My Movie History - Part 1: The Boone Years

I'm taking a film class right now at Rio Salado College and it's making me think about my love of movies. Almost everyone loves movies. I'm certainly not unique. But I got to thinking about how my tastes have been shaped by the movies I've seen, especially in my formative years. As my own children are growing, and we try to limit their media exposure as much as possible, I sometimes think back to stuff I watched at a very young age. Tons of memories come flooding in and out of my noggin, so I've been thinking about writing a huge "history of my film experience" blog to get it all down for posterity (and so I can stop thinking about it).

So be warned...this will be a long post! I'll probably break it up into segments of my life to make it less cumbersome. Alright. Here goes.

The Boone years

One of my earliest movie memories is actually from TV. In the Spring of 1976, when I was 3 years old, I saw a commercial on TV for a movie called Rattlers. One image showed a snake coming out of the bathtub faucet while a woman was bathing. This was pretty terrifying, and I was afraid of the bathtub for a while, even though I never actually saw the movie.


A website review describes Rattlers as "overall forgettable drive-in trash" but to me, not even the commercial was forgettable. Part of me wants to rent the movie now just to see how ridiculous the movie is. But another part of me wants to keep that childhood fear intact. I know that sounds kind of strange...

I was 3 when we moved to Boone, North Carolina and it was there that my love of going to the cinema was forever seated in my psyche. There was a little theater in downtown Boone that I frequented, sometimes with my parents, sometimes with my sisters. The theater was called the Appalachian Twin, and unfortunately I just found out that it closed November 2007. It was a classy cinema with a long history, first opening in 1938. I'm saddened to hear that it's closed now.

I have two especially vivid memories of that theater. One was eating Fun Dip. In case you don't know what Fun Dip is, it's powdery sugar dust that you lick off of an edible stick of chalk-like candy. The other memory is the anticipation of waiting for the movie to start. I would stare at the lights in the theater, waiting for them to start to dim. Of course, these were the days when the screen was covered by a curtain instead of showing commercials, so you had nothing to do but listen to the Muzak and wait for the lights to dim. I was so excited that my eyes would play tricks on me and I would think the lights were starting to dim when they really weren't. I try to remember that feeling when I see my kids eagerly waiting for something. We lose that eagerness as we get older.

I don't remember every movie I saw in Boone at the age of 4 or 5, but I remember 4 particular films very well. This little theater in Boone showed, on more than one occasion, Godzilla movies. One I remember seeing there was called Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, where Godzilla fought a big robot version of himself. I'm assuming the films were dubbed in English, because I wouldn't have been able to read the subtitles. I don't think subtitles would have curbed my enthusiasm though. Let's see, Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla came out in March 1977. I was 4 years old. I can't imagine taking Bella, my current 4 year old, to a Godzilla movie! But I'm glad my parents took me or let me go. Because part of my taste in movies I attribute to early exposure...to Godzilla. And in all fairness to their parental judgment, it was rated G. This was the 14th Godzilla movie, and it has quite a cult following even today. From imdb.com: "The movie has become popular among fans in recent years for its strange music, colorful special effects and entertaining monster fights. The film's robust themes and fairly complex plot stand out against a time when the Godzilla franchise was being fueled by increasingly lower production values." So it was a good one! (The original title in America was Godzilla vs. Bionic Monster, but the producers of The Six-Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman threatened to sue! Mechagodzilla sounds better anyway. It was reissued later with the title Godzilla vs. Cosmic Monster. Lame!

When I think of my early moviegoing experiences, I think of two names: Knotts and Disney. The Don Knotts Disney flick No Deposit, No Return was from this same era of my childhood. I can't say that I remember a whole lot from the actual movie, but Disney had a run in the 70's of these kinds of movies and I loved 'em all. I saw Knotts's Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo at this same Boone theater. Don Knotts and Tim Conway made several movies together (The Apple Dumpling Gang, Hot Lead and Cold Feet) and I was a big fan. I recently rented The Apple Dumpling Gang for my kids. They really liked it, which is proof, I guess, that the appeal of these films is timeless. Score one for Disney (even though he'd been dead for 10 years).

And speaking of Disney, movie #3 on my Boone memory list is The Rescuers. This movie had the fate of being released a month after Star Wars, but I think it did okay. I liked it, but when I think about it, it was a pretty dark film. The theme of the orphan girl is quite somber, and some of the music was melancholic as well. The Fox and the Hound had this same kind of vibe. Not sure why Disney animated films were kind of tear-jerky in the 70's. I remember the art itself was very dark and gloomy, like the swamp scenes and the big run down steamboat. The scene where the girl has to lower down into the cave to get the jewel was pretty scary. My mom took Mary and me to see The Rescuers. According to Mary, whose memory is better than mine on this detail, we ate PBJs that we smuggled in.

#4 was Star Wars. I really don't feel like writing a ton about this, because it's a story that just about everyone who was a kid in the 70's shares. I was 4 years old when Star Wars was released (2 months before my 5th birthday). A family friend named Glenn took me to see it the first time. It was mesmerizing. I was hooked. Over the next few years, when Star Wars was re-released (now there's an antiquated concept) I saw it several more times (including at a drive-in). I know I saw it at least 5 times in the movie theaters, which doesn't sound that impressive now in the home video age. By far, Star Wars was the most influential film of my childhood. It affected the way I played, the things I drew and wrote in school, my imagination in general. It also got me paying attention to movie credits. I couldn't tell you anything about the directors or the composers of the first 3 movies on my list, but even at the age of 5, I knew George Lucas and I knew John Williams.


Star Wars is a nice segue into the second phase of my childhood, which spans five cities and three states. The period of 1977 to 1983 I'll just call...the Star Wars Years.