[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 18)

DARK CITY (1998)

Already a massive fan of Alex Proyas' The Crow, when the weird cryptic trailers came on for Dark City I was intrigued. When we finally saw it at the cinema, I was stunned. Dark City is one of those completely nuts, totally weird, scifi noir, style-fests that I love.

The big problem is, the cinema release of it (and the first DVD release) spoiled a massive element of the plot in the titles. IN THE TITLES... It's not quite as bad as say, revealing the twist of The Sixth Sense in the opening scene, but almost. Don't worry, if you haven't seen it, I'm not going to spoil it here, and if you pick up the Director's Cut you won't have that spoiler.

Dark City is fantastic. It's SF but done with cool 1940's style. In a weird city where the sun never shines, John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes in a bathtub, unsure how he got there, or who he is. In a weird Lost Highway style reveal, he discovers a murdered woman in the bedroom, and strange men closing in on his location. Convinced they're after him, he runs...

He discovers he has a wife, Emma (Jennifer Connelly) and that a police detective, Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) is convinced Murdock is the killer. While being chased by these strange men with weird names (Mr. Hand, Mr. Wall, Mr. Book, etc.) Murdock discovers he has some form of psychokinesis, And then it gets really weird.

Add into the mix a totally awesome performance by Kiefer Sutherland as crazy scientist Dr. Schreber, and a totally amazing last half hour that rivals the ending of Akira, and you have something amazing.

Those iconic rooftop sequences with the Strangers chasing Murdock? The sets they constructed were sold on to the production for my favourite movie - The Matrix.

Oh man, just saying at the beginning of this that I'm not going to spoil the movie has left me a little stumped for what to say about it. Without giving away the twist upon twist of this awesome movie, I can't really say anything further.

The only thing I will say, if you've not seen it, or are planning on watching it again - just pay attention to the number of edits in the first half hour. When most movies have an edit to a new shot every 10 or so seconds, there is an insane amount of cuts. Every couple of seconds.

But it doesn't suffer for it. There seems to be a crazy amount of information it's trying to get across quickly at the beginning.

Anyway, absolutely love it. It gets overshadowed by The Matrix which came out the following year, but it is fantastic in its own right.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 17)

LOST HIGHWAY (1997)

It's no secret that I'm a massive David Lynch fan. I have been since my teens and I first witnessed the wonders of Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, the latter sending me on an obsessive journey of fandom and decoding for decades to come. I could have picked Blue Velvet, or Mulholland Drive, to add to my list - both of which I love, especially Mulholland Drive. However I thought I'd go a bit left-field and go with my favourite of all the Lynch movies - Lost Highway.

For those of you who haven't seen it (seriously, why not?) it's a tale of a saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) who starts getting weird VHS tapes left on his front door. As the days progress, the VHS recordings continue, each showing camcorder footage of his own house, getting closer, until finally entering the house. The last tape shows him murdering his wife, Renee (Patricia Arquette). Fred has no memory of committing the crime, but the evidence is there and he's sentenced to death for her murder.

In the prison cell, he transforms into a completely different person - Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), an auto mechanic who does repair work for mobster Mr Eddy, whose mistress, Alice (also played by Patricia Arquette) looks an awful lot like Fred's wife.

Throw into the mix the Mystery Man (Robert Blake) in one of the most unsettling scenes from any movie... Seriously. He goes up to Fred at a party and asks him to call his own house, because he's in it right now. Fred does, while the Mystery Man looks on, smiling. And the Mystery Man answers the phone...

Messed up.

The whole movie loops back on itself, with a final scene that will confuse and intrigue in equal portions. And that's possibly why I love it so much. It's simply mindbending. You can find dozens and dozens of articles and features on Lost Highway, and what it all means. I like to think it's in the same universe as Twin Peaks, with the Mystery Man being another entity from the Black Lodge.

Add to this a score by Angelo Badalamenti, and a soundtrack collaborated with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, and you can see why I love it so much.

I didn't get to see Lost Highway when it came out at the cinema in the UK, I don't think it was on screens for very long, but I remember renting the VHS and loving it, while being equally confused. Like a lot of David Lynch projects, the whole film feels like a dream - a confusing and unsettling dream. Lynch will refuse to explain it, rather letting the audience get what they want from the film. Interpreting it in their own way to mean different things to different people.

What do you think it means?

