The concept of rewatching a movie is almost foreign to me now given that I have access to a library of tens of thousands of movies. It would have to be very good and something that whoever I'm with hasn't seen.
Of course I used to watch the same movie about every month or so back when I was growing up in the 90s.
That's curious because I find I rewatch more movies than ever before, since it's so easy to find them, and I already know whether I like them or not.
The first thing I do when Return of the King ends is put on Fellowship of the Ring.
That does prevent you from finding new movies you like though.
It might, but it definitely hasn't. I work in some fresh blood on the weekends, when I feel up to taking a chance. Actually, I've got a date to go see Dream Scenario (Nic Cage 🥰) just this week.
I have a daughter I enjoy showing movies I've already watched to. So I've been doing mostly rewatching, but with someone who has never seen, for example, Ferris Bueller's Day Off before.
The best was her reaction to Repo Man. We got to the end and she said, "all of that for a flying car?"
This is so sweet. Getting to show cool stuff you like to your kids must be one of the best things about being a parent. If I ever end up becoming one I'll show my kids all the great Pixar movies and also the Emperor's New Groove cause that one is a classic.
It really is, although you have to tailor it to their tastes, which means not showing them some movies you want to. She has absolutely no interest in seeing Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies, for example. But she loves cult movies, so I'm enjoying showing her those.
Life as a repo man is always intense.
I have trash taste, so I actually just continue to rewatch the same dumb shit I liked in the 90s so I don't have to make a decision. I actually paid real money to buy Not Another Teen Movie a few years back because I rewatch it about once a year. I think we have too many options and they're all on different services so it's like fuck it, Men In Black for the 85th time.
Same. And Demolition Man holds the distinction of being the only movie I rewatched on the same day.
We'd rent The Princess Bride and Flight of the Navigator a few times a year.
I used to watch the same movie about every month or so back when I was growing up
I don't think this is a technical limitation, I think young children really like repetition because their brains are still learning how to predict things
To the chagrin of parents who endure Cocomelon or Caillou rerun marathons.
This is true. My little brother watched "The Lion King" every day after school for a few months.
I once had the flu so badly I couldn't get out of bed or yell for help. My parents put on "Flushed Away" (movie about some fuckin rats) on dvd and it looped at least 4 times before anyone came back to turn it off. One of my core traumas
i suspect its been replaced with stumbling upon tentacle porn or 'whats this goatse' when youre 10.
Stumbled upon Spyro porn when I was 11.
Now I'm 25 and a massive furry degenerate.
Good riddance. Children should not be on the internet unsupervised
I used to be a big fan of Eevee and the eeveeloutions so I looked them up on DeviantArt and saw fetish art of a Flareon getting its toes tickled by a torture device. I didn’t know what fetishes were at the time and assumed it was a silly joke about how painful it is to get tickled. (I was very ticklish as a child.)
When we moved to the middle of nowhere and couldn't even get channels over the air, my sister and I wore through every tape in the house.
The worst was being 9 years old desperately trying to find the second half of Lonesome Dove because you only got most of the episodes on some random VHS.
We must have worn the sound off of The Princess Bride, splash, Aladdin and the little mermaid. For a 9 year old boy living in the hinterlands after growing up in a city, Ariel singing "I want to be where the people are" hit me right in the feels.
I only had Aladdin Cassete tape with the soundtrack! not even the movie! I can still sing every single song lol
One jump, ahead of the breadline
One swing, ahead of the sword
I steal only what I can't afford ...
And that's Everything!
Ours was "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". I don't know why nor where but one day my step dad showed up with this movie for us. It was the only "kids" movie we ever own and we watched it a 1.000 times. looking back it wasn't as inocent as I thought at the time, but it was the 90s. Another movies we loved?! Howard the Duck ( the movie where Marty Mcfly mom fucked a duck) So yeah the 90s were kind of weird and had a lot of inapropriate movies for kids.
Oh come on, Down and Dirty Duck, by The Turtles, was a masterpiece that literally didn't show any possible nudity, since it was animated. That was a totally appropriate animated film for families. The main character was specifically interested in creating his own offspring as soon as possible!
/Do I need this?
Also: Who Framed Roger Rabbit was totally a documentary about the oil companies forcing the US into a car-centric society.
More specifically General Motors buying and dismantling city rail lines in order to sell more buses.
Haha I was just talking to someone the other day about how much I loved Howard the Duck growing up. She was like "uhh... that wasn't really a kid's movie, was it?" Maybe not. Maybe it and similar movies are the reason us millennials are the way we are.
Me too! Love me some Howard!
We'll never again have such insane inapropriate movies! the 90s were a special moment in time lol
For some reason, I had the book version at a young age and I'm not sure if it was a weirder experience than actually watching the movie.
I would also add that if you had a neighbor or relative that had HBO, you'd be able to record on VHS a set of movies playing at that time. For many of us this may have been only a few months/years of movies. That set of movies would grow on you because thats all you had to watch on demand. Genre, theme, high budget, low budget, it didn't matter. Someone close to you popped in a 6 hour tape one day and pressed "record" before they went to work. You got the one movie you were hoping for and whatever came afterward.
I remember HBO used to have a new movie on at something like 6:00PM every Friday. But I didn't know what the movie would be ahead of time. So I would start the VCR recording as soon as I saw that screen at 6:00, then would wait patiently to see what the movie was that I was recording, hoping it was gonna be something good
Back in the day, me and my siblings recorded movies on VHS by sitting next to the TV and starting/stopping the recording for commercial breaks. The best movies were those with only small snippets of commercials, and my most treasured movie was a nearly "clean" copy of Die Hard that I've watched probably somewhere between 50-100 times.
I lived overseas when I was a kid and my grandma used to tape Saturday morning cartoons and mail them to me
She's a real one.
My father was a film historian. We had so many obscure movies on tape. I've seen tons and tons of movies, although not in the last 10-15 years in terms of recent ones.
I used to have a party trick where I would have someone open a random page of Leonard Maltin's movie guide and start listing titles and I could almost always summarize the plot of at least one.
No kids these days still have that. It's just some random film available on streaming. I've watched so much Trolls. Please send help, my kids won't stop watching
You need to get them hooked on something else. But be careful what you wish for because this will only give temporary relief until you start hating the new addiction and wish back the previous one. My girl went from binge rewatching a penguin cartoon to the little mole to a horribly animated newer cartoon about cats and dogs. And I fear we have reached the point at which we cannot hide or deny the existence of peppa pig any longer and I already regret dissing the kittens & puppies stuff because jfc I watched peppa pig for the first time today and I won't be able to bear this one for the love of God
because jfc I watched peppa pig for the first time today and I won’t be able to bear this one for the love of God
Its a damn shame they only made that one. single. episode. that you watched today, right? Right?
Well I doubt the accents will change, or the plots will become more elaborate or realistic, or the drawing style will change. Right?
Peppa Pig is the worst thing that ever happened, and not just on TV. We had a short run of it with my younger son and it was an awful time. Now we get SpongeBob and/or Pokémon and it makes me so happy.
Im sure it's awful but it can't be worse than Caillou...
Agree with your take on Caillou. I also always thought Dora was yelling. My daughter never seemed to mind either though. 😕
My family watched the movie Clue about a million times. Can quote every line by heart. To this day, we only have to look in one another's eyes whenever a quotable opportunity comes up. "Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests?" "You don't need any help from me."
Brave little toaster. And fievel goes west.
Brave little toaster has gotta be the reason so many of us millennials are so freaking weird.
