I saw my first R-rated movie when I was twelve. That was when HBO--then called Home Box Office--came into being. I was shocked. I was shocked that R-rated movies were so stupid. I tried to picture the sort of moronic grown-ups who would pay to see Death Race 2000 or Rollerball.
When I was six or seven, an idiotic-looking horror movie was being advertised called Frogs, rated R. I asked my brother how a movie like this could do any business. What adult would go to a thing like this? It's a little strange that I thought in those terms.
The first R-rated movie I saw may have been The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. I was babysitting and watched the people's HBO. A guy named Peter Proud realizes that he's the reincarnation of his girlfriend's father, so his girlfriend's mother, who murdered him in his past life, kills him again, this time for sleeping with his own daughter.
I guess it raised the philosophical question of what difference would it make if we WERE reincarnated since no one remembers their past lives anyway. So what if a guy was Hitler in his past life? He's not Hitler now. And if you kill him, won't Hitler just be reincarnated again?
I was glad when VCRs took over. We had gotten rid of HBO years earlier because it wasn't very good, but I felt left out. There was a local video store that specialized in foreign and high brow cinema. I started going there all the time. They were the type of movies I had imagined adults watching.
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