My top 10 most influential films...Part One

Maybe it's the new year...or maybe it's because I'm finally sitting on my ass more...but I've been watching a bunch of WatchMojo.com's Top 10 lists on YouTube. Some of them are pretty good, others just bulls**t, but it got me thinking of movies that had an impact on me in my youth. This list is the result. I'd love to say that the rankings matter, but with the exception of the top three they really don't.

My criteria: the films in this list were seen by me in my youth (which I'm ending in 1989 - the year I graduated high school and went off to college), but not necessarily in the theater. So it includes anything available on VHS at the time. Also - these are movies that affected me the most while growing up, meaning they are not genre-specific

If you're sick of lists like these, stop now or forever hold your peace.

Spoilers ahead. You've been warned...

10) 

This film came out Friday, June 23, 1989. My high school graduation ceremony was Thursday, June 22nd. That night, me and a bunch of like-minded individuals went to a midnight showing at the late, great Naugatuck Valley Mall in Waterbury, CT. It was my first-ever midnight showing, and one of the best experiences of my life. (Little did I know my second midnight movie would take place in October that same year...Rocky Horror Picture Show no less...with my future wife in attendance, but that's another story.) I stood in line to see Batman and quickly made friends with strangers. The audience as a whole reacted to everything, including an impromptu sing-along with the mandatory "don't talk, smoke, etc... in the theater" song that's played before every showing. It was a wonderful time, and firmly convinced me that not only can films be enjoyed with large groups of people, but that comic-book super-hero films can be enjoyed with large groups of people.

9) 

I never saw Better Off Dead in the theater. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw John Cusack in Class, Sixteen Candles, Hot Pursuit and One Crazy Summer all on video before this. But Better Off Dead wasn't just Classic John Cusack...it was Classic Savage Steve Holland. I love everything about this film - the cast (featuring Winchester from M.A.S.H., the guy who dated the secretary in Moonlighting, the kid from Head of the Class, the guy from 21 Jump Street and the (unfortunately) late, great, Taylor Negron as the mailman), the visual effects (like the food that crawls off the plate...later seen in Ned's Declassified), the dialogue, the sets, the plot (natch), and that CAR! Having seen One Crazy Summer first, I could tell right away that this film was by the same director. And even though I eventually saw How I Got Into College after I was actually in college, Holland's directorial style was evident. Yeah, every teenager's thought about suicide at some point, but this film really makes the point of saying how stupid that idea is. Plus: the woman Cusack's character winds up with? She's a dark-haired, pale-skinned, French beauty - not unlike Mrs. Adorkification. 

8) 

I first saw The Bride on Channel 20 back in the day. It was one of those UHF channels that showed unedited films in their entirety (albeit with commercial breaks) to compete with Cable. My parents didn't want Cable - it was too expensive to bring to our street at the time - so no MTV, HBO, SHOWTIME or the like at my house. Yes, there is that one scene where Ms. Beals appears topless for all of like three seconds, but that wasn't the most influential part to me. It was the sub-plot where the monster (Clancy Brown) is on his own, and meets up with little person Rinaldo (David Rappaport) and together they travel to Budapest. That friendship between a tall, scary guy and a short, clever guy made me realize that everyone in this world can have friends. Even though bad things can happen, and friends may be lost, lives are forever altered by the experiences they share. Deep stuff, but this was a big deal for someone dealing with anonymity as well as bullies in high school hallways. I knew that once high school was over, and I was on my own in a big city (Boston as it turned out), I too could make friends and build a life for myself. And yeah...boobies...

7)

Say what you will about fantasy films. The whole "love conquering all" mushy-type stuff can be brain-bleeding, but this film, as silly as it gets at times, blew me away. First, Tim Curry. Never saw him in anything before this. If ever there was a visual representation of the Devil, this was it. Not having seen Curry anywhere before, I thought the guy actually was seven and a half feet tall and built like Stallone. Then there's the story of a young hero saving his pale brunette damsel (is this a trend?) in distress. The fact that she was the female lead in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which I saw first, didn't hurt things. While the film could be considered childish and immature by today's standards, when I first saw this in 1986 Darkness was scary. Lily was gorgeous. The imps, fairies and goblins were cool, and of course...

Meg mutherf**king Mucklebones was mutherf**king awesome!

6) 

Speaking of scary things, Jaws terrified the hell out of me. So much so that I never actually saw the film - from beginning to end - until college.  

That's right. I had nightmares over a film I hadn't actually seen yet. 

That's not the case with Dream Warriors. I eventually saw Nightmare parts I and II, but A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 was my first Freddy Krueger film. I loved the idea of a group of teenagers ganging up to fight a scary monster in the dream world, but I hated watching each kid get killed off. The worst scene? When Freddy turned that guy into a marionette...using arteries and veins as the strings. THAT made me lose my s#!t right there. Freddy really scared the hell out of me. I didn't just have bad dreams or cringe every time I took a bath. I lost sleep. I was afraid of falling asleep. 

So WHAT if that was the point?

Other movie monsters had their weaknesses: garlic, torches, silver. Freddy didn't have a weakness. He couldn't be isolated to just appearing only at night or in large bodies of water. He attacked you in your dreams. Seeing teenagers band together to fight someone like that was the first time I saw misunderstood youths band together to fight anything. Yeah, Red Dawn was about teenagers fighting together against a foreign invasion, but that s#!t was happening all over the country. The Dream Warriors were thought of as crazy kids doing drugs or whatever and were totally ignored by the grown-ups. Despite being a straight-up horror film, Dream Warriors sent the message that friends could make a difference. Wanna know how I beat my nightmares? By making myself believe that other monsters (like Dracula, The Creature and The Wolfman) along with other entities (including Superman, Captain America, the G. I. Joes and Transformers...yes, all of them) could protect me. I know it's crazy, but it worked. Unfortunately, that fear of something coming after me...relentlessly...kinda stuck with me: 

To. This. Day.