There was a movie theater on the main street going through the heart of Mount Airy, North Carolina in the early 1960’s that played matinee movies on Saturdays for the town’s kids. The movie variety from what I had heard was ok. I had not been to the theater and only heard stories from friends and some of the other boys in the neighborhood. The horror movies were the ones that seemed to attract more boys than girls. And as kids, these horror movies would really get the” you know what” scared out of you when you saw them. Today, these are classic movies that you can search for, and they can be hard to find sometimes.
One Saturday me and my friends from my new neighborhood, all boys of course, went to see the movie “The Mummy”. This was the 1959 release starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I remember that this was the first time I went to a movie theater. I do remember going to drive in movies that we watched in our car with the speaker box hanging on the car window, but this theater was inside a building. This was a new experience for me. And what an experience it would turn out to be.
The movie theater was full of kids from our school and from the other schools in the town, and I remember sitting near the front with my friends. As an eight-year-old boy who was skinny in size, the screen in front of me was gigantic. But I felt something special about this screen I was looking at along with this theater I was sitting in. As the lights of the theater began to dim, the screen came to life with oversized brightly illuminated images of the beginning of the movie. The text of the movie name filled the screen. I was excited to be here in the theater with my friends. And then…
I remember being scared right from the beginning, but nothing like what I was about to experience. The people in the movie were so big on the screen. You could see all the background details and the scenery supporting the story. Wow! A drive-in movie screen was nothing like this. And when the mummy appeared on the screen I almost cried in fear. I was truly scared, almost to the point of screaming out loud, but I could not show my fear with the other boys from the neighborhood. They were mostly cheering on the creature and the evil it was doing while I was closing my eyes so scared to look at what was happening in the scenes.
The worst part about being this scared was that I had to endure my terrified emotions for the rest of the movie. I had to hide this fear. I am an eight-year-old boy in a town where masculinity was what boys were taught during this time and simply that “boys don’t cry”, period. We were not girls. I’m sorry, but there is no other way to say this. In a way, we were not allowed to express any physical characteristics that would diminish our being a boy. So, I knew I could never let my friends know just how scared I was. I just knew that if they found out they would make fun of me and that would hurt my feelings.
By the end of the movie which I mostly didn’t watch with my eyes open, I began to practice how I would hide my fear so I would not be embarrassed. I knew my friends would pick-on me and call me names if they ever found out how much the movie scared me. This hiding of my fear would later haunt me as I became more aware of my confidence in experiencing my young life and the challenges it presented. But I did often wonder if any of them were truly scared like I was.
Have you ever been to a movie that truly scared the “you know what” out of you. How did you respond? Were your friends there enjoying the horror and mayhem being shown? Were you afraid of being seen as a lesser person based on your gender if you showed any fear of watching the movie?
At eight-years-old, and being a young boy, being scared of any fictional creatures who create mayhem and murder was something new for me, and I didn’t like it. I think that I learned that I preferred movies and stories about fantasy worlds and mythical creatures who were friendly and fun more than being scared beyond what my young mind could tolerate by those creatures of horror.
I also believe that experiencing a story, either in book form or in a visually performed show or film in a happy setting, would support your best feelings when they are concluded, and your understanding of the story being told is now firmly embedded in your imagination. I believe this format of entertainment allows your imagination to explore the story in the way you want to. And this one particular movie impacted me in many, many ways, and one impact would challenge me for many years to come.
I now know fear…
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