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 16)

HARD BOILED (1992, 1993 for me)

Back onto movies I love and that have had a massive impact on me. Hard Boiled is one of those movies that I knew nothing about before going into the screen. I knew very little of the cool movies coming out of Hong Kong. The closest I got to it was hearing that Reservoir Dogs (which I saw when it came out in the UK in 93) was a rip off of (sorry, inspired by) a Hong Kong action movie called City on Fire. This must have got me interested.

When our local arthouse cinema while I was studying at University decided they were going to show Hard Boiled, I figured I'd give it a go.

Hard Boiled is a cool crime movie with the legendary Chow Yun-Fat playing a cop ("Tequila" Yuen) trying to bring down a new gang leader, Johnny Wong. He ends up partnering with Alan (Tony Leung) a gunman working for a rival gang who is actually an undercover cop. It all ends up in a massive gunfight in a hospital that takes up half of the movie.

Never had I seen anything like it. The crazy stuntwork, the slow motion action, jumping in the air with two guns - the action was less of a shootout and more of a balletic dance. It was stunning.

There were only a dozen or so people in the audience that afternoon, and the arthouse cinema messed up and showed two of the reels in the wrong order. But you know what? It didn't matter. We all still understood it, thought of it like a flashback, and got on with it. At the end of the movie, the audience clapped and cheered. It was awesome.

I came out of the cinema in a state of shock and eager to discover what I'd been missing. I hunted down any movie director John Woo had done, and any movie that starred Chow Yun-Fat. Was I ever in for a treat. The Killer, A Better Tomorrow, the even more over-the-top A Better Tomorrow II, The God of Gamblers, City on Fire, Once a Thief, Full Contact, Bullet in the Head... I watched them with a newly discovered amazement.

When John Woo started directing movies in the west, I was very excited. Hard Target, Broken Arrow and Face/Off are great, but I can't help but feel a little disappointed in Mission: Impossible 2.

But it wasn't just Hong Kong crime action I discovered thanks to Hard Boiled. I started checking out the movies of Jackie Chan, and Jet Li (Fong Sai-yuk remains one of my favourites).

Awesome stuff. I may have to rewatch Hard Boiled and The Killer now...

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 15)

THE LAST BOY SCOUT (1991 - Though 1992 for me)

When I set out to do this list, I wanted to cover movies that have had the biggest impact on me. Ones I love, or ones that have shaped my life in some way.

The Last Boy Scout is a good film. Tony Scott's great direction, a Shane Black script with all of the trademarks - grumpy lead, partners who hate each other, a lot of drinking... only thing missing was setting it at Christmas. I loved action movies, loved Bruce Willis movies.

It was good! I liked it. Had some classic sarcastic one liners. But the movie production was apparently horrible, people hated each other, hated the rewrites to the script, and hated making it.

Why have I added it to my list? Well it did completely change my life. I'd been dating my first girlfriend for about eight or nine months. We went to the cinema a heck of a lot, as we both liked movies. I took her to see this one, and she hated it. Said it was the most disgusting thing she'd ever seen, and the following day I had been dumped.

So, in theory, this was a major landmark in my life movie-wise. Really did shape the course of my life. Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't taken her to see it.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 14)

UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD (1991)

What a movie! I don't know what drew me to it. I'd watched some Wim Wenders movies before - Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas, most notably, but I guess it was the weird scifi cover of the VHS in the video store that appealed to me initially. It wasn't the usual poster, and featured William Hurt wearing weird cyberpunk goggles on the cover over a neon cityscape. Cool, cyberpunky movie set in 1999. Can't go wrong really.

I remember renting it from the video store and sitting down to watch the mammoth three hour long movie and being kinda blown away by its scope.

The plot is kinda nuts, but fairly simple in concept. Claire (the late Solveig Dommartin is a bit of a free spirit, and during her wanderings she crosses paths with a mysterious guy - Sam Farber (William Hurt). They hit it off, and there's a collision with a bunch of bank robbers where Claire ends up with loads of stolen cash. Sam runs off with some of the money to continue his weird quest, and Claire turns to her estranged lover Eugene (Sam Neill) for help tracking Sam down.

Okay so far? Sam's quest involves travelling the world with a weird device that allows him to record his brainwaves while he talks to his family spread all around the world. He hopes to take his recordings back to his parents in Australia, using the device so that his blind mother can see her family from the brainwave recordings. So begins a chase all around the world as Claire follows Sam, and Eugene follows Claire, as well as various private investigators, and the US government who want the technology that Sam has run off with.

Add to this the weird backdrop of an Indian nuclear satellite spinning out of control threatening to crash somewhere on the planet, and the worldwide panic it causes, and you have an epic roadmovie that follows characters around eleven countries around the world.

