I had a crush on Kelly LeBrock for about 10  years.  She was I think, my first movie celebrity crush and it was all thanks to this single movie.  That crush even resulted in me watching a Steven Seagal movie (Hard to Kill) I would have otherwise passed on because she was in it.  Weird Science was released in 1985 and as always I’m never really sure where I saw it first, although I’m pretty sure it wasn’t in the cinema.  I do remember that since I was a nerd, and this was a ‘nerds do nerdy thing but then come good in the end’ movie that I associated with it pretty closely.

It’s a true pre-90’s John Hughes movie (the stuff he did post 1990 mostly sucked or maybe I just grew up) and it’s an iconic example of a whole bunch of stuff I loved from around then.  Of course, at the time I didn’t realise that I was watching a load of similar movies, or that these kind of films would spawn franchises like American Pie or one off homages like Road Trip, but they did.  If you’re younger than me and you loved American Pie, you should look out for Weird Science and anything John Landis or John Hughes did before 1990.

I just remember that I really fancied Kelly, that the movie was funny and involved computers and had nerds who won against bullies.  I didn’t even know they were nerds, or that I was a nerd, just that two kids I could sympathise with won out against the bad guys.

I really need to buy this movie on DVD as soon as possible.

My lasting memory of this film?  Any of the scenes with Lisa in them of course.  Burned into my memory.   She was a miracle of science.

I was 13 when Ghostbusters was released in the UK and that is a very impressionable age.  Frankly, I loved it and everything about it.  I think I probably sang the theme tune for about 18 months after I’d seen it and I think I may have even had the 7 inch single.  I was probably just the right age to really find the film exciting, there was humour I wasn’t supposed to get (because it was a bit rude) but did, there was Sigourney Weaver looking hot (I was 13), there was some alien chick in cellophane who was maybe naked and maybe not, and there were truly amazing ground breaking special effects the likes of which had never been seen before.

I came away from that movie with a lifetime of quotes that have kept me going ever since (although they warp over time, naturally so please don’t correct them, I know they’re morphed),

• where do these stairs go? they go up!
• mother puss-bucket
• what a lovely singing voice you must have
• save some for me
• woah, woah, woah nice shooting Tex
• she sleeps above her covers, four feet above her covers, she barks, she drools
• it sounds like you’ve got at least two or three people in there already
• nimble little minx isn’t she
• this is the last of the petty cash
• i don’t have to take this abuse from you, i’ve got hundreds of people dying to abuse me.

And so on, and so forth.  Some of the lines from Ghostbusters have entered common usage in my age demographic (I dare you to find someone in my age group who doesn’t laugh when you say ‘Don’t cross the streams!’).  I even made a Ghostbusters backpack for a fancy dress thing we did that may have been that year or perhaps a couple of years later.

But all that asside, I have two lasting memories of this film.  Firstly, I remember being scared witless by the ghost in the library when she transforms into the evil version.  I think I remember talking to my sister about that on the way home from having seen the film.

And secondly, I remember being appalled when Ghostbusters was on TV for the first time, I think it may have been ITV, and it was edited, redubbed and cut to hell.  They changed mother puss-bucket to something totally stupid, and a bunch of other lines (like ‘thanks to dickless over here.  Is this true?  Yes, this man has no dick’ being changed to ‘yes this man is some kind of rodent’).  It was my first exposure to being ‘protected’ from evil movie content by having it badly redubbed to save me from myself.

Forget the fact that this was a PG in the UK and so by the time it came on TV any kid who wanted to had seen it in the cinema, but we had to be saved from the terrible language (like shit!) and the accusation of having no dick.  Folks, don’t be too surprised to learn that at 13, I’d heard words worse than that at school.  A lot.  I know, hard to believe, and I thank everyone for saving me from hearing it on the Television.  Ghostbusters was my first lesson in how the dialog can totally change a scene, how some words are just funnier than others, and that TV censors were hypocrits.

So, Ghostbusters, awesome movie which I love to this day that sticks in my mind because it was butchered by the censors.

I’ve always been a fan of fantasy and to a lesser extent sci-fi.  There’s something about mythology, heroes, dragons, monsters, wizard and magic that I love.   In 1981 I saw Clash of the Titans at the pictures.  To the best of my knowledge and memory (which, if this series of posts is anything to go by, has been proven to be weak) this was the first film, or certainly one of the very first films, I went to see without immediate family.  So I guess I went with some friends.

I certainly remember feeling grown up, but my lasting movie memory was the opening few minutes.  There was a beach, and along it walked a naked woman.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I was in a cinema, and there was a naked woman on the screen!

Titans in the UK had an A rating, which when I started writing this post I thought meant it was suitable for 15’s and over only, but according to Wikipedia’s history of BBFC ratings meant it was ok for anyone over 5 to go in alone, with parental advice that it might contain scenes not suitable for anyone under 14.  So I would have been 10 in 1981 when it was relased.

Of course I loved the mythology and I was scared by the Medusa and relieved when her head was removed and disgusted to find it was in a bag, and then amazed by the mechanical owl.  But mostly, I remember the woman on the beach.

When Dead Poets Society was released in 1989, I went to see it at a cinema in Newcastle Upon Tyne.  I’m pretty sure it was the Odeon, but there’s a small chance it was somewhere else, maybe the Tyneside Cinema across the road from the Odeon.  I really, really enjoyed the film.  I found it moving, inspirational and it really moved me.

But what I remember most about seeing it is that I cried.  The cinema was packed, so busy that it wasn’t possible to sit with the people I’d gone with.  We all ended up sitting on our own, amid the crowded rows of people.  You’ll note I’m being vague about how many of us there were, because once again, I’m not 100% sure who I was with.  I think it might have been David Sant, or a few of us.  I really wish my memory for people was as good as my memory of the movies themselves, but alas it’s not to be.

Anyway, we were forced to sit on our own as it were, surrounded by strangers.  Once the film got going it wasn’t a huge issue, after all it’s not like we’re going to be chatting to each other, although it made the adverts slightly less interesting.  However, by the time we got near the end which if you’ve seen it you’ll know is highly emotional, tears were streaming from my eyes, I’m man enough to admit it.  I was balling my eyes out.  I was flooding the row of seats.  Which is all the more embarrassing when you’re sitting next to people you don’t know sniffling, and yet also incredibly handy since you’re never going to see them again in your life (most likely).  I remember standing, when it had finished, and trying to get my eyes and face dry before making it back out into the light, so that no one would know I’d been crying only moments before.

That is my enduring memory of Dead Poets Society.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world — John Keating