It ain't that deep. Like I said, this is all about the movies I saw as a child between the years 1970 and 1984. If you haven't seen these movies, maybe you should read something else, because I don't want to spoil anything for you.
A group from our church organized a field trip to see the Hidding Place at the Skyway. I suppose the church wanted us to see an example of true Christian love and sacrifice. The Hidding Place taught me that Nazis are bad. I remember how the good lady fantasied about beating up her Nazi guard, even though it was bad to want to hurt others, and I could really relate to that. After the movie, I was really scared of german shepard dogs, but I got over that pretty quickly.
Of course, my sheltering parents did not take me to see these films when they came out. But I did know about them, because they were broadcast on television before I was 6 years old. This was before cable television and the widespread use of home VCRs, so the broadcasts were major events. I sat in the basement with my parents, waiting for the show to start, but then came the dreaded warning: the omnious black screen with white text with portents of mature content, the mere sight of which could send my heart rate skyward. The fact that the film was "edited for television" meant that it could still contain pictures so frightening as "to blow my young mind", as my father used to say. I got the feeling from my mom that these were movies about "bad people." By the time they got to the horse head part, I had run from the family room in terror. For months, the word godfather was right up there with sasquatch and the loc ness monster in terms of scaryness.
Wow! We were really psyched to see this one. Tim Conway and Don Knotts together! For some reason, we got to the theater late and missed the beginning. No problem! They fine folks at the theater let us sit in on the next screening so we could see how the movie started, plus we got to see an extra Donald Duck cartoon! I'd never scene anything like that before. I don't really remember what happened in the actual movie, though.
This one didn't leave much of a mark on me, but I still I love Don Knotts.
This movie was first released in 1970, but I remember seeing it in a theater, so Disney must have re-released it. I don't think I enjoyed this one. They hid jewels in vegetables. Stefanie Powers was in it. I loved her in Heart to Heart, but that was much later.
The first movie I remember seeing in a theater (actually, it was at a drive-in off Highway 7 and county road 101) was Snoopy Come Home. I remember the whistling song, and that the movie made my big brother cry. I don't think I'd seen him cry before. I suppose those were meloncholly times with the Vietnam War and everything, but I was just a toddler then.
