Seeing Singing in the Rain in college. I had talked my friends into going, and we were amongst lots of cranky dance majors (and Bennington had LOTS of dance majors) who did not want to see an "old" movie. Of course, people LOVED it. Afterward, everyone poured out of the theater is a happy daze, and we were all dancing down the dark path and leaping off of benches and it was magical.

Not a movie, but one of my fave movie moments was the first time I saw the trailer for the first X-Files movie. Dark screen and then, "Mulder?" And the entire place went wild. It was great!

Oh, college movies. I watched Princess Bride every time they showed it at McGill and it was a great atmosphere except when people laughed at me for gasping when Count Rugen pulls the knife out of his boots on the spiral stone stairs. But that bit still gets me.

That crowd was a great crowd to see stuff with. Also saw their every showing of A Clockwork Orange. It's where I first heard Singing In The Rain, so my dance probably doesn't look like yours, Scrappy.

College movies -- classic films category: both Blues Brothers and Monty Python/Holy Grail were rocking good times. Slightly older (less than five years old) films category: for Ghostbusters, they handed out bags of marshmallows, which, of course, were tossed all over the theater beforehand and then thrown at the screen when the Columbia lady showed up.

Contemporary films category: not a fun time, but the most moving experience was for The Killing Fields--packed house, a few guys making noise at the beginning of the film, and then dead silence throughout the rest of it, except for moments when you could hear the sniffling noses and outright sobs, especially at the end.

Not a college film, but still a great movie going experience- watching X-Men in a theater full of con-goers.(The con rented out the theater)

It was a little embarassing when I was the only one who didn't laugh at the "What did you expect, yellow spandex?" line. (My comic book knowledge was a little sparse)

Sitting in stunned silence at the end of Talk Radio in a packed house. No one...not one person...moved for at least two minutes, until someone in the back cried, "Oh. My. God." Then, as a body, the entire place rose and emptied at a dead run.

I remember taking a film class and our prof telling us about Freaks. He was showing us clips, but he said he wasn't going to show us the ending, because we'd all laugh, and it doesn't play that way in the context of the whole movie. But we pestered him until he finally showed it, and of course, we all laughed. A few months later Freaks played at the local rep theatre, and when they showed the chicken lady almost everyone one was silent. Only one person laughed.

I would say horror stories are a subset of thrillers. So all horror movies are thrillers, but not all thrillers are horror. And there used to be a site that would let you make Venn Diagrams and I would have, but I can't find it. Damn it!

With that in mind, I don't think I'd call Jaws a horror movie. Right at this second, anyway. It's totally a scary movie, but not a horror movie. I'm trying to figure out where the entirely arbitrary line in my head is, and why. Hm.

[ten minutes pass]

Okay, the best I can come up with is: horror stories are about Evil. It can be mundane dude-with-a-chainsaw evil. It can be spooky walking-dead evil. It can be freaky alien-body-snatching evil. It can even be existential Japanese we're-all-fucked-for-no-reason evil. But there's gotta be some sense that what we're dealing with here is just Evil.

In Jaws, the shark is doing what sharks do. The movie's got fantastic scares. Quint's monologue about the Indianapolis is definitely a little horror story within the movie, but I feel like the movie overall is maybe too naturalistic to be a horror movie. (So: Duel, yes. Jaws, no.)

I will probably change my mind about this tomorrow, but I do like forming random theories. Feel free to poke holes, 'cause I'll have to come up with a more complicated theory and that's my idea of a good time. Speaking of existential horror...

In Jaws, the shark is doing what sharks do.

But can't you say the same about the body-snatching aliens?

But can't you say the same about the body-snatching aliens?

Yes, but they do it with evil intent. Sharks just want lunch.