These are the movies that at some point, either during the viewing, or after the viewing, or when it suddenly hits you on your twenty-fourth viewing, that there is something profoundly amazing about these/your/my favorite films… The movies, where when you're six years old, you come strutting out of the Cineplex because you feel like a hero. You feel like you could be Superman, or Indiana Jones, or you could be Romancing the Stone, although you really have no initial idea what that title is supposed to convey… There's something about this/your/my personal list of films that had your (my) consciousness flat on the floor, ready to be scooped up and re-scrambled and poured back into that skull for further reassessment.
A few of these films I was lucky enough to have seen in their initial theatrical run – while others I had to wait for VHS to discover them, and even more had to wait for the advent of DVD. In any and all cases, I thought it might be interesting to recall at what age I witnessed these valuable cinematic contributions (and they all have value on some level of individuality), of course, through different mediums, the age these films were beheld may not correlate with the actual time of the films' release. So, here's my list…
01. Blues Brothers, dir. John Landis (5 yrs old – theatrical)
02. Superman, dir. Richard Donner (6 yrs old – television)
03. Raiders of the Lost Ark, dir. Steven Spielberg (6 yrs old – theatrical)
04. Friday the 13th, dir. Sean S. Cunningham (9 yrs old – VHS)
05. Blow Out, dir. Brian De Palma (15 yrs old – VHS)
06. Full Metal Jacket, dir. Stanley Kubrick (16 yrs old – VHS)
07. A Clockwork Orange, dir. Stanley Kubrick (16 yrs old – VHS)
08. Blue Velvet, dir. David Lynch (18 yrs old – cable)
09. Sisters, dir. Brain De Palma (19 yrs old – VHS)
10. Martin, dir. George A. Romero (19 yrs old – VHS)
11. Knightriders, dir. George A. Romero (19 yrs old – VHS)
12. They Live, dir. John Carpenter (20 yrs old – VHS)
13. Re-Animator, dir. Stuart Gordon (20 yrs old – VHS)
14. Deep Red, dir. Dario Argento (20 yrs old – VHS)
15. Pulp Fiction, dir. Quentin Tarantino (20 yrs old – theatrical)
16. Cemetery Man, dir. Michele Soavi (21 yrs old – VHS)
17. The Toxic Avenger, dir. Lloyd Kaufman & Michael Herz (25 yrs old – VHS)
18. Frankenhooker, dir. Frank Henenlotter (25 yrs old – VHS)
19. Audition, dir. Takashi Miike (27 yrs old – Vancouver film festival)
20. Contempt, dir. Jean Luc Godard (31 yrs old, DVD)
Okay, just one more, I can't resist...
21. Grindhouse, dir. Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino (32 yrs old – theatrical)
While this can't be a final-final list per say, it was a great little exploration for me (it took me four days to come up with this list) to unearth a little self-understanding into what exactly started to warp my mind – and when.