There’s plenty of iconic lines. I was thinking of Street Fighter, “The day that Bison came to your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Thursday.”
Also plenty of iconic songs came from forgettable movies.
For truly forgotten movies with iconic scenes I offer some really old school fare:
Everyone can picture a cliffhanger, but the earliest one goes to the movie serial “The perils of Pauline” (1914)
Some also reported that that series also made the first quaint iconic scene of “the damsel in distress tied on the train tracks by the villain”, but that honor goes to “the Keystone comedy Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life (1913) , and the scene was also enacted in Sennett’s Teddy at the Throttle (1917) with Gloria Swanson”
Fair enough. I’m setting no hard-and-fast rules here. I do like the “They Live” example because I’ve heard that line but know nothing at all about the movie, so from my perspective, it fits.
I just think we can all agree that something like “Indiana Jones running from the giant boulder” or “Luke blowing up the Death Star” are the kinds of things I’m not looking for.
Similarly, there’s Harold Lloyd dangling from the clock face over the city streets. It’s an iconic image that’s been endlessly parodied, but how many people know what movie it’s from (Safety Last!), or anything about the plot of that movie (guy lies to his girlfriend about how successful he is, and has to impersonate the boss when she comes to visit him)?
I came to post this. My wife said “Hey, Five Easy Pieces is on TV tonight.”, and I said “I have got to see that. I’ve watched ONE scene from that a dozen times, but I have zero idea why the characters are in that diner, or where they’re going, or if Jack’s an asshole… or a normal guy who’s out of patience.”
I agree. Say Anything . . . is far from a forgotten film. There’s the “Be a man” scene, the “She gave me a pen” scene and a whole bunch more, beyond holding up a boombox.
You are blind, Lou, and you cannot speak. But you can hear . . . and that will never do!
Lots of horror buffs have read about that movie, and can quote that line in Lugosi’s accent, but very few have actually seen the film.
Cher, slapping Nicholas Cage in the face:
Snap out of it!
Moonstruck was a big hit in its day. It won three Oscars, and made Nicholas Cage famous. But today, among my friends, it doesn’t come up in conversation very often.
Cary Grant never said “Judy, Judy, Judy” but the genesis of it may come from the 1939 film “Only Angels have Wings” where he says things like “Hello Judy” and “Come on Judy” to Rita Hayworth
The most prominent use of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine is the 1945 film “The Naughty Nineties”.
“Thanks for the memory”, the song associated with Bob Hope is from the 1938 film “The Big Broadcast of 1938”.
James Cagney never said “You dirty rat”; the 1932 film “Taxi” has him tell his brother’s killer who is hiding in a closest “Come out and take it, you dirty yellow-bellied rat, or I’ll give it to you through the door”.
