Well... I guess I find myself a big overwhelmed by all the thought-out responses to last time. Sounds like a cop-out? Im gonna try to address some of you alls thoughts, but I also need to add mine and write some new topics, so feel free to ask me to expand on your horror/ sci-fi ideas.
While I consider myself skeptical of most sci-fi, and a hater of horror, this isnt so after I think about it.
When I was little, I was a big fan of Marine Boy (one could say obsessed), Speed Racer (which I now believe is utter, utter shit), and Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot, which I really dont remember much about now. Always liked the giant attacking animal/ lizard/ bug movies. My siblings and I had models depicting giant bugs attacking buildings; mine was a praying mantis.
One of my earliest memories is how much TV commercials for the movie The Bug freaked me out. It was about vary large bugs, like stag beetles, that went around setting people on fire and (from what Ive read) they also spelt out threatening messages with their bodies.
When I was in London, late 70s, I was really into Doctor Who with Tom Baker. Someone once pointed out that as a hero 1) he isnt very strong, 2) he isnt always too smart. So true; he veers between playing stupid, actually being stupid, and being very smart. I dug the hell out of the show, and found it impossible in later years to watch other actors in the role (even though Baker wasnt the first).
Blakes 7 was another very cool show. It was on here briefly in the 90s. It was like a more hardcore Star Trek. The premise of the show was that Blake and some folks escaped from the prison of an Evil Galactic Empire (run by a woman; kinda nice twist) and their means of escape was a spaceship from a civilization that was alien to everyone. So they couldnt read the controls n such, but it was a very powerful ship; hence, the ability of 7 folks to escape a whole empire from week to week.
A nice touch to the show was Blakes second-in-command, Devon. He was a mean-spirited guy, borderline bad-guy, but in a much more subtle (and, in my mind, far superior) way than, say, Slytherin College students in Harry Potter are.
There were other strange Brit sci-fi shows and mini-series. There was one about a modern-day plague. There was one about some evil guy who made everyone go into a technological-device-destroying rage I hope you understand see, at intervals, everyone, all human beings, would destroy their stereos, TVs, cars for like five minutes, then snap out of it. There was, I recall, one kid who was unaffected, and he sets out to find whos behind it. A true mindfuck of a show, as I recall, but I never saw how it ended.
Back in America, 80s, I was hardcore into the Japan cartoon Star Blazers, the premise being that the Japanese space navy decides to fight the evil Gamalons by digging up the WWII battleship Yamato and installing a giant space cannon in it and making it, you know, a spaceship. Seriously. It also had some really soap-opera elements to it, but I bought totally into them.
I liked reading really odd books as a young teen. My favorites were Hunter Thompson and Michael Moorcock sci-fi. The End of Time books and Thompsons fictionalized nonfiction (at the time, I just assumed it was all true!) were just as bizarre and skewed as I could hope for.
Star Trek how to summarize? So much I could say well, I liked it as a kid, watched it in London, went to all the films in the theater up to #5, liked Next Generation, liked Deep Space Nine but then I started to turn against it. I decided Trekkies were dupes and pushovers and even idiots. When the movie Trekkies came out, I went to it thinking Oh great, itll show how dumb they are, etcetc but instead I was surprised at what bright, productive and philosophical people the fans depicted were. Computer experts, doctors, professionals with a lot of rational things to say about why they liked the show.
I mightve also, at some point, been trying to deny that I was a nerd. I felt like, I dont fit an exact nerd profile, and when my college roommate Mike said, You were a nerd! Man, I was too! I was really upset but now, I dont care. I dont mind if people think Im a nerd, or cool, or both. From what Ive seen of cool people in life, they dont impress me too much.
But anyway, what I noticed also over the years is that I seem to be a fan of sci-fi and horror when they are mixed. Alien. The Thing. Event Horizon (really freaked me out, and I was 27 years old). Even 2001: a Space Odyssey can be seen as horror in part; suspense, folks getting killed.
Regular horror, I dont really get into, just some guy killing folks but then, most horror adds some supernatural element, and then you have some promise. The last segment of Trilogy of Terror. Before it became a franchise, Elm Street really pushed the envelope (I understand that Depp was in the early ones, too).