And then, about two-thirds of the way through the movie the US shoot down the satellite, causing an electromagnetic pulse that takes out the world's technology, and the character assemble in a protected underground base in Australia, where they discover the tech that was used to record brainwaves can be used to record and playback dreams...

Now you can see why I love this movie. Yes, it's about dreams, but it is also one of the most beautiful and stylish movies I've seen. The locations are phenomenal, the film took months to film, and the tech is revolutionary. The soundtrack - all commissioned for the film (except the U2 title track) - is brilliant. It's just lovely, moving, and touching. An intimate tale of a writer who loves a woman, who loves another man, who is obsessed with helping his mother.

I loved it.

And then I discovered it was the short version of the film. Yes, the three hour cut I saw on VHS was slightly longer than the version shown in the States, but it is only half the film. I managed to get a German import version of the "trilogy cut" where the movie is split onto three disks with a total running time of 280mins. Nearly six hours of it.

It's one of those weird movies that I love even though there are whole chunks of dialogue I can't understand. There's about twenty minutes of the extended cut I have that is purely in French with no subtitles - but I manage to follow the basics with the help of my old O-level French knowledge. (I'm hoping there are subtitles on the new Criterion BluRay of the long cut - please release it in the UK!)

When you think about the sheer scale of the project, it's just amazing. When some film makers are given some cash and allowed to produce their own thing they go a little off the rails and produce some weird disasters, but Wim Wenders' produces a lovingly crafted, relaxed paced, masterpiece. The first cut of Until The End Of The World is apparently 20hours (and will never be seen, which is a shame) though I'd love to see it as an extended miniseries over twenty episodes. Yes, it is long, and by the time you get to the existential last section as people get addicted to rewatching glimpses of their own dreams, you've almost forgotten where this epic journey began... But it is well worth putting in the hours.

I love it. I really must give it a rewatch.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 13)

HEATHERS (1989)

Now we've moved past the classics that everyone my age would have in their "movies that made them" list - y'know, the Ghostbusters and Back to the Futures of the cinematic world - we're going to start getting some stranger and more obscure choices come up in the list.

One that may surprise everyone is Heathers. God, I loved Heathers. I guess I only really picked it up at the video rental store because of the leads. I'd loved Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice and I was vaguely aware of Christian Slater from his role in The Name of The Rose... but the trailers were on other VHS movies I was renting, and it looked unlike the other high school movies I'd seen and loved like The Breakfast Club.

Heathers is a weird and brilliantly dark movie that came along at a time when I was frustrated, lonely and pretty bored with everything. And while it was filled with pretty girls, the standout for the whole film was Christian Slater's character, JD. Swaggering onto screen like a young Jack Nicholson, he told it like it is, and questioned the ridiculous nature of life around him.

Though he does encourage a whole string of deaths and tries to make them look like suicides, so maybe he wasn't the best role model for me in my very late teens. But JD was the coolest, Veronica (Winona Ryder) was great for trying to break free of conformity and convention, and together they had a romance that rivalled Mickey and Mallory Knox. Until it all goes horribly wrong, as you'd expect.

Looking at it now, it's kinda shocking. In the late 80s it was shocking in its own right - the dialog was fast and extreme, it involved (faked) teenage suicides and high school shootings and bombings. But now it seems even more extreme.

At the time I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I remember transcribing the script by hand (these were pre-internet days people!) so that I could study the way it was written and the fluidity of the dialog.

It's an odd one that I haven't gone back to in a long time. I know there was an anniversary bluray released recently that I'm yet to pick up, and I've carefully avoided the remake TV series that sounded horrible. The closest thing I got to the musical was an episode of Riverdale which was horrible (I don't do musicals). But I still have a soft spot for the original, and still love those leads. Winona Ryder is still brilliant today, loving her role in Stranger Things. And Christian Slater? Have you seen Mr Robot? Oh man, still cool. Still very cool.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 12)

EVIL DEAD II (1987)

Okay, I've already stated on this run through of movies that I wasn't a fan of horror movies, and I really didn't have the stomach for gory films as a teen. I loved A Nightmare on Elm Street - it wasn't really gory and had a bizarre fantasy element. It opened my eyes to a lot of slasher movies, that, when I finally started watching them I realised were not as horrible as I thought they were going to be.

