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

[Stanley Doble]

How about movies you would be stunned if people have seen?

Here are some obscure movies I watch over and over and never get tired of.

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock - excellent screwball comedy with Harold Lloyd and some of his patent heart stopping stunts, in this case featuring a circus lion. Also an awesome bar scene with Edgar Kennedy as a bartender, one of the best scenes he ever did.

Double Wedding, another screwball comedy this time starring Myrna Loy and William Powell. Again with Edgar Kennedy in a supporting role as bartender. I love the Thin Man series but I like this one even better.

The Third Man. This should be on every list of the best movies ever made. If you want some insight into present day politics, business and finance watch the ferris wheel scene a few times. Harry Lime's spiritual grandchildren run the world.

Topper. The movie that made Cary Grant a major star.

Beat The Devil. I know this is not Humphrey Bogart's best movie but I never get tired of it. Witty script by Truman Capote.

OC and Stiggs. The newest movie on the list and the only one in color. This is a kind of uneven or patchy effort but the best parts are wonderful. I guess I like it because it is a modern screwball comedy.

All these movies cheer me up except The Third Man.

Do you have any favorites than never made a best of list and never will, and that nobody has ever heard of?

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Wake Up And Live," one of the best musicals of the mid-thirties, starring columnist Walter Winchell and bandleader Ben Bernie as themselves, Alice Faye as the singing host of a motivational radio program, Jack Haley as a would-be crooner paralyzed by mike fright, Patsy Kelly and Ned Sparks as Winchell's scheming assistants, Walter Catlett as a sleazy agent, and Buddy Clark as Haley's singing voice. Like all 1930s Fox product not involving Shirley Temple, it's dropped down the memory hole, but it's a wonderfully entertaining film featuring some of the best songs of 1937.

 

[angeljenny]

Don't even bother with Top Gun.

I won't - doesn't look like my sort of thing!

I do adore The Goonies though which is a film that all my friends hate. Makes me cry!

 

[Doctor Damage]

The Matrix.

One of my friends (much younger than me) is an aspiring actor who has never seen The Matrix. I tried to explain he needs to see it, since almost every movie since which contains sci-fi or action elements has been fundamentally effected by that movie.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

This is reason enough not to watch Top Gun :doh:

[video=youtube;HVNWSEX-WqU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVNWSEX-WqU[/video]

 

[Formeruser012523]

How about movies you would be stunned if people have seen?

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock - excellent screwball comedy with Harold Lloyd and some of his patent heart stopping stunts, in this case featuring a circus lion. Also an awesome bar scene with Edgar Kennedy as a bartender, one of the best scenes he ever did.

Call me one of those stunned people. lol Thought I was the only person on the planet on this one.

I do adore The Goonies though which is a film that all my friends hate. Makes me cry!

Really? Who hates The Goonies?

This is reason enough not to watch Top Gun :doh:

Can't stand that movie so much, I'm not even watching that clip. *yucky*

 

[Stanley Doble]

Incidentally after hearing about The Matrix for all these years I picked up a copy a few weeks ago. Managed to watch about 15 minutes of it before I shut it off out of sheer boredom.

This is not bad. Most modern movies I shut off within 5 minutes.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

The Third Man is hardly obscure. It's got Joseph Cotten in it (a major star at the time), not to mention Welles and Trevor Howard.[huh]

How about movies you would be stunned if people have seen?

Here are some obscure movies I watch over and over and never get tired of.

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock - excellent screwball comedy with Harold Lloyd and some of his patent heart stopping stunts, in this case featuring a circus lion. Also an awesome bar scene with Edgar Kennedy as a bartender, one of the best scenes he ever did.

Double Wedding, another screwball comedy this time starring Myrna Loy and William Powell. Again with Edgar Kennedy in a supporting role as bartender. I love the Thin Man series but I like this one even better.

The Third Man. This should be on every list of the best movies ever made. If you want some insight into present day politics, business and finance watch the ferris wheel scene a few times. Harry Lime's spiritual grandchildren run the world.

Topper. The movie that made Cary Grant a major star.

Beat The Devil. I know this is not Humphrey Bogart's best movie but I never get tired of it. Witty script by Truman Capote.

OC and Stiggs. The newest movie on the list and the only one in color. This is a kind of uneven or patchy effort but the best parts are wonderful. I guess I like it because it is a modern screwball comedy.

All these movies cheer me up except The Third Man.

Do you have any favorites than never made a best of list and never will, and that nobody has ever heard of?

 

[scottyrocks]

Really? Who hates The Goonies?

The Goonies falls into the category of movies with so obvious a premise, featuring a 'don't-do' situation, that you actually can't believe that one of the characters does it anyway. What was it with the Goonies, that you can't get them wet, especially at a certain time of day? So what happens? They get wet at a certain time of day. I look at these types of films and think, 'Are you kidding me?'

 

[Flicka]

The Goonies falls into the category of movies with so obvious a premise, featuring a 'don't-do' situation, that you actually can't believe that one of the characters does it anyway. What was it with the Goonies, that you can't get them wet, especially at a certain time of day? So what happens? They get wet at a certain time of day. I look at these types of films and think, 'Are you kidding me?'