Okay, so Ive been writing for a half-hour, I guess I should shut up. Um, I agree with WaTed, I havent been blown away by Lovecraft yet, but I havent gone deep into his work
While I consider myself skeptical of most sci-fi, and a hater of horror, this isnt so after I think about it.
When I was little, I was a big fan of Marine Boy (one could say obsessed), Speed Racer (which I now believe is utter, utter shit), and Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot, which I really dont remember much about now. Always liked the giant attacking animal/ lizard/ bug movies. My siblings and I had models depicting giant bugs attacking buildings; mine was a praying mantis.
One of my earliest memories is how much TV commercials for the movie The Bug freaked me out. It was about vary large bugs, like stag beetles, that went around setting people on fire and (from what Ive read) they also spelt out threatening messages with their bodies.
When I was in London, late 70s, I was really into Doctor Who with Tom Baker. Someone once pointed out that as a hero 1) he isnt very strong, 2) he isnt always too smart. So true; he veers between playing stupid, actually being stupid, and being very smart. I dug the hell out of the show, and found it impossible in later years to watch other actors in the role (even though Baker wasnt the first).
Blakes 7 was another very cool show. It was on here briefly in the 90s. It was like a more hardcore Star Trek. The premise of the show was that Blake and some folks escaped from the prison of an Evil Galactic Empire (run by a woman; kinda nice twist) and their means of escape was a spaceship from a civilization that was alien to everyone. So they couldnt read the controls n such, but it was a very powerful ship; hence, the ability of 7 folks to escape a whole empire from week to week.
A nice touch to the show was Blakes second-in-command, Devon. He was a mean-spirited guy, borderline bad-guy, but in a much more subtle (and, in my mind, far superior) way than, say, Slytherin College students in Harry Potter are.
There were other strange Brit sci-fi shows and mini-series. There was one about a modern-day plague. There was one about some evil guy who made everyone go into a technological-device-destroying rage I hope you understand see, at intervals, everyone, all human beings, would destroy their stereos, TVs, cars for like five minutes, then snap out of it. There was, I recall, one kid who was unaffected, and he sets out to find whos behind it. A true mindfuck of a show, as I recall, but I never saw how it ended.
Back in America, 80s, I was hardcore into the Japan cartoon Star Blazers, the premise being that the Japanese space navy decides to fight the evil Gamalons by digging up the WWII battleship Yamato and installing a giant space cannon in it and making it, you know, a spaceship. Seriously. It also had some really soap-opera elements to it, but I bought totally into them.
I liked reading really odd books as a young teen. My favorites were Hunter Thompson and Michael Moorcock sci-fi. The End of Time books and Thompsons fictionalized nonfiction (at the time, I just assumed it was all true!) were just as bizarre and skewed as I could hope for.
Star Trek how to summarize? So much I could say well, I liked it as a kid, watched it in London, went to all the films in the theater up to #5, liked Next Generation, liked Deep Space Nine but then I started to turn against it. I decided Trekkies were dupes and pushovers and even idiots. When the movie Trekkies came out, I went to it thinking Oh great, itll show how dumb they are, etcetc but instead I was surprised at what bright, productive and philosophical people the fans depicted were. Computer experts, doctors, professionals with a lot of rational things to say about why they liked the show.
I mightve also, at some point, been trying to deny that I was a nerd. I felt like, I dont fit an exact nerd profile, and when my college roommate Mike said, You were a nerd! Man, I was too! I was really upset but now, I dont care. I dont mind if people think Im a nerd, or cool, or both. From what Ive seen of cool people in life, they dont impress me too much.
But anyway, what I noticed also over the years is that I seem to be a fan of sci-fi and horror when they are mixed. Alien. The Thing. Event Horizon (really freaked me out, and I was 27 years old). Even 2001: a Space Odyssey can be seen as horror in part; suspense, folks getting killed.
Regular horror, I dont really get into, just some guy killing folks but then, most horror adds some supernatural element, and then you have some promise. The last segment of Trilogy of Terror. Before it became a franchise, Elm Street really pushed the envelope (I understand that Depp was in the early ones, too).
Okay, so Ive been writing for a half-hour, I guess I should shut up. Um, I agree with WaTed, I havent been blown away by Lovecraft yet, but I havent gone deep into his work
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Cherry xox
P.S Would you really share a Vanilla Malted with me? That's so cute!
Keep it un-real in the streets, Cheech