Just a fun post for today. I’m going to visit my childhood and list a few movies that fostered my distrust of government and authority, with some brief reviews and comments. Some will be well-known and obvious, but others might be a little more obscure.
I saw this in theaters twice and I own it on VHS. Sadly, I don’t think that it’s been released on DVD, and Blu-Ray? Come on. Yet, this movie, based loosely on the legend of the 1947 Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash, made a huge impression on me as a kid. It fed my budding sense of outrage that our government would keep such a secret from the people, and that they would be willing to kill to keep the secret from getting out. I haven’t watched it in years so I have no idea if it holds up. Chances are it doesn’t, but if you can find it, it’s worth a viewing, especially if you were 10 to 13 years old in ‘83, it’ll bring back some memories.
I think I read this book too. Loosely based on a true story, this 1984 movie stars Scott Schwartz (A Christmas Story, The Toy, and several adult feature films in the 1990’s) as a young entrepreneur who starts a successful fertilizer/pest control business only to have the government come in and shut them down. As usual, the government ruins all the fun. In recent years, life imitates art as school bake sales become banned and don’t you even think of having a lemonade stand, or the Board of Health will land on you like a ten ton hammer.
I was angry from the minute the cop confiscated Wren’s Quiet Riot tape. I mean, yelling ‘No!’ at the screen. I was pissed. This movie, I have to give credit, it inoculated me against the bullshit that is organized religion, and for all the evangelical types like to bitch about Hollywood indoctrinating audiences against Christians, look, it wasn’t that far off the mark for what the evangelicals and Moral Majority members were actually doing. There were towns where dancing was not allowed. There was a big push to ban all kinds of popular music of the time. The Dead Kennedys were put on trial for their music (it was never about the H.R. Giger insert, the authorities had a hard-on for that band since they started). The infamous PMRC hearings followed a couple years after this movie. After failing to get record labels to censor their rock music, the censorship movement shifted to rap and hip-hop in the 90’s because it was easier to scare lily-white Christians with gangsta rap than it was to scare them with Twisted Sister (who had since jumped the shark). Looking back, the movie is a bit dated. OK, it’s really dated. Chris Penn is not only alive, he’s skinny. And Bacon’s solo dance number/montage is hysterical, but the emotion of it still resonates with me, the influence that a majority of religious people can have in a small town to the point of outlawing dancing (or anything else) is something we see repeated on a bigger scale when majorities vote for state constitutional amendments that strip gay & lesbian couples of their right to marry, for example.
This goes without saying. I mean, you have a kid who discovers an alien, a government that is spying on people trying to find said alien, and trying to capture the creature for their own designs. It’s classic kid vs. government, I loved those movies back in the day. Only watch the original, though, do NOT watch the altered and mutilated anniversary edition where the guns the government agents were pointing at the kids were replaced by hand-held radios. When the feds bust in your door they will NOT be carrying walkie-talkies. Plus, this movie got snubbed at the Oscars for Chariots of Fire. Chariots of Fire was fucking terrible.
This one was late 80’s, I was a little older. Goes like this. Government builds a cyborg prototype that for all outward appearances, is a teenage boy. Government decides to scrap the program, and that means that the robot-boy will be killed. A great tale that asks some good questions. When is a life a life? If a person creates a life artificially, through inventing a sentient, self-aware android, does that android then assume individual liberty by virtue of his own free will, or is he a disposable slave to his creator? It was a well-made movie and a good story as well, but it definitely made me think.
So… this is your homework assignment. If you haven’t seen these movies, you must watch them. See if they affect you the same way they affected me. And ask yourself, what modern movies out there portray government as the villain against the protagonist who wants to be free these days? Is there any film in the last 10 years or so where you feel incensed and angry with authority that steamrolls the individual, or do movies seem to be pushing the glory of the collective?
Let me know.
~Matti Frost
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