Fuck, I hated those movies though. I mean I watched them, but as a kid, I hard a hard time understanding what was going on. Same with The Rescuers, all dogs go to heaven and all those other 80s animated movies. Could have been because I was still learning English.
That was definitely why, although I watched cartoons in German without knowing the language and still enjoyed them. It was many, many years later that I learned Biene Maia was called Maya the Bee in English.
We watched Rescuers Down Under all the time, never had any idea it was actually a sequel, I didn't see the first one until I was in highschool.
Fievel was the goat. Well, mouse at least.
Tbe trauma of watching Fivel and ET as 3/4yo triggered a lifetime of anxiety. What's up with all the horrible traumatizing movies in the 80?! Bambi?! WTF, why show that to kids?
Bambi?! WTF, why show that to kids?
To teach them about death as part of a story with a happy ending. I think that The Lion King does it better though as they've already been briefed on the circle of life.
Oh life is already so hard and sad, let the kids have a couple of good anxiety free years! ET was so traumatizing as a kid that I refuse to ever watch it again lol
Be thankful you didn't watch Watership Down
Beetlejuice? Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice.
I have a core memory of seeing this movie for my birthday when I was 6. God damn 80s movies were good at traumatizing a whole generation.
Same. For me it was Robocop 2 in about 2nd or 3rd grade at a birthday party sleepover.
We had a "kids tape" that had countless things recorded over each other. The second half was just a collage of the tail end of various cartoons and shows. When it got to the Abba-soundtracked documentary about a carnival it meant you were at the end of the tape.
I will never forgive my friend's sister taping over several Transformers episodes to record a Madonna marathon from MTV...
That was in the 80s and I'm still sour.
How about building a core memory around a weird French movie you only saw because it was in the wrong case when you rented it from Blockbuster?
All the 90s Disney animated films.
And Robocop.
I remember calling into the radio station and requesting a song. And then sitting around with friends waiting to hit record on our boombox!
My childhood predates the average person's private ownership of movies . As a child no one I knew owned anything other than home movies... The very idea of actually OWNING a copy of a movie would have been the height of opulence .... And back then, there was no way to play a 35mm movie without a 35 mm projector even if you could get your hands on a print
Hope Pizza Steve is doing well.
Is it true that movies were super cheap to watch back then? I've heard that that's partially the reason people would go watch the same movie multiple times, that and AC/socially.
Movies would also stay in theaters longer, sometimes multiple years. You would also see a lot more second runs. I'm not even that old but I used to get $1 tickets to the second run theater when I was a kid in the early 2000s. I don't think I've even seen a second run theater in the last decade.
The one in my hometown just went out of business 2 years ago due to the pandemic. It was $5 for adults, $3 for children under 14 and students of the local highschool if you present your student ID. They were an important part of the town, and practically everyone 2-3 towns over was talking about it when they closed.
Same, we had two in Metro Atlanta that were Covid Casualties
Goooooooood morning Vietnammmmmm
Bringing in the deep cuts:
The Peanut Butter Solution
DARYL
Ewoks; The Battle for Endor
Enemy Mine
Police Academy and The Blues Brothers (edited for broadcast TV)
Enemy Mine is a sentimental favorite of mine
"I still don't understand...what's a hooker?"
"Ok,its him."
Im glad somebody mentioned D.A.R.Y.L. That and Police Academy 2 were my go tos as a kid,since we lived in bfe.
We grew up watching Blues Brothers, we'd watch it like every other week. That movie holds up so well, i still watch it occasionally.
My neighbor had so many weird yet charming movies we didn't have in our house. There was this one where I think an English man took care of an otter for some reason? It was also at this neighbor's house that I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time. We had those 1am sillies and were in a permanent giggle fit.
Today’s childhoods will be defined by watching some semi-obscure streamer or meme video on YouTube that only your friends understand.
I have two. I grew up near Toronto in the 80s. Both were CityTV movies. They used to do a thing. I can't remember what it was called..
1 - SPACEBALLS!!!! ("F___! Even in the future nothing works!")
2 - Predator (there's a line where Arnold says, "That's one bad motherfucker." They only censored the word 'mother'. i was 8. best thing ever)
Mine was some weird fairy tale cartoon where a mom goat fills a wolf with rocks and they drown in a well.
My dad made bootleg copies of just about every vhs he rented until the mid 90s.
The ones that were for kids he imprinted with red or blue tape, all the others black.
I have no idea what my mom did with that wall of tapes once he was gone, at this point she doesn't remember either.
The main tape I remember rewatching was the Raggedy Ann movie from the 80s that got super psychedelic and had elements of body horror.
There was also an unsettling retelling of Beowulf via awkward English dub. Watched now, it would probably be charming, but 4 year old me was petrified when the cuddly looking Grendel bit off a man's head and you could see the stalks of arteries poking out of the neck stump.
I also watched the first episode of MadBalls more times than is probably healthy.
Ah yes, bootleg Harry and the Hendersons.
There is more obscure media than ever, it just connects less people you're likely to ever meet in person.
I grew up watching Stallone, Van Damme, and Schwarzenegger movies with my dad, since he monopolized the remote.
The only rated R movie we were allowed to watch was Demolition Man, which we had a tape of, so we watched it enough times for me to have fond feelings for Stallone.
I also had this on tape! It was where I learned about the concept biscuits and gravy. Except for I didn't actually learn what they were for another 10 years.
It made sense to young me that when Simon opened the sewer it would smell like digestive biscuits smothered in Bisto.
Haha wow, that's a horrible mental picture.
Demolition man is a classic
Or catching the same movie in different places over the course of a month before HBO changed its lineup.
This wasn’t on tape, but this move is Shaolin Soccer for me. We watched it so many times. I watched a couple of times recently too, and it holds up.
I completely forgot about Shaolin Soccer!
Are you me?
The daycare I went to after school when I was a kid had a few that got a lot of play, but the most obscure were a 1994 ABC Family animated rendition of The Secret Garden and a 1985 Hanna-Barbera Pound Puppies TV special.
Mine was Idle Hands, which my grandma taped for me when she noticed me watching an Idle Hands marathon. My love for this movie at such a young age really helps to explain my sense of humor as an adult.
an Idle Hands marathon
I actually kind of like the movie, but why would a channel play it on repeat?
Sometimes they just did that, I dunno why. Sometimes movies would play in a specific order then restart, and sometimes they'd play the same one back to back, usually if it was a newly released to TV movie.
Oh my goodness, I remember for some reason people kept giving or lending my parents all these long play VHS tapes full of movies. Random video mix tapes where you didn't know what you'd get next. Now and then some of them had kid movies (like the Sesame Street movie, Follow That Bird and there was at least one muppet movie), but most of them were PG and occasionally R-rated stuff, and I still watched it (except the R-rated stuff, but thankfully they were mostly pretty tame as I recall). I think my fave childhood movie was always on TV though: The Goonies.
Not a movie, exactly, but we had the VHS of the extended version of Michael Jackson's Thriller and the making of the video. It was over an hour long. And amazing.
Idk how obscure, but "Puff the Magic Dragon" was definitely a weird one for me. Kinda glad it got lost (probably thrown out, who knows). Almost feels like a fever dream, so much so, that I had to double check the movie even existed
In the land called Honoli!
Full-disclosure... I found it online and am about to re-watch it. Loved it as a kid, but does it hold-up? 23 minutes will tell
Edit: It... oddly holds up for me lol. Just as weird as I remembered, but kinda sweet (I truly thought when they sang "Honoli" they were saying "Harmony". It's been a long time)
One of the things I put on when my son refuses to go to sleep- 5 minutes in, he's out cold.
