'retro' films you think people should see...

[GarryG]

Name 5 films that may now be considered 'retro' that you think people should see...

These don't neceseraly need to be things you like best or think are the best made,
just films from a by-gone era that you think people, for whatever rereason, should watch.


Mine would be (in no particular order):

The great rock'n roll swindle. (A story of Brittish Punk from the most infamous of all Punk bands, The Sex Pistols)
Quadrophenia. (An interesting and sometimes uncomfortable look into the 'Mods and Rockers' culture)
Scumm. (A disturbing Brittish film that chronicals life in the, thankfully now defunct, borstal system)
The Rocky Horror Picture show. (A truly Iconic film, apparently the biggest Cult Film in history!)
Man Bites Dog. (Warning this film is VERY disturbing and repugnant in a gross and intelectual way!)


Romper-Stomper almost made the list... and the list isn't light-viewing by any streach of the imagination.
I think something can be lernt from each, but with a view to 'Man Bites Dog' remember some things can't be unseen!

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Ooh, alright then.

Ice Pirates - Of all the Star Wars-influenced things that happened, this is my favourite. Features Angelica Houston, rapid-ageing time travel, an alien on the toilet, robots that get squashed by steamrollers... Lots of fun!

Alien Intruder - Starring Billy Dee Williams, a fun-enough sci-fi romp with an alien disguised as a lady, who makes the crew of men go mad and kill each other.

Jason and the Argonauts - Everyone's already seen this, but it's still my favourite SFX-centric film of all time.

Destroy All Monsters - The "ULTIMATE" Godzilla film, in which him and all his mates get posessed by aliens, destroy every major city on the planet, meet up for a big fight, then all gang up on King Ghidorah.

The Land That Time Forgot - A bunch of Brits are taken aboard a German U-Boat, which gets lost somehow and ends up in a place filled with dinosaurs and cavemen, as well as a weird river which allows for further evolution the longer you follow it (or something like that).

Those are the first five that came to mind, anyway.

[Antiriad2097]

Alien Intruder - Starring Billy Dee Williams, a fun-enough sci-fi romp with an alien disguised as a lady, who makes the crew of men go mad and kill each other.

I watched that about a week ago, it was awful. Even Billy Dee couldn't save it.

[Mr_C]

Hopefully I can offer a bit of variety with my choices.

The Time Machine (1960): starring Rod Taylor. If for no other reason than to see the progression through time scene. One of those real imagination sparkers.

Dawn of the Dead (1978): I felt the 2004(?) remake completely missed the messages from the original. The original offered a feeling of hopelessness as you watch the group going about their daily lives, desperately trying to smother themselves in the pretense of living a normal life.

Joe's Apartment: (is this retro yet?) starring Jerry O'Connell. A fun, quirky little comedy about a guy and his friendship with the cockroaches that live in his apartment. A great 'cheese' film

Watership Down: an emotional tale of the trials of a group of rabbits, Simon and Garfunkel. Everyone should have seen this and if not, they should.

Back to the Future: starring Michael J. Fox & Christopher Lloyd. Another time travel adventure and arguably the best to ever grace the big screen. I've seen this film countless times over the 27 years since it's release and everytime I spot a new detail I've previously missed. The tiniest details from the "Twin Pines Mall" at the start of the film, in 1985, becoming the "Lone Pine Mall" later in the film after the Dolorean smashes through one of the pine trees in 1955. Even better still is watching the whole trilogy straight through and linking all the details together from the films.

[Mire Mare]

Alien
Blade Runner
The Third Man
Seven Samurai
It's a Wonderful Life

I thought about saying something about each film, but I think the titles say more than enough.

[GarryG]

If you watch Seven Samurai, you need to watch the spaghetti western it spawned afterwards...

The magnificent sever, I'd also say watch 'The good, the bad, and the ugly' and 'A fist full of dollars' / 'A few dollars more'

[joefish]

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) - Why explain it when it's got pretty much every single damn thing in it everyone has mentioned so far?
An epic space battle. Derived from Seven Samurai / Magnificent Seven. Even Robert Vaughn in effectively the same role. And former stars like Richard Thomas (John-Boy Walton), George Peppard, Sybil Danning, Earl Boen (the Psychiatrist from The Terminator et. seq.). And it's also the film that Space Raiders (1983) lifted all its effects shots from. Of models built by James f*cking Cameron no less, and only James bl**dy Horner doing the soundtrack! And a lass with more cleavage than Pammie delivering the line "You've never seen a Valkyrie go down." What more could you want from a film?

What are you counting as 'retro' anyway? Jaws (1975)? Star Wars (1977)? Aliens (1986)? Too obvious?

The Princess Bride (1987) - Glorious to watch, funny and exciting. Swordsmen, monsters, pirates, rats of unusual size - it's got them all. And André the giant and a bloke who went on to play a Ferrengi...

Dark Star (1974) - it's not that great, but as Sci-Fi from 1974 it's amazing to watch it and spot all the influences it had on the likes of Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979). Or if it gets too silly, watch Silent Running instead (from 2 years earlier), which has a much better story - just skip the musical interlude bit.

