Bill Murray: The Gateway Drug.

Though I had seen other cartoons and various films, the first movie I remember being burned into my brain was a VHS copy of Ghostbusters which I received for my fourth birthday in 1985. I will never forget shaking excitedly when the VCR started humming and clicking, the flash of a notice from the FBI warning me not to charge others to watch it with me, and the intense score of Elmer Bernstein blaring as I caught a glimpse of the New York Public Library lion statue.  With my eyes wide and my jaw dropped, I was ushered into the world of film fandom.  Building on a theme, my parents also gave me a box of Ghostbusters cereal, essentially sugar dipped bits of Styrofoam and marshmallows.  Two bowls was enough, though I held on to the empty box long after the stale bits of ick had been tossed.  Thus began my love affair with film.  I remember having nightmares, as any four year old who saw Sigourney Weaver groped by demons and morphing into a Hell hound should.  The many days without sleep were a small price to pay to feed this strange compulsion to watch this film over and over and over again until the tape was literally wearing thin.  I became an insatiable movie buff before the ripe old age of five.  My parents, who were both film junkies, fed my hunger with the collected works of Jerry Lewis, the complete James Bond (I'm an expert on the entire series), Mel Brooks, John Candy, Doris Day, Peter Sellers, Laurel & Hardy, John Wayne, Alfred Hitchcock, and Jack Lemmon (to name a few).  I was the only middle schooler I knew who could recite all of Some Like It Hot and found W.C. Fields hilarious.  For my Mom; she loved murder mysteries, classic horror, and musicals.  My Dad watched anything that showcased cars; American Graffiti, Grand Prix, LeMans, Bullitt, and Gumball Rally, as well as any Elvis Presley musical or British comedy he could find.  As I matured, so did my taste in film, as I discovered Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch as well as the endless frontier of foreign cinema with Fellini, Kurosawa, Murnau, and Herzog.  These new found gems only added to the layers I had acquired.  My propensity for Cinematic sophistication became balanced when I discovered schlock and exploitation films in college.  I grew to believe Ed Wood was a misunderstood genius, who with proper funding could have been as accomplished as Orson Welles, and Troma's Toxic Avenger sequels are actually better than the first.  This melting pot of ideas has created a functioning addict who hasn’t watched a TV series regularly since the late 90s because to me, a TV functions as a means to watch movies.  My collection, which married into my wife’s own pile of DVDs 7 years ago, numbers in the 800s.  They all sit on two long shelves placed flush together.  It is one of the first things people see when they walk into our home, and it never goes unnoticed.  My family still speaks in our own language of movie quotes.  So when Mr. Rathbone ran his proposal for this blog by me, I was more than eager to contribute.  The following should prove I am more than qualified:

1. I believe that Russ Meyer's Supervixens is a better film than Citizen Kane.
2. I believe the best anime Japan produced was Robot Carnival.
3. I have seen at least four Alejandro Jodorowsky films: Holy Mountain (my favorite) El Topo, Fando Y Lis, and Sante Sangre. 
4. I have seen Roger Corman's Fantastic Four as well as the Captain America crapfest from 1990.
5. and Finally, I own two Cook and Moore films; Bedazzled and Hound of the Baskervilles.  

I hope to share some of my passion and knowledge acquired over the years by bringing you titles you may not have known existed.  As a side note, I still get that rush when I see the Columbia Pictures lady with her torch and hear the eerie score at the beginning of Ghostbusters.  The nightmares subsided but I’m still tasting that cereal (shudder).

In the way of a mission statement...

“My sense of the past is vivid and slow. I hear every sign and see every shadow."
-Barry Hannah

In the early eighties, when I was a wee lad, there was a place close to our suburban home called Everything Video.  You could go there and rent movies and a VCR. (This was way pre-Blockbuster, and way pre-owning-your-own-VCR.)  On many a Friday evening my dad and I would head down there and rent VHS’s (they also had Betamax) and a VCR and head back home and dig in for the weekend. This was exciting to me, lazy little shit that I was.  Screw fishing!  Binge movie-watching was much preferred.  You could stay home and you didn’t have to kill anything.

My dad’s taste is eclectic, and he was always very permissive with my brother and me, so I was exposed to a wide array of cinema at a very early age.  If I were arrogant about such modest matters I might even say that my viewing was “prodigious.”  By the time I was eleven, I was well on the road to cinephilia.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Marathon Man, Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and on and on.  (In high school I filled in the gaps.)

Those weekends with my dad, staying up late, watching everything from Fright Night to Fort Apache, were aesthetically formative.  I love movies.  I love all kinds of movies.  But, mostly, I love the odd, bad and out of the way.  I love The Beastmaster and Krull.  I love Ice Pirates and Time Bandits.  I watched Brazil when I was twelve and had no idea what was happening, but loved every minute of it.  In the middle of the night, sitting next to my dad, I watched Richard Lynch rise out of a pool of blood in The Sword and the Sorcerer and nearly shit myself out of pure adolescent fear.  Heavy Metal, which is practically pornographic, scarred me for life when I saw it for the first time at the age of ten.

My dad loved to watch old movies, too, especially stuff from the thirties and forties.  The Thin Man, is one of his favorites.  Can you imagine a “Millennial” sitting through The Thin Man?  I did.  And, I’d wager, lots of guys my age did.  Gen Exers seem to be an excessively nostalgic lot.  I know I was, and still am.  (To this day, by the way, William Powell is, to my mind, about as cool as they come.)   

Monster movies from the fifties are particularly special to me.  Perhaps it’s because my dad grew up watching that stuff, but it’s also the tone of those films.  The innocent, playful, heroic mood is captivating.  Those movies are filled with wonder, with a thrilling sense of “make believe.”  And, of course, they’re cheesy and awful, in the best way possible.

Nostalgia.  That’s a big part of this, I suppose.  Nostalgia for the stuff of my childhood.  Nostalgia for the stuff of the past, in general.  Also, a desire to find new-to-me things, not just to uncover the odd, hard-to-find things I've already seen.  That’s reason enough, I guess.

I'd also like to extend an invitation to other nostalgia-haunted nerds. If you find some old, weird, obscure cinema-related something (art, a clip, an essay, an old film review, anything) and think it pertinent, send it our way.  In the meantime, we'll watch and look and "fly low," and find some cool stuff to put up.

Most Earnestly & (not ironically) Tongue-in-Cheekedly,

-Basil Rathbone.

"What a puny plan."

Coming soon! A blog celebrating the bad, obscure and the forgotten.  Movie reviews, clips, essays, doggerel, various and sundry other items, as well as, we hope, interviews.  It's "a puny plan," but aren't they all? Anyway, keep checking back with us, and please be patient.  We promise to have some fun and cool stuff happening here.