Nahhh…
In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead
or “Now! Fight like apes!”
The Omega Man
“Build coffins. That’s all you’ll need”
I wonder if this might be a generational thing. I’m 52 and being obsessed with a movie wasn’t really an option when I was a kid. You didn’t have any means of watching a movie on your own schedule - you watched a movie when it was being shown in a theatre or when it was broadcast on a local TV station.
an absolute family night event once each year. I can still remember the delight of seeing it in color the first time. I must have been 6 at the time.
An anecdotal story of how endearing this movie is: We have a bar district in my area that celebrates Halloween as do many locals. People come out in costume and have a good time. Years ago one of the local stores in this district put a sheet in their front window and played the movie so it could be seen from the outside. So many people stopped to watch the movie that it filled the street. It’s a timeless classic with so much going for it. The special effects, costumes, singing, and Art Deco scenery was so well done that people couldn’t help but stop and enjoy a beloved childhood memory. I don’t think too many movies could do that.
I hate you.
Not so much obsessed as much as scared, but no movie affected my young brain like Pet Cemetary. Particularly the scene where Pascow suddenly appears at the bed side of the father. I actually still think about it sometimes near sleep and I’m 35.
Heh. I teach high school–most of my students this year were born about the time *Titanic *came out.
Now I hate you.
Star Wars for me too, even though I was born between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It was still a huge thing among my age group in the 1990s. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is another one.
I was pre-TV. Little theater across the street from where we lived in the back of Mom’s restaurant showed Cinderella three consecutive nights, and, for 42 cents total, I went every night. Cured my nervous tics and night terrors. (laughing) 1952?
“Obsessed”? When I was a kid? :dubious:
Well, there was Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, which came out the summer I was six years old. Of course, I was already a big fan of Sea Hunt, so I spent most of my vacation diving underwater, pretending I was sabotaging submarines.
Guns of Navarone came out right around the same time. When I wasn’t sabotaging submarines that summer, I was sniping Nazis while drums beat in the background.
Hell Is for Heroes came out the summer I was seven. I learned the entire US Army table of ranks from my dad the evening we saw it together.
The Great Escape came out when I was eight. I kept trying to figure ways I could tunnel out of the house without my mother catching on.
Heroes of Telemark and 633 Squadron came out about the same time when I was in fifth grade. I wanted to organize my own resistance unit in Norway.
Definitely a pattern here…
Return of the Jedi. I didn’t obsess over any of the other Star Wars films, I was too young for that kind of attachment, but in 1983, when I was 13, ROTJ was right in my wheelhouse. And since about 1986 when I got over Star Wars somewhat, I haven’t obsessed over any other movie either.
My two favorite classic horror movies, which I dutifully watched whenever they came up on rotation on the TV movie shows…
Bride of Frankenstein and Brides of Dracula.
Many people posting in this thread (me included) are in a similar boat. I’m a little younger than you, but still, VCRs weren’t a thing in my world until I was in my late teens. I had no problem being obsessed with All Things Star Wars regardless of only being able to see it in theaters.
The one movie that haunted me for a long time was Logan’s Run. It was on TV, and I watched it when I was ten years old. I couldn’t get the Carousel Scene out of my head. It gave me nightmares.
I feel sorry for forcing my parents to sit through it. For a while it was one of those “Bank Holiday Sunday” films that was shown on TV in the post-Christmas lull, I assume because it was cheap. In retrospect it’s basically the great lost Space: 1999 theatrical movie. Excellent static modelwork, intermittently good cinematography, generally wonky motion effects, utterly flat acting, incoherently portentous storyline that ends with “it was all a dream”. The soundtrack is good. The bit with the boulder is good.
Much the same could be said of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The other great lost Space: 1999 theatrical movie, it even had the same silly outfits.
To the original question, my answer is 2001: A Space Odyssey. A rare example of a film I was fascinated with as a kid - it was scary - and then amazed with as a teenager - it’s astonishing - and still admire today. What other big-budget sci-fi epics have a five-minute scene where a man flies a space pod and all you hear is bip (pause) BONG, and it’s still fascinating?
If I had seen The Holy Mountain or Fellini Satyricon I would have been obsessed with them as well, but sadly British television did not show them in the afternoon after Christmas or at all.
As for Star Wars, I remember being obsessed with the franchise, but not the film as such; video was a little bit less widespread in the UK and my family didn’t have a video recorder, and it was rarely on TV.
“Logan’s Run”
Ah, Jenny Agutter. You looked good in clothes - and not in clothes. The days of PG-rated nudity, eg? Splash, Cocoon… The Trail of the Pink Panther… I can probably think of more examples.
Star Wars. When I was a bit older, The Princess Bride. They were on the same VHS tape, recorded off the TV, with commercials and everything. That tape just lived in the VCR, and I’d watch one or both of them just about every day during summer break from about 5th grade until high school. Now when I watch those movies, I expect commercial breaks (with ads for 80s products, of course).
I’m in my mid-forties and that was my reaction too. I absolutely loved Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but could only watch it once a year when it was on TV.
Labyrinth. Loved it then and love it now.
Most consistent?
Probably The Princess Bride. I was … much older than I should have been when I finally realized it was satire. (In my partial defense, I never knew til I was in college that it was based on a book.) It was simply always around on TV or video, and everyone in my family - even aunts and uncles and cousins - would always stay and watch it together.
The most embarrassing?
Logan’s Run. I fell into utter love the first time I saw it. I adored it. I still do. It’s so amazing. I don’t care, I know it’s awful, but it doesn’t matter. The clothes and the undercity and the bullet trains and the crystals… It’s everything cheesy and wondrous about early sci-fi dystopias and I just utterly and absolutely love it, even now.
(Runner up would be Labyrinth. I am somewhat abashed at my sheer unselfconscious love of this film when I was an impressionable young teen. There might have been early online text-RP chat sessions with total strangers based on Jareth and the Goblin Kingdom. I might not regret that as much as I perhaps should.)
The most eternal?
Star Wars. I was the perfect age for them as a trilogy, and I think of them as a whole (usually binge-watched them as a whole also - the benefits of homeschooling, right?). We recorded them off the TV, borrowed “real ones” from the VHS rental place every time we went (so I could see the artwork on the slipcases and read the blurbs on the backs), and eventually I got my own VHS copies as birthday presents because I watched them so much. I still have them, they’re scratchy and crackly from overuse and age.