1975 Olongapo City, Philippines

Corason Z. Smith
Born 1958
Olongapo City, Philippines
Interviewed on 1/25/19
By: William Matthew-Alika Smith

Jaws was the first movie I remember seeing. I was 17 when I first saw it. It was a very good movie but it was scary. There were a lot of people because it was a famous movie. It was a huge movie back then so everybody was anticipating it. Back then, there were tons of advertisements on the radios and magazines. I remember the shark specifically because it was massive and terrifying. After I saw the movie, I would not go to the beach again because I was so afraid. To this day, I do not like going to the beach. If I go, I will only go to shallow waters because the movie scared me so much. I always think about the shark. The movie scarred me in a way.

I went with my classmates and I do not remember their names too well. They were my friends, we heard the advertisements and it looked like a pretty good movie. It was like two pesos at the time so many students would go to the movie theaters as dates or weekend events. We were all excited when we were going to the movie. We wanted to see what all the hoopla was about the movie. It was very thrilling and scary, more so than we expected.

I think the theater was called the Delrose Theater. It is probably not there anymore, as this was 43 years ago. There were many ushers there. They would take you to your seat which is abnormal today. The theater experience in the Philippines was not like it was here in America. The movies were constantly playing. It was not like now where there is a showing time. Back then, the movie was constantly playing and you could go at any time. You could go in during the movie, stay and watch it again. It was dark so the usher would take you to your seat. Because it was constant, there was no schedule time so the usher would constantly be bringing people in. I do not think it is like that anymore. I really remember it being constant such that you could just watch it again by staying. You could basically stay there all day if you want and watch the movie all day long. My friends and I would sometimes spend our entire weekends there.

The theater was normal to me, but different than those in America. Theaters in the Philippines were actually bigger than in America from what I remembered. I remember that our malls were better, too. People were surprised because we were a third world country, but had big theaters and malls. It was like a theater in America in which they had what was showing and what movies were coming up with posters and everything. My memory is not too great – this was forty years ago, I cannot remember what I ate three weeks ago.

We had popcorn and soda. It was pretty basic. I really liked the popcorn with lots of butter and coke. We snuck in candies and peanuts. We always got away with it and we enjoyed eating the treats during movies.

This was in Olongapo City in 1975. The movie was not in Tagalog, it was in English. Most pinoys knew English. We were taught in English all throughout school. We were the only ones that were English speaking really in Asia. Since you were in first grade all the way, we were taught everything but one subject in English. There were not even subtitles for the movie. All the English movies were totally in English. They were not translated into Tagalog. This obviously was fine for people who went to school. Unfortunately, people who didn’t go to school wouldn’t be able to understand the movie.

My grandparents were very well educated. My grandmother was born in 1901. My grandmother worked for the telephone company. You could not be a telephone operator without an education. You needed to understand English and know how to communicate well. We were pretty well off when we were younger. We had a printing press business so we knew a lot about current culture. Because of them, I was able to go to school and learn English well enough to watch movies.

It was an enjoyable movie and scary at the same time. It was considering a horror, thriller movie. I was jumping and screaming the whole time. Everyone around us were jumping and screaming as well which made the movie that much scarier. Like I said, I’m still scared today. I do not like horror movies but it was advertised so much that we wanted to watch it.

I remember Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw. I think that the shark got the captain and I remember when it ate some people. The actors were pretty good and the story was good. I think that it lived up to the hype. It was a hit and made a lot of money. I think that it was one of the best movies and was iconic.

After the movie, I kept wondering if there were a shark that big in real life. I had never seen a shark like that but kept wondering if there was one. I was sure that there was a shark that big somewhere. I never wanted to find out though so I stopped swimming. I was afraid that I would see it and get attacked by it.

I told my mom about the movie. She never went to go see it though. She was afraid of dark places and got claustrophobic so she very rarely went to the movies. She liked the James Bond movies and would go see them though.

I never ended up as a big movie goer. I enjoyed watching the James Bond movies with my mother, but never went to much more than that. Jaws scared me so badly that I never wanted to watch another horror movie again.