Yes kiddies…it’s almost that time of year again…All Hallows Eve!! Such Memories! The Costumes, The Ghouls and Goblins, The Costumes, and me getting subjected to year after year of horrible social embarrassments, butt-kicking, and social scarring events that haunt me to this day! Here are but a few more of my movie memories in a column I will call;
Halloween: My Stories
By Geoffrey Reed
JAWS (1975) Steven Speilberg’s quintessential masterpiece about a great white shark wrecking havoc seaside. Roy Scheider leads an all-star cast in this classic horror film that made film-fans afraid of the beach for decades to come. I first saw this film at an outdoor beach party at the tender age of 15. I had moved to Seattle shortly after my mom told me “that guy wasn’t really your dad” I was in a new town trying to make friends, and crashed this beach-kegger as “the new kid in school” I helped myself to a cup of beer, and watched the film being projected on a huge white sheet, ready to have the time of my life. My hopes for making new friends was cut short when I heard someone yell “Hey dillweed! Surf’s Up!” Ten mintues later I was strapped naked to a surfboard about half a mile from the shoreline. The icy cold Puget Sound waves crashing around me. I could hear the echos of laughter from the shore, signaling the good times being had without me. The paramedic who gave me mouth to mouth said I swallowed more water than anyone in his history on the job. He also said when they pulled my lifeless, naked body out of the water they thought I was a girl. According to the comments left in response to the photos they posted of me on line, many agreed.
The Craft (1996) Neve Campbell stars in this Horror film about a trio of high school witches who wreck havoc on their classmates (and ultimately themselves) in this supernatural thriller. This film was released at a time when I was myself dabbling in the occult myself! I had just tried out for, and gotten rejected by the Grunge band Swampwater (They said the didn’t need someone playing the recorder in the band!) And was feeling pretty low. I decided to become goth. At first it was really fun wearing black clothing and mascara…(if by “fun” you mean getting tied to the flagpole outside of school with the word “fruitcup” scrawled across your forehead in permanent marker) Anyways, I befriended a goth girl named Cora-Beth. She said she was a witch, and that if I joined her coven, we could get revenge on everyone. I went over to her house, where she was boiling a witches brew in her parents kitchen. She handed me a test tube of a clear liquid and asked me to pour it into the pot. I did so. Instantly a horrid mix of liquid bleach and boiling fat exploded in my face. I screamed in agony and stumbled around the kitchen, reaching out for some support, which came in the form of the red-hot burners of the stove. Cora-Beth visited me in the hospital once, then started dating a guy who would go on to pants me on a twice-daily basis for the rest of my high-school career. I learned some valuable lessons that summer. Like how to sort-of see again, and live a life without discernible fingerprints.
SAW (1994) This gory film (and later successful film franchise) revolves around the Jigsaw killer, and his victims. He captures various people, and forces them to fight for their lives by making them choose between facings various near-deadly, body mutilating “boobie traps”. Needless to say there is gory galore in this genre favorite, and needless to say some of those copycat jokers at my school took it to the next level… I was at the mall, licking on a delicious corn-dog with dallops of mayonnaise spread on it and looking at a picture of Marilyn Manson that was on display in the front wind of a hot topic. Suddenly, I felt a burlap sack behind pulled over my head. I tried to scream, but was restrained and thrown into the back of a van. Amazingly loud hard-core punk music played in the background (I think it was third-eye blind) I blacked out almost instantly. I woke up in a urine-soaked basement, wearing a prom dress and died to a wall. On a small t.v. monitor, a man in a top-hat demanded i follow his instructions if I wanted to “see the light of day” Well…i did what was asked of me. I cannot say what i did on this site, but it included the following; ping-pong balls, a can of pledge, a vacuum cleaner, my corn-dog from the mall, rubber tubing, a great Dane, a zip-lock bag of peanut butter, a feather duster…but I digress. All in all it was a very trying evening that ended with me “seeing the light of day” I am glad that I made it out alive, and that I get a discount at the proctologist.
Anyways…all of these titles are available here at Moviecycle! And thru Oct. 31 they are all 20% off!!
THE LAST PICTURE HOE
More Movie Night Mix-Ups…..
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that Hollywood is the land of dreams. I’ve no idea if the old adage “If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere” is true or not, as I’ve never ventured out of the Pacific Northwest for more than a few days. I do know that on several occasions to view what Hollywood had to offer, I have suffered numerous pitfalls & extremely scarring social embarrassments. Here are but a few more memories of my one-way love affair with movies.