Lol, that's pretty ingenious. It's soothing and the animation is kinda boring, especially the beginning. Bravo
The Thief and the Cobbler!
You can recreate this by spending time working in a remote location, like a fishing vessel, that doesn't have any internet. All you can watch on your off time is what media you take out with you.
I watched "A River Runs Through It" probably 30 times one summer while commercial fishing, because it was one of the few movies we had that we all liked.
I should send my kids to work on a remote location, so that they can watch a VHS after a 14 hour shift? Sounds reasonable.
That's why I said "recreate"
Oddly, I think I'd like the opportunity to do something similar, if I could pick the media in advance. The same kind of vibe as Desert Island Discs.
so true.
my uncle had a tv. and 2 movies on vcr. I saw "Smokey and the bandit" more then a hundred times. and "the sting" 30-40 times..
Idk about obscure, but OLD Looney Toons classics and The Land Before Time (recorded FTA).
Part of me wants to show The Land Before Time to my kids, cause it was such a great movie. The other part of me knows that Little Foot's mom dying (sorry, 1980s spoilers) would absolutely wreck them.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Kris P. Bacon, @KrisWolfheart
kids today are missing out of the pre-streaming era, where your childhoold was at least partially defined by some semi-obscure movie your family just happened to own on tape and you watched several dozen times
I lived in an in-between, I have a lot of dvds (even 2 blu-rays I think) but they're not shitty at all, 90% were Disney films when original content was still a thing but we have rewatched them so many times, nowadays my little sister, born in the era of streaming can't handle not choosing what to watch on tv or not having a new film out every 2 months
Whenever I'm subjected to terrestrial TV, the only thing I end up watching is the second half of movies I've seen a dozen times before.
I grew up with only having 4 channels, but holy shit having some actual agency over what you watch was a game changer.
I had a VHS copy of the Empire Strikes Back that my uncle recorded for me when it played on one of our 3 local TV stations. For the holidays I had a recording of a bunch of the old holiday cartoons that would play in a marathon every Christmas, and one of Ghostbusters (for some reason it used to play every Christmas in the evening, so it became a Christmas movie for me).
Aside from that I'd mostly just rent the same VHS tapes from our local hole in the wall video rental place every weekend (Neverending Story and Inhumanoids) from the ages of 4-6. Then I think we got a real video store and my movie watching experience improved a bit. To be fair, the hole in the wall rental shop was probably only about 10 feet long and 6 feet wide inside, and the shelves of movies lined the walls, so there wasn't a lot to choose from.
I basically knew every line of Space Jam by heart. I even knew when to look for the funny parts of the VHS when rewinding it and watching the movie in reverse.
Hellooooooo The Great Outdoors and Harry and the Hendersons.
Or something that came up while channel-surfing on TV and decided to leave it on for a minute, put the control aside, and ended up watching the rest.
Back while in high school, one weeknight I stumbled across Jean Luc Godard's "A Bout De Soufflé" ("Breathless") on our town's local channel, at just the right moment when it seemed like the film was skipping. Intrigued, I left it on, soon enough figured out that this was intentional editing. By the end, my mind was blown and my way of looking at film and art had changed forever.
The weirdest one that comes to my mind, was a vhs tape of some stop motion lego stories that me and my brother watched a million times.
My brother and I kept watching The Go-bots meet(?) the Rock Lords. This was back in the late 80s to early 90s.
“The Cat from Outer Space” we used to rent it all the time from blockbuster for me and when they switched to DVDs we bought it
Cats Don't Dance. 20 years later I'm a furry.
Asterix. Doesn't really matter which of the 30+ comics, or the 5 or 6 movies. No one knows Asterix in The US.
Also: Flight of The Navigator, The Last Unicorn, or The Last Starfighter
I don't know Asterix, but I loved the shit out of Flight of the Navigator. I still drop a "compliance!" every once in a while when somebody asks me to do something.
Also, The Last Starfighter was fantastic and... The Last Unicorn was definitely a movie that was. That Unicorn was kind of an asshole, though. Watching it cringe in horror at feeling mortality was like, yeah asshole. Welcome to the slums of the mortal world, ya prissy bitch.
I've seen a lot of nods to Flight of the Navigator in here, but this is the first mention of The Last Starfighter. I saw that probably a dozen times because my best friend was obsessed for a while and we'd watch it every time I want over. I have very fond memories of that.
I grew up in the US and used to play the Asterix Sega game when I was a kid. I loved the art style and the characters.
We watched Mission Cleopatra in French class! I was able to find it online. All my friends thought I was a weirdo.
Me and my brothers loved the Asterix and Obelix books, we used to get them every time we went to the library. We probably read through most of them several times.
We also really loved the Tintin books, it was crazy to me when they made a movie from them, prior to that i had never known anybody else who had heard of Tintin.
If i ever got the opportunity I'd love to start collecting them, would be a real nostalgia kick.
Bonus points if you recorded it yourselves on VHS.
My daughter asked me what a VHS Player was last night. It was in one of her books, and I couldn't tell her how it works. But I got to tell her why we say "rewind" when we reverse a movie.
Data is written to a tape in one direction. It's on a very long magnetic ribbon. That ribbon is wrapped around two spools.
Once you read through the data you have to wind it all the way backwards to read it front to back again.
He got to explain to his daughter and you got to explain to the comment section, circle of life
They say you don't fully understand something until you can explain it to a 7 year old.
Complete with adverts for shops that no longer exist.
Oh, man. Idea:
When watching a vintage movie on a steaming service they should run ads from the same time period.
Watch an 80s movie with 80s McDonald's and Folgers commercials.
Homeward Bound
The Incredible Journey!
Honestly my plan is to try and get copies of my family's old home videos
Might be interesting to see if any kids I have being able to see when I was their age has any effect on how they see me as their parent
Mom and Dad Save the World and then finding out that Jeffrey Jones is a child molester.
It's incredibly disturbing, but then also somehow not entirely unexpected.
I really liked the movie titan AE and had it on VHS . When looking it up recently aparen it was really bad . Still might give it a rewatch some time though
Don't let the haters get you down. Titan A.E. is a classic
It isn't bad. The story and characters are a bit tropey, but the animation is gorgeous. I'd recommend watching it again. The nostalgia will probably more than make up for what it lacks.
Saw it in theaters. Still like it.
I love this movie.
For me it was a CD, not a tape, but I watched the hell out of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, dubbed in a monotone voice by a grand total of like three people.
Mine were Shrek, Dickie Roberts, and When a Stranger Calls
Oh shit, Shrek is a classic kids movie now isn't it...? :(
Yeah. My layers are shattering right now.
My condolences to anyone who grew up with the movie Plague Dogs
This was the movie Troll for me with Sonny Bobo.
For me it was The Boy Who Loved Trolls, The Boy Who Could Fly, Flight of the Navigator and the Rainbow Brite episode/movie that contained this song: https://youtu.be/zPRWuegS8l8?si=OYJ3x4vSSyWg2eNO
Cocktail with Tom Cruise, and Independence Day. I watched the fuck out of both of those movies in late Elementary/early Middle School.
Oh noo, kids have it less shitty today, how horrible for them.
Well i think the point is that today people just watch movies that have "aTleAsT 7 or 8 on imDb" or the top ranked show/album on [insert arbitrary streaming service] that week, and are never exposed to anything outside of the mainstream realm = Everyone you meet is just a clone of the person next to her/him.
On paper you are correct; You'd think people have vastly different tastes and interests but in reality they just watch/listen to/do what everyone else is watching/listening do/doing.
