I went to see it at a matinee showing in our local Odeon, in the days long before they carved it up into a multiplex cinema. So this was a massive auditorium with many hundreds of seats and an upper circle. It was also empty, other than for a handful of people dotted around, and me...on my own, enjoying a skive off school (I was 15) and, I thought, a good laugh at 'the pictures'.
It was anything but. I was
terrified. Not by the film, but by the fact that once I'd chosen my seat in the empty stalls, as equidistant as possible from the handful of others in attendance that afternoon (as you do), and settled down as the lights went out, the usherette - a towering manly figure of a woman, with more than a trace of malevolent psychosis in her eye (she had moments earlier sold me a Zoom from her tray, whilst displaying an unnerving leer) sat in the seat directly behind me. Dozens of empty rows - hundreds of empty seats, and she sat
directly behind me. I tried to ignore her, but she her laughter was loud, and matched her look. But the worst part was that she laughed at all the bits that weren't funny, and not when she was supposed to. That completely freaked me out!
She laughed at the wrong bits!After about an hour of this, I escaped to the toilet, and didn't come out again until I heard the film's closing music, and made a run for the exit. I still don't know how the film ends, and remember precious little about the hour I did watch. But I'll never forget that usherette's face...or her laugh. If it wasn't an utterly absurd notion, I would suspect that she was on Mel Brooks's payroll...
