An early Thirteen: Thirteen Movie Memories

An early Thirteen, because somewhere in the world it’s already Thursday*.

Veterans to my Thursday Thirteens know I like to use these occasions to revel in the only subject of which I never tire: me. It’s autobiography as viewed through a variety of lenses. Food, sex, love, are little more than angles and gimmicks. But isn’t that the original idea of the TT, to learn more about the author?

I shall always be faithful to this blog’s subtitle. Besides, if you’re here reading this, you haven’t tired of me, either. Or perhaps you’re just hoping for more recipes.

Follow me below the fold: my life in movies.

1. Ring of Bright Water (1969). Sis, help me out here. Is it really possible I didn’t see my first cinematic movie until age seven?

In my early years, my father maintained it was a waste of money to take me to movies because I wouldn’t understand them. Later, he would take me to a variety of inappropriate movies (like Diary of a Mad Housewife; more on my dad’s taste in movies below) because he didn’t want to pay for a babysitter.

Another movie I remember seeing early on was Krakatoa, East of Java (1969) and Fantastic Voyage (1966). Lest you think Fantastic Voyage pushes the date back three years, I saw it as a Saturday matinee at the Temple Theater. Those films were strictly repertory.

And that name, Temple Theater, inevitably abbreviated to The Temple. You want to go to The Temple tonight? could mean a relatively enjoyable evening watching the latest World War II movie, or a visit to the prematurely embalmed rabbi of Temple Beth Shalom. Not that I had a choice; my parents dragged me along regardless of my opinion.

2. Patton (1970). My father wasn’t in Patton’s army but he idolized Patton nonetheless. What do I recall of Patton? It was long and boring. My little eight-year-old butt fell asleep but could I fall asleep? No such luck.

The man took me to see The Godfather (1972) and countless other masterpieces of ultraviolence. Except for the occasional glimpse of naked breast or ass, these experiences were uniformly unedifying. (Best memory from The Godfather: Sonny banging the bridesmaid at his own wedding. Worst memory: the it-would-make-Peckinpah-blush slaughterfest near the end.)

3. Mysterious Island (1961). Oh, how I loved watching reruns of Mysterious Island. The bees were the best part. Giant bees, how cool is that! And I can still imitate the sound they make: t-chka-t-chka-t-chka. Next time you see me, ask, and I’ll gladly imitate it for you.

For years, I had nightmares about bees. Bees stinging me, bees flying into my ear canal, buzzing me into shrieking madness. I blamed Mysterious Island. But in college, something clicked for me. I understood the bee dreams, and the explanation made a hell of a lot more sense than any fevered recollection of a bastardized Jules Verne novel.

My mother’s first name is Bea.

***

This next one could be a blog post unto itself, but alas, I’ve buried it in the middle of a Thirteen. Oh, well. Hope you like it.

4. An Unnamed Independent Production for 8 mm (1971). I was 9 or 10, my brother, 16, my sis, in her early 20s — old enough to be trusted with the young ‘uns, so my folks went off on vacation somewhere and left us Home Alone.

Some friend of my brother scored a dirty movie but had no way of screening it. Our family had a home movie camera, a projector, and a screen, so my brother offered to play host, much to my sister’s chagrine.

I remember her frowning in the shadows as the boys screened the film. The film’s owner had brought along a bunch of friends, of course, so we had ourselves a regular bachelor party. I think my sister’s main objection was my presence. I was too young and already entirely too perverted to be trusted to watch such images; and in any logical world, she would have been dead on the money.

But I had no context for the movie. For me, it was (if I had had the vocabulary to express it at the time) a surrealist film, An Andalusian Dog with beaver shots.

Why were the women moaning so piteously? It didn’t look that painful.

What was with those mens’ penises? They had to be ten, twenty times larger than my popgun. A tropical affliction, perhaps? I wondered what I could do to keep mine from becoming so hideously overgrown.

And the women had hair down there. Were they even women?

But the detail which pushed this film well beyond the bounds of reality was the eruption of shaving cream from the mens’ penises. Where were the hidden tubes and pumps? I wanted to applaud the screen — Well done, gentlemen! Good stunt!

After that, my sister dragged me from the room, arguably a bit late. But Sis, don’t worry. I suspect I would have turned out much the same either way.

5. Planet of the Apes (1968). Is that date correct? Maybe PotA was one of my first movies.

I hated this movie. Always have, always will. And the only movie I hated worse was its sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Bad enough that in PotA, the moviemakers killed off most of the humans and buried Lady Liberty up to her tits in sand crabs. At the end of BtPotA, Heston destroys the whole effin planet. You damn dirty Heston!

At that age, I took a dim view of 2001, also. While I was a big fan of written science fiction, I was fast approaching the conclusion that cinematic SF sucked big ones.

6. Walkabout (1971). Mmmmm. Naked, nineteen-year-old Jenny Agutter. *wipes drool off keyboard* But seriously. I’ve written before that Walkabout gave me one of my earliest tastes of tragedy. That movie stuck to my ribs for days . . . hey, what am I saying. Years. I still remember how I felt afterwards: startled out of my childhood slumber, unable to see the world in the same way ever again.

7. Lawrence of Arabia (1962). I saw this on television in the mid-70s and oh, did it ever rattle me! I loved it up until the moment Lawrence ceased to be a hero. WTF? Complex characters were too much for my adolescent brain, I guess.

