As I have mentioned a few times on this blog I don’t particularly like animated movies, musicals or kids films. What I haven’t said is that I didn’t like many kids films when I was a kid. A movie geek lover from an early age these are my top five movie from when I was a kid (they are not in order as just like now the order changed daily):
Star Wars: The original Star Wars: episode IV; A New Hope; or just Star Wars, whatever you call it, it is a movie that changed movies forever. It is also the first film I remember watching as a kid and I have loved it ever since. It was on TV, not video or at the cinema it was on TV and I was allowed to stay up later than normal to watch it. I must have seen other movies before this but I just don’t remember them.
The Blues Brothers: Recommended by a friend of my parents when it first came out on video, I watched the movie loved it the recoded it off TV a few years later and wore the tape out. Still a classic movie that I was lucky enough to see on the big screen last year.
Smokey and the Bandit: The CB craze didn’t last long in the UK but I remember my dad having one in his car for a time. It was this that led me to a sub genre of movies I have heard described as “good ol’ boy movies”. Weekend trips to the video store with my parents and older brother would often result in movies like this, White Line Fever, White Lightning and Convoy (see below), I just wasn’t that interested in kid’s movies! It was also around this time that I first came across Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose. Check out this article by Kim Morgan who is far more articulate than me.
Convoy: Recorded off the TV onto VHS this was one of my most watched movies as a kid. Widly regarded as one of Sam Peckinpah’s weaker movies, for me it holds up as a modern classic, it was also the highest grossing film of his directorial career. A slice of contemporary history and a true modern day western but I didn’t care about those things as a kid, I just thought the trucks were cool. It wasn’t until years later when I drove through Arizona and New Mexico when I got a feel for the big open spaces of southwest highways. Take a look at what I had to say about the movie last year when I first started blogging.
From Russia With Love: I think On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Live and Let Die were the first Bond films Isaw but I wasn’t paying much attention to them but when I saw From Russia With Love I was hooked and every time one was on TV I had to watch it. I didn’t see a Bond movie on video until Never Say Never Again and Octopussy (that I watched on the same day at a relatives house) and I didn’t see one at the cinema until GoldenEye (Pierce Brosnan’s only decent Bond movie). As well as being the Bond movie that got me interested in the franchise it is also still the best. And like The Blues Brothers I got to see it at the cinema last year.
Then in my early teens I got into horror action movies but that’s a list for another day.
Fine. Respectable.
Smokey and The Bandit has so much satire in the film that I didn’t understand awhile back until like 3 weeks ago, and just could not stop laughing my ass off at. Mostly because Jackie Gleason is a legend.
Having Blues Brothers in your top five as a 10-year-old is pretty freakin’ cool, man. Not too shabby.
hehe, great idea Fands, you had a thing for driving movies then…
Would you believe I haven’t seen “Smokey and the Bandit” yet? I have a couple of friends who organize The Bandit Run, an annual traveling car show that pays homage to the movie, and they’ve haggled me endlessly.
“haven’t seen Smokey and the Bandit” blasphemy. The only redeeming thing is that you say “yet” implying you intend to see it.
The Bandit Run looks fun.
Wow, at ten? This is the sort of stuff I wouldn’t have dug until I was at least fifteen. Solid list and you were mature beyond your years – though I’m a Goldfinger man, myself.
Goldfinger is also a good choice.
That’s quite a list of classic films you have there. I’ve onyl seen the first two, both absolute must sees, so I’m confident that your other picks are all worth the watch.
I did a lot of recording of the telly too. In fact, the only copy of Dumbo I have is still an old recorded VHS
OK… I’ve never seen Blues Bros and just cannot get into it. I’ve started it like 5 times and always end up turning it off… is it really as funny as everyone says? Cuz I hated the SNL stuff.
Nice pick on Star Wars too… everyone dotes on Empire but without A New Hope, none of that other stuff can exist… and it is a good film!
Sorry Kai, I’m with the crowd Empire is a better movie, I just didn’t realise that the time.
No… I agree Empire is a superior film. I just think Star Wars is a solid foundation and good in it’s own right and people forget that!
Nice list for a ten years…I only see Starwars when I was that young.
Hell yes to Convoy. Who doesn’t love a Kristofferson/Peckinpah film?
Definitely digging the list, and like you I was more fond of adult movies when I was a kid. The first movie I remembered watching was Poltergeist and Flashdance!
I hope you keep doing posts like these, it’s always good to look back and remember what made us love the movies in the first place.
Of course you have Star Wars on the list. Good man.
Favourite movies as a child and you pick a Sam Peckinpah movie! That’s got to be a first!
Yes but its an accessible none violent one, its not as if I was watching Straw Dogs and The Wild Bunch, I don’t think I saw them until I was 13 or 14!
[…] 9, 2010 by fandangogroovers A couple of months ago I posted a list of my favourite movies from when I was ten years old. But how did my tastes change? Although I still loved the movies from when I was ten (and still do) […]
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