Isn't that Gremlins? Which I incidentally never saw. Goonies is about a bunch of kids who muck about in some sort of caves/dungeon (all I remember; I saw it back in the '80s and wasn't impressed so here's one person who didn't like it): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089218/

 

[LizzieMaine]

"The Goonies" was a lot of fun, especially when it was a 1934 "Our Gang" comedy called "Mama's Little Pirate."

 

[Baron Kurtz]

The Goonies was fun, as a 6-year old. I can see how an adult wouldn't like it. Bit like Alice in Wonderland. Good for kids.

bk

 

[Flicka]

The Goonies was fun, as a 6-year old. I can see how an adult wouldn't like it. Bit like Alice in Wonderland. Good for kids.

bk

I never liked Alice in Wonderland even as a kid; always felt icky to me. Anyway, I once caught the animated version on tv once with my ex, and had to spend the entire movie explaining things to him because they were 'unrealistic' - this from a guy who spent his teenage years playing D&D and who loved monster movies. Then again, he also called Dirty Dancing the 'most difficult to understand movie he ever saw'. Yeah, right. Second hardest? Grease. He kept asking idiotic questions like 'why are they singing?' 'Because it's a musical, you dork' didn't cut it, because then he just asked why it was a musical. :eusa_doh:

But you know, Ingmar Bergman movies and stuff like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead went down really smoothly. Presumably not as intellectually challenging as Grease. Or something.[huh]

 

[scottyrocks]

Isn't that Gremlins? Which I incidentally never saw. Goonies is about a bunch of kids who muck about in some sort of caves/dungeon (all I remember; I saw it back in the '80s and wasn't impressed so here's one person who didn't like it): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089218/

Yes, thank you, you are right. So just add me to the list of people who are 'stunned because I didn't see' The Goonies because I didn't.

 

[rue]

I won't - doesn't look like my sort of thing!

I do adore The Goonies though which is a film that all my friends hate. Makes me cry!

Good choice

I loved The Goonies too. I can't imagine not liking that movie [huh]

Stand By Me is another great one from that era.

Can't stand that movie so much, I'm not even watching that clip. *yucky*

Me neither uke:

 

[Tango Yankee]

I wasn't stunned but was mildly surprised to realize that I don't think I've seen the entire Godfather movie. With all those clips and references to it out there it feels like I've seen it.

As for Star Wars, I sometimes feel sorry for those who've only seen it on their TV screens or in small shoebox theaters. The first time I saw it was when it was released and I saw it in a theater with a full-sized screen. It blew us away at the time! The visceral effect of having that lumbering battlecruiser slide into view from the top of the screen as if it was passing overhead and then slowly grew to fill that huge screen was amazing. We kept our seats and sat through a second showing (of course, this was back in the days when you could do so.)

2001: A Space Odyssey is one that elicits surprise from me when someone says they haven't seen it. I know, many people don't like the drawn-out beginning and the psychedelic effects towards the end but even when I was a kid and seeing it for the first time (at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood) I was entranced.

Top Gun: Great soundtrack!

These days, though, I'm not very surprised when someone hasn't seen an old movie. My wife, on the other hand, is constantly surprised at the more recent movies I haven't seen. Part of that is due to spending the '90s overseas and part of it is that I don't spend a heck of a lot of time watching movies on TV. I have a large backlog of DVDs of movies that I've not seen but will eventually.

One thing I find slightly annoying is the very brief time movies seem to spend in theaters these days. If you're unable to get to a movie within a few weeks of when it first comes out you're going to have to wait for the DVD release.

Cheers,
Tom

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

One thing I find slightly annoying is the very brief time movies seem to spend in theaters these days. If you're unable to get to a movie within a few weeks of when it first comes out you're going to have to wait for the DVD release.

At least nowadays you don't have to wait very long. I seem to remember that it would take a year for a movie to come out on video from the time it hit the theatres.

 

[Touchofevil]

At least nowadays you don't have to wait very long. I seem to remember that it would take a year for a movie to come out on video from the time it hit the theatres.

And then it was on Laser disc. We didn't own a Laser disc player, but my best friend's parents did which was beyond cool at that time.

 

[Formeruser012523]

^ Apparently I blinked too long during the laser disc phase. Either that or they just didn't come to Texas. lol

 

[MisterCairo]

Laser disk? I remember the VHS/Betamax wars. Our local video store (boy, is that expression fading into obscurity) sold the machines as well as renting tapes. A guy came in and asked the owner his opinion on which system was better, and why. After saying that Betamax was "technically" superior and with an allegedly better picture, he reamed off the myriad advantages of VHS - longer recording times, four-head playback, re-winding without spooling the tape through the heads, and so on. Without saying anything the other guy turned around and left.

The store owner said "must be a Betamax owner".

That was 1983.

In the 90s in law school, we'd rent a laser disk player and borrow a video projector from the business school and show movies on a wall with stereo surround sound. That was fun.

Sorry, what was the question?