Twitch-o-Meter: The Return of the Top-Loading VCR

Good list. But I have issues with you about putting Krull in there. Some films are best left to your memory as they amazed you when you saw them as a kid. I had the missfortune to buy Krull on DVD recently and I really have to say this it is one huge stinking pile of shit. Even though it was probably fairly well budgeted at the time it's just too bad to watch today.
Still funny to see Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane in there.

Mine would have to be in no particular order.

V. Totaly blew me away when I saw it and I was obsessed about it for a while. One of the few times you saw Robert Englund as a good guy.
The Monster Squad. Even though it's a blatant Goonies cash-in it's still fucking great. I recently got a widescreen copy of it and it still holds up so well. Mostly because of Fred Dekker's and Shane Black's script.
Night of the creeps. Fred Dekker created a movie that spoofed and paid homage to older B horror films ten whole years before Scream did it and recogniced Ed Wood's failed genius eight years before it became en vogue. Sadly few people noticed. Again the solid script by Dekker demands that you watch it a few times to spot all the great subtle jokes.
Conan. When I watched this film I actually thought that this was a period piece and that our world was once like that. How cool would that have been?
Big Trouble in little China. My favorite Carpenter film by far. I knew nothing about it when I first saw it but it really did a number on me. Such a great adventure film with great one liners.

Aaahh, Todd, the glory days of top-loading VCRs and 1980s oversized videocassette boxes littering the "Horror" shelves in your local mom-and-pop video rental stores. Come back, Wizard and Paragon video, I remember you all too well. My family first bought a VCR at Christmas of 1984, when I was fourteen. I distinctly recall pleading with my mother to drive me to a local indie video store (now defunct for many years; I also worked there in high school just a couple years later) so that I could finally dive in -- I remember my first four rentals on December 26th as if it were yesterday: DAWN OF THE DEAD, ERASERHEAD, VIDEODROME, and BASKET CASE. I think DEEP RED, EVIL DEAD, DEADLY SPAWN and (sue me, but remember the period of time we're talking about here) LIQUID SKY followed upon returning the original four. It's been downhill for me ever since, I guess...I mean it's 22 years later, and I just finished watching a DVD double-bill of THE BRAINIAC and Teruo Ishii's SHOGUN'S JOYS OF TORTURE tonight, so clearly something snapped that holiday season when the gigantic Panasonic came out of its cardboard factory box...

...then again, I have a whole other list of genre films that traumatized me at an even younger age on regular, old syndicated (UHF) television before that: PHANTASM, SHOGUN ASSASSIN, DePalma's SISTERS, DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT (!), and -- believe it or not, yes, this showed on television when I was young -- Jess Franco's VIRGIN AMONG THE LIVING DEAD (!!) all scarred me for life during their TV runs when I was growing up. But that's another post, isn't it?

I was still young during the 80's and saw most of these movies on television. We only rented movies during the summer hollidays and most of the time they were comedy. The first thing i remeber renting with my own money was the first Hellraiser, I just hád to see that movie! But that's at the end of the 80's already. I am still a big fan of 80's fantasy though. Conan the Barbarian stands on a lonely high place. Then there are Highlander, Big Trouble in Little China, Critters, the Beastmaster, the Barbarians, Red Sonja, the Last Dragon, Wolfen and ofcourse the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies (the George Lucas updates of serial fantasy from the early years of cinema)

Todd, that must be like the third or fourth time you've mentioned growing up in a conservative household in a film review or Twitch-O-Meter.

Just thought I'd point that out.

My first experience with home video wasn't a vcr or betamax. It was the cartridge style laserdiscs. My friend Herbie Hoffman had older sisters in high school and they would rent tons of exploitation films. I first saw the following films in this manner: I Spit on Your Grave (the castration scene at that tender age of 10 or 11...), Mausoleum (the titties turn blue and grow mouths with razor sharp teeth!), and Phantasm (I remember us laughing hysterically when the flying ball hit the guy in the head and started spraying blood out of the otherside. It just struck us as funny somehow.) I think all of these films prepared me for Vistor Q and Audition.

My love for big rubber suits and black & white horror are the work of television, though.

Three or four times over the span of 3400+ posts (yes, I just looked it up) aint a bad ratio, Jake. And when you're talking about the stuff that shapes you environment is at least as important as any other factor.

And yeah, Swarez, I've specifically avoided going back to Krull because I know that my impressions of it now won't come anywhere close to living up to my memories of it. I saw a lot of 'better' films in my youth but for some reason when I'm looking back these are the moments that really stick out in my memory.

True. Somehow films usualy were "better" back in the day.
In my household we didn't get a VCR untill the early 90's but fortunately for me since I lived in an apartment building/complex everybody would hook up to the internal entana which was hooked up to a VCR and then they would chip in renting videos and they would hang up programs so you could see what would be on that night. That practice would die out when whole appartment buildings were threatend to be sued by the distriputers and the US studios. Today the cables that hung between houses to get the hook up are still there.

