My Top 5 Influential B-List Movies

Celebs and Media, Distractions, Personal Bits 2 Replies

5. Barbarella. At the influential age of 15 I pleaded with my mom to let me and an older friend to attend MapleCon, one of Canada’s first comic/fandom conventions. Parents certainly gave their kids longer leashes back then. One of the first midnight screenings I ever attended was of this sexy romp. Which I didn’t “get”. Seriously I didn’t find one moment of this movie funny at all but oddly enough I didn’t get angry at not getting the jokes. I was mesmerized by the chompy scary dolls on the ice planet and the full on hairy chest that Ugo Tognazzi (from the 1978 version of La Cage Aux Folles) sported half way through the movie. He was my first Wookiee crush. This was also one of my first Dino De Laurentiis movies where sets and costumes won out over story, script and sense – but more on that in my “Cult” list, coming soon.

4. Dark Star. I had heard that this movie was created by the same team that brought us Alien (as well as plucky John Carpenter) so I lost another night of sleep at the same ‘Con. It was the first independent film I ever saw and introduced me to the concept of “following the creative back to the source”, to get a better insight into the thought process of things. Both Dark Star and Alien dealt with isolation, claustrophobia and dread either humorously or disturbingly depending which theatre you were in. The best moment from Dark Star was the existential bomb’s logical rendering of killing itself.

3. Saturn 3. Know that I cringed along with the rest of the world when we saw Kirk Douglas’ floppy maboobs florp wildly in probably his last on-screen action shot. We do get to see a little more acting chops of Farrah Fawcet Majors Lee as she screams her way through this bizarre script, but its no Burning Bed. Really, there’s not much to this movie other than I really enjoyed the robot design, based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s anatomical drawings. Sure it had all the dystopian “we eat dogs in the future” vibe, and some excellent matte painting shots, but really it’s all about the scary robot design.

2. Battle Beyond The Stars. Johnboy Walton gets into his flying testicles and saves the universe. That’s all I remember about this one. I’m waiting for it to become available on instant access, here on Netflix Canada.

1. Millennium. Cheryl Ladd plays a time travelling, body snatching Sheena Easton look alike who gets romantically entangled with Kris Kristofferson. I liked this movie only because it was so awful while the book was a good fun read. John Varley is one of my favorite post-Heinlein authors and when I saw this movie come from out of nowhere, I had to see it. Come on, the star robot has a ton of lines and yet they didn’t bother to try to hide his human mouth. Though they did slather on silver makeup to make him look roboty.

2 thoughts on “My Top 5 Influential B-List Movies

  1. postbear

    ok, i had you pegged for dark star, barbarella, zardoz, this island earth and westworld on this list, with maybe the brain that wouldn’t die as a wildcard entry. i got two right, which is more that i picked on your a-list.

Comment Here!