Maximum overdrive.
We didn't tape it, but it was saved to our DVR for years.
I still watch these movies that I used to own just on their respective streaming platforms. I cant tell you how many times I've rewatched the same handful of movies I had as a kid but in my adult years.
I feel this. Each night I have a handful of massive media libraries to choose from, and each night I choose something I know and like over anything they recommend.
Last night it was Iron Chef followed by Austin Powers
Yeah, about half the time when I sit down to watch a movie, it's one from my childhood. It's oddly comforting to me.
Captain Ron fam checking in!
EDIT: We also were frequent watchers of "Money Pit" and "The 'Burbs"....all movies which are pretty notable for..............being available for multiple watches.
I tried to watch Jingle all the way with my kids today. They pointed out how stupid that movie is, but I didn't have a lot of choices back then. I don't miss those days of shitty choices.
My daughter is 19 and that's one of her favourite Christmas movies.
I want to watch it every Christmas but my wife objects.
I suggested it last year for my family. No one (wife nor kids) wants to watch it this year.
Dude I remember getting so pumped up because of specials on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. In high school I loved being home to catch my favourite shows.
It was a bunch of shitty animated films on DVD for me (with a couple of Disney and Dreamworks films added into the mix). It’s probably the cause of my love of physical media.
The Adventures of Milo and Otis! I wonder if it is streaming anywhere?
How obscure are we talking ? Mine was Gandahar (1987). Try to beat that !
100%!!!
I co-host a podcast focused on superhero movies. Over breaks (summer and winter holidays) we'll typically do something different than our usual. This past summer we did a Jeff Bridges sci-fi double feature - Tron (the original) and Starman.
For this holiday season we just recorded an od pairing that I think could be called "what random VHS tapes did you grow up with?" The movies? Roadhouse and The Pirates of Penzance!
It was a direct to VHS release called "Berenstein Bears visit Sinbad in Shazam!". This was pretty close to Irontown. My mom said I had such an imagination with it and it was all static.
Aladdin
Tell that to my daughter watching that soviet cartoon about penguins I had as a video tape over and over again on youtube
My movie was princess and the goblin. I watched it on a 10x10 in monitor that had the VHS in while I worked at my family's business where I did labor at 10 years of age 30+ hours a week. Good times
Little Monsters and a Herbie movie.
I can't recall my family having obscure movies. Don't remember what it's actually about, but I at least remember we had one Home On The Range VHS. Don't recall ever watching it once, but this post made it come to the forefront of my memory
We could say the sme thing about music.
An American Tale for me and my closest(in age) siblings. Bonus because while my older brother and I were American born, we moved out of the country when I was 2, and my younger sister was born outside the states. We saw the movie first overseas, then often when we came back to the US (7 for me).
Alaska, I really wanted to pilot that yellow Piper Cub.
Also something Tom&Jerry related.
Also something Mickey Mouse related.
Can't remember much, TBF, because later there'd be a few DVDs with Master&Commander, LOTR, SW: RotS, making me forget everything before.
Mine was The Point.
🎵 Me and my Arrow 🎵
My aunt had a big cabinet full of home recorded tapes, our most favourites were the ones with BTTF, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the one with one and only episode of The Adventures of Sinbad.
The obscure movie for me was... Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. I still know every line of dialog from beginning to end any time I happen to see it on.
Same but Phantom Menace for me
Say what you will about the prequels, at least they're not the sequels.
No doubt
Someone in 20 years: Say what you will about the sequels, at least they're not the threquels.
Maybe not. I don't think the prequels are good movies, but there's no denying they're some dumb fun that certainly appeals to a lot of people. The sequels don't even have that going for them. I can't imagine anyone being nostalgic about the return of Palpatine.
What I'm getting at is that the way you're talking about the sequels is exactly the way people spoke about the prequels when they came out.
I hated the prequels when they came out, I still think they're basically unwatchable. But they weren't aimed at me, and a whole new generation of SW fans grew up with a deep fondness for them.
I expect we'll see the same thing with the sequels.
I see your point, but wow, I hope not.
Me too buddy, me too... but they will, and I have hope that someone will find a way to do the same thing to the sequels that people have done to the prequels.
Edit: changed my wording
Ha. My dad's copy of star wars was just star wars, no episode, no hope. I'm old.
I thought the "Episode IV" was always there? I'm talking the early 80s. I'm not exactly young either..
No, when Star Wars first came out in 1977 and the first home video releases (including the laserdisc transfer that was included with the 2006 DVD release as a bonus feature) it was just Star Wars.
Ahh yeah. Google tells me it wasn't until a re-release in 1981 that it was rebranded as Episode IV. You learn something new every day!
Mine was Scamper the Penguin.
'Holy Moses's
An absolutely stacked cast about Moses brother. Somehow very medicre
The Jungle Book starring Sabu. The only VHS my family owned from when I was 5 - 9.
I'm just barely old enough to relate to this
My wife and I used to have Parents with Randy Quaid on VHS. I love that movie but I haven't seen it in 20 years.
Judgement Night and Speed. I guess I got lucky, all my aunt had in the middle of fucking nowhere. Now two of my favorites
That soundtrack was unreal. One of my first CD purchases as a little dude -- got it in the Columbia House 0.99 "deal" lol.
Rikki Tikki Tavi!
Ours was The Ugly Dachshund.
Even though it was from 1966, I think the youngest person in it was Mako.
I couldn't find a single person from it who is still alive.
It's on Disney+. It's not great, but it was on a tape my parents used to put on for me so they could be undisturbed for an hour. I didn't even like the film that much, but there were two Chip and Dale cartoons at the end, so I watched it to get to them.
My mom liked that movie a lot. I also ran across it on Disney+ a while back and watched it with my kids. I watched a lot of those 60s and 70s Disney movies as a kid in the 80s.. Herbie, etc.
Mine was Labrynth, Aladin 3 and the George Clooney Batman.
The Glowfriends FTW
My wife has never seen home alone.
She can quote the second one...
"It's Christmas for me"
She's a monster.
For me it was a VHS of the first four episodes of the Swamp Thing animated cartoon
for me, that will be the random movie my brother asked me to download to my jellyfin server years ago.
Mine was Despicable Me and we had it on BluRay
Psalty iykyk
I'm gonna have kids just so I can make sure to raise them on the correct media diet. They're getting all the classic video game consoles, in order of generation, so when they get to something like Elden Ring they have the context all the way back to Space Invaders to appreciate it. And we're going to be a home of physical media, god damn it. We're not streaming things. We're putting CD's and vinyls and blu rays in their respective players. No iPads. Only books, comics, coloring books and notebooks.
How the fuck did parents start giving their kids iPads, anyway? Nintendo Switches? My first Gameboy cost $90 and I bought it with my own birthday money. A children's book from a young reader series cost $6 new in the 90s and is probably not much worse now. Less, if you buy it used, which is much easier now. And people are just like, "here, my 12 year old child, have an Xbox Series whatever, and an iPad, and a Galaxy phone. They're all pre-connected to your YouTube account. Don't let your other parent know that I told you that for Christmas we're getting you a gaming PC, Logitech C920, condenser microphone, wireless headset, gaming chair, scissor arm, and LED lighting array so you can chase the completely impossible dream of being a professional streamer. Can I kiss your feet while I'm at it? Will that make this a good half-birthday for you?" Unfuckingthinkable. Knock it off.
The concept of rewatching a movie is almost foreign to me now given that I have access to a library of tens of thousands of movies. It would have to be very good and something that whoever I'm with hasn't seen.
