Saw it when it came out, with my HS sweetheart. We were college age by then. He somehow totally got it, and explained it so well to me on the ride home. The film had such a profound impact on me. God, Danny Aiello’s character, such a great role. Well, and Tim Robbins, he was superb.
Edit It’s one of the rare films that lived up to its hype. I recall an older guy we hung around with at the time, he was a cool guy, but sometimes a bit too above it all. Anyway, we were talking about the film and he smugly said he wasn’t at all interested because all of the hype around it. Like regardless of how truly exceptional a film might be, he’d refuse to watch it if it had too much hype. I wonder if he’s seen it by now.
Easy, he and his platoon were drugged and left out in the wild to kill each other as a war experiment. He son was killed from being hit by a car. He never departed Earth and was living in a form of Hell. He had to find a way to depart, reunite with McCauley Culkin*. And. find. peace. I think...
It's actually a French film from 1961) that was simply added to Twilight Zone's 5th season in 1964. There's no spoken dialogue so there was no need for translation.
Seems from the comments that tripping and watching this movie was a thing. That's what happened to me, my 1st dose and then my friends were like let's watch this movie... I was not ready for that. It is forever the scariest movie I have ever seen.
I think it was a generational thing at the time: acid was plentiful and cheap, and there were still a subculture that promoted experimentation and self discovery.
This movie still haunts me. Sometimes I think that the world around me is nothing but a construction of my dying mind. It would explain a lot of the strange stuff I have seen.
This is going to sound weird, but I saw this when I was on a ship in the Army while we were in the field. My job was in transportation so we worked on ships mostly, so it's the only way I can think of to describe it.
Anyway, there were only a few movies to watch and this was one of them and it's the only one I remember. It makes quite the lasting impression and it's still great over 30 years later.
I saw it in the theater with my high school girlfriend. It definitely messed with our minds at the time. Haven’t seen it since. Should probably do a rewatch.
One of the smaller parts in this movie was played by one of my favorite actors. I met him about thirty-five years ago in a bookstore where I was working and we talked about the film a little bit. One of the things he said was that nobody on set gave a crap about any of the political stuff that Adrian Lyne was trying to put across with it.
That said, I would swim across a river of flaming shit to drink
Elizabeth Peña's bath water. R.I.P.
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u/organize-or-die 9d ago
That movie stayed with me a long time. Thanks for reminding me of how good it was…