Old movies vs. the new stuff
Some things about me will never change. One of them is the fact that I prefer watching an old movie over one that was released this year. Oh, I sometimes will watch the new stuff, but they just don’t make movies like they did before we got so cynical about our society.
I love to laugh at the dumb stuff, and cry at the cheesy stuff, and I love to look forward to an ending where the good guys prevail and the bad guys lose, and it is revealed just how bad they are. The new stuff usually still does have that kind of ending.
I have written before about watching the old Hitchcock television shows. My husband and I have watched dozens of them lately. They are usually kind of corny, and the endings are often really stupid, but we continue to watch them, and we enjoy seeing some famous actors and actresses who made debuts during The Hitchcock Hour.
When I was a child, we didn’t have videos we could watch on TV. We went to the “picture show” to see movies. I was about 10 years old when “The Pit and the Pendulum,” starring Vincent Price, was released. I had nightmares for weeks after seeing that movie. I remembered the scene where the lady was tied up next to a wall in a room, and someone was laying bricks to seal up the room, and so she was buried alive. I also remember another lady in the movie being shut up in one of those iron cases the shape of a body. It had spikes that went through the body — not badly enough to kill them, but bad enough to die a slow death.
That movie went down in my mind as the scariest movie I have ever seen. It haunted me for a long time. Until last week, I had never seen that movie a second time, but last weekend I found it on “Tubi,” and so my husband and I watched it. I am no longer scared because of that movie. Vincent Price seemed almost like a sit-com star, rather that the creepy sort he seemed to be back in the 1960s.
“The Pit and the Pendulum” was written by Edgar Allen Poe, a famous writer from the 1800s, known for his poems and short stories. He had a disturbing life, and so much of his writings had a dark tone, such as the one I just described. Another famous piece of Poe’s was “The Raven,” which was written as a poem, but in 1963, it also was made into a movie starring Vincent Price. This past weekend, we watched both of these Poe/Price movies. “The Raven” seemed almost to be a comedy. Not only was Mr. Price the star, but it also had Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and a young Jack Nicholson. Good combination. It had some funny parts and some creepy parts, some deception and some mended relationships. The good guys won.
I think I’m done with creepy movies for a while. I’m moving on to a cheesy chick flick or a comedy. Maybe I’ll watch Mr. Mom or Mrs. Doubtfire.
— My love to all,
Nancy
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The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked, but he blesses the home of the righteous.
— Proverbs 3:33
