“I screamed”: Revisit my traumatic visitor session where I left the room

February 1993, I had just celebrated my sixth birthday and to welcome the occasion appropriately, “What’s better than taking the baby to the movies?”My parents think. “He likes the Middle Ages, he likes comedies, we’ll take him to see Jacquiel” (I am paraphrasing).

A monumental mistake.

Everything starts well at first. My father, my mother, my brother (11 years old) and I are going to see Les Visiteurs at the two-screen cinema in our small town. Here we are set in a room. Ads are good. The beginning of the film jumps right into the Middle Ages, a boy gets beheaded and surprisingly, it goes well. It’s after that that everything starts to get tough.

Everything changes

At 7 minutes and 12 seconds into the film, Godefroy (Jean Reno), Jacquiel (Christian Clavier), the monk Raoul (Eric Averlant) and their entourage arrive at the witch’s house in the middle of a Saturday. I’m already starting to squirm in my chair at this strange ritual – I was told I was going to laugh, I remember. Fortunately, it’s quickly resolved: Godfrey falls sword in hand / scene cut / witch captured. Phew!… Except it doesn’t stop there.

The next scene, the witch, trapped in a cage, extends her arm until she grabs Godfrey’s gourd to inject the hallucinogenic poison. Already stretching out my hand, I start asking my mother to take me out of there. Please, in “no, but I don’t want to, it’s terrible” mode. He tries to calm me down, because my brother has no problem with all this, and it’s just that we went to the cinema with a little car, it costs a little money, we are not going to go on the first whim.

And then Godfrey’s hallucinations begin. The castle is blown up on the hill, Raoul becomes a pig and Jacquiel becomes a rat. We no longer hear them, the Count of Montmireil goes completely off the rails, in the face of the witch’s sarcastic laughter. There are too many! I’m afraid of special effects, both the witch and her are laughing, I’m screaming!

But I scream to the point that my mom has to leave the theater with me under her arm to let the other audience members and the rest of the family enjoy the movie!

I take a few minutes to calm down, my mother misses Godfroy’s killing of the Duke of Pouille (Patrick Burgel) and finally we come back to finish the film in a more relaxed atmosphere… the comedy that I was. I was told it finally sold out! As a six-year-old, we appreciate “The Jacqueline Show” more than the story, but the end of The Guests goes smoothly. Much softer than his first minutes!

Even though I saw it again on TV, I found The Guests to be a perfectly harmless movie, don’t look at the magic scene… I might be a little uptight.