Growing up during the 70's did not offer much in family TV. There usually wasn't much choice of what you could watch compared with today. Lets just say they did not overly cater to the children. I went to spend the weekend with my father. I was pretty young. Maybe the 4th grade. He put on his favorite horror movie "Night of the Living Dead." So not appropriate. To top it off, he would keep sneaking behind the couch and jumping out and yelling at the scary parts.
Our parents would take us to the Drive-In Movies. In theory this is a great idea. We went in our pajamas. There was a swing set in the front that we played on before the movie started. The family movie played first. By the time the children fell asleep the adult one would play. I did some research and I think the adult movie was "The Vampire Lovers." I do not know how they rated movies back then but the way I searched for it was by typing in the words. "Vampire movie where woman gets bit on the boob." because that is what I remember. The movie poster says not for the mentally immature. My husband just said to me some things never change. No one asked him.
One of the girls in the neighborhood stole the book "The Exorcist" from her mother. We were at that age when you kinda of know how sex works but still kind of foggy on the exact mechanics of it.. We took turns reading it to each other especially the really shocking dirty part. One night I heard pounding outside my bedroom. I ran down to my parents bedroom hysterical because "Captain Howdy" was trying to get me. My parents yelled at me to go back to bed. It was a loose board on the roof. So I got myself busted for reading the book. I'm the oldest of four. I begged my younger siblings to walk me to the bathroom at night. They all refused except for my baby brother. They have never let me live this down. I have never watched the movie and I never will. I don't even like looking at this picture.
I have not done much better then my parents. I came home one day and my husband was letting our six year old son watch "Child's Play." I said "that's not for kids." My husband says "its a puppet and its not even scary." It didn't help that I had an old ventriloquist dummy from my childhood and we put it in his bed. He made us give it away to our friends four year old who loved Chucky?
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