Childhood movies that inspired you

[Red Shirt]

I'm older than most of you (60), but as I sit here sipping a cup of lapsang souchong I was thinking of a movie I watched recently on an old nostalgia channel. It happened to be one of my favorites from when I was young and more impressionable. The movie was First Men In The Moon from 1964. Totally ridiculous by today's standards but it held up better than expected. The fact I remember being so impressed by it 50 years ago and hadn't seen it since is why I post it here. Another Ray Harryhausen movie that excited me was Earth Vs The Flying Saucers. I loved that one and still enjoy it. Then there was my favorite The War Of The Worlds (the 1953 version). It was already an older movie when I first saw it. My son told me the effects were stupid. I told him yeah so's your old man. That shut him up.  

I imagine for many of you the first Star Wars would more likely make your list. I was in College when Episode IV was released. We drove 60 miles to see it. Was so amazed we sat through it twice.

[LordFerret]

Heh... we're the same age. I remember all of those movies, and I especially loved Earth vs The Flying Saucers. There was something special about all those 'old' science fiction movies from the 50's and such, they were especially great to watch on tv during the 60's on those rainy Saturday afternoons when we couldn't go outside to play (you kids these days wouldn't know what that is).

The first time I saw Star Wars, I was in college also up in Schenectady NY ... and when the Millennium Falcon jumped to light-speed for the first time, the entire audience jumped up out of their seats and screamed and cheered - they actually cheered. I'd never seen an audience do that before outside of a concert.

The movie that did it for me however was 2001: A Space Odyssey. Having previously read all seven rewrites of The Sentinel, and the book itself (2001), which landed in the public's lap before the movie was released despite being (allegedly) written concurrently with the movie, I sat transfixed in the theater start to finish - and I don't believe I blinked my eyes even so much as once throughout. Even though I knew it was science fiction, Clarke's already prophetic record of writing, I thought I was seeing the future. When the year 2001 finally did roll around, I was actually disappointed we weren't there yet - I still am. Thank you Mr. Clarke for that lifelong disillusionment lol.

[Just Jim]

Ha.... I'll be 54 in a couple weeks... but right now I'm the youngster???  Too funny!!!

One of my biggest inspirations from my early, early childhood was  "Them", the movie about giant atomic ants.  Being a child in the 60's, and growing up in the cold war, I actually found the idea of mutant radioactive ants much more believable than aliens or even giant atomic dinosaurs.  Plus the writing and cast of "Them" is outstanding compared to most other movies of the time, except maybe "Forbidden Planet".

 

 

[p1t1o]

Spacecamp, 2001/2010 and TopGun awww yeah 

[adsii1970]

I like this thread... but the problem for me is that it is hard to limit the movies that influenced me the most. What I will do is share the ones that came to my mind first and give you a brief explanation:

• The Last Starfighter - Anyone can make a difference, no matter their background.
• 2001/2010 - It's space. It's about space exploration. Need I say more?
• Star Trek II TWOK - There are times that duty calls for the ultimate sacrifice. How much do you value your friends?
• The Alamo - John Wayne - there are times that being right means you face great odds. Are you willing to risk your life on what you believe is right?
• War of the Worlds - Aliens attack the earth; people seem to have this belief that aliens will be too sophisticated and philosophical for war and conquest. Yeah, about that belief...  (yeah, the ORIGINAL)
• Dr. Strangelove (or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb) - there are times we must take a step back and laugh at the absurdities of life.

[Xorth Tanovar]

Well, at age 50 I may be younger than some others here, but grew up watching a *LOT* of 50's/60's/70's science fiction flicks, both good and bad. There was something about the general unfamiliarity with the effects of space travel, radiation, new discovery of things unknown at that time that lent itself to a myriad of story lines. Yes, even some "cult classics" I can think of...anyone recall "Kingdom of the Spiders" or "Food of the Gods"? 

I kept hoping that Gerry Anderson's "UFO" would have gotten the big-screen treatment it deserved, but it looks like Matthew Gratzner's trilogy project for it just dried up. I has a sad over that....