There was always a legendary movie that was so nasty that a lot of the video stores in my hometown refused to stock it - The Evil Dead. One little video rental place, that was mostly electrical goods with a sideline for VHS rentals, had a copy. A very battered and worn copy, but I never had the guts to rent it. It was like that copy of Stephen King's IT that stared at me in the bookstore. I was fascinated by it, but unlike IT I didn't give in to the curiosity...

Until the trailers started on TV for Evil Dead II. There were a few of them involving Sam Raimi and Jonathan Ross, but the trailer I remember the most had the classic sequence with the shakycam breaking through the cabin, picking Ash (the awesome Bruce Campbell) up and flinging him through the trees, before slamming into one, dropping him face first into a massive puddle. It just looked amazing, and completely unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

If my memory serves me well, Evil Dead II came out on VHS at the same time as it had a very limited cinema run. I remember renting the VHS the day it appeared on the shelf, first person to hire it from the video store. I loved it. It was crazy, weird, and above all - funny. I really wasn't expecting it to be a horror comedy, something I'd never really experienced before. But Sam Raimi's direction was totally out there doing weird things with the camera that even now I don't quite understand. The scene with Ash looking around the room as the objects taunt him - the way the image distorts and seems multileveled 2D. Amazing.

Bruce Campbell is a legend. How he managed to do that movie without majorly injuring himself I don't know.

I watched it multiple times, and felt that I really should muster the courage to finally see The Evil Dead. I rented it from that little video store - probably their only rental that week. It was not what I expected. It was dark, messy, and not funny in the slightest. It was okay, but I don't think I really appreciated it until (like many) I watched Jonathan Ross' TV series The Incredibly Strange Film Show. Ross was a bit of nerd, and his series spent an episode looking at the work of a particular director. The episode on Sam Raimi is reportedly the hour of TV that inspired Edgar Wright to make movies. It's highly recommended and you can find it on Youtube in parts.

That blew my mind - how they funded a low budget horror movie, and basically just went off and made it for peanuts.

I bought the soundtrack on vinyl for Evil Dead II, and eagerly awaited the promised sequel hinted at by the "Hail he, who has come from the sky, to deliver us from the terror of the Deadites!" final scene. The sequel was cool, but it was no Evil Dead II, and remains the only movie my wife has slept through at the cinema. (She was very tired).

Another recommendation in addition to that Incredibly Strange Film Show episode (and the David Lynch one from the sequel series) is to check out Bruce Campbell's books, especially "If Chins Could Kill" if you really want to see what went into the making of the first Evil Dead movie. A brilliant read.

Groovy.

[Footnote: Another recommendation is to check out the remake of the original Evil Dead, starring Jane Levy. Released in 2013, I was fortunate enough to be sent a review copy of the bluray and watched it twice in a row. It's brilliant, horrific, and messy, but well worth a watch - and keep watching to the end of the credits]

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 11)

ALIENS (1986)

Released in the UK on the same day as yesterday's movie comes another endlessly quotable piece of cinematic brilliance. ALIENS goes down in my history as the first 18 Certificate movie I saw at the cinema. I was just 18, by a few months, and I don't think I saw it on opening weekend. That probably went to Highlander. However, while I only saw Highlander once at the cinema (and devoured it on VHS later with dozens of repeat viewings), I went to see ALIENS four times during its initial cinema run (then again when our local cinema decided to do the "trilogy" back to back in one afternoon).

I had a strange relationship with ALIEN - when it came out back in 1979 I was way too young to see it at the cinema. SciFi was the coolest thing ever in my book, especially as I'd just seen Star Wars, but I was far too young to go and see ALIEN. I do remember the adverts on TV for it, and I have a distinct memory of our school form tutor (and English teacher), Mrs Perkins, being very enthusiastic about ALIEN when it came out. She went to see it one evening and then for the twenty minutes or so after registration in our form period at the beginning of the day, she decided to relate the whole story of ALIEN to us from beginning to end.

She was a natural storyteller, and we were all gripped listening to the story of this movie being told to us scene by scene.

I wanted to see it, but I wasn't great with horror movies in my youth. It does say something about the genius of ALIEN that it is a horror movie with very little gore compared to other horror movies that were out there at the time. When it finally aired on UK TV in 1982, I sat up to watch it on my little black and white portable TV in my bedroom and spent a great deal of the movie cowering behind a pillow. I knew what was going to happen, and that probably made it worse.

By the time ALIENS happened in 1986, I was older. Wiser, and certainly more tolerant of horror movies. I'd developed the stomach for it. But ALIENS wasn't a horror movie. It was a war movie. A brilliant, tense, and awesome war movie where the squad of marines were fighting not just one xenomorph, but hundreds.

