My dad is a huge fan of movies, so I’ve been seeing movies in the theater from a young age. Too young of an age actually because apparently one of the first movies I ever saw was The Shining. Not cool, dad!

Anyway, there are certain time periods I have pretty well covered because my dad and I would see at least one movie together nearly every week. Which means movies have indelibly transformed how I view certain things. Here are some of the ones that have stuck with me over time for a variety of reasons.

Time Bandits

I was in my 20s before I realized this was an actual movie and not just a nightmare I had. I thought I dreamt of a roving band of little people being chased by a huge malicious face. It had scared the shit out of me!

Upon rewatch, this movie is still disturbing! There are disfigured animal heads on human bodies, and horse monsters, and bull-skeleton-head grim reapers, and they all make shrieking noises. One of the little people gets turned into a grotesque pig person. And one gets crushed dead!!

The bad guy in this movie is also the bad guy in Tron. He has disgusting long scraggly nails, bones coming out of his shoulders, a skeletal gas mask headpiece, and a carousel comes out of his brains. He is obsessed with technology and using it to do evil in the world. At the end, the parents of the kid who has been traveling with the time bandits explode and he’s left an orphan! Seriously!! It is actually a pretty fucked up movie for a little kid!

Dreamscape

This was another movie I couldn’t remember much about except that it involved going into nightmares and a gigantic reptile man trying to kill people. The snake-man shit really haunted me!

I rewatched this one recently. Right at the top, there’s Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow. You see these two guys and you know some serious shit is going to go down! Side note: young, hot Dennis Quaid!!

Max von Sydow is doing dream research and wants psychics to enter into people’s dreams for reasons I already forgot. Dennis Quaid is a young psychic that Max convinces to participate in the research. Kate Capshaw is there to play hot lady doctor. Then there is Christopher Plummer, a secret government guy who seems up to something, and David Patrick Kelly who is another psychic and a hotshot asshole (but not in an endearing way because he wants to kill people).

Turns out Christopher Plummer only wants the dream program so he can use it to assassinate people in their sleep. The President wants to de-escalate on the nuclear front because of all the nuclear winter nightmares he’s having, but Christopher Plummer thinks denuclearization is for pussies! Clearly, he must get David Patrick Kelly to kill the President in his dreams so that there can be MOAR nukes!

There are a bunch of dreams/nightmares: man falls off a building, snake-man attack, nuclear winter, Dennis Quaid enters Kate Capshaw’s dream (without her permission! very not cool!!) to have sexy times with her (and she forgives this transgression way too easily!), more nuclear attack with zombies and vicious dogs, more snake-man, ripping a man’s still-beating heart out of his chest, etc

Dennis Quaid obviously saves the President from David Patrick Kelly from inside the President’s dream, which is cool, but then he enters Christopher Plummer’s dream and becomes the snake-man to kill him in his sleep. Which honestly seems less cool.

Anyways, this is 100% not a movie I should have seen when I was 7 because even though the special effects are horrendous by today’s standards, it is still pretty creepy!

Lost Boys

Maggot rice! Do I think about this practically every time I get white rice in one of those to-go containers? Yes!!

Child’s Play

I totally get how ridiculous this one is in retrospect, but try sleeping in a ROOM FULL OF CABBAGE PATCH DOLLS LINING THE WALLS STARING AT YOU after watching this shit late at night!

The Witches of Eastwick

Two words: cherry scene.

Heathers

Heathers came out around the time I was in middle school. So obviously, the exact perfect time to get messages about how women are horrible to one another and creepy violent disgruntled assholes are hot…

Unfortunately, those lessons about asshole guys take a long time to unlearn. I’d like to say there were other better movies about relationships I could have watched in the late 80s or early 90s, but … were there…?

Speed

I used to have so many dreams/nightmares about being in a falling elevator. I’m not 100% sure that it comes from Speed, but it’s the one that I most remember. I also generally do not like being in an elevator for very long at all, and if I am, I will start to think about it falling or malfunctioning. The number of office buildings I have worked in that have had oft-malfunctioning elevators has not been helped!!

Also, come to think of it, some of the elevator fears may also have been reinforced by Final Destination 2…

Final Destination 2

Pretty sure this movie is why I can’t drive behind pickup trucks or auto transport trailers. I see a packed pickup and imagine a ladder or 2×4 (that is obviously very shittily tied to the back because there’s stuff flying around and garbage coming out!) coming loose and being jettisoned directly through my windshield. Or I imagine a car coming loose from the trailer and flipping over and smashing into me. Are these things that I should be paranoid about? Probably not! But they’re not gonna catch me up in no shit like this scene if I can help it!

To see my review of another throwback movie I recently rewatched, check out: Wherein I dedicate a post to the movie The Net

Is there a movie or movie scene that has stuck with you? Tell me about it in the comments!