Ranking right up there are the science fiction/fantasy novels and short stories that have YET to be made into any type of move or TV show, and are simply CRYING to be done. Hollywood, wake up and stop giving us re-hashed vapid reboots of things already done twice over! The technology is here to do a proper version of Niven's "Ringworld", Ellison's "Phoenix without Ashes" (we'll ignore the poorly done Canadian treatment of that!), or with a proper rewrite perhaps E.E. Smith's "Lensman" series, A.E. van Vogt's "Voyage of the Space Beagle", Rick Cook's "Wizard's Bane" (and the rest of the "Wizardry Compiled" series)...

EDIT: what inspired me? Space:1999, UFO, Thunderbirds (the 1960's series), Rocketship X-M, Master of the World, The incredible Shrinking Man, Forbidden Planet, the original War of the Worlds, The Time Machine (and just about every other Harryhausen-effects related tile, like the Sinbad movies or Verne's Mysterious Island), Silent Running, Logan's Run; in the interest of brevity I am capping my list here!!!!!!!

 

" Science fiction used to be a dangerous literature. Now, it is a very commercial genre, and whatever dangers might still lurk within seem to have been safely sanitized for the marketplace. The real crime is that the lobotomy has been self performed. " - Harlan Ellison

 

 

Edited August 5, 2016 by Xorth Tanovar

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, Xorth Tanovar said:

I kept hoping that Gerry Anderson's "UFO" would have gotten the big-screen treatment it deserved, but it looks like Matthew Gratzner's trilogy project for it just dried up. I has a sad over that....

EDIT: what inspired me? Space:1999, UFO...

Oh my.... I was thinking in terms of Movies.  But television, I can't agree more with these two.  I was a massive UFO and Space:1999 junkie!  Also The Prisoner!  That weird bubble thing freaked me out so bad when I was a kid, I never forgot it! 

 

Spoiler

 

 

[adsii1970]

I thought the thread was just about movies! Science fiction was a big part of my youth since being introduced to the genre in 5th grade. The Foundation series (Isaac Asimov), the Space Odyssey series (Arthur C. Clarke), and Dune (Frank Herbert, I quit reading that series after God Messiah installment) were all a part of my core reading.

 

Television shows, as mentioned above were Space 1999, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost in Space (all originals, mind you).

Edited August 5, 2016 by adsii1970

[Vanamonde]

Robinson Crusoe on Mars.  Somewhat cheesy, but so much fun.

[adsii1970]

Just now, Vanamonde said:

Robinson Crusoe on Mars.  Somewhat cheesy, but so much fun.

I remember watching that on Mystery Science Theater 3000.... oh what fun that was! (It is also how I saw Kingdom of the Spiders).

[LordFerret]

3 hours ago, Xorth Tanovar said:

"Food of the Gods"

Holy cow, thanks for that reminder. I saw that, of all places, in a drive-in theater with some buddies from high school. I'll spare the details of our drunken charades.

And what an excellent quote from Harlan Ellison. He was such a great and prolific writer... it's too bad more isn't done with his old stories. I'm willing to bet folks have no real clue of the influence his old stories had on countless classics of today.

[cubinator]

When I was a kid (I guess I'm still a kid to you people, but when I was a smaller one) I remember putting one of my toy lightsabers at the bottom of the stairs, standing at the top, and trying to lift it up to my hand with the Force like Luke did on Hoth. It didn't work, though. I guess I am better at channeling it into other things...  So there's your answer!

[Red Shirt]

Lot of good stuff here. Them - James Arness I think. Great movie.

TV shows, yeah pretty much the same for me. TOS obviously, but UFO, I didn't think any one else would even remember that one. SyFy or some oldies station should show that one and Space: 1999. I'd watch. 

Lost in Space was mentioned. My first reaction was to groan but really the first several episodes (in black and white) were amazing. Then it spiraled into a cartoon. Too bad.

Back to seeing Star Wars for the first time - I can believe people cheered at the Millennium Falcon. Our little group sat there speechless after the credits rolled. Without a word (as I recall it) we split into 3 groups. My group took the front row and we watched it again. By then it had been out a while and no one ran us off or demanded we buy a second ticket. Great memories.