I knew a bit about what was going to happen thanks to the magazines - the Official Collectors Edition magazine that showed you the behind the scenes filming and making of the movie. I used to collect all of those things, and especially the poster magazines. Heck, I still have them somewhere. I even had the ALIEN poster magazine years before I saw the movie. No wonder I was traumatised, having that poster on the wall as a pre-teen...

Anyway, I was determined to go and see ALIENS. I'd seen the making of the movie that aired on ITV the opening weekend, and it looked awesome. I can't remember who I went to see it with first, but I remember going multiple times in the end with various friends. It was just awesome. And so very quotable.

I think we were all really excited by ALIENS, and Pete decided that his homebrew RPG system (Odyssey) would make a fine RPG for ALIENS. JR was the Gorman of the group, staying in the APC, and the rest of us played marines of varying skill. I thought Vasquez was the coolest and generated a smart-gunner. We were sent into some hairy situations, like quelling rebellions from colonists trying to splinter off from the Earth government, but a lot of the situations went horribly wrong. I remember it was probably our third assignment when the xenomorphs started appearing, and I have a distinct memory of the encumbrance rules coming into play as we tried to get away from the nuclear reactor at the heart of one of the terraforming plants, with the countdown to its destruction echoing in our ears... Drop all the equipment and we may be able to run fast enough to escape the blast...

Now, decades later, there is a new official ALIEN RPG, and bloody tense it is too. We played the Chariots of the Gods scenario and there were no survivors. No player characters, no aliens, no ships. We managed to destroy them both. It was messy, but brilliant.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 10)

HIGHLANDER (1986)

Here we are! Born to be Kings!! We're the Princes of the Universe!

Highlander was an odd one. Released the same day in the UK as ALIENS, I honestly can't remember which one I went to see first. The poster definitely caught my eye, with its cool sci-fi typeface, and some guy in a trenchcoat carrying a sword.  

Often, the best movies are experienced like this. I had seen some very brief ads on the TV for The Matrix before going to see it, completely unaware of what it was about. Sometimes, in fact often, not knowing can be part of the fun.

The publicity images mixed 80's New York with scenes that are better suited to Braveheart. There's about three words said in the first ten minutes, and it's not until over forty minutes into the movie that you discover why we keep flashing back to the Scottish glens and the clan MacLeod. I always remember a classic TV listing for the movie in the Radio Times calling it a "time travel epic". Well, I guess the characters do travel through time, but linearly and at the same speed as everyone else! Maybe that guide's reviewer wasn't paying attention.

As a teenager, I was hooked. Amazing visuals, one of the coolest and most iconic villains in cinema with Clancy Brown's gravel voiced Kurgan. A fantastic soundtrack peppered with Queen songs. And Christopher Lambert playing the hero who mouths off to the cops, takes crap from no one, and has mastered the art of hiding a katana in his trenchcoat.

What's not to love? 

The more you look at the movie, the more you appreciate the visual flair of director Russell Mulcahy. From the opening panning shot swooping over the audience of a wrestling match at Madison Square Garden, long before the existence of drones that make such shots so easy now. To the brilliant transitions from present to past, from aquarium water level to Scottish loch, from the incapacitated and dying form of MacLeod in ancient Scotland suddenly being the subject of police camera flashes. Everything about it is beautiful, inventive and brilliant.

I bought the novelisation, bought the "A Kind of Magic" Queen album. Highlander was one of those movies that stayed with you. I watched it so many times on VHS that I could quote it almost word for word, and eagerly awaited the release of Highlander II.

I remember asking a girl out to go and see Highlander II, but she turned me down. I think she dodged a bullet that day. We ended up dating in the end, but we'll come back to that further down the line - there's a tale to tell there relating to another movie involving grubby guys in violent movies.

Many years later, when I met my future wife, and discovered she could recite the movie just as well as me I knew it was destiny. Our first real holiday away together we drove to Scotland and took in the locations, from the stunning Glencoe, to Castle MacLeod itself, Eilian Donan. We were both so sad to cross the border south again on the way home. 

I still love Highlander. One day I'll drum up the courage to see the Renegade Cut of Highlander II, but that experience was possibly one of the most disappointing of my cinema-going life. After such a brilliant first movie, there really should have been "only one". 