Of course I used to watch the same movie about every month or so back when I was growing up in the 90s.
That's curious because I find I rewatch more movies than ever before, since it's so easy to find them, and I already know whether I like them or not.
The first thing I do when Return of the King ends is put on Fellowship of the Ring.
This you, King? https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/my-precious-canadian-user-watched-lord-of-the-rings-361-times-on-netflix-1.3716170
That does prevent you from finding new movies you like though.
It might, but it definitely hasn't. I work in some fresh blood on the weekends, when I feel up to taking a chance. Actually, I've got a date to go see Dream Scenario (Nic Cage 🥰) just this week.
I have a daughter I enjoy showing movies I've already watched to. So I've been doing mostly rewatching, but with someone who has never seen, for example, Ferris Bueller's Day Off before.
The best was her reaction to Repo Man. We got to the end and she said, "all of that for a flying car?"
This is so sweet. Getting to show cool stuff you like to your kids must be one of the best things about being a parent. If I ever end up becoming one I'll show my kids all the great Pixar movies and also the Emperor's New Groove cause that one is a classic.
It really is, although you have to tailor it to their tastes, which means not showing them some movies you want to. She has absolutely no interest in seeing Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies, for example. But she loves cult movies, so I'm enjoying showing her those.
Life as a repo man is always intense.
I have trash taste, so I actually just continue to rewatch the same dumb shit I liked in the 90s so I don't have to make a decision. I actually paid real money to buy Not Another Teen Movie a few years back because I rewatch it about once a year. I think we have too many options and they're all on different services so it's like fuck it, Men In Black for the 85th time.
Same. And Demolition Man holds the distinction of being the only movie I rewatched on the same day.
We'd rent The Princess Bride and Flight of the Navigator a few times a year.
I don't think this is a technical limitation, I think young children really like repetition because their brains are still learning how to predict things
To the chagrin of parents who endure Cocomelon or Caillou rerun marathons.
This is true. My little brother watched "The Lion King" every day after school for a few months.
I once had the flu so badly I couldn't get out of bed or yell for help. My parents put on "Flushed Away" (movie about some fuckin rats) on dvd and it looped at least 4 times before anyone came back to turn it off. One of my core traumas
i suspect its been replaced with stumbling upon tentacle porn or 'whats this goatse' when youre 10.
Stumbled upon Spyro porn when I was 11.
Now I'm 25 and a massive furry degenerate.
Good riddance. Children should not be on the internet unsupervised
I used to be a big fan of Eevee and the eeveeloutions so I looked them up on DeviantArt and saw fetish art of a Flareon getting its toes tickled by a torture device. I didn’t know what fetishes were at the time and assumed it was a silly joke about how painful it is to get tickled. (I was very ticklish as a child.)
Memory unlocked.
When we moved to the middle of nowhere and couldn't even get channels over the air, my sister and I wore through every tape in the house.
The worst was being 9 years old desperately trying to find the second half of Lonesome Dove because you only got most of the episodes on some random VHS.
We must have worn the sound off of The Princess Bride, splash, Aladdin and the little mermaid. For a 9 year old boy living in the hinterlands after growing up in a city, Ariel singing "I want to be where the people are" hit me right in the feels.
I only had Aladdin Cassete tape with the soundtrack! not even the movie! I can still sing every single song lol
One jump, ahead of the breadline
One swing, ahead of the sword
I steal only what I can't afford ...
And that's Everything!
Ours was "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". I don't know why nor where but one day my step dad showed up with this movie for us. It was the only "kids" movie we ever own and we watched it a 1.000 times. looking back it wasn't as inocent as I thought at the time, but it was the 90s. Another movies we loved?! Howard the Duck ( the movie where Marty Mcfly mom fucked a duck) So yeah the 90s were kind of weird and had a lot of inapropriate movies for kids.
Oh come on, Down and Dirty Duck, by The Turtles, was a masterpiece that literally didn't show any possible nudity, since it was animated. That was a totally appropriate animated film for families. The main character was specifically interested in creating his own offspring as soon as possible!
/Do I need this?
Also: Who Framed Roger Rabbit was totally a documentary about the oil companies forcing the US into a car-centric society.
More specifically General Motors buying and dismantling city rail lines in order to sell more buses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Haha I was just talking to someone the other day about how much I loved Howard the Duck growing up. She was like "uhh... that wasn't really a kid's movie, was it?" Maybe not. Maybe it and similar movies are the reason us millennials are the way we are.
Me too! Love me some Howard!
We'll never again have such insane inapropriate movies! the 90s were a special moment in time lol
For some reason, I had the book version at a young age and I'm not sure if it was a weirder experience than actually watching the movie.
I would also add that if you had a neighbor or relative that had HBO, you'd be able to record on VHS a set of movies playing at that time. For many of us this may have been only a few months/years of movies. That set of movies would grow on you because thats all you had to watch on demand. Genre, theme, high budget, low budget, it didn't matter. Someone close to you popped in a 6 hour tape one day and pressed "record" before they went to work. You got the one movie you were hoping for and whatever came afterward.
And it probably started with this
It did and it was magical!
I remember thinking about how amazing the animators were that made the HBO logo spinning into frame toward the end. Turns out, they actually build a big chrome logo and shot it with practical photography as detailed in this Behind the Scenes program..
The method of creating the lights inside the O knocked me out. I miss the ingenuity behind practical effects.
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Turns out, they actually build a big chrome logo and shot it with practical photography
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I remember HBO used to have a new movie on at something like 6:00PM every Friday. But I didn't know what the movie would be ahead of time. So I would start the VCR recording as soon as I saw that screen at 6:00, then would wait patiently to see what the movie was that I was recording, hoping it was gonna be something good
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And it probably started with this
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Back in the day, me and my siblings recorded movies on VHS by sitting next to the TV and starting/stopping the recording for commercial breaks. The best movies were those with only small snippets of commercials, and my most treasured movie was a nearly "clean" copy of Die Hard that I've watched probably somewhere between 50-100 times.
I lived overseas when I was a kid and my grandma used to tape Saturday morning cartoons and mail them to me
She's a real one.
My father was a film historian. We had so many obscure movies on tape. I've seen tons and tons of movies, although not in the last 10-15 years in terms of recent ones.
I used to have a party trick where I would have someone open a random page of Leonard Maltin's movie guide and start listing titles and I could almost always summarize the plot of at least one.
No kids these days still have that. It's just some random film available on streaming. I've watched so much Trolls. Please send help, my kids won't stop watching
You need to get them hooked on something else. But be careful what you wish for because this will only give temporary relief until you start hating the new addiction and wish back the previous one. My girl went from binge rewatching a penguin cartoon to the little mole to a horribly animated newer cartoon about cats and dogs. And I fear we have reached the point at which we cannot hide or deny the existence of peppa pig any longer and I already regret dissing the kittens & puppies stuff because jfc I watched peppa pig for the first time today and I won't be able to bear this one for the love of God
Its a damn shame they only made that one. single. episode. that you watched today, right? Right?
Well I doubt the accents will change, or the plots will become more elaborate or realistic, or the drawing style will change. Right?
Peppa Pig is the worst thing that ever happened, and not just on TV. We had a short run of it with my younger son and it was an awful time. Now we get SpongeBob and/or Pokémon and it makes me so happy.
Im sure it's awful but it can't be worse than Caillou...
Agree with your take on Caillou. I also always thought Dora was yelling. My daughter never seemed to mind either though. 😕
My family watched the movie Clue about a million times. Can quote every line by heart. To this day, we only have to look in one another's eyes whenever a quotable opportunity comes up. "Are you trying to make me look stupid in front of the other guests?" "You don't need any help from me."