15 hours ago, cubinator said:

 

When I was a kid (I guess I'm still a kid to you people, but when I was a smaller one) I remember putting one of my toy lightsabers at the bottom of the stairs, standing at the top, and trying to lift it up to my hand with the Force like Luke did on Hoth. It didn't work,

 

I've figured out how to do this with Coke cans. I often hold out my hand and while grunting say "Use the force Luke". After a few moments my wife gets sick of it and hands me the can. Oh, yeah baby, these aren't the droids you're looking for!

[pandaman]

I'm gonna break the sci fi theme here...

In my childhood...

Battle of Britain, the cinema even had a Hurricane stuck to the wall hanging out above the entrance.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.  I was really into dinosaurs as a kid, and a bit too young to appreciate Raquel Welch properly at the time.

As a teenager...

Star Wars - naturally

[Red Shirt]

27 minutes ago, pandaman said:

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth.  I was really into dinosaurs as a kid, and a bit too young to appreciate Raquel Welch properly at the time.

I don't remember WDRtE. I do remeber Raquel Welch in 1,000,000 B.C. apparently I was not too young to appreciate her.  Veering way off course here, I ran home from school every day to catch Batman because there was the chance Julie Newmar would be in it. Even at 10 I knew she wasn't like other girls. She was purrfect.  

[pandaman]

49 minutes ago, Red Shirt said:

I don't remember WDRtE. I do remeber Raquel Welch in 1,000,000 B.C. apparently I was not too young to appreciate her.  Veering way off course here, I ran home from school every day to catch Batman because there was the chance Julie Newmar would be in it. Even at 10 I knew she wasn't like other girls. She was purrfect.  

That could be the one I remember Raquel Welch from actually. It was a few years ago now.

Though I definitely saw WDRtE at the cinema, my brother was a projectionist at the time, so we got cheap tickets.

 

Edit... Just searched on Google to check my memory, actually Raquel Welch wasn't in WDRtE so my recollection was flawed

Edited August 6, 2016 by pandaman

[Dispatcher]

My experiences were similar to some others posted above; spanning decades.  My list is large since I never left my first childhood.  Everyone should grab some popcorn and soft drinks, gather around the TV, darken the room and watch Things to Come (before my time) ...

... then followup on similar occasions with:

Black Friday (also before my time), Day the Earth Stood Still (original), Forbidden Planet, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Them!, This Island Earth, It!  The Terror From Beyond Space, The Thing (the original was scary and the remake is best watched on an empty stomach), 20 Million Miles to Earth, The Fly (the original was scary enough), Journey to the Center of the Earth (no conspiracies please), Dr. Strangelove ... , The Time Machine (a few good ones but I like the one with Rod Taylor), 2001: A Space Odyssey (in the theater was best), The Killer Shrews (gotta get in some silliness sometimes), Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, The Illustrated Man, Seconds, Fantastic Voyage, Planet of the Apes (original and remake) (the "sequels" were a bit of a let down), Andromeda Strain, Soylent Green, Westworld, Star Wars (IV), Alien (and sequels; this is where leaving it up to the imagination went out the window), Jurassic Park, The Fifth Element, Red Planet, Event Horizon, Pitch Black, Supernova, A Sound of Thunder, Avatar, The Book of Eli, Interstellar and many others that are less influential but still fun or interesting.

The biggie:  in bold above.  That was to be the future.  Leave it to the politicians (gotta blame someone) to mess that up.  And yes, I've read the novels upon which several of these movies were based; recommended.

Television?  The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits (TOS and the new series), Fireball XL5, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (quasi science fiction), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (love the completely illogical engineering nightmare of the Flying Sub), Star Trek and all its spin offs (but not the "milk the franchise" work by Abrams; but see later), Lost in Space (the first handful of episodes, before Irwin Allen and the one time diabolical Jonathan Harris changed it to compete against the campy Batman), Time Tunnel, The Invaders,  U.F.O., some minor stuff that escapes me for the 80s and 90s), Dune (not Sting and the heart plugs; but the miniseries and sequels on the original SciFi channel back when it was mostly good stuff, before the name change to Sy Fy and its loads of Sharknado dreck), Lost, Jericho, some others along similar themes.

Plenty of stuff out there and too much to mention.  I know I've left out some good ones and I know some of them are mentioned by others.