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 9)

THE BLUES BROTHERS (1980)

I was doing this list chronologically as these movies had an impact on me, and despite this being a film released five years before the latest entry on the list, this is about the right time for the movie to have made an impact on me. After Ghostbusters, especially when it was released on VHS, I hunted down all the movies that featured the SNL actors who appeared in it, and branched out into others of the same ilk. I loved all the early Steve Martin movies (especially The Man With Two Brains) and those early Chevy Chase movies. Dan Aykroyd was a legend in my eyes, and I looked for any movie he was in - but one really didn't appeal to me. The Blues Brothers.

I don't know why - probably because it looked like it was a musical and I really hate musicals. There are a couple of exceptions (Rocky Horror, Once More With Feeling, Dr Horrible) but most of the time the moment someone bursts into song I turn off. But, I needed to see this one. I loved Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi was awesome in Animal House and 1941. Hell, it even had Carrie Fisher in it who was in my favourite movie ever, so I relented and rented it from the video store.

Oh boy was I ever wrong. The Blues Brothers is one of my faves. It's funny, has a hell of a heart behind it, and loads of little details that just stick with you - "He broke my watch!" 

Their quest to raise enough money to save the orphanage where they grew up results in an epic concert con-job and one of the most destructive and longest car chases ever put on screen. Going by Wikipedia, 103 cars were trashed making the movie, only surpassed by the truly awful Blues Brothers 2000, and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra.

They manage to piss off everyone from the police to the "Good Ol' Boys" and a bunch of Nazis, resulting in some crazy stunts that still blow my mind today.

Sure, it's a musical, but it's a great musical. The songs are classics, and I was stunned to see that The Blues Brothers had actual albums you could buy in the shops! I immediately purchased Made in America, and Briefcase Full of Blues, and scoured my dad's record collection for other Atlantic records classics like Sam & Dave, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, and more. A record collection that would set me up nicely for when I became obsessed with Moonlighting and David Addison's music tastes in the coming years.

I was in the Sixth Form at school, and the moment we were no longer required to wear school uniform I wore nothing but black - like Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi... that was, until I saw the Blues Brothers.

After that, for many months, the black jacket came out again, the white shirt and black tie... And the raybans. Of course this was before I had to wear glasses. Five years too late I was walking around in the outfit (minus the hat)... Maybe I was trend setting ready for when Reservoir Dogs would come out.

Heck, I think I wore that for the interview for my first job (just not the sunglasses!)

No wonder no one would go out with me.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 8)

BACK TO THE FUTURE (1985)

There's not really much to say about this one. Back to the Future. There are very few perfect movies in the world, and I personally think Back to the Future is one of them. It has everything. Action, comedy, music, romance, science fiction, nerdy references, time travel... heck, it's just perfect in my eyes.

I remember seeing the very cryptic trailer that gave absolutely nothing away. Just that car pulling up to a hitchhiker, and the guy from Family Ties (which I think everyone was watching) driving... and that "how far you going?" And then there was the cool Drew Struzan poster. Again, giving nothing away.

By this time I went to see anything that was remotely science fictiony, and this looked cool. I think I went opening weekend (or certainly early in its release).

I loved it, as you can guess. Just brilliant. First time watching it I really didn't know what was going to happen so it had me hooked from the very beginning. As always, with me, when I find something I really like, I get a little obsessed. I bought the novelisation, the soundtrack, the poster magazine, the behind the scenes magazine, and even collected the Panini stickers (managed to get the whole collection except for one sticker - even Panini ran out of it, as it was portrait pic of Michael J. Fox and those teens had sent off for extra copies of it).

Hell, even my Call of Cthulhu character at the time was based on George McFly.

When the VHS came out, I bought it and watched it over and over, convinced that a shadow I saw move in the car park of the mall at the beginning was the returning Marty at the end of the movie, not really comprehending how time travel worked.

But I was young and impressionable, and it was before the internet. Kept me quiet, and I loved that movie. Still do. Back then it was just cool, and wasn't violent (except for a few punches and a little gunfire - though those Libyans came to a sticky end don't they?). It was just fun, and for an awkward nerd like I was/am it was nice to see the nerd get the girl of his dreams in the end.

(Just realised that years later my first steady girlfriend would share the same first name as the object of George McFly's affections... how weird).

I did have that moment a while ago when I thought, "why isn't there an RPG of Back to the Future?" and then I realised I was just describing Rick and Morty.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 7)

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI ACROSS THE 8TH DIMENSION (1984)

Prize for the longest title on the list I think! Buckaroo Banzai is a weird one. I love that film, and probably didn't see it until it came out on VHS in the UK in 1985, jumping on that "You liked Back to the Future" bandwagon. I guess the marketers were thinking - "oh, it's got a science experiment in a fast car, just like Back to the Future, we'll go with that!" (Don't worry, we'll come back, and back, and Back to the Future at a later date)...

