The Movies

   For a number of years, I saw every movie released.  In those days, there were double features, and the "B" movie was often recycled and paired with the main attraction, meaning you saw it more than once. I am still retroactively bored when I recall a certain movie involving airplanes flying over Mary Tyler Moore at a wedding party, or something like that.  I remember hardly anything about most of the movies I've seen, can not recall sections of dialog, or even the main plot lines.  All I'm left with is a general impression of the most memorable movies I've sat through.  Some throughout the years opinions:
  Worst Movie:    Face/Off----I know face transplants were in early development stage then, but really?  Grab a face-skin out of a medical lab, slap it on and John Travolta becomes Nicholas Cage, and able to run right out and fool people as to his identity.  (Or it could have been the other way around)   Another horror of  a movie, not to be confused with horror movie was Twins.  I remember nothing but Danny Devito and a feeling of intense boredom.
   Scariest Movie:   Still has to be Psycho, for the shock.  Not so much as at the surprise ending, but because it was the first movie I'd ever seen where who you assumed  were going to be the main characters were killed---first Janet Leigh and then Martin Balsam---who would have thought. 
 ( Scariest movie as a child:  Ma liked the idea of going to the movies, but we were able to go only a few times as a family back in the early days. I remember being somewhat nervous about one of those early movies, while Dorothy was absolutely terrified.  The movie opened with a man riding  a bicycle down a road at night and falling into a pit soon surrounded by a pack of dogs.  Another scene was of a  howling dog signaling that there had been a death.  I don't even know if they were parts of the same movie, but many years later Dorothy told me she'd seen that horrifying  movie on  TV, and it was a comedy, one of the Ma and Pa Kettle series, I think she said. No one had told us, and we didn't remember anyone laughing, though Ma used to repeat the "I'm Bert"  and  "I'm Mert" lines once in a while. We were so oblivious.)
   Most Repulsive Movie:   Blue Velvet----Ugh!  Block it out of my mind.
   Most Ominous and Unsettling Movie:  The River Wild----Kevin Bacon at his creepiest, kind of ahead of his time in depiction of psychopaths.
   Most Underrated Movie:  The Great Gatsby, the one starring Mia Farrow.  I remember seeing this at a drive-in the night we were having our house flea-bombed.  The kids were at Ma's, Roger the cat was at the vet's, and the movie had received lukewarm at best reviews.  It was our only option, I hadn't expected much, but ended up with a very positive opinion.  (I plan to see the new version with Leonardo Dicaprio, though the movie's approach seems entirely different.)
   On these sleepless nights, I recall what my son would ask me to do when he was little and couldn't sleep:  "Mom, would you come in and bore me to sleep?"   I would drone on about the old days, (that would have been any time before he was born), and after a fairly short time, he'd fall sleep.  Better than any sleeping pill.  Ho-hum, back to bed for me......