Childhood Movies Memories!

[moody]

Hey,

Just caught the end of one of the Ice Age animation movies and made me think of the kids films from my childhood.

I clearly remember that my local cinema used to do saturday/sunday daytime showings of the Star Wars movies, i think I saw the first one around 6/7 times there.

I remember finding the end of E.T a bit upsetting when my mum took me.

The only full length animations were from Disney, as they are mostly now, I had the Jungle Book, Snow White & my parents would buy VHS of the others that were doing the rounds at the time, such as Robin Hood.

I remember early teens, seeing Bowie in Labyrinth, Dark Crystal which was mind blowing and Flight of the Navigator were all favorites.

Going to see a movie doesn't quite have the same appeal these days even if it is a title that has caught my eye.

What movies do you remember from your childhood, did you have any favourites?.

 

[Reno]

All my early films in the late 60s/early 70s were the classic Disney animated movies like Snow White and Bambie, etc. They used to re-release them every few years. When I got a little older, dinosaur films were my next big passion. The Land That Time Forgot was a huge success and as a result they re-released One Million Years BC and When Dinosaurs Ruled The World, all of which I went to see several times. When there weren't dinosaurs, any type of giant monster would do. My local cinema had kids matinees where they showed Godzilla films and I even liked the rubbish 70s King Kong.

In my early/mid teens a film I really connected with was The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane. It's like a sinister version of Pippi Longstocking where Jodie Foster plays a 13 year old who keeps the fact that her parents have died a secret, so she doesn't get taken into care and can keep living on her own. I don't think that film would be made today because she gets to smoke grass, commit fraud, fuck a boy and kill people and she remains a sympathetic character throughout. Martin Sheen plays the neighborhood paedophile who is closing in on her. One of the strangest coming of age films ever made. Watched it again recently and it still holds up.

 

[moody]

did she kill people with cyanide?

 

[existentialist]

Hey,

Just caught the end of one of the Ice Age animation movies and made me think of the kids films from my childhood.

I clearly remember that my local cinema used to do saturday/sunday daytime showings of the Star Wars movies, i think I saw the first one around 6/7 times there.

I remember finding the end of E.T a bit upsetting when my mum took me.

The only full length animations were from Disney, as they are mostly now, I had the Jungle Book, Snow White & my parents would buy VHS of the others that were doing the rounds at the time, such as Robin Hood.

I remember early teens, seeing Bowie in Labyrinth, Dark Crystal which was mind blowing and Flight of the Navigator were all favorites.

Going to see a movie doesn't quite have the same appeal these days even if it is a title that has caught my eye.

What movies do you remember from your childhood, did you have any favourites?.

Only two: Jungle Book, and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

The Jungle Book was brilliant, although it may have been spoiled by having my very young brother there at the same time.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks was just...silly. I didn't like it at all.

I saw them both at the Surbiton Odeon, now long converted into a Waitrose

 

[sovereignb]

I remember vowing that one day, i would go down that waterslide in The Goonies. Hasnt happened yet but there is still hope

I also remember my mum taking me (for the first and only time) to see Big Foot and The Hendersons at Elephant & Castle Coronet (now a soon to be demolished nightclub). There was another cinema right opposite at the time which seemed kinda pointless.

 

[existentialist]

I remember vowing that one day, i would go down that waterslide in The Goonies. Hasnt happened yet but there is still hope

I also remember my mum taking (for the first and only time) to see Big Foot and The Hendersons at Elephant & Castle Coronet (now a soon to be demolished nightclub). There was another cinema right opposite at the time which seemed kinda pointless.

They were everywhere, once. By the time I was old enough to go, Surbiton was the nearest, but to my surprise there had been one in my home town of Tolworth, right by the bypass.

ViewFinder - Image Details

 

[DaveCinzano]

The first film I ever saw at the cinema (and I think it would have been first film, full stop, as we didn't have a telly at the time) was E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. It totally blew my four year old mind, Spielberg manipulated every sense and emotion I had. There are three films which trigger certain responses no matter how many times I have seen them, and this is one of them.

The next thing I saw at the pictures was the Winter 1983 double-bill of the re-released The Jungle Book and Mickey's Christmas Carol. I enjoyed them, but, y'know, time dragged a bit. I enjoyed The Fox And The Hound (1984) a lot more, as hokey as it plainly is to me now.

That year I also went to see Star Trek III: The Search For Spock as a birthday treat for a friend. I wasn't a Trek fan, it was not thrill-a-minute (lots of pointy-eared dudes talking), and I think I was sick. Certainly someone was sick (too many sweeties and fizzy pop). Only other lasting memory was of someone's older brother wisely sloping off to a different screen to watch The Karate Kid instead.

I don't think I saw another film at the cinema until 1989, when Batman came out. I dragged my dad to it; even though he had no interest in it, he gamely came too, which I think was sweet of him.

 

[Reno]

did she kill people with cyanide?

Spoiler

She does poison someone, I can't remember if it was with cyanide.[\spoiler]

 

[DaveCinzano]

In my early/mid teens a film I really connected with was The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane. It's like a sinister version of Pippi Longstocking...

Spoiler: SPOILERY STUFF

where Jodie Foster plays a 13 year old who keeps the fact that her parents have died a secret, so she doesn't get taken into care and can keep living on her own. I don't think that film would be made today because she gets to smoke grass, commit fraud, fuck a boy and kill people and she remains a sympathetic character throughout. Martin Sheen plays the neighborhood paedophile who is closing in on her. One of the strangest coming of age films ever made. Watched it again recently and it still holds up.

If anyone hasn't seen it, it is well worth your time - currently on Netflix

 

[zoooo]

That sounds kind of amazing.

