A Day at the Movies Did you ever notice how some television programs hold your interest while others bore you to death? Sure, you have, and yet some of those same programs are loved by others. You have to wonder why this is. Is is caused by the way people are brought up, could it be caused by the current norms, or maybe it is shaped by the games people play? It wasn’t that long after most people got a television that video game machines and computer games came out. In 1958 a very simple video game was made for a primitive analog computer which had been installed in one place and after that in the same year Tennis for Two appeared. I am sure these simple games had no bearing on movie tastes. The video game industry began in about 1970 and from that point on games started getting more complicated and today some are extremely lifelike. If someone likes to play space games wouldn’t it follow they would like movies about space? The same might be true if they liked superhero games, they would probably like superhero movies and so forth. I also believe taste in movies has to do with the generation one was born in. Those people who were born in the 1940s and 1950s seem to enjoy cowboy movies while the rest of the people not so much. That is why the amount of cowboy movies made has dwindled to a precious few. I love a good movie and I have a habit of watching a movie until the end even if I feel it was not that enjoyable. My wife says she doesn’t understand why I do this. Perhaps it is because I think the movie might get better before it ends or maybe it is because I am not as critical about movies as some people. My children are a lot more concerned about who is in the movies than I am. I am not beyond watching a movie filled entirely with unknowns if it seems to have a story I like. When I was a kid it seemed there were more cowboy movies than any other type. This was followed by war movies and horror movies. Well I guess I just gave my age away. Many a kid in those days was scared out of their seats by those old black and white vampire and Frankenstein movies, not to forget the mummy. Some of the movies I used to look at then seem so foolish today. Take the science fiction movies from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. Many of them had the usual scene of a rocket blasting off and if you looked closely the rocket was a German V2 rocket which the Americans captured and repainted. I can’t count the number of movies which featured that scene. Those old science fiction movies used to like to show you scientific equipment to dazzle you. The early ones would show you computers filling entire rooms which made all sorts of sounds and sometimes spit out a paper tape with the supposed answer to a complicated problem. The horror movies, especially Frankenstein and his monster would have a lab with lightning jumping from pole to pole on standing poles along with sparking wheels turning and lights flashing on and off. Erie music would be playing on the sound track when you saw the lab. The actor who became synonymous with Count Dracula was Bella Lugosi. He was also offered the part of the Frankenstein monster and turned it down. This was a big mistake because an actor named Boris Karloff accepted and became a household name and Lugosi’s biggest competition. While there is no denying when the movies became colorized it made a world of difference, there was something to be said about those black and white movies setting the mood for horror movies. When you saw Dracula and his vampire wives in an old dark castle and the old gypsy woman warning you about the wolfman it made the movie all the scarier to us kids. I also like action movies and some of my favorite action actors were Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham and many other action stars including Gerard Butler. I think the one who surprised me the most as being a great action star was Keanu Reeves. He turned out to be a much better actor than I thought he would be. Let’s not forget the Rock and Vin Diesel. We kids used to love a good war movie and many of them in those days had John Wayne in them. Some of his movies were remade and they were just not as good. It is funny how many of the remakes of famous movies just didn’t stand up. No one was ever able to beat Humphrey Bogart in Sahara and I have to say if you never saw the original it is so good you won’t even notice it is in black and white after a few minutes. Bogart turned out to be a master actor and was great in so many movies like The Caine Mutiny, The African Queen, Casablanca, The Roaring Twenties and so many more movies. Yeah, I know, I didn’t mention two of his greatest, The Maltese Falcon and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre which many consider his greatest film and one of the best ever made even though it is very dated. If we are talking about dramatic performances enter Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda and James Stewart. If they were in a movie you always knew it was going to be good. Who can forget Peck in To Kill a Mocking Bird or the Guns of Navarone? Fonda made 12 Angry Men, On Golden Pond, Mister Roberts, Fort Apache, and so many more. Stewart was also very proficient and acting and made many movies such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Rear Window, Mister Smith Goes to Washington, Vertigo, Liberty Valance and a lot of other movies. I was never that big on comedy, but the ones I liked many people didn’t. Peter Sellers was one of my favorite comedians and I loved when he played Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther Movies. I have been roundly criticized for liking Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber. I saw it with a buddy of mine and we were rolling on the floor laughing. I laughed so hard at the time I almost threw up. That movie must have made a fortune since it only cost 17 million dollars to make. In older movies I like Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, and Danny Kaye. I really liked him in The Court Jester. In one short article I could not mention every actor I liked and there were many great actresses. Perhaps in another article I will discuss them.
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