…yup, you couldn’t stop watching.
There’s a beautiful print of “My Name is Nobody” on Youtube. Had no intention of watching the whole damn thing, but the wackidoodleness of it, how confusing it was at first and the fearless commitment of Terence Hill to his character kept me enthralled.
Loved it.
There’s a million times I’ve said, “I’m going to watch the first half of Full Metal Jacket” and I always end up watching the whole thing.
It’s got the best answer to “Where the fuck is this going?” I’ve ever seen.
Mine is “The Best Years Of Our Lives”. Just short of three hours long, and it looks like it’s going to be one long talky-talk borefest, but the stories drew me in like a good novel.
Häxan (1922)
Now, I enjoy old movies. I enjoy silent movies. I definitely enjoy old silent movies about witchcraft, especially if they’re in the running to be the first exploitation film. (Mmmm… Swedish witchsploitation… )
However, I was up with a horrible cold at oh-fuck-thirty because my sinuses were not going to let me sleep. I wasn’t in the mood for much of anything. But I just couldn’t stop watching. It drew me in. I was witch-mo-tized. It was magical.
After I got better, I sought it out. It holds up.
I was getting restless pretty early on in “Bubba Ho-Tep”. Wound up watching it at least twice.
I started to watch something by Werner Rainer Fassbinder and said "What the?"and hit eject sent it back. Later I accidentally ordered The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and immediately re-queued and watched all of his films.
Another one was “Sorcerer”. I thought the first half hour, setting up the story, was a completely lame action-adventure routine, that left me yawning. But then when Roy Scheider and the rest turned up in the jungle, it became a spellbinding picture, maybe the grittiest and most realistic portrayal of the third world Ive ever seen on film. A classic. It’s the famous story, done more than once, about the dynamite truck in the jungle, with the amazing Tangerine Dream soundtrack.