Movies you're stunned that people haven't seen....

[Worf]

This is kind of an odd premise so stick with me here. I was recently talking to a friend who's a film nut like me and as we were talking about great film dramas I mentioned "The Godfather" one and two. She replied off-handidly THAT SHE'D NEVER SEEN EITHER OF THEM! Now, I could see hearing that from some Luddite fresh from the hills of Afghanistan but this woman had taken film courses for goodness sake!!!! I was stunned, shocked, flabbergasted. "Saturday Night Fever" sure, it was disco you missed it, "Animal House" fine, you were out of town that year... but the GODFATHER? Blasphemy. I'm less shocked when people say they never seen "The Exorcist" because that film can really put the zap on your head if you're impressionable.

What ommissions in folk's film repetoire have surprised you the most?

Worf

 

[MisterCairo]

Funny you should pose this question, as the Godfather was listed as the number one film in a study or survey of films people SAID THEY'D SEEN but in fact had NOT SEEN, precisely for the purpose of not appearing to be unwordly!

Back to your question, films people haven't seen which surprises me:

Star Wars (original) - reason: pure popularity, time since release and cultural influences.
Casablanca: see above.
The Wizard of Oz: above.
Withnail and I: it's the greatest film ever created, WHY hasn't everyone seen it???

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

I've never seen E. T. My lab partner and I were informed by one of his co-workers that "We couldn't live unless we saw E. T." Russ said that we were both a little suicidal and weren't going to go see it. Next one of my other college friends said that he got beat by the girlfriend for giggling during E. T.'s "death scene". Tim is a perfect gentleman (usually), but to quote "the whole idea of a wad of rubber cement dying cracked me up, sorry!"

Other than that, one of the currently 20 year old neighbors didn't finish Casablanca because it was too boring. Jeez.

later

 

[rue]

This is kind of an odd premise so stick with me here. I was recently talking to a friend who's a film nut like me and as we were talking about great film dramas I mentioned "The Godfather" one and two. She replied off-handidly THAT SHE'D NEVER SEEN EITHER OF THEM! Now, I could see hearing that from some Luddite fresh from the hills of Afghanistan but this woman had taken film courses for goodness sake!!!! I was stunned, shocked, flabbergasted. "Saturday Night Fever" sure, it was disco you missed it, "Animal House" fine, you were out of town that year... but the GODFATHER? Blasphemy. I'm less shocked when people say they never seen "The Exorcist" because that film can really put the zap on your head if you're impressionable.

What ommissions in folk's film repetoire have surprised you the most?

Worf

I can not believe there are people out there that haven't seen the Godfather :eeek:

Withnail and I: it's the greatest film ever created, WHY hasn't everyone seen it???

I've never even heard of it

 

[rue]

Gone With The Wind.

 

[Peregrine]

Quadrophenia. Not sure how much exposure that got outside of the UK though...

 

[MisterCairo]

I've never even heard of it

:eeek::eeek::eeek:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094336/

 

[MisterCairo]

Quadrophenia. Not sure how much exposure that got outside of the UK though...

It's out here. Brilliant!

 

[BigFitz]

"Cool Hand Luke"

 

[LizzieMaine]

"It's A Wonderful Life." Anybody who was alive and functional in the 80s or 90s would have had that one thrust at them from all directions every December.

You'd be surprised how many people over 60 have never seen "Star Wars." They were old enough when it came out that the whole phenomenon smacked of kiddie sci-fi space opera, something they'd long since outgrown. If you mention Star Wars to my mother, her only frame of reference is "all them stupid little dolls your brother had."

 

[rue]

:eeek::eeek::eeek:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094336/

lol I'll try and remedy that

 

[rue]

"It's A Wonderful Life." Anybody who was alive and functional in the 80s or 90s would have had that one thrust at them from all directions every December.

My mother has never watched it, because of the scene where Zuzu says "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings." She said that scene in the preview makes her gag. Sometimes I wonder how we're related :eusa_doh:

 

[MisterCairo]

My mother has never watched it, because of the scene where Zuzu says "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings." She said that scene in the preview makes her gag. Sometimes I wonder how we're related :eusa_doh:

Hot dog!

