Oh
the joys of audience participation in the cinema.
My
favourite example was a British horror pic called Night of the Eagle. Peter
Wyngarde (later to play overly hirsute Jason King in a dire TV series) has to
save his wife from some spell or other... She’s been practicing witchcraft and it’s
gonna end in tears. Forgive me if I’m a little forgetful – it wasn’t the sort
of the film that my contemporaries would have approved of, and I can’t remember
much of it. Anyhow, he batters down this crypt door, goes down dusty steps into
the actual crypt, in which assorted sarcophagi are in layers. He pulls out one
coffin, and for whatever plot reasons, has to perform some incantation. As the
audience held their collective breath, he stucks his wife photo on the coffin,
placed two candles in front of it, and with trembling hand lighted the
candles...
At
that point the silence was broken as a teenage voice sang out from the cheap
seats: “...Happy birthday to you....”
The
audience erupted. There is no other word for it.
Yup
- a real moment of pleasure.
I
was obviously very easy to please in those days.
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