But Buckaroo Banzai is far more than that. It's freakin' legendary in its bizarreness. Presented as a docudrama - a re-enactment of real events - it chronicles "real" scientist Buckaroo Banzai, physicist, neurosurgeon, rock star (played in the movie by Peter Weller). He creates a device called the Oscillation Overthruster that allows him to travel through solid matter - where he travels through the Eighth Dimension, and attracts the attention of Red Lectriods from Planet 10.

Just typing that plot is making me laugh. The whole plot is madness, involving stopping Red Lectroids who arrived on Earth disguised during the Orson Welles "War of the Worlds" broadcast, and Buckaroo Banzai and his team (The Hong Kong Cavaliers) team up with Black Lectroids to stop mad scientist Lectroid Lord John Whorfin (inhabiting the body of Dr Emilio Lizardo) from opening a dimensional portal.

It's just ridiculous, but I love it. It's made brilliant by the amazing cast. Joining Peter Weller is Jeff Goldblum, Clancy Brown, and Ellen Barkin, battling against disguised Lectroids (long before John Carpenter's 'They Live') played by Christopher Lloyd, Vincent Schiavelli, and John Lithgow (as Dr. Lizardo - really going to town with the acting on this one).

As if having a massive team (The Hong Kong Cavaliers) at his disposal, like The Avengers, Buckaroo Banzai has a group of fans who volunteer to help across the world - the Blue Blaze Irregulars. So much crazy detail went into this movie, and it was all dumped on you really quickly like you were supposed to know what was going on - or just run with it.

It's so crazy that it has stuck in my mind ever since. One of those movies I can still quote (beyond the classic "No matter where you go, there you are" line). Especially the amazing villains. Red Lectroids are all called John - with a randomly generated name as a surname. John Ya Ya, John Small Berries, John Many Jars, and the legendary John Bigbooté.

It has musical numbers, car chases, spaceship chases, dimensional travel, watermelons, and one of the coolest end credit sequences known. I loved that VHS, and watched it so many times. I waited and waited for the sequel that was promised at the end credits - Buckaroo Banzai Against The World Crime League. But alas, it was never going to happen. Rights are owned by various people, and it's just a nightmare by the sound of it.

We got some of it as comics, and there was a roleplaying game announced a long time ago that suffered the same fate as Kevin Smith's announced TV series. Alas, it looks like Buckaroo Banzai will stand alone as a single, crazy, brilliant movie.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 6)

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (1984)

A bit of a departure from my usual movie selection came along in 1984. I was not a horror fan at all, still reeling from the Raiders of the Lost Ark experience, and then the terror of seeing ALIEN for the first time when it aired on UK TV in 1982, and The Omen - I have a memory of a friend of mine at school, Wally (he liked to be called), had recorded it off the TV and kept slowing down the gory bits to show how the special effects worked. It should have made it less sinister, but that bloody soundtrack! Talk about unsettling...

Anyway, I didn't watch a lot of horror really, I was more of an SF/Fantasy/Action person, but I have a very distinct memory of the trailers on TV for A Nightmare on Elm Street. We didn't get it in the UK until a lot later - August 1985 - and I seem to remember it getting an almost simultaneous release in the cinema and on VHS. It certainly was pretty close.

There was something about that first trailer. It was scary, but it was the dream element that really got me interested.

The idea that something could kill you in your dreams, and it happen in the waking world. That was brilliant. Especially as it came out just a year after Dreamscape - an awesome film I really loved as well about a psychic going into other peoples' dreams to help them escape their nightmares. You can see I was already getting really into dreams as a setting for fiction and games way back then.

I visited my local video rental stores constantly when I was a teenager. The moment we had a VHS recorder we had regular Friday Night movie nights, where the D&D group would come around and watch the latest releases. And weekends were usually spent with me renting a handful of movies, taking the VHS player into my room and having a movie marathon for most of the waking hours.

I'd just seen the trailers and then there the movie was on the shelves! Yes!

I seem to have a memory of watching it first time around at a friend's house during the day over a lunchtime/free period when I was in the 6th form.

Freddy was nasty, gross and sick, and that made him a brilliant villain. While some of the teenagers lined up to get the sharp end of Freddy's finger-knives were slightly annoying (Rod, I'm looking at you) you were on the kids' side.

