“I Screamed”: My Traumatic Experience Watching ‘Les Visiteurs’ That Made Me Leave the Theater

It was February 1993, I had just celebrated my sixth birthday, and my parents thought, “What better way to mark the occasion than by taking the little one to the movies?” “He loves the Middle Ages, he loves comedies, let’s go watch Jacquouille’s antics” (I’m paraphrasing).

Big mistake.

Initially, everything started off well. My dad, mom, my brother (11 years old), and I headed to see Les Visiteurs at the dual-screen cinema in our small town. We settled into our seats. The commercials were fine. The beginning of the movie was hardcore medieval—a guy gets beheaded, but surprisingly, I was okay with it. It was what came after that began to escalate things.

Everything Changes

At exactly 7 minutes and 12 seconds into the movie, Godefroy (played by Jean Reno), Jacquouille (Christian Clavier), the monk Raoul (Eric Averlant), and their companions arrive at a witch’s gathering during a sabbath. Right then, I start to shrink in my seat at the sight of this strange ritual – I was told I’d be laughing, remember. Thankfully, the scene is quickly interrupted: Godefroy bursts in sword in hand / the scene cuts / the witch is captured. Phew!… But it doesn’t end there.

In the next scene, the witch, now a prisoner in a cage, stretches her arm out to grab Godefroy’s flask to slip in a hallucinogenic poison. At the sight of her extending arm, I begin begging my mom to take me out of there. Nicely, in a “no thanks, this is scary” kind of way. She tries to soothe me since my brother is having no issues with it and, after all, we drove a bit to get to the cinema, spent some money, we can’t just leave on a whim.

Then Godefroy starts hallucinating. The castle swells on the hill, Raoul turns into a pig, and Jacquouille into a rat. They become incomprehensible, the Count of Montmirail goes completely off the rails, all to the witch’s mocking laughter. That’s too much! The special effects terrify me, the witch and her laughter too, and I scream!

I scream so loudly that my mom has to exit the theater with me in tow, leaving the other moviegoers and our family to enjoy the film!

It takes me several minutes to calm down. My mom misses the entire assassination of the Duke of Pouille (Patrick Burgel) by Godefroy, and we eventually return to finish the movie in a more relaxed atmosphere… the comedy I was finally sold on! At six years old, I enjoyed the “Jacquouille Show” more than the plot, but the end of Les Visiteurs goes down much smoother than its first few minutes!

Even though when I saw it again on TV, I realized that Les Visiteurs was a perfectly harmless film, don’t watch me during the witch scene… I might still be a bit tense.