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Though I'm a big Stanley Kubrick fan, the one movie I've never seen, or more accurately, never got around to seeing, is A Clockwork Orange.

I've never seen E. T. My lab partner and I were informed by one of his co-workers that "We couldn't live unless we saw E. T." Russ said that we were both a little suicidal and weren't going to go see it. Next one of my other college friends said that he got beat by the girlfriend for giggling during E. T.'s "death scene". Tim is a perfect gentleman (usually), but to quote "the whole idea of a wad of rubber cement dying cracked me up, sorry!"

Me neither. And to this day I've never seen E.T. From all I heard about it at the time and since, E.T. was a reflection of Spielberg's Disney phase when he aspired to be the next Walt Disney.

 

[Flicka]

"It's A Wonderful Life." Anybody who was alive and functional in the 80s or 90s would have had that one thrust at them from all directions every December.

Any American who was alive and functional in the 80s or 90s would have had that one thrust at them from all directions every December, maybe. It wasn't ever broadcasted here in the 80s or 90s.

I saw it (for the first time) this Christmas so now I don't have to again. I know lots of people love it, but it was most decidedly not my thing.

I'm surprised when people haven't seen Gone With The Wind too. And The Jungle Book. Also, for people my age and younger, the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Matrix.

For Swedish people, I'm surprised if they never saw Ivanhoe with Anthony Andrews because that's been running on New Year's Day since 1980 and you'd have had to work hard to avoid seeing it at least once.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I think the advent of home video which gave people the ability to be more selective and give their movie choices a more tailor-made, narrower focus have resulted in a suprisingly large number of people who have never seen many of the movies that most of us thought that everyone had seen. Back in the days when these movies were regularly shown on TV it was, as Flicka said, hard not to see them.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The days of Golden Era films being shown constantly on local television created a level of overall film literacy that I don't think has been equaled in the home-video age. Where I grew up, the pre-1948 Warner Bros. film package was shown constantly, over and over again, every afternoon ("The Great Money Movie!"), both the common stuff like Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, Now Voyager, the Berkeley musicals, etc. to the most obscure stuff from the back of the vault: I first saw Al Jolson in "Mammy!" on a rainy Thursday after-school afternoon, the sort of film which is hardly ever seen anywhere nowadays, not even on TCM. We also had the Universal package in constant local rotation, so everybody my age who grew up here knew who Abbott and Costello were, who Ma and Pa Kettle were, and who Francis The Talking Mule was. And the Paramount package taught us about Hope and Crosby on the Road, about Maurice Chevalier, W. C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers. We saw all this stuff, constantly, to the point where it was an active part of our daily culture -- it didn't matter that it was *old,* it was what was on, so everybody watched it.

Contrast that with today, where only a self-identified movie buff will seek out and watch anything in black and white, let alone some grade-B Lee Tracy-Glenda Farrell programmer from 1932. Nowadays, most people only watch the films of their own generation, and have little if any awareness of anything that predates them.

 

[Captain Lex]

Quadrophenia. Not sure how much exposure that got outside of the UK though...

Quadrophenia is brilliant, but it has almost no cultural presence in the US.

OT: I'm actually terribly behind on classic films, but as far as cultural standbys go...I always get very surprised when people say they haven't seen The Princess Bride. I've only met two people who, having seen it, didn't like it.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

My favorite TV station when I was growing up was KBSC Channel 52 in Corona. They used to show The Three Stooges, Our Gang Comedies, and all the Warner Brothers movies, including the Busby Berkley musicals. I think I even saw Here Comes the Navy on KBSC, a film that to my knowledge has never been released on video. Sadly, in the early '80s Channel 52 changed format and became one of the first subscription channels in the area.

 

[Undertow]

"It's A Wonderful Life." Anybody who was alive and functional in the 80s or 90s would have had that one thrust at them from all directions every December...

I'm definitelty a self-identified movie buff, and I STILL have yet to see this. My family loves it, everyone has seen it, but we never watched it during the holidays. I have no idea when they saw it, but I feel like the only man alive that still hasn't seen it. (And I love Jimmy Stewart, so I don't know what's wrong with me. [huh])