The Wind in the Willows (1983) - The Cosgrove-Hall version with David Jason, Michael Hordern etc. Classic British artistry - story, model-making, animation and voices - at its finest. Though as has been mentioned, Watership Down (1978) is another great - a deeply meaningful film that parents can easily be tricked into letting their kids watch.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963) - I've tried hard not to repeat any, but this one is too good to skip over. You could perhaps go for the original Clash of the Titans, but Jason and the Argonauts was Harryhausen at his best. And yes, you can then point to the restaurant in Monster's Inc. and laugh.

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Alien Intruder - Starring Billy Dee Williams, a fun-enough sci-fi romp with an alien disguised as a lady, who makes the crew of men go mad and kill each other.

I watched that about a week ago, it was awful. Even Billy Dee couldn't save it.

I watched it back-to-back with Starcrash, and got more enjoyment out of this one

[jdanddiet]

What makes a movie Retro

Any of the Harryhausen stop motion movies or the monster movies of the 70's like Warlords of Atlantis, Land that Time Forgot, People that Time Forgot etc.

[ootini]

Good calls on Battle Beyond the Stars, Silent Running and Dark Star. BBotS is a Roger Corman classic that I recall fondly from Being on telly at xmas as a kid.

Corman's movies are great places to start for Cult low-buget cinema. From his 60's Psychedelic movies like the Trip and Psych out, to his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations and a series of low-buget sci-fi flicks designed to cash in on the Star Wars Craze of the late 70's and early 80's. He's also resposible for launching the careers of a lock of Hollywood actors. There's a great documentary about him. Aul Jack Nicholson gets quite emotional in one snippet.

Anyway, here's my tuppence worth...

Vanishing Point (1971) - The ultimate car chase movie. About a guy trying to deliver a White Dodge Challenger from Clevland to San Fransico in jig time. Plenty of action and some surreal moments.

The Wild Angels (1966) - Possibly the move that started a brief craze of Biker Movies in the late 60's. Stars Peter Fonda who later did Easy Rider. Has the line "We wanna be free! We wanna be free to do what we wanna do. We wanna be free to ride. We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by The Man! ... And we wanna get loaded. And we wanna have a good time. And that's what we are gonna do. We are gonna have a good time... We are gonna have a party."

Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) - Spanish schlock Horror from the early 70's. First of four movies featuring the undead templar knights.

Suburbia (1983) - Movie about runaway punk kids in early 80's California. Used actual real Punks from the California punk scene at the time instead of real actors. Gives it some authenticity and grittiness. Also features some a few of the bands of the era like DI and TSOL.

Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx (1972) - Actually all the Lone Wold and Cub movies are worth a watch but this is my personal favourite of them. A framed Master Samurai out for vengeance with his baby son in a pram loaded with hidden weapons. Lots of dismemberment and arterial spray. The first three movies were later re-cut into one movie called Shogun Assasin which had the tagline "Meet the greatest team in the history of mass slaughter".

[The Beans]

Ooh, alright then.

Ice Pirates - Of all the Star Wars-influenced things that happened, this is my favourite. Features Angelica Houston, rapid-ageing time travel, an alien on the toilet, robots that get squashed by steamrollers... Lots of fun!

And space herpes and at least one really big afro. Great film.

I think you should all watch The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension, it's quite mental.

[jdanddiet]

Ooh, alright then.

Ice Pirates - Of all the Star Wars-influenced things that happened, this is my favourite. Features Angelica Houston, rapid-ageing time travel, an alien on the toilet, robots that get squashed by steamrollers... Lots of fun!

And space herpes and at least one really big afro. Great film.

I think you should all watch The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai: Across The 8th Dimension, it's quite mental.

ah yes I love that film! There's another fan on here, think it's Felge?

You have to watch it a couple of times though!

[joefish]

Starcrash is pretty awful - far too much of it is lifted straight from Star Wars but with no budget or imagination. I haven't seen it in decades, but I do seem to recall it's less convincing than Spaceballs, which was at least meant as a spoof! (No disrespect to Spaceballs though - still funny and someone, somewhere, please, next Star Trek convention that has Tim Russ (Tuvok) attending, ask him to sign his publicity photo with the line "We ain't found SH*T!"!).

What I find astonishing is that you can't get Battle Beyond the Stars on DVD anywhere in the UK! There's an R1 special edition with loads of extras in the US, but it's never had a UK DVD release. My copy is a German one via eBay (Sador - Herrscher im Weltraum, literally 'Sador - Lord of Space') which thankfully, by default, plays the original English language (mono) release with no subtitles.

[RetroAerosmith]

Sky Riders 1976ish, a governors family gets kidnapped and hekd in a tower..a rescue attempt using hangliders is then arranged.

Rollercoaster 1977ish - classic disaster movie where someone has planted a bomb on a rollercoaster track...race against time to find it, cut the red or the blue wire?

The Last Dragon - classic or 80s cheesefest. A black martial artist wants to find the master to learn "the glow".

Fortress - 88ish- australian movie involving a class of school kids that get kidnapped by gunmen wearing masks of a duck/cat/father christmas...quite violent too.

Cannibal Holocaust - probably the most shocking/disturbing film ive seen and probably wished i hadnt.

[The Angry Jock]

Destroy All Monsters - The "ULTIMATE" Godzilla film, in which him and all his mates get posessed by aliens, destroy every major city on the planet, meet up for a big fight, then all gang up on King Ghidorah.

Good shout, I'd love for Channel 4 to run all those movies again, one a week would do nicely.