1964 Toronto, Canada
Rita DeMontis
Born: 1951
Toronto, Canada
Interviewed on Monday, January 28, 2019
by Robert DeMontis
What’s the first movie you remember seeing?
The first movie I remember seeing was The Birds. I saw it with my family, on a Sunday afternoon in the winter. The Birds is an early 1960s American horror-thriller directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock and it was one of scariest movies I have ever viewed – and that includes the Exorcist. It’s about the sudden an inexplicable attack of hundreds and hundreds of birds on a small town in California. We watched it at home on a black and white TV.
How old were you (approximately)?
I think I was around 13 or 14 years old.
What do you remember about the movie?
Everything. The characters – I loved the way the women were dressed. The unrelenting build-up of fear, how the birds attacked the humans, pecking their eyes out, even killing. It was graphic and gruesome without there actually being overly-graphic gory details. At one point, the star – Tippi Hedren, the protagonist – is trapped in a phone booth and the birds attempt to attack her and shatter the glass. The birds are not limited to just one species – there are blackbirds and seagulls and chickens. There is a set of lovebirds that were purchased as a gift and are with the main characters throughout the movie. The movie builds and builds and you can’t wait for it to be over…and when it is, the ending leaves one hanging for an answer. It’s up to the viewer to discern the right answer, but there isn’t one. The movie can be viewed as just another horror flick, or a reflection of the political era that dominated the U.S., of the time. The Cold War was setting in, and fear of a nameless enemy dominated lives everywhere. What gave the movie such credence is the fact that a huge flock of birds was found dead of unknown causes a few years earlier, in a town similar to the fictional town where the Birds took place. It made people nervous to think that birds could rise up and challenge mankind.
What did you think about the characters, actors, and story?
To be honest, as a young girl I saw them as one-dimensional characters in a lopsided love-story type of setting. Viewing the movie at later stages in my life, I saw them as reflections of the times of that era; there was a fair amount of self-absorption, pity, arrogance and an older woman who proved to be horrid to the younger women in her life.
Who was with you when you saw it?
I vaguely recall my family – it was an afternoon – but I remember my father specifically. He was a very strong, fearless man who laughed at the most intense times in the film. I remember snuggling up to him and watching most of the film through the slits in my fingers as I kept covering my face.
How did you get to the theatre or venue to see the movie?
Not this movie specifically but – when I was very young, I did go to the theatre to watch black-and-white horror movies. We grew up in a family where religion was not that big a deal, yet my mother thought it was important that we attend Catholic Mass at a church called St. Peter’s, which was a good 2 kilometers from our home in Toronto’s inner-city. Further south was an old theatre called The Midtown. On Sundays, if we went to Mass, our treat was a Sunday matinee for only 10 cents each. We’d go to Mass, go home for lunch, and then my mother would give us a dime each and we headed off. And we walked there, all three of us. My two big brothers were forced to take me along. They hated having a baby sister (they were 2 and 3 years older than me respectively) – so they would dump me at the very front of the movie screen while they went to the back to horse around with their buddies. And every movie was a black-and-white horror or science fiction film, which scared me to death. Halfway through the movie I would go racing up to find my brothers, screaming most times. A pair of hands would grab me in the dark and plunk me down between them. I’d then have coats thrown on me. I really wanted to watch the movies, so I spent most of my time underneath my brother’s coats (or sweaters), jabbing them in the ribs and constantly asking “what happened! what happened!?” It was hilarious, when you think about it.
Was there a concession? Did you have a favorite candy?
There was a concession but we never did buy anything from there, as the place was rather shabby and somewhat dirty, including the concession stand. What we would do is purchase a “surprise” 10-cents candy bag from the local smoke shop and split what we found – mostly rolls of black liquorice rolls with a tiny red candy at, and some sour gums; things like that.
Do you remember the theatre? Were there ushers? What town and year was this?
I remember the Midtown like it was yesterday. I can’t recall any ushers but that’s because I was with my brothers. This was Toronto in the early 1960s. The theatre was so drabby and sad, but we thought it was a real luxury – the seats were those traditional red plush seats that sunk in deep in the center because they were so old. The place had a strong stench of tobacco and body odor (people smoked in the theatre).
How did the film make you feel?
Movies like The Birds, and other classics like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, really helped shape my curiosity for things that didn’t make sense at the time. I learned to ask questions, do research, get to the bottom of issues. I think I would have made a great detective! At the same time, all those scary movies (and books – from an early age I was reading books that would have been deemed inappropriate for a child and later a teen) made me a bit neurotic, anxious and constantly question the mundane. There’s an old saying that says, if you hear hoof beats, it’s most likely a horse; it’s very rare that it’s a zebra. I was always waiting for the unicorn.