Brave little toaster. And fievel goes west.
Brave little toaster has gotta be the reason so many of us millennials are so freaking weird.
Fuck, I hated those movies though. I mean I watched them, but as a kid, I hard a hard time understanding what was going on. Same with The Rescuers, all dogs go to heaven and all those other 80s animated movies. Could have been because I was still learning English.
That was definitely why, although I watched cartoons in German without knowing the language and still enjoyed them. It was many, many years later that I learned Biene Maia was called Maya the Bee in English.
We watched Rescuers Down Under all the time, never had any idea it was actually a sequel, I didn't see the first one until I was in highschool.
Fievel was the goat. Well, mouse at least.
Tbe trauma of watching Fivel and ET as 3/4yo triggered a lifetime of anxiety. What's up with all the horrible traumatizing movies in the 80?! Bambi?! WTF, why show that to kids?
To teach them about death as part of a story with a happy ending. I think that The Lion King does it better though as they've already been briefed on the circle of life.
Oh life is already so hard and sad, let the kids have a couple of good anxiety free years! ET was so traumatizing as a kid that I refuse to ever watch it again lol
Be thankful you didn't watch Watership Down
Beetlejuice? Beetlejuice.
Beetlejuice.
I have a core memory of seeing this movie for my birthday when I was 6. God damn 80s movies were good at traumatizing a whole generation.
Same. For me it was Robocop 2 in about 2nd or 3rd grade at a birthday party sleepover.
We had a "kids tape" that had countless things recorded over each other. The second half was just a collage of the tail end of various cartoons and shows. When it got to the Abba-soundtracked documentary about a carnival it meant you were at the end of the tape.
I will never forgive my friend's sister taping over several Transformers episodes to record a Madonna marathon from MTV...
That was in the 80s and I'm still sour.
How about building a core memory around a weird French movie you only saw because it was in the wrong case when you rented it from Blockbuster?
All the 90s Disney animated films.
And Robocop.
I remember calling into the radio station and requesting a song. And then sitting around with friends waiting to hit record on our boombox!
My childhood predates the average person's private ownership of movies . As a child no one I knew owned anything other than home movies... The very idea of actually OWNING a copy of a movie would have been the height of opulence .... And back then, there was no way to play a 35mm movie without a 35 mm projector even if you could get your hands on a print
Hope Pizza Steve is doing well.
Is it true that movies were super cheap to watch back then? I've heard that that's partially the reason people would go watch the same movie multiple times, that and AC/socially.
Movies would also stay in theaters longer, sometimes multiple years. You would also see a lot more second runs. I'm not even that old but I used to get $1 tickets to the second run theater when I was a kid in the early 2000s. I don't think I've even seen a second run theater in the last decade.
The one in my hometown just went out of business 2 years ago due to the pandemic. It was $5 for adults, $3 for children under 14 and students of the local highschool if you present your student ID. They were an important part of the town, and practically everyone 2-3 towns over was talking about it when they closed.
Same, we had two in Metro Atlanta that were Covid Casualties
Goooooooood morning Vietnammmmmm
Bringing in the deep cuts:
Enemy Mine is a sentimental favorite of mine
"I still don't understand...what's a hooker?" "Ok,its him." Im glad somebody mentioned D.A.R.Y.L. That and Police Academy 2 were my go tos as a kid,since we lived in bfe.
We grew up watching Blues Brothers, we'd watch it like every other week. That movie holds up so well, i still watch it occasionally.
My neighbor had so many weird yet charming movies we didn't have in our house. There was this one where I think an English man took care of an otter for some reason? It was also at this neighbor's house that I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the first time. We had those 1am sillies and were in a permanent giggle fit.
Today’s childhoods will be defined by watching some semi-obscure streamer or meme video on YouTube that only your friends understand.
I have two. I grew up near Toronto in the 80s. Both were CityTV movies. They used to do a thing. I can't remember what it was called..
1 - SPACEBALLS!!!! ("F___! Even in the future nothing works!")
2 - Predator (there's a line where Arnold says, "That's one bad motherfucker." They only censored the word 'mother'. i was 8. best thing ever)
Mine was some weird fairy tale cartoon where a mom goat fills a wolf with rocks and they drown in a well.
My dad made bootleg copies of just about every vhs he rented until the mid 90s.
The ones that were for kids he imprinted with red or blue tape, all the others black.
I have no idea what my mom did with that wall of tapes once he was gone, at this point she doesn't remember either.
The main tape I remember rewatching was the Raggedy Ann movie from the 80s that got super psychedelic and had elements of body horror.
There was also an unsettling retelling of Beowulf via awkward English dub. Watched now, it would probably be charming, but 4 year old me was petrified when the cuddly looking Grendel bit off a man's head and you could see the stalks of arteries poking out of the neck stump.
I also watched the first episode of MadBalls more times than is probably healthy.
Ah yes, bootleg Harry and the Hendersons.
There is more obscure media than ever, it just connects less people you're likely to ever meet in person.
I grew up watching Stallone, Van Damme, and Schwarzenegger movies with my dad, since he monopolized the remote.
The only rated R movie we were allowed to watch was Demolition Man, which we had a tape of, so we watched it enough times for me to have fond feelings for Stallone.
I also had this on tape! It was where I learned about the concept biscuits and gravy. Except for I didn't actually learn what they were for another 10 years.
It made sense to young me that when Simon opened the sewer it would smell like digestive biscuits smothered in Bisto.
Haha wow, that's a horrible mental picture.
Demolition man is a classic
Or catching the same movie in different places over the course of a month before HBO changed its lineup.
This wasn’t on tape, but this move is Shaolin Soccer for me. We watched it so many times. I watched a couple of times recently too, and it holds up.
I completely forgot about Shaolin Soccer!
Are you me?
The daycare I went to after school when I was a kid had a few that got a lot of play, but the most obscure were a 1994 ABC Family animated rendition of The Secret Garden and a 1985 Hanna-Barbera Pound Puppies TV special.
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Mine was Idle Hands, which my grandma taped for me when she noticed me watching an Idle Hands marathon. My love for this movie at such a young age really helps to explain my sense of humor as an adult.
I actually kind of like the movie, but why would a channel play it on repeat?
Sometimes they just did that, I dunno why. Sometimes movies would play in a specific order then restart, and sometimes they'd play the same one back to back, usually if it was a newly released to TV movie.
Oh my goodness, I remember for some reason people kept giving or lending my parents all these long play VHS tapes full of movies. Random video mix tapes where you didn't know what you'd get next. Now and then some of them had kid movies (like the Sesame Street movie, Follow That Bird and there was at least one muppet movie), but most of them were PG and occasionally R-rated stuff, and I still watched it (except the R-rated stuff, but thankfully they were mostly pretty tame as I recall). I think my fave childhood movie was always on TV though: The Goonies.
Not a movie, exactly, but we had the VHS of the extended version of Michael Jackson's Thriller and the making of the video. It was over an hour long. And amazing.
Idk how obscure, but "Puff the Magic Dragon" was definitely a weird one for me. Kinda glad it got lost (probably thrown out, who knows). Almost feels like a fever dream, so much so, that I had to double check the movie even existed
In the land called Honoli!
Full-disclosure... I found it online and am about to re-watch it. Loved it as a kid, but does it hold-up? 23 minutes will tell
Edit: It... oddly holds up for me lol. Just as weird as I remembered, but kinda sweet (I truly thought when they sang "Honoli" they were saying "Harmony". It's been a long time)
One of the things I put on when my son refuses to go to sleep- 5 minutes in, he's out cold.
