Movies That Influenced My Life

I was pondering while recently watching a movie about how much I've enjoyed them throughout my life. I remember fondly when I was a little fellow going to the movies with my parents and our friends.

I remember the very first time Mom dropped my brother and me off for a movie - our first without grown-ups. I was twelve years old and it was to see the James Bond movie, "Live and Let Die" downtown Tallahassee at the theater that used to be next to the Capital building.

Soon afterwards, my parents purchased an 8mm camera (no sound, but state-of-the-art at the time) and I quickly learned I could gather all the neighborhood kids together and make little movies. The best of them was "Dracula Invades Blountstown" Parts I and II.


So again I'm thinking about all this and I decided to reflect on the movies that have most influenced me in my life (in no particular order):

• Dawn of the Dead.
  I had been hooked on scary movies for as long as I can remember. Growing up on Frankenstein, The Wolfman, Dracula, and The Mummy, etc. I even had all the little models of each (which had glow-in-the-dark parts, which would scare me during the night). But this movie, it didn't push the envelope for me, it blew it apart. I saw it for the first time during it's initial release in the spring on 1979 with my friend Steve Lee in Marianna, Florida (ended up a lot of friends where there the same night to see it for the first time). It completely scared me to a state I had never before experienced...I mean, this was a complete assault on my senses. I had seen "Last Man on Earth, "Night of the Living Dead" and "The Omega Man" so I already had a fascination with the whole "last man left" genre, but this movie took it to an entire new plateau. Since that initial viewing, I've literally watched this movie over a thousand times.


• It's A Wonderful Life.
  Maybe it's just me, but I believe that most folks have made decisions in their lives that they wished they could go back and change. Also, we've gotten ourselves in to some things that we just don't think there's any other option than the worst ones we can come up with. Then, there's this whole "our attitude" is what we need to change philosophy. I've written before about how awesome this movie is and how I continue to find lessons in it.


• Patton.
  This is the film that caused me to have a life-long passion for Military History, specializing in WWII. I saw it when I was nine years old and from the very beginning of the movie, that scene with the giant flag and the speech...I was at that moment a committed full-blooded American in appreciation of what others had sacrificed to give me the freedoms I enjoyed. Yes, it was very powerful on a young, impressionable boy.


• Forrest Gump.
  My favorite movie of all time. Every time I watch this movie I see something else that makes me think about how our lives are so similar. I'll not go into this one any further since I've recently written about it, but just to note about it's influence on me.

This isn't all of them, as I could go on and on. But this is the top ones as reflected in certain areas of my life.

My question: What movies have influenced your life?

[Note: photo from http://larryfire.files.wordpress.com/]

“Your Success Is My Business.”™

pondering - "to think about : reflect on"

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