But I have a distinct memory of the first moment when I thought Elm St was cool. There's the scene where Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) is taken to a sleep specialist and wired up. She has a nightmare and starts flailing about, and when they wake her she's grabbed Freddy's fedora off of his head in the dream, and pulled it into the waking world.

Hell yes. That was going beyond the horror movie tropes and heading right into SF/Fantasy domain. I loved it. Of course, I liked the sequels - though they did peak with 3: The Dream Warriors and 4: The Dream Master. Dream Warriors introduced the element that I loved from Dreamscape by introducing Kristen Parker (Patricia Arquette) who had the psychic ability to pull other people into her dreams. With multiple dreamers able to team up in the dreamrealms, Freddy didn't stand much of a chance. And it was great to have Nancy from the original movie back, along with her father (the legendary John Saxon).

The Dream Master built upon this, continuing Kristen's story (now played by the brilliantly named Tuesday Knight) before handing her dream ability over to a new character... and then the series kinda started losing its way. Freddy was becoming too big a character, almost a cartoon of himself. He wasn't sinister or evil anymore, despite his horrific backstory. He was becoming a wisecracking parody, and it wasn't until the incredibly clever and meta Wes Craven's New Nightmare that it became brilliant again. It foreshadowed the Scream movies, with Heather Langenkamp returning playing herself as an actress plagued with nightmares of the movies she was in - and the power of these nightmares to make Freddy real.

Clever stuff.

Anyway, that's getting off the topic. The first A Nightmare on Elm Street was great, and shortly after renting it on VHS I ended up buying it - I think it was fairly cheap straight away if I remember correctly. I even had the massive quad cinema posters for Elm St 2 and 3 on my ceiling, so you can tell I was more comfortable with horror movies by then and had got over my previous experiences.

Must give it another watch soon.


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Before I finish this blogpost it has been pointed out to me that there are a few movies missing from my list that have had a real impact on me. I tried to keep it to twenty, but I may just up it to twenty four in order to get these essential movies included. Sorry!! I hope this doesn't bore you all too much.

Take care everyone, and stay safe.

[Roll Your Own Life] The Movies That Made Me (Part 5)

GHOSTBUSTERS (1984)

Another one of my absolute favourite movies. Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters came along at just the right time for me, just as I was discovering the Saturday Night Live cast in other cool movies like Trading Places, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, and Stripes. Just as I was loving those comedies, along comes a movie with a load of my favourite comedy actors in a movie about hunting ghosts with high-tech equipment. Count me in!!

Ghostbusters didn't disappoint. Great special effects, great action, hilarious script, cool soundtrack. I loved it.

I may have become a little obsessed with it. I did my usual thing where I bought the novelisation so I could experience the film again after the movie left the cinema, and I bought the soundtrack. I still have the single as a shaped picture disk somewhere.

When the VHS was scheduled for release I did the stupid thing again where I talked to the lovely people at the video rental store and paid in instalments the £80 for a rental copy of the movie so I could watch it months before it hit retail.

I still have that somewhere too!

By the time 1986 came along, my obsession with Ghostbusters was fuelled even further when the animated TV series - The Real Ghostbusters - aired on kids TV in the UK. Though not the episode The Boogieman Cometh as they figured it was too scary for daytime TV for kids. I tried to record them all, but the scheduling was all over the place and I think I only got the first season and a half recorded.

That same year, West End Games produced one of my favourite roleplaying games of all time. The Ghostbusters Roleplaying Game - or should that be Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game. One of the simplest, fastest, and funniest games I've ever played, and still a massive influence on me today.

I played that game a hell of a lot, and then I tried to get into game writing, sat typing away for hours on an old electric typewriter, submitting adventures to West End Games. I've written about that many times on this blog.

I spent so much of my teens wanting to be Peter Venkman. Venkman was the coolest - he was a bit of a doofus and really wasn't great at smalltalk, but in my head he was brilliant.

Ghostbusters II was great too, though not as amazing, and though I still loved Ghostbusters and was still trying to write for WEG, real life got in the way as I got a job and a lot of the roleplaying group went off to universities.

Ghostbusters will always have a soft-spot in my heart, and I'm really excited by the new movie coming next year - Ghostbusters: Afterlife. But whenever someone asks if I can do something for them, especially after I foolishly talked my way out of a brilliant writing gig, I always think of that classic line...

"If someone asks if you're a god, you say YES!"