Hooray for Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll!
At the age of nine, I became a latchkey kid. My mom went back to work and I got my first house key on a keychain featuring my birthstone (sapphire, faux, of course). The major upshot to the suckitude of having a working mom was that we had cable back then and being largely unsupervised for extended chunks of time, friends congregating at my house and watching movies on cable was a common activity because you know, RATED R MOVIES, DUDE!
Our parents had no frakking idea we were watching stuff like Death Race 2000 (”in the future, hit and run isn’t a crime, it’s the national sport!”; Crazy Mama (guns and boobs, baby!) and the totally effing creepy Phantasm (hooded killer dwarf creatures, a flying drill-ball, and a demonic mortician…FUN!!!)
How I turned out even remotely normal I’ll never know.
But there was one movie that I still love to this day (Kurt Cobain once said that it was his favorite film, too) It was called Over the Edge (now something of a cult classic) and it starred a teenage Matt Dillon (HOT!) in his first movie role as a sort of ringleader of juvenile delinquents in a suburban “master planned” community in the middle of nowhere.
Having grown up in a master-planned suburban environment in the seventies, I can attest to the accuracy of this film in terms of being trapped in suburbia with nothing to do but get in trouble — sex, drugs, rock n roll, vandalism… (okay, there was none of that for me, personally, as I was a tween but I knew plenty of kids older than me that were all about it)
My best friend and I wanted to LIVE this movie. Being bad never looked so fun. In fact, the film was so controversial at the time that it never made it to a theatrical release, debuting on HBO instead. And the soundtrack? AWWWWESOME –> Cheap Trick, Van Halen, Ramones, The Cars, Jimi Hendrix…
Check out this site to behold the awesomeness of Over the Edge (a website by someone far more obsessed with it than even me). Or better yet, rent it. They have it on Netflix.
So what about you? What movie(s) rocked your world as a kid?
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For more posts on this theme, visit these other fine purveyors of Friday Flashback bloggery:
Mamalogues
And if you want to play along on your own blog, link this post at the end of yours, add the participants above, and then email me or leave a note in the comments so I can link you here.
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Just linked back to you. I can’t say I’ve seen any of the films you mentioned, though. But a young hot Matt Dillon might make it worth my while…
OOhh yeah. Loved hanging at your house and watching those R movies, dude!
I’m in also, see my post on my movie.
I’ve read the handful of blogs who have participated in this flashback Friday and all I could think was, “Man! I am so old compared to all of these whipper snappers!”
When I read your list of movies I really felt old…I was IN Death Race 2000! I didn’t have a featured roll or anything cool like that but if you remember the marching band that played before the race…that was my high school marching band and I was in there with the best of them. We got our pictures taken with “The Real Don Steal”, David Carridine and some goofy unknown guy named Sylvester Stallone!
We all figured this movie would bomb at the box office and certainly never dreamed that it woud become the cult sensation that it is. We also never dreamed that the goofy unknown named Sylvester would go on to become the super star that everyone currently knows and loves!
I will be available for autographs after the paperazzi dispurses!
I’m going to press my luck and play again. Added you to my post on my first movie experience titled,Sharks and Dwarfs. Thanks, Laurie
How have I never seen Over The Edge? Dude? Where have I been? I might need to see it now and pretend like I’m thirteen and angsty.
And ppsstt. Mine is up, too. :-)
Love your new site design Izzy….
How have I never seen that? Dude!
Must add to netflix. The huz loves it when I bump his movies down the list for obscure flicks I found on the internets and now must. see.
what!? Killer midget??
I’ll have to check that out…
I was all about Wizard of Oz as a child - we didn’t see many movies, but that was a biggie.
I love movies and I have seen many. But the one thing that continuosly sticks out is Rocky III not because it was better than the Godfather or Gone With The Wind, nor was it because it was inspirational. I love it because it was the only movie that I saw with my Dad. And get this, he fell asleep during the movie…LOL
I remember Phantasm and the murderous drill-ball! Who comes up with this stuff?
This isn’t a movie, but my first TV memory was a Donna Summer special. I was apparently mesmerized by her when I was still in diapers. My parents eventually bought me her tape, which I played until it broke. I grew fond of singing “On the Radio,” and substituting sundry appliances for the word “radio.” i.e. “on the washing-machine / woh-oh-oh-oh…/ on the toaster oven…”
Seriously, try Liar’s Moon. Ultimate Matt Dillon hotness, and illicit teen sex/love too. OMG.