Every serious movie geek knows it’s bad form to talk or make noise during the show.
But there are exceptions.
In fact, there are times when a random eruption of audience emotion and a shout-back to the screen is totally and completely called for.
Here are some of my memorable favorites, in no particular order.
The scene: Daddy Darth Vader has just saved his boy Luke Skywalker from the clutches of the evil Emperor Palpatine, and during his last gasps of breath, he instructs his son to remove his mask so he can look on him with his own eyes. After six years and three movies of suspense, audiences finally got their first and only look at the pasty and hideously scarred face of Anakin Skywalker.
It’s a tender moment of familial reconciliation and cinematic closure…deftly undercut by a viewer’s well-timed interjection, “Put the mask back on!” There wasn’t supposed to be a punch-line here, but the roar of audience laughter is a sound I will never forget.
Octopussy
The scene: Sexy Magda has just slithered away from James Bond with the all-important MacGuffin, the jeweled Fabergé egg. As he cocks an eyebrow in admiration for the slinky thief and her acrobatic escape from his balcony, Bond turns and is immediately karate-chopped in the neck by the villain’s henchman, knocked out cold. One particularly soulful audience member, apparently disappointed in 007 for not thoroughly checking his perimeter, bellows a well-timed, “Awww, Booooooond!” Cue audience laughter and applause.
Batman Begins
On a technicality, this shout-back didn’t happen in the middle of the actual movie, but during the “preshow” hosted by the radio station promoting the advance screening. As a trivia question for a prize giveaway, the emcee lobbed out a not-so-difficult challenge to the audience, “Name a Batman villain.” Without a second’s delay, a member of my party shouted out, “Joel Schumacher!” (as in, director of 1997’s odious Batman & Robin)—to thunderous laughter and applause. Prize awarded—and totally justified.
The Village
Overheard during the end-credits of this M. Night Shyamalan stinker, two audience members riff on the stupid logic of the movie’s parental figures’ staged “scare” tactics: “Okay, so I’ll dress up as the monster and do the scaring next Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and you’ll take Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We’ll split Sunday.”
Spider-Man 3
By the time Mary Jane Watson kissed Peter Parker’s friend-cum-nemesis Harry Osborn, audiences were already in a froth over how convoluted and disoriented the plot was. But fans remained loyal to their web-slinging hero, and when M.J. and Harry locked lips, the moment was met with a resounding and well-deserved chorus of “WHORE!!!!!!” by, well, pretty much everybody.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
As the intro song-and-dance number aptly prepped us, “anything goes”—and audiences had no idea what was in store for the return of Indiana Jones. Before the plot settled into its dark groove of stolen stones and slave children, we were catapulted on a breakneck journey from a nightclub in Shanghai to the wilds of India. Indy and company bail from a plummeting aircraft and slalom down a mountain in an inflatable raft—“That wasn’t so bad, was it?!”—and as they immediately slide right off an insanely high cliff, a capacity crowd of roughly 1,300 riveted patrons (yes, theaters had such mind-boggling seating capacities back in 1984) collectively gasped and shrieked in a thrilling moment of communal excitement and audience participation rarely matched since.
Tootsie
I saw a lot of movies at Philadelphia’s iconic SamEric Theater, which packed in 1,300 seats counting the main floor and balcony. Among the most memorable audience-reaction highlights happened there, during the moment when we first glimpse Dustin Hoffman in full-on “Dorothy Michaels” drag, prancing wearily towards the camera down a crowded Manhattan avenue. I’ve never before and not since recalled such a moment of uproarious laughter and applause from any movie-going crowd. Ever.
Aliens
Every time I saw this movie in 1986—and there were several viewings that summer and fall—the moment that always got the crowd literally cheering and applauding and shouting back an odd “Fuck, yeah!” or two, was Ripley’s challenge to the alien queen, “Get away from her you bitch!!” After the slow-burn of two hours of pent-up tension and suspense, the release was more than merely cathartic—is was downright explosive.
Teeth
Imagine if you will a game audience totally buying into this movie’s deliriously twisted conceit of a girl cursed with vagina dentata—yes, teeth in her nether region. This horror comedy is a terrific little thriller about the frights of puberty, but what made my viewing so memorable was the constant refrain from multiple audience members—including, eventually, myself—of a creepy, sotto voce utterance of the film’s title during any given suspenseful moment…. “Teeeeeeeeth!” Every successive instance got the crowd more and more whipped up.
