Gyroscopic Investing

For me, it was Tommy and The Deer Hunter.

I shouldn't have been allowed to watch either movie, but it was the 1970s and HBO was brand new.

What movie(s) dented your mind when you were a kid?

the swarm... only movie that ever got to me as a young kid, something to close to home about stumbling across beehives and something terrifying about killer bees that you couldn't out run  and that wouldn't stop attacking... 

The degree to which children's minds are impressionable and subject to damage is so easily forgotten when you become an adult and stuff just bounces off of your mind that would have wounded it deeply if it had happened to you as a child.

I remember so many things from when I was a kid so deeply.  I remember the intense emotional content that everything seemed to carry with it, whereas today I just don't perceive things in that way, in part because I experience so few things now with that "I've never felt this way before or seen anything like this" feeling that I was constantly having when I was a kid.

I do, however, very much enjoy talking to my kids about the way they see things, and I try to imagine what they are feeling.  When I get a glimpse of it it always feels very intense.

Invaders from Mars, the 1953 version.  And, no, I did not see it in the theater release version!  I saw it on TV (not HBO!), "Million Dollar Movie" or "Creature Features" or some such.

Extremely interesting camera angles, very creepy seeing people getting sucked into the sand dunes, the whole "injection into the neck" thing, the Martian boss in the fish bowl, etc.

At the time, I did not realize the film was an allegory of US vs. Communism.  Pretty good stuff.

MediumTex wrote: What movie(s) dented your mind when you were a kid?

Last House on the Left.
Some three decades later, I think I have finally recovered.

{The "dented mind" phrase makes me think of that poor guy who had his skull bashed in by a security guard. The pics were all over the online news last week. his head is completely deformed now, and that dents my adult mind. At least he was awarded more than $50 million by the courts.}

Mine was V.

http://youtu.be/_mry2WUQLVE

It scared me to the point where I couldn't sleep, but I still would want to watch it.

I remember being upset that it got cancelled.

Not a movie, but the Ayatollah Khomeini scared the bejesus out of me.  Obviously that and the Soviets.  I was convinced one or both would invade the US when I was little.

Darby O'Gill and the Little People.  No contest!

Xan wrote: Darby O'Gill and the Little People.  No contest!

Ha! I'd forgotten about that movie completely! All I can remember this instant is the first wish, "First, i'll have me health" and that ride in the big black coach.

That big black coach haunted me for years.  A lot of folks say the Banshee was worse.

Salems Lot. Bella Lugosi and Christpoher Lee never really bothered me. I had no idea where Transylvania was and besides, it was all clearly long ago. But Stephen King moved the blood sucking bastards in next door to me... in the here and now. I watched it with a buddy who lived two houses down from me in a normal suburban neighborhood. Normally the walk home might take all of 2 minutes. That night I think I might have qualified for the Olympic Track Team. And I remember sneaking into the kitchen for weeks after and stealing the garlic powder off mom's spice rack.

The other movie was Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. Both films seem rather corny today. But anyone allowing little kids to watch them should be jailed for child abuse.

Ad Orientem wrote: Salems Lot.

Although Last House on the Left is my own fault, and I was already 13 when I rented it, Salem's Lot is one of the many movies that I walked in while my sister was watching. I was under ten and it definitely messed with my head.
Add to that Halloween and two far creepier if lesser known films:
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark
Tourist Trap

"Time Bandits".  Something about all those midgets running out of the kid's closet at night really got to me. 

Xan wrote:Darby O'Gill and the Little People.  No contest!

Somehow I missed this one (misspent youth, probably).  I will see if it is Netflix-able.  Dang, not streamable.  Probably a Disney thing.

WildAboutHarry wrote:

Xan wrote:Darby O'Gill and the Little People.  No contest!

Somehow I missed this one (misspent youth, probably).  I will see if it is Netflix-able.  Dang, not streamable.  Probably a Disney thing.

It's definitely worth seeing.  But not as a kid!  It features one of Sean Connery's first (maybe very first?) movie roles.

Fail-Safe.

It still scares me at age 61.

Xan wrote:It's definitely worth seeing.

Just ordered the DVD.  I'm not sure how to explain that to my wife, though.

HB Reader wrote:[Fail-safe] still scares me at age 61.

That whole EOTWAWKI/Military-Industrial Complex genre of the early 1960s was pretty scary.  Fail-Safe, On The Beach, Seven Days in May, etc.

Of course, Dr. Strangelove was a brilliant send-up of the whole genre.

WildAboutHarry wrote:

Xan wrote:It's definitely worth seeing.

Just ordered the DVD.  I'm not sure how to explain that to my wife, though.

HB Reader wrote:[Fail-safe] still scares me at age 61.

That whole EOTWAWKI/Military-Industrial Complex genre of the early 1960s was pretty scary.  Fail-Safe, On The Beach, Seven Days in May, etc.

Of course, Dr. Strangelove was a brilliant send-up of the whole genre.

I saw the color remake of On The Beach a number of years ago. That ranks high on my list of the most depressing movies.

Ad Orientem wrote:I saw the color remake of On The Beach a number of years ago. That ranks high on my list of the most depressing movies.

Imagine how depressing it is in B&W!

Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Saw it as a 10 or 11 year old, and it has been a lifelong inhibitor for wanting to go to scary movies.

Great thread!!

So many... where to start?

- Clockwork Orange.
- Slaughterhouse Five
- The Day After
- Time Bandits
- Phantasm
- Most of the Twilight Zone episodes, including (I'm embarrassed to admit) the bad 80's Twilight Zone movie.
- Deep Throat (my father had an illegal VHS recording of it... on the same tape he had an illegal recording of Star Wars, on.  Pretty f--ed up looking back on it now that they would let me and my 11 year-old buddies watch Star Wars unsupervised and "not remember" what was next on the same goddamn tape?? WTF???)  I'd imagine that kind of thing would land somebody in jail, today?

Paranormal Activity

Spooked the hell out of me and reminded me of a recent "incident" in my family.

I spent some of my early childhood living in Germany. Of course, since my parents were pretty young, they wanted to get out and about in the Deutschland. Well, usually us spawn got by on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles VHSs sent over by our grandparents from the States. Well, one day our parents had no more TMNT tapes, but they had....

Watership Down.

So they plopped us down in front of that horrorfest and went to a biergarten or something. Hey, cartoons are cartoons, right? I'm still freaked out by rabbits.

Enjoy

The Deer Hunter and Clockwork Orange, for me.  It took a while after that last one before I could listen to Beethoven's Ninth without getting queasy.

Also 2001: A Space Odyssey, but in a good way.

Jurassic Park might have been a little too real for a nine year old.