1) 1993; Cool Runnings- 1993. The year I left high school…”grunge” music was ruling the airwaves & I was “grunge as f**K” You could tell this, because I wore a Hot-Topic t-shirt with those exact words printed on it. Anyways…also released this year was a John Candy comedy about a Jamaican bob-sledding team. Such a funny & inspiring film! It was so good, in fact, that I felt my teen-angst momentary lifted as I left the theater. This feeling was short lived. Seconds after I left the theater Ryan Carter, my high-school bully pulled up his Camaro in front of me. Loud heavy metal (he hated grunge) blaring, he kicked the door open. “Hey a-hole” (he didn’t say a-hole but this is a family site) He and some other dude grabbed me and threw me in the back of the car. I can only assume they had seen Cool Runnings as well, because half an hour later I found myself tied up inside a makeshift bobsled they had constructed out of an old bathtub and some skateboards. As I felt myself barreling down one of the steepest hills in Seattle I found myself wishing I had never gone to see Cool Runnings. And that I wasn’t headed directly into on coming traffic. I spent the next 8 months in an amazingly painful back-brace and attending humiliating physical therapy classes taught by a guy who smelled of Funions and wanted me to “find my higher power.”
2) 1993; Jack The Bear- One of the films my physical therapy teacher recommended I watched that summer between bouts of learning to walk & use the bathroom without the assistance of a male nurse again was this Danny DeVito film. He said it was uplifting and funny. I guess. I never got to watch it. I tried to see this film downtown, and in order to enter the theater, you had to walk through a metal detector. The second I walked through, holding a large popcorn & 32 ounce Mountain Dew ($23.97) my back brace set off the alarm. The events get foggy, as I spent a while unconscious, but here is what I know. The three security guards had no problem tackling, assaulting & preforming a move known as the “tiger grab” (again, I won’t go into details as this is a family site) on an obviously handicapped teenager. I also learned that if you beat said teenager with rubber hoses, bruises won’t show up. I woke up outside the Lusty Lady covered in a sticky film of what I could only hope was dried Mountain Dew.
3) 2002; Jackass: The Movie- I know what you’re thinking. And no. I was smart enough not to venture out in to public to see this one. I didn’t even get it at the video store. I waited for it to come on cable, and then watched it from the safety of my own home. I cracked open a 2-litter bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red, and threw a pepperoni pizza hot pocket in the microwave. The second I pressed the “cook” button on the microwave a huge, burning shock rocketed through my body. I felt every nerve on my body tighten up as I was thrown backwards at a speed that truly frightened me. As I lay convulsing on the cold, tile floor of my kitchen, I looked up at the microwave to see that it was on fire. I thought quickly about what to do. What I did was empty my bowels and pass out. When I woke up, I was on my couch. A note from the fire department was on the table next to me. It read, it part: “We put out the fire. You are a real pu**y, you know that, right?” They had also taken the liberty of removing my pants, putting make-up on me & posting pictures of it on the internet. We have copies of this film at Moviecycle if anyone wants one.
4) 1993; The Skateboard Kid- One of the biggest hits of 1993 this blockbuster was everywhere that year & I was super excited to see it as it was was one of my favorite books. I wanted to see how Hollywood was going to transform this amazing novel to the silver screen. Two months before the movie was set to hit theaters, I got an e-mail from MoviePromotions.com. I had been selected to attend an advanced screening if I agreed to become a “Platinum Member” of the website. I instantly entered three of my credit card numbers, their pin numbers, my social security number & drivers license number onto the site. It printed out an address, and I headed out to pick up my ticket. Four hours later, I was sitting in an empty room, filling out my MoviePromtions contract on a card table in a building downtown. I was just filling out the “favorite movies section” (Kid with the 200 IQ, Once Bitten, K-9 & She’s Out Of Control) when I heard an amazingly loud noise. A wrecking ball crashed the side of the building, and the building came tumbling down around me. For almost 24 hours I was trapped beneath the wreckage of a building that had been scheduled for destruction for months. Weeks later I found that my entire bank account had been drained. The $460 dollars I had earned that summer as a Little Caesars janitor had all been in vain. In order to pay off the Fire Department rescue bill, I had to spend the next year entertaining at an old folks home in town by singing to the elderly five days a week. Thanks to that job I still know all the words to the Billy Ocean hit “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car” I also still know how to help someone into a pair of Depends. Oh, and I suffered a collapsed lung.
More stories to come.