NIGHTMARE ON MAIN STREET

Being a father of young sons right now means fretting more about plenty— like what to pick on MOVIE NIGHT. They’re getting too big for the baby stuff, but are they really ready for the thrills of a true horror classic?

- CHRIS NASHAWATY

DO YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST MOVIE THAT scared the holy living shit out of you? Of course you do. I certainly remember mine. And it’s been haunting me lately because...well, because I’m worried about being a terrible father. Let me explain.

One Saturday afternoon not long ago,I was sitting on the couch in our suburban New England home with my twin seven-year-old sons. The morning snow that we had woken up to was turning into bleak afternoon slush and sleet, and our plans to go sledding were dashed. Suddenly we were stuck inside with hours to kill before dinner, bath, and bedtime. So we all decided the best thing to do would be to whip up some hot chocolate, commit to hibernating in our pj’s, and throw on a movie. Sounds idyllic, right?

Wrong. Pretty quickly it became clear that our ideas of the perfect cozy shut-in movie couldn’t be more different. It’s not as if I were expecting them to suggest Touch of Evil or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly—after all, they’re seven. But when they tossed their top three picks at me, I felt like a deflating balloon. In descending order, they went like this: The Boss Baby, The SpongeBob Movie, and Captain Underpants. All three, I should point out, we’d already watched. Many times.

So I told them I thought we could do better. That we ought to try something they’d never seen before. Something we could all love. I started flipping through the cable guide and saw that Gremlins was just about to kick off on one of the lesser HBO channels. I hit record. Then I went into the kitchen to warm up three mugs of cocoa and told them to fasten their seat belts. They were about to witness a classic.