 

[clicker]

Aged about 11 years I remember Born free and Living Free at Lewisham Odeon. The landscapes seemed vast on the wide screens. Also The incredible Journey about a dog, a cat and a something traveling across America? I loved bedknobs and broomsticks, the interaction of cartoon and real people and an actual flying bed , ticked many a box. The school took us to see Disney's fantasia, still in my top three movies , but I don't really watch films now. Then it all got a bit dark with David Essex's Stardust and Slade's Flame.

 

[Sirena]

When I was growing up, Saturday morning matinees were the place to be. They even had a song....



One film I remember today was 'Anne of the Indies' (Anne of the Indies (1951) - IMDb), based on the life of female pirate Anne Bonney. I thought she was just so cool and it broke my heart at the end when she refused to give up and died on her ship....

 

[hot air baboon]

.....seeing this at an open air cinema on holiday in Greece...dubbed and subtitled into various languages....and all these years I thought it was masked raider

 

[Sirena]

When I was 8, I went to see 'The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold' with my brother.

It was preceded by a b movie sci-fi horror called 'The Flame Barrier' (The Flame Barrier (1958) - IMDb). It was about a sputnik-type thing falling back from space into a jungle. But it had been infected with some space-blob.

So it sat and pulsed in a cave and its RADIATION (a subliminal horror in the 50s) would increase every two hours and it kept burning people and turning them into skeletons and it couldn't be stopped.....

It scared the wits out of me and, all that night, I had nightmares about burning and skeletons and I could hear my mother complaining that they shouldn't be showing that sort of film with a kids' cowboy film....

 

[Saffy]

I went to the premier of ET when I was little as my brother was on the children's ward at the Middlesex hospital. I don't remember much as I was only little.
We went to a double bill of Indiana Jones films, we took our own picnic to eat in the cinema.
Also remember going to see Amedeus, which I loved as a kid.

 

[Epona]

I love the photos of art deco cinemas in this thread!

My earliest childhood memory of cinema was when I was taken to see Dumbo, I got really upset about a lot of it.

clicker - I remember The Incredible Journey, it was (iirc) a Labrador, an English Bull Terrier, and a Siamese cat finding their way home. Bedknobs and Broomsticks was also great.

 

[krtek a houby]

My mom brought me to see this when it came out in Dublin. My first visit to the cinema.

Walt Disney's Robin Hood

This is the first movie I remember on telly

The Phantom Tollbooth

And the Banana Splits movie which seems to have vanished from collective memory

 

[DotCommunist]

The Last Starfighter remains one of the most cruelly undervalued kids films.

 

[stdP]

No mention of Sammy's Super T-Shirt and the Battle of Billy's Pond and all those other naff films from the Children's Film Foundation?

Naffness aside, the only film I can consciously remember seeing and having a big effect on me was when I saw The Princess Bride on TV when I was about 6... loved it to bits and had no idea WTF it was called and think I was about 11 before I rediscovered it.

And of course there's abject horror of The Never-ending Story and Return to Oz which I saw at around about the same time give or take a year or two. Don't know why I found the film where someone got tortured to death as hilarious whilst some punks with wheels on their hands were bowel-looseningly terrifying but I guess it explains why I've never trusted people wearing rollerblades and have always had a sneaky regard for soft-spoken murderers...

 

[bi0boy]

London Bridge is falling down la la la la..

They used to show this 15 minute short called That's the Truth ABout Mother Goose before some animated features:

 

[hot air baboon]

.....ooh and my dad taking me on my birthday to this cinema in Victoria Station that showed cartoons.....a memory now rather sullied as it was mentioned in an article on the paedophile scandal as a notorious perverts pick up point for rent boys....

 

[sovereignb]

...and i remember my friend lending me this VHS tape as a child. I was obsessed with the stickers but the film is not even Razzie worthy. Loved it at the time though
Edit: actually looks kinda creepy looking at it now

 

[DotCommunist]

 

[adidaswoody]

Thundercats the movie!!
I also had toyland broadcast on video and watched it religiously every night!
I had a few films taped off the TV that I watched lots too, bill and ted, super Mario bros the non animated movie, Natural born killers (which I now know I shouldn't have watched) and ferngully

 

[Nanker Phelge]

When The North Wind Blows was my first film. It was released in 74 in the US, but I think I saw it 75/76.

My dad took me to a late afternoon showing, just after school, and it was packed out (god knows why) and we had to go back for an early evening showing. My mum made me take a nap before had so I wouldn't fall asleep in the cinema. I was only 5. I remember being excited about being out 'late at night'.

The next film my Dad took me to see was Jaws ....that was certainly in 1976.

Another film that always sticks in my head is Saturn 3 with Farrah Fawcett, Kirk Douglas and Harvey Keitel. I saw that as part of a double bill with Superman II.

 

[hot air baboon]

...Guns in the Heather ( Kurt Russell's first film role ) in a double bill with the The Love Bug....

...and blimey - here's a picture of it...!

....Chariots of the Gods...a film doco. version of the book that was the B movie in another double bill with god knows what...

...Day of the Dolphin...with George C Scott....the film Polanski was working on when his wife met her appalling end...

...that weird French sci-fi animated film Fantastic Planet in a double bill with a surfer doco. with Floyd's Echoes as the soundtrack...

 

[krtek a houby]

I'd love to see these ones again, although I imagine they'd look a bit ropey now

 

[existentialist]

I'd love to see these ones again, although I imagine they'd look a bit ropey now

Well, it looks like torrents exist for all of them...

 

[krtek a houby]

Well, it looks like torrents exist for all of them...

Excellent! Now I have to pretend I know what a torrent is

 

[existentialist]

Excellent! Now I have to pretend I know what a torrent is

It's a way of downloading large files...like video files containing 1960s B-movies