Twitch-O-Meter: Most Memorable Family Viewing Experiences

Thank you for writing this article.
I very much enjoyed reading it.
It made me think back on some of those moments I had when i was younger.

Since I grew up in Europe and as all of you know we are ga ga for some cha cha, nutidy that is. I'd watch movies on TV with some crazy ammount of T and A, squirming in my seat, not saying anything while my dad would give the film his undivited attention.

In fact sex and sexual images was such a none issue that my dad would bring home the papers, along with a couple of Penthouses, Playboys and a Danish dirty mag called Rapport every few days. Then the family would gather around, me and my brother eagerly waiting our turn to leaf through the nudie mags while my mother and father read them and the daily news.
So I never got to discover that pile of porn mags under my dads bed or in his closet because it was sitting right there in the living room.

I can remember my father, always very tolerant of my bizarre cinematic inclinations, agreeing to take me to a small theater in Cincinnati (The Real Movies, now long-gone) to watch TETSUO: THE IRON MAN when I was all of 12 or 13 years old. That it was shot on Super-8 (I had a Super-8 camera!) and featured men turning into machine-monsters (I liked monsters!) was all I needed to know. What I didn't know was that it was all a thinly-disguised metaphor for the mechanization of Japanese sexuality, but hey - that's what makes the story fun and illustrates my point. We watched it, my dad explained it to me (tried his best, anyway), we went home, and would be back in few weeks to watch Carl Franklin's ONE FALSE MOVE. He was always quicker to try and explain things than simply put his foot down with no reason.

Living away from home for the last... yikes, 11 years now, I hardly have opportunities to watch anything with my father anymore (as my visits home grow increasingly short and hectic) and whenever I go back to something completely off-the-wall he had the blind love to take me to on DVD these days, it's become quite bittersweet.

Very touching T-O-M, Peter. Thanks.

What a wonderful article, Peter. Thanks for sharing.

My favorite family viewing moments involve my mom. When I was in high school, I discovered three wonderful things: "Mystery Science Theatre 3000", kung fu movies, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My mom watched all of them with me, and she still laughs about Crow T. Robot and Chinese Super Ninjas to this day.

Great article... made me immediately think of a day in 1982 when my dad took my younger sister and I to a double-bill at our local theater. The first film was 'E.T. The Extra Terrestrial' and the second was 'Conan the Barbarian'. An ingenius pairing... All of us loved 'E.T.' of course, but my dad was most looking forward to 'Conan'. Did I mention my sister was eight yrs old? Shortly into the movie Conan starts "interacting" with a topless woman in front of a fireplace, before of course discovering she's a witch and dispatching her in a suitably violent way. I loved the scene, but my dad (who also loved it) took one look at my wide-eyed sister, stood up and whispered "we're leaving." One of the toughest decisions he ever made. I still remember the long walk from the front of the full theater to the exit and the laughing faces watching us as we left.
And then there's the time my mom watched 'Meet the Feebles' with me at 1am one night...

Two worst taking much younger siblings to movies:
Monty Python's Meaning of Life, with the sex lesson.
and Look Who's Talking 3, which turned out to be all about discovering that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Fuckers.

My family was very eclectic and liberal in terms of what we watched when I was growing up. My parents did always watch movies with my sister and I, so they could explain or put into context any of the strange things we might come across. I always have and always will appreciate this with one significant exception. We had recently subscribed to a pay cable movie channel and my uncle was visiting. My father suggests "Oh look DELIVERANCE is on later, that was a very good movie." I was 6 years old. I remember my uncle protested pretty loudly that it was not a movie for children. My father laughed at him and we saw DELIVERANCE uncut as a family. Everything after the naked Ned Beatty "Squeal like a Pig!!" scene was a blur of white noise. That image really disturbed me for many years to come. That was 21 years ago. One day I plan to rewatch this movie but I want to make certain I am in the proper state of mind.

Heh. Very nice topic. Why is it that when myself and by brother were down in the basement and given free reign with VHS to watch just about anything, my mom would come down ALWAYS during the sex scene. Fortunately it was a highly liberal house, and no comment was made...but talk about awkward...!

I do remember sitting down and watching DEAD/ALIVE (aka Braindead) with my folks back in the mid 1990s. A) I can't believe they stayed and watched and B) I can't believe they enjoyed the heck out of it. Weird.

One time more recently my dad did a double bill of Ravenous and Dumplings. And no complaints. That was pretty cool actually. My uncle stayed for half of Dumplings before having to leave in disgust.

Futher more, some of my favorite moments with my dad were watching Spaghetti Westerns on TV in the early 1980s. There was a lot of love for Lee Van Cleef in our house, and it was a special surprise when my brother, father and myself watched Escape From New York back on VHS in the day.

Good times.