that I wouldn't like it. But I ended up prevailing, and off we went. And no more than ten minutes after the opening credits, out we went! As I recall, this movie begins with a quick recap of the first Halloween movie, and the ten-minute opening included all the hated scary-movie elements. This is the only movie I've ever walked out on, but I realized immediately that Ron was oh-so-right: I would seriously regret it if I stayed to watch the whole thing. I felt really bad, though, because now Ron's money had been wasted, but he eventually married me anyway, so I guess he got over it.

The third bad movie experience was Aliens. Yes, the sequel to the much-hated Alien. Ron and I—now married—saw this movie with another couple, Tim and Kathy. We'd decided to see a movie, but hadn't picked one yet. Tim and I both said the only one we didn't want to see was Aliens. We had both seen Alien, we had both hated it, and no way were we going to sit through the sequel. I still don't know how we ended up watching this one. Just before the movie began, a large man with an even larger head sat right in front of me, blocking my view of the screen. Normally, this would completely ruin the movie for me. That was not the case with this movie. I grew to love the back of this man's head. As the movie progressed, I figured out that if I scrunched down in my seat, the man's head would fill nearly the entire screen, and that's how I "watched" the rest of the movie. I remember during one scene I had to turn my head away so that I wouldn't see even the edges around the man's head, and instead I watched Ron's face in profile. He had the most god-awful expression, then his face contorted into something even worse. I did not want to know what he was seeing!

We did not see Alien³, Alien: Resurrection, or Alien vs. Predator. We are still married.