Lol, that's pretty ingenious. It's soothing and the animation is kinda boring, especially the beginning. Bravo
The Thief and the Cobbler!
You can recreate this by spending time working in a remote location, like a fishing vessel, that doesn't have any internet. All you can watch on your off time is what media you take out with you.
I watched "A River Runs Through It" probably 30 times one summer while commercial fishing, because it was one of the few movies we had that we all liked.
I should send my kids to work on a remote location, so that they can watch a VHS after a 14 hour shift? Sounds reasonable.
That's why I said "recreate"
Oddly, I think I'd like the opportunity to do something similar, if I could pick the media in advance. The same kind of vibe as Desert Island Discs.
so true.
my uncle had a tv. and 2 movies on vcr. I saw "Smokey and the bandit" more then a hundred times. and "the sting" 30-40 times..
Idk about obscure, but OLD Looney Toons classics and The Land Before Time (recorded FTA).
Part of me wants to show The Land Before Time to my kids, cause it was such a great movie. The other part of me knows that Little Foot's mom dying (sorry, 1980s spoilers) would absolutely wreck them.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Kris P. Bacon, @KrisWolfheart
kids today are missing out of the pre-streaming era, where your childhoold was at least partially defined by some semi-obscure movie your family just happened to own on tape and you watched several dozen times
I lived in an in-between, I have a lot of dvds (even 2 blu-rays I think) but they're not shitty at all, 90% were Disney films when original content was still a thing but we have rewatched them so many times, nowadays my little sister, born in the era of streaming can't handle not choosing what to watch on tv or not having a new film out every 2 months
Whenever I'm subjected to terrestrial TV, the only thing I end up watching is the second half of movies I've seen a dozen times before.
I grew up with only having 4 channels, but holy shit having some actual agency over what you watch was a game changer.
I had a VHS copy of the Empire Strikes Back that my uncle recorded for me when it played on one of our 3 local TV stations. For the holidays I had a recording of a bunch of the old holiday cartoons that would play in a marathon every Christmas, and one of Ghostbusters (for some reason it used to play every Christmas in the evening, so it became a Christmas movie for me).
Aside from that I'd mostly just rent the same VHS tapes from our local hole in the wall video rental place every weekend (Neverending Story and Inhumanoids) from the ages of 4-6. Then I think we got a real video store and my movie watching experience improved a bit. To be fair, the hole in the wall rental shop was probably only about 10 feet long and 6 feet wide inside, and the shelves of movies lined the walls, so there wasn't a lot to choose from.
I basically knew every line of Space Jam by heart. I even knew when to look for the funny parts of the VHS when rewinding it and watching the movie in reverse.
Hellooooooo The Great Outdoors and Harry and the Hendersons.
Or something that came up while channel-surfing on TV and decided to leave it on for a minute, put the control aside, and ended up watching the rest.
Back while in high school, one weeknight I stumbled across Jean Luc Godard's "A Bout De Soufflé" ("Breathless") on our town's local channel, at just the right moment when it seemed like the film was skipping. Intrigued, I left it on, soon enough figured out that this was intentional editing. By the end, my mind was blown and my way of looking at film and art had changed forever.
The weirdest one that comes to my mind, was a vhs tape of some stop motion lego stories that me and my brother watched a million times.
Surprised I just found the whole thing on YouTube
https://youtu.be/zJvu8X5OpT4?si=t89ja_1qtWt8ah14
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My brother and I kept watching The Go-bots meet(?) the Rock Lords. This was back in the late 80s to early 90s.
“The Cat from Outer Space” we used to rent it all the time from blockbuster for me and when they switched to DVDs we bought it
Cats Don't Dance. 20 years later I'm a furry.
Asterix. Doesn't really matter which of the 30+ comics, or the 5 or 6 movies. No one knows Asterix in The US.
Also: Flight of The Navigator, The Last Unicorn, or The Last Starfighter
I don't know Asterix, but I loved the shit out of Flight of the Navigator. I still drop a "compliance!" every once in a while when somebody asks me to do something.
Also, The Last Starfighter was fantastic and... The Last Unicorn was definitely a movie that was. That Unicorn was kind of an asshole, though. Watching it cringe in horror at feeling mortality was like, yeah asshole. Welcome to the slums of the mortal world, ya prissy bitch.
I've seen a lot of nods to Flight of the Navigator in here, but this is the first mention of The Last Starfighter. I saw that probably a dozen times because my best friend was obsessed for a while and we'd watch it every time I want over. I have very fond memories of that.
I grew up in the US and used to play the Asterix Sega game when I was a kid. I loved the art style and the characters.
We watched Mission Cleopatra in French class! I was able to find it online. All my friends thought I was a weirdo.
Me and my brothers loved the Asterix and Obelix books, we used to get them every time we went to the library. We probably read through most of them several times.
We also really loved the Tintin books, it was crazy to me when they made a movie from them, prior to that i had never known anybody else who had heard of Tintin.
If i ever got the opportunity I'd love to start collecting them, would be a real nostalgia kick.
Bonus points if you recorded it yourselves on VHS.
My daughter asked me what a VHS Player was last night. It was in one of her books, and I couldn't tell her how it works. But I got to tell her why we say "rewind" when we reverse a movie.
Data is written to a tape in one direction. It's on a very long magnetic ribbon. That ribbon is wrapped around two spools.
Once you read through the data you have to wind it all the way backwards to read it front to back again.
He got to explain to his daughter and you got to explain to the comment section, circle of life
They say you don't fully understand something until you can explain it to a 7 year old.
Complete with adverts for shops that no longer exist.
Oh, man. Idea: When watching a vintage movie on a steaming service they should run ads from the same time period.
Watch an 80s movie with 80s McDonald's and Folgers commercials.
Homeward Bound
The Incredible Journey!
Honestly my plan is to try and get copies of my family's old home videos
Might be interesting to see if any kids I have being able to see when I was their age has any effect on how they see me as their parent
Mom and Dad Save the World and then finding out that Jeffrey Jones is a child molester.
It's incredibly disturbing, but then also somehow not entirely unexpected.
I really liked the movie titan AE and had it on VHS . When looking it up recently aparen it was really bad . Still might give it a rewatch some time though
Don't let the haters get you down. Titan A.E. is a classic
It isn't bad. The story and characters are a bit tropey, but the animation is gorgeous. I'd recommend watching it again. The nostalgia will probably more than make up for what it lacks.
Saw it in theaters. Still like it.
I love this movie.
For me it was a CD, not a tape, but I watched the hell out of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, dubbed in a monotone voice by a grand total of like three people.
Mine were Shrek, Dickie Roberts, and When a Stranger Calls
Oh shit, Shrek is a classic kids movie now isn't it...? :(
Yeah. My layers are shattering right now.
My condolences to anyone who grew up with the movie Plague Dogs
This was the movie Troll for me with Sonny Bobo.
For me it was The Boy Who Loved Trolls, The Boy Who Could Fly, Flight of the Navigator and the Rainbow Brite episode/movie that contained this song: https://youtu.be/zPRWuegS8l8?si=OYJ3x4vSSyWg2eNO
Cocktail with Tom Cruise, and Independence Day. I watched the fuck out of both of those movies in late Elementary/early Middle School.
Oh noo, kids have it less shitty today, how horrible for them.
Well i think the point is that today people just watch movies that have "aTleAsT 7 or 8 on imDb" or the top ranked show/album on [insert arbitrary streaming service] that week, and are never exposed to anything outside of the mainstream realm = Everyone you meet is just a clone of the person next to her/him.