I saw it again in college, at the University Theater in Berkeley. Appreciated it, loved it, and it’s been on my top five list ever since. Same goes for The Godfather, by the way — when I saw it again in college, I couldn’t believe I’d hated it so much as a kid. (Well, hated it except for Sonny banging the bridesmaid, of course.)

8. Rabbit Test (1978). Worst movie ever made . . . until I saw The Brown Bunny. (Okay, if you follow that link you’ll discover I rated Rabbit Test as worse than The Brown Bunny. So I’m not entirely consistent. But they are both far worse than any of the classic world’s-worsts: Plan 9 From Outer Space, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Mars Needs Women all kick ass over those two lagomorphic movies.)

9. Damnation Alley (1977). Ooh, look! Jan Michael Vincent back when he was man meat:

First date with my girl in high school, I took her to see Damnation Alley. Macho vehicles, road dust, man-eating bugs . . . what was I thinking? So not a chick flick.

Then again, imagine yourself a teenage girl circa 1977 and stare at Jan Michael Vincent. Maybe I wasn’t such a dumbshit after all.

Before the date, my brother and father were so obnoxious.

“You going to go parking?”

“Well, yeah. I kind of have to park the car before I can get out of it, you know.”

“No. Parking.”

Snickers between the two old men.

When they finally deigned to enlighten me on the meaning of “parking,” I was furious. It was a first date, for the love of God! I couldn’t tell whether they were being more insulting to me or her.

She kissed me good night, and I was happy. Parking. Jeez.

10. The End of the World (1977). Flash forward a year. Our hands-down favorite place for parking was the local drive-in movie theater, which never showed first run movies. Yeah, like it’s about the movie? We saw this old Christopher Lee horror flick, The End of the World, at least twice. Maybe three times.

Yeah, it was that good.

11. The Road Warrior (1982). Back when I liked Mel Gibson . . . man, I had no taste. But I recall feeling very discouraged about my upcoming college finals, so discouraged I couldn’t bear to look at another equation, so I went with some friends to see The Road Warrior and HOLY COW, NOW I WANT TO STUDY! You know, so I wouldn’t end up in a desolate future wasteland as Wez’s bitch.

Eh. I don’t have the looks for it.

I managed to read great sociologic depth into The Road Warrior, saw it as an allegory for the rise of civilization. Pappagallo, leader of the refinery colony, represented traditional civilization, much as Tina Turner’s Auntie Entity character would, in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, come to signify the rule of law. Max and the Feral Child represented the opposite end of the spectrum, man (boy) sans taint of society. In between were the riff-raff and criminals — Lord Humungus, Wez, Bruce Spence’s Gyro Captain. Max does fine as long as he sticks to his eremitic principles, but when, like Enkidu in The Epic of Gilgamesh, he succumbs to the lure of civilization (Pappagallo), he is well and truly fucked. Thus does civilization consume its outliers in the interests of self-preservation.

Sound stupid? That thesis got me an A+ in my senior anthropology course, The Evolution of Human Behavior. Nyah, nyah.

12. Spring Break (1983) was my first movie-date with Karen. You would think I would have learned something from my high school relationship, but apparently not. In fairness to me, we were bored that afternoon, and Spring Break really was the multiplex’s best offering. (Tag line: Like it’s really, totally, the most fun a couple of bodies can have. You know? IMDB score: 2.6/10.)

If I remember correctly, we got the taste of Spring Break out of our mouths the very next weekend with Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Or did we catch Life of Brian at the University Theater?

Have a chocolate wafer.

13. Crank (2006), the last movie I rented. Jason Statham plays Chev, a hit man who has for no apparent reason developed a conscience, thus pissing people off left and right. Someone has injected him with a poison that will stop his heart if he doesn’t keep himself continuously stimulated with an epinephrine rush.

This movie is so deliciously stupid I can’t recommend it enough. Imagine Speed without its two major flaws, Keanu Reaves and Sandra Bullock. Crank has it all — drugs, sex, violence, Amy Smart. (Um, not work safe.) And Amy Smart, too. (Nope, that one’s not safe either.) (You get the idea.)

Don’t know how busy I’ll be tomorrow, friends, but I’ll try to give you the linky lurve you so richly deserve. Gimme a comment, I’ll give you the lurve. Nothing’s free.

Lyvvie and I started exercising at the same time. Why didn’t I have the foresight to do before and after pictures of my ass?

Darla, you forgot one other difference between the US and Germany: Germany has better beer!

Dean has this thing about women, don’t you know.

It’s been seven years since Carrie has been in a classroom, and she thinks that’s a lot!

Sam asks, Am I Nuts? How can you resist a straight line like that?

SxKitten’s son, the notorious Monkeyboy, learns to manipulate Mom (or gets further practice, I should say!)

Corn Dog hosts AZ’s backyard nature photos. Dig the mantis

Pat, you really do need to rent Big Trouble in Little China.

Da Nator gives us an update from Natorland. Mmmmm. Velveeta.

Thirteen COOL gifts from Trish, including bacon bandaids and a shocking stapler!

Shaina Maydel: these kids and their music. I’ll never understand it.

Da Nator’s Thirteen memories about her step-dad: proving I’m not the only one who can sling top quality memoirist BS! Seriously — check it out.

D.

*This only took me half the night. If I drag my heels another hour, it will be Thursday.