Ah, BEASTMASTER. I remember thinking that those guys with the wings that would grab you and turn you into a pile of bones and green slush were the coolest things in the world (if you look at them closely, they almost have a Batman-esque quality about them). Oh, and the other guys (I'm so good at remembering names, if they even had any) who had the helmets on where the eyes glowed and the spikes down each arm... And Tanya Roberts breasts, of course...'rank right up there with the infamous Phoebe Cates swimming pool scene from FAST TIMES as far as defining my sexuality at such a young age. I still remember my first video rental, though I'm ashamed to admit it was GREYSTOKE: THE LEGEND OF TARZAN, LORD OF THE APES. Ah, those cheeseball memories...good times...

Oh I remember a time - when I was a teenager in the 80s - when I was renting and watching something nearly every night, and in retrospect, it did and does seem like a golden, or silver era.

I remember "V" being very big and original at the time, and that lizard-alien-eats-mouse scene was huge in reputation. I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I am sure it is totally hokey and hammy now (and it is always mingled with my memories of the last golden Dr. Who era before it's cancellation).

As it would happen, I saw BEASTMASTER just last week, having purchased the dvd for £3 (!). Thoroughly enjoyed it. I always remembered the ikky bird-creatures being scary, and in my memeory, the "gimps" (hehe) were more gorilla-monster-like. Hmm. In truth, I still probably think DRAGONSLAYER is a superior film - still love it. And then there is CLASH OF THE TITANS, which I was totally taken with as a kid. I saw all these at the cinema on release, and then revisited on VCR...

And then there was CRITTERS, THE MONSTER SQUAD, the 80s series of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE KEEP, CHILD'S PLAY, SHRUNKEN HEADS, RE-ANIMATOR (!!), PUMPKINHEAD... these are still real favourites.

Also what I consider a sacred "P" trinity: PAPERHOUSE, PIN and PARENTS.

I am not sure how on Earth I got to rent these, as I was underage for many.... but I guess it was because I knew the video shop guy well, and years later I got to work in that very store for almost a decade. And now I am changing homes and having a big spring clean, and I will be forced to lose some of those old videos. I have hundreds. But, of course, DVDs are incredible, mostly because it has revived so many forgotten rarities that VCR never bothered with.

i keep finding i have more common ground with todd that i ever imagined. all the movies here are strong memories for me also... 'logans run' is the oddest, having been edited into a daytime-friendly version that manages to remove much of the harshness of the early terminations, and (surprisingly) the sex elements too to a large extent, here in the UK - ive seen it more times like that than ive seen in it complete form - 'V' I remember because it initially seemed inocuous, and then i accidentally caught the infamous 'mouse swallowing scene' when things began to reveal themselves a bit more... i am trying to think of other similar films like this that i remember from those days, big VHS memories for me also include 'life of brian', 'hellraiser' (when i was about 14), argentos 'opera' when i was around 16 or 17, 'platoon', 'full metal jacket' and so on... as for TV, the odd sci-fi fantasy ones stick out, bormans 'excalibur' is still a favourite of mine, and it's the reason i got to see many a godzilla movie, loads of abott and costello films too. oh, and late night seasons of animation, french movies, and hammer horror also.

God bless Toronto's CityTV. Shaper of many post-X'rs warped sensibilities. What with the uncensored Grade B and Grade Z movies (Night of the Living Pancake anyone?) And Saturday nights, home of the broadcast-over-air "BabyBlue" films.

Oh, on the subject of Beastmaster, it is a long running joke that HBO stands for "Hey! Beastmaster's On" and TBS stands for "The Beastmaster Station." Ha.

Just about 5 months ago, some of my geekier friends were having a similar converstaion to this Twitch-o-meter, and a passionat Krull vs. Beastmaster argument sprung up (yes, that geeky). It was settled with back to back screenings of Beastmaster and Krull. Nobodys opinion was changed, but the following observations were had watching these films for the first time in over a decade (or 2):

1. Cut out the soaring hawk shots in Beastmaster, and you trim nearly 30 minutes of the film. Seriously.
2. What a great odd combo of cute ferrets and brutally murdered children. Just what audience were they looking for here?
3. Rip Torn is genius. Pure Genius.

4. Krull has aged very, very badly from a visual look, but there are moments of sadness (mostly the spider subplot) here that actually belie some of the weaker elements of the movie.
5. Liam Neeson when from bit-part in Krull to Oscar Schindler! An even bigger transition of Helen Hunt from TRANCERS (one that should be mentioned in this thread!) to As Good as it Gets.

A few more to add (I believe there was a thread in the forum which covered this ground considerably - Deathrace 3000, Hell Comes to Frogtown, They Live (and all of the 80s Carpenter canon), An American Werewolf in London, Full Moon's collection (Trancers to Puppetmaster), Deathstalker, Solar Babies, Phantasm, Italian Hercules pictures, anything staring Sho Kasugi and/or Lee Van Cleef and/or Fred Williamson, Terror Vision, that odd Harvey Keitel duo Saturn3 and Starknight, Repoman, and a healthy dose of Rutgar Hauer starring B-flicks from The Hitcher to The Blood of Heroes.

Yes it was good to be young in the 80s with a Video membership and lenient parents whose attitude was "They're just movies after all, rent what you like)