How I Watched “Gorillas” Again…

…when I vowed I never would. You know me, I’ll watch a movie over and over until I’m scaring people by quoting the lines before the actors onscreen do.

But there are a few good, even great movies I can only see once, just because I can’t take the sheer emotional roller coaster again. Schindler’s List is one, for example; Holocaust movies are tough but man, that one put me through the ringer. Gone, Baby, Gone is another; that one just makes my guts ache I get so mad.

And then there’s the 1988 Gorillas in the Mist. I’ve always had a tough time watching animals die onscreen. My mother forbade me as a kid to ever watch The Yearling again, since it left me dissolved every time I saw it. As did Old Yeller, Bambi, the Little Drummer Boy‘s donkey dying in that Rankin and Bass animated Christmas special. Remember that? Each one I cried and cried and cried — but I watched them over and over.

Gorillas was another matter. I knew when I walked into the theater in 1988 to see it, there was a better than fair chance I’d be a mess since I read the real-life story of Dian Fossey and her work with endangered gorillas in Rhwanda. I mean, gorillas, in general, KILL me. Those soulful faces. Hell, I even cry at King Kong. What I didn’t expect was how inconsolable I was with Gorillas. When Fossey, played by the brilliant Sigourney Weaver, finds her beloved primate friend Digit decapitated by poachers, I started sobbing uncontrollably — and I continued that way until the end of the credits. My boyfriend at the time didn’t know what to do with me. After I finally calmed down, a day or so later (just kidding but it took awhile), I told myself I couldn’t put myself through that again and thus never saw the film again.

Until now.

Gorillas has been playing on my movie channels, and I thought, “Well, it’s been, like, 20 years. Maybe I could just watch it one more time.” So I did. I teared up when Digit touches Dian’s hand for the first time. And when she has to give up the baby gorilla she nurses back to health to the bad French guy who wants it for a zoo. But when IT started to happen — that awful scene in which Digit is murdered — I couldn’t do it. I switched the channels before the deed, switching back awhile later to see Dian herself murdered. I spared myself an afternoon of exhaustive crying because I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop it. Here’s the hand-touching scene, plus other wonderful gorilla lovin’ moments from the movie:

I guess I am still sticking to my principals. I mean, I know the difference between a good cry and the kind of tear jerking that leaves me sobbing out loud and gulping for words. Not good.