Early fall, 1997.
James, Richard and I had just gotten out of a late showing of that year’s Sci-Fi/Horror film, “Event Horizon“. None of us had known quite what we were in for when we decided to go, aside from the most basic premise of “something creepy happens in space,” but it looked fun, so off we were.
We had a blast. The movie itself, if you haven’t seen it, is either really good or really horrible, depending on how you look at it. As a horror movie, it’s pretty good — as a science-fiction movie, it’s horrendous. That night, though, we just had a lot of fun with the horror movie part, sitting in the dark in a huge theater, jumping at all the cheap thrills and loud noises, and thoroughly enjoying it.
Leaving the theater sometime after midnight, we were so jazzed on adrenaline that we were bouncing off the walls, so we stopped off at the local grocery store for some snacks.
“I like it here,” commented James as we walked down the aisles. “It’s warm…the lights are on…there’s air…. Can we stay?”
We got to the checkout counter, and I started skimming the tabloid headlines as James and Richard paid for their goodies. “Hey guys,” I said, and held up the latest Weekly World News. “Alien’s Last Words!”
James just looked at me and deadpanned, “Ack. Ack ack. Ack ack ack ack. Ack.”
Eventually we headed back to my apartment. Once we got there, James decided that he was still too amped from the movie to have any chance of going to sleep. In order to relax and calm down, he decided the best thing to do would be to watch a nice, calm, relaxing movie.
Like Aliens.
True to form, he was asleep before the movie ended.