• I’ve told my Madeline story before at TSM, but this article brought back memories of my employment at the theater, which also happened to be a member of the National Amusements family.

An audience expecting to watch a family film was stunned to get an glimpse of a horror movie, which left some parents shaken and the theater chain apologizing for the movie mix-up.

 

The moviegoers were expecting to see "The Last Mimzy," the PG-rated tale of a brother and sister who discover a mysterious box of toys and become endowed with superhuman powers to help preserve humanity's future.

 

Instead, the crowd saw the opening scene of "The Hills Have Eyes 2," the R-rated sequel to a recent remake of a 1977 horror classic by the genre's renowned director, Wes Craven. The film centers on National Guard troops who stumble on a clan of mutant cannibals and starts with a chained woman giving birth to a mutant.

 

"There were kids that were crying, there were people trying to cover the kids' eyes, they were caught off guard," said Anthony Rasco, who was in the audience when the scene was unexpectedly shown Thursday in one of the theaters at the Island 16 multiplex.

 

Another patron said the episode had left his 3-year-old son with lingering, and unsettling, questions.

 

"My wife is eight months pregnant, and he's been asking, 'Is that what mommy's going to have?'" said Frank Doll, 31, of Mastic.

 

Theater staffers soon stopped the movie, gave the patrons free ticket vouchers, and started "The Last Mimzy" about a half-hour late, according to parents.

 

National Amusements Inc., which operates the Island 16 and about 1,500 other movie screens in the United States and elsewhere, expressed "deepest apologies" in a statement Friday.

 

"We are working with our theater's managers to correct this situation and ensure that it does not happen again," said the statement from the company, based in Dedham, Mass.

One afternoon I was working the afternoon cashier shift. I think it was a holiday of some sort (Memorial Day if I had to guess), and this usually means the early afternoon shows would be overrun with children. However, I was working the cashier position, so my dealing with juveniles was kept to a minimum. I could tell though that there were a lot of kids, and many of them were to see this Madeline movie. If you don’t know who Madeline is, it’s a set of books about some girl who lives at a finishing school (the movie had her as an orphan) and gets into all these wacky adventures with the other children. I’ve never heard of this character, but I guess it was popular among certain sects of kids, so who am I to judge. Anyway, I noticed that there were quite a number of children dressed up as characters from the books...

...and I even saw some camera flashes going off. Everything seemed normal enough, but when I ventured out into the lobby for my 2 p.m. break I knew something was wrong because my co-workers had a “I can’t believe what just happened” look on all of their faces. I approached one and asked what happened. Turns out our manager had accidentally played the wrong reel of film in one of our theaters.

Let me elaborate a bit. Many times at my former place of employment we would show two movies in a theater during the course of a day. Generally, if we had a movie that was geared specifically toward kids (Air Bud, Mr. Magoo, etc.) they would be played for the 1 p.m., 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. shows, while the evening times would feature a more adult-oriented film. Well, the auditorium playing Madeline was one such example. Madeline was to be shown for the afternoon times with another movie for the 7 p.m., 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. times. Turns out our manager inserted a reel for the evening film rather than the Madeline reel. And just what did an auditorium full of children watch for the first 5-10 minutes?

Yep.

According to the one usher, a man came out of the Madeline theater and said “Is someone supposed to be peeing in Madeline?” (I haven’t seen the first part of Baseketball, so I’m not sure if this is indeed what happens in the opening of this movie. Nevertheless, that's what I was told.) And, if memory serves, that showing of Madeline was a near-to-complete sell-out. Nice.