On paper you are correct; You'd think people have vastly different tastes and interests but in reality they just watch/listen to/do what everyone else is watching/listening do/doing.
Maximum overdrive. We didn't tape it, but it was saved to our DVR for years.
I still watch these movies that I used to own just on their respective streaming platforms. I cant tell you how many times I've rewatched the same handful of movies I had as a kid but in my adult years.
I feel this. Each night I have a handful of massive media libraries to choose from, and each night I choose something I know and like over anything they recommend.
Last night it was Iron Chef followed by Austin Powers
Yeah, about half the time when I sit down to watch a movie, it's one from my childhood. It's oddly comforting to me.
Captain Ron fam checking in!
EDIT: We also were frequent watchers of "Money Pit" and "The 'Burbs"....all movies which are pretty notable for..............being available for multiple watches.
I tried to watch Jingle all the way with my kids today. They pointed out how stupid that movie is, but I didn't have a lot of choices back then. I don't miss those days of shitty choices.
My daughter is 19 and that's one of her favourite Christmas movies.
I want to watch it every Christmas but my wife objects.
I suggested it last year for my family. No one (wife nor kids) wants to watch it this year.
Dude I remember getting so pumped up because of specials on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. In high school I loved being home to catch my favourite shows.
It was a bunch of shitty animated films on DVD for me (with a couple of Disney and Dreamworks films added into the mix). It’s probably the cause of my love of physical media.
The Adventures of Milo and Otis! I wonder if it is streaming anywhere?
How obscure are we talking ? Mine was Gandahar (1987). Try to beat that !
100%!!!
I co-host a podcast focused on superhero movies. Over breaks (summer and winter holidays) we'll typically do something different than our usual. This past summer we did a Jeff Bridges sci-fi double feature - Tron (the original) and Starman.
For this holiday season we just recorded an od pairing that I think could be called "what random VHS tapes did you grow up with?" The movies? Roadhouse and The Pirates of Penzance!
It was a direct to VHS release called "Berenstein Bears visit Sinbad in Shazam!". This was pretty close to Irontown. My mom said I had such an imagination with it and it was all static.
Aladdin
Tell that to my daughter watching that soviet cartoon about penguins I had as a video tape over and over again on youtube
My movie was princess and the goblin. I watched it on a 10x10 in monitor that had the VHS in while I worked at my family's business where I did labor at 10 years of age 30+ hours a week. Good times
Little Monsters and a Herbie movie.
I can't recall my family having obscure movies. Don't remember what it's actually about, but I at least remember we had one Home On The Range VHS. Don't recall ever watching it once, but this post made it come to the forefront of my memory
We could say the sme thing about music.
An American Tale for me and my closest(in age) siblings. Bonus because while my older brother and I were American born, we moved out of the country when I was 2, and my younger sister was born outside the states. We saw the movie first overseas, then often when we came back to the US (7 for me).
Alaska, I really wanted to pilot that yellow Piper Cub.
Also something Tom&Jerry related.
Also something Mickey Mouse related.
Can't remember much, TBF, because later there'd be a few DVDs with Master&Commander, LOTR, SW: RotS, making me forget everything before.
Mine was The Point. 🎵 Me and my Arrow 🎵
My aunt had a big cabinet full of home recorded tapes, our most favourites were the ones with BTTF, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the one with one and only episode of The Adventures of Sinbad.
The obscure movie for me was... Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. I still know every line of dialog from beginning to end any time I happen to see it on.
Same but Phantom Menace for me
Say what you will about the prequels, at least they're not the sequels.
No doubt
Someone in 20 years: Say what you will about the sequels, at least they're not the threquels.
Maybe not. I don't think the prequels are good movies, but there's no denying they're some dumb fun that certainly appeals to a lot of people. The sequels don't even have that going for them. I can't imagine anyone being nostalgic about the return of Palpatine.
What I'm getting at is that the way you're talking about the sequels is exactly the way people spoke about the prequels when they came out.
I hated the prequels when they came out, I still think they're basically unwatchable. But they weren't aimed at me, and a whole new generation of SW fans grew up with a deep fondness for them.
I expect we'll see the same thing with the sequels.
I see your point, but wow, I hope not.
Me too buddy, me too... but they will, and I have hope that someone will find a way to do the same thing to the sequels that people have done to the prequels.
Edit: changed my wording
Ha. My dad's copy of star wars was just star wars, no episode, no hope. I'm old.
I thought the "Episode IV" was always there? I'm talking the early 80s. I'm not exactly young either..
No, when Star Wars first came out in 1977 and the first home video releases (including the laserdisc transfer that was included with the 2006 DVD release as a bonus feature) it was just Star Wars.
Ahh yeah. Google tells me it wasn't until a re-release in 1981 that it was rebranded as Episode IV. You learn something new every day!
Mine was Scamper the Penguin.
'Holy Moses's
An absolutely stacked cast about Moses brother. Somehow very medicre
The Jungle Book starring Sabu. The only VHS my family owned from when I was 5 - 9.
I'm just barely old enough to relate to this
My wife and I used to have Parents with Randy Quaid on VHS. I love that movie but I haven't seen it in 20 years.
Judgement Night and Speed. I guess I got lucky, all my aunt had in the middle of fucking nowhere. Now two of my favorites
That soundtrack was unreal. One of my first CD purchases as a little dude -- got it in the Columbia House 0.99 "deal" lol.
Rikki Tikki Tavi!
Ours was The Ugly Dachshund.
Even though it was from 1966, I think the youngest person in it was Mako.
I couldn't find a single person from it who is still alive.
It's on Disney+. It's not great, but it was on a tape my parents used to put on for me so they could be undisturbed for an hour. I didn't even like the film that much, but there were two Chip and Dale cartoons at the end, so I watched it to get to them.
My mom liked that movie a lot. I also ran across it on Disney+ a while back and watched it with my kids. I watched a lot of those 60s and 70s Disney movies as a kid in the 80s.. Herbie, etc.
Mine was Labrynth, Aladin 3 and the George Clooney Batman.
The Glowfriends FTW
My wife has never seen home alone. She can quote the second one...
"It's Christmas for me"
She's a monster.
For me it was a VHS of the first four episodes of the Swamp Thing animated cartoon
for me, that will be the random movie my brother asked me to download to my jellyfin server years ago.
Mine was Despicable Me and we had it on BluRay
Psalty iykyk
I'm gonna have kids just so I can make sure to raise them on the correct media diet. They're getting all the classic video game consoles, in order of generation, so when they get to something like Elden Ring they have the context all the way back to Space Invaders to appreciate it. And we're going to be a home of physical media, god damn it. We're not streaming things. We're putting CD's and vinyls and blu rays in their respective players. No iPads. Only books, comics, coloring books and notebooks.
How the fuck did parents start giving their kids iPads, anyway? Nintendo Switches? My first Gameboy cost $90 and I bought it with my own birthday money. A children's book from a young reader series cost $6 new in the 90s and is probably not much worse now. Less, if you buy it used, which is much easier now. And people are just like, "here, my 12 year old child, have an Xbox Series whatever, and an iPad, and a Galaxy phone. They're all pre-connected to your YouTube account. Don't let your other parent know that I told you that for Christmas we're getting you a gaming PC, Logitech C920, condenser microphone, wireless headset, gaming chair, scissor arm, and LED lighting array so you can chase the completely impossible dream of being a professional streamer. Can I kiss your feet while I'm at it? Will that make this a good half-birthday for you?" Unfuckingthinkable. Knock it off.