Thursday, March 14, 2019

RAMBLINGS...

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and an interesting topic came up.

We were talking about movies we saw a children and which ones scared us the most, and then we went into some of our favorite movie moments that, while not always scary, have stuck with us through all these years.

When one starts actually thinking about this it becomes much more difficult and massive than one believes. My earliest scary movie moment goes back to 1967 when I was almost 5 and I saw "The Blob". When it ate the doctor silently that scene scarred me for life, but now I wanted to see more.

Some of the other scenes that stuck with me include seeing King Kong grabbing a bound Fay Wray, the vampire in "The Night Stalker" attacking people in a hospital while stealing blood from the blood bank, seeing armies of walking dead bodies in the "Invisible Invaders", the dead witch in "Black Sabbath", the pre credit sequence with Barbara Stanwyck and her ranch workers riding past a wagon on an empty trail in Sam Fuller's "Forty Guns", seeing Ro-Man for the first time in "Robot Monster", seeing the vampire melting in "Vampire And The Balerina" and so much more.

There are literally thousands of these types of imagery in my mind and they have stayed with me always. I could probably write 100 pages of that type of thing.

In later years as a young teenager there were other type scenes, not exactly horror, but from horror and action films. Some other unforgettable moments that have stayed with me include the introduction of Caroline Munro's character of Margiana in "Golden Voyage Of Sinbad", Ursula Andress coming out of the ocean in "Dr. No", the sizzling Mamie Van Doren singing at a nightclub in "Vice Raid", seeing gorgeous Judy Pace in "Frogs" and of course the Collinson twins in "Twins Of Evil".

All of the above mentioned scenes just made me want to see more and more and with the advent of VHS in the late 70's and early 80's this was starting to become easier.

And yes, there were entire movies that helped shape this warped mind I have. In these films I cannot pick a specific scene because to me they were perfect from beginning to end and they include "Night Of The Living Dead", "Dawn Of The Dead", "Zombie", "Cotton Comes To Harlem", "Creepshow", "Day The World Ended", "Equinox" just to name a few.

It's a shame that the audience today isn't getting unforgettable imagery like we got when we were kids. It just doesn't exist in movies today because they all look and sound the same.

Yep in any conversation about this with people my age who love movies there are always thousands of different answers as to what affected them the most. The same can be said of music. I was raised on Elvis and 50's and 60's country, but also like pop of the 50's, 60's 70's and 80's. However my favorite genre of music is Disco because it had the greatest impact on me.

If you read this and want to chime in on some of your favorite moments from any movie, please do. The subject fascinates me.

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