Edited August 8, 2016 by Dispatcher
growing list

[HoloYolo]

All of you are so old! I wouldn't be surprised if all of you were in retirement homes 

 

I'm extremely young. The movies that got me into space were:

Interstellar (I hadn't bought KSP yet, and I was still a COD kid)

Zathura (First space movie I've ever seen in my whole life)

and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

[razark]

Where's my cane?  I need to tell someone to get off my lawn. *grumble grumble*

 

Star Trek (TOS) was a major influence, even though I only caught it in reruns.  Star Wars, 2001, Dune all had their influence.

But none of it compares to living through the real thing.  I missed the moon landing, but I remember the shuttle launches and landings interrupting morning cartoons.  And later, after we got cable, the NASA channel was on the entire time during a mission.  (Of course, that was because my father was a NASA engineer. (Of course, everyone in the area worked for NASA.))  The fictional stuff was inspiring, but the real stuff was too, and the real stuff was a stone's throw away.  And in the backyard.  And the next room.

 

On 8/5/2016 at 9:12 AM, Red Shirt said:

I sit here sipping a cup of lapsang souchong...

I must compliment your choice of tea.

[Red Shirt]

7 hours ago, razark said:

I must compliment your choice of tea.

Some old guys collect wine, I have my tea. 

7 hours ago, razark said:

The fictional stuff was inspiring, but the real stuff was too, and the real stuff was a stone's throw away.  And in the backyard.  And the next room.

Jealous? Yes, yes I am. 

[Superfluous J]

Star Wars (what they call A New Hope these days) was probably not the first movie I saw in a theater, but it is the first that I remember seeing in the theater. I actually remember the fact that I was in a theater watching it, which is impressive considering I was 5ish at the time. But it wasn't really inspiring.

I think the most inspiring movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark, at least from a "creating fiction" perspective. It's one of the best action movies ever made, and I still frown when current movies make mistakes that Steven Spielberg basically wrote a tutorial on how to make correctly.

I won't speak to other aspects of life, as those are equally more personal and less awesome than Raiders was.

Edited August 8, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[Just Jim]

14 hours ago, HoloYolo said:

All of you are so old! I wouldn't be surprised if all of you were in retirement homes 

hey now... I outta smack you with my cane... lol... 

But yeah, I'm probably old enough to be your grandfather.   

And back on topic, if you're interested in the old sci-fi classics, and can embrace the cheesiness, so to speak, there are a bunch of great movies listed here that would be well worth searching for and watching.  Even if you were to find them on Mystery Science Theater 3000 or Svengoolie or something like that, all of these listed so far are definitely worth checking out.

 

On ‎8‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 10:12 AM, Red Shirt said:

I'm older than most of you (60), but as I sit here sipping a cup of lapsang souchong I was thinking of a movie I watched recently on an old nostalgia channel.

Yummy, but I prefer Jasmine Downy Pearls myself.. 

Edited August 8, 2016 by Just Jim

[Just Jim]

On ‎8‎/‎6‎/‎2016 at 8:12 AM, Red Shirt said:

Lot of good stuff here. Them - James Arness I think. Great movie.

Not just him, but also James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Fess Parker.....

And if you watch very, very carefully, you will spot a 20 second or so scene with a very young Leonard Nimoy!
(This movie was about 10 years before TOS and Spock)

Everyone was in this one, and they played their roles very, very seriously, which is what made Them stand out amongst the rest... IMO... 

 

Edited August 8, 2016 by Just Jim

[Andem]

Earl Gray in hand, I say that STWOK is probably the most inspirational movie. Now, books and television, on the other hand...

[Red Shirt]

1 hour ago, Just Jim said:

Everyone was in this one, and they played their roles very, very seriously, which is what made Them stand out amongst the rest... IMO... 

Wish I had Netflix and a big enough data plan to watch Them. I remember loving it but it has been so long. 

 

2 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Yummy, but I prefer Jasmine Downy Pearls myself.. 

 

1 hour ago, Andem said:

Earl Gray in hand,

Both excellent choices... and now I'm thirsty. Also can't find my War of the Worlds DVD. sigh