Movies From Your Childhood That You Barely Remember -

[BoingoTango]

I *THINK* this might be it. Haven't seen it since I was four or five. But I'm pretty sure that this is the movie that inspired really-weird rabbit related dreams. Like one I remember where there was just this giant Easter Bunny sitting in a chair in a dimly lit room I was in. He was all cute but I was afraid of him for some unexplained reason. The next thing I remember him being really mean and talking shit to me, and then he took my favorite jacket that my Grandma gave me and was taunting me, and the whole thing was really weird. And I had that dream like 3 or 4 times.

 

[Madam Nekromantik]

Bringing up Rankin Bass reminded me that they had done a film called The Daydreamer. It's about a young Hans Christian Andersen daydreaming during school about many of his famous stories. One part had Thumbelina and right after that was The Garden of Paradise. Because the stories were back to back my young mind combined the two, and for a long time I though that Thumbelina had found the garden of Eden after she ran away from Mr. Mole and got teased by the Devil.

Looking back at it the part about the Garden of Paradise is still a bit creepy.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

I once snuck downstairs late at night as a kid to watch television and this weird horror movie about frogs was on.

Frogs (1972 Theatrical Trailer)

Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson Present "Frogs", released by American International in 1972. Starring Ray Milland, Sam Elliot, and Joan Van Ark.

m.youtube.com

I'm pretty sure this was it.

 

[Vorhtbame]

Not a movie, but my parents insisted years afterward that this never happened:

 

[Pokemonquistador2]

Bringing up Rankin Bass reminded me that they had done a film called The Daydreamer. It's about a young Hans Christian Andersen daydreaming during school about many of his famous stories. One part had Thumbelina and right after that was The Garden of Paradise. Because the stories were back to back my young mind combined the two, and for a long time I though that Thumbelina had found the garden of Eden after she ran away from Mr. Mole and got teased by the Devil.

Looking back at it the part about the Garden of Paradise is still a bit creepy.

I remember seeing parts of that film as a kid and thinking it creepy. I watched the whole thing a couple of years ago and I thought, when it started, that it was going to be a story where the kid looks for a treasure, but then meets a bunch of friends and discovers that the true treasure was the friendships he made during the journey. But then the kid blows off every person he meets, acts like a selfish brat and gets called out for it at the end of the show. I found it kind of refreshing, like a Grimm fairytale where the main character acts badly and gets punished. You generally don't see that kind of thing anymore since parents don't want their precious children imitating or admiring a morally compromised hero, or being traumatized by the comeuppance they receive.

Rankin Bass movies were always known not just for the creepiness of their animation, but for their unsettling weirdness as well. Movies like Mad Monster Party were chock full of it. (I saw that movie recently and was more weirded out by it than I was when I saw it as a kid. You'd think you'd be prepared to be scared of a movie based on universal horror movie characters, but one of the first scenes of the movie has a mad scientist killing one of his own pets in order to test an explosive chemical. You definitely won't see THAT kind of thing in kids movies today. Also, there was a lot of weird sexual innuendo between the monster characters (most of whom were based on real live actors of the day.)

 

[RumblyTumbly]

I remember seeing the Raggedy Ann and Andy movie when it was on TV (Back when I was about 5 or so) and it was really a trip:

It was animated by Richard Williams, the animator who did The Thief and the Cobbler and Toontown from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? So the animation is extra fluid and trippy. A real mindfuck to a kid like me who hadn't been exposed to that kind of thing much.

I also remember seeing Rankin Bass' Return of the King when it first came out. (I'm an old muh'fugger.) Rankin Bass animation is weird enough on its own, but when you combine it with a dark story like ROTK, it'll give you nightmares for awhile. The story covers the last leg of Frodo and Sam's journey to Mount Doom and the destruction of the One Ring and the plot has to fudge a bit to include things that weren't properly set up (like Galadriel's Phial.) The backgrounds of Mordor were amazing though. (The animation was done by Topcraft, the Japanese studio that later became Studio Ghibli. ) When I properly read the books years later, the image of Mordor that came to my imagination was the one I had seen in Rankin/Bass's ROTK. I really don't think I would have visualized that book as well if it hadn't been for this movie.

Oh God the Raggedy Ann Movie is nuts! Even as a kid I was perplexed by its trippy nature.

Also, the Ragdolly song will never leave my brain. It’s actually a sweet little song but I’m just amazed I remember it almost word for word after all these years.

As for the Rankin Bass ROTK film I remember watching it and being completely confused. As a kid I hadn’t read Tolkein’s work yet, but while The Hobbit was a stand-alone that I could follow, ROTK was something where we were coming in the middle of and I was completely lost.

And in my youth I obviously didn't know about the Bakshi LOTR film and that it never got a concluding film. Rankin Bass basically just picked up the slack, but I had no way of knowing it back then.

Watching it again as an older person with more knowledge of the books, I was able to appreciate it more. It’s sort of an abridged version of the book, but has that great visual style that I loved about The Hobbit and solid voice acting (though we all think of Serkis as Gollum, I rather like Brother Theodore’s voice for the character too).

Could do without the songs though. The songs in The Hobbit as straight from the book and are used to punctuate scenes as the story develops rather than do a Disney style musical number.

 

[UF 404]

I watched a few of those direct to video Disney sequels like Lady and the Tramp 2 and Cinderella 2. I don't remember much about them except that mouse turns into a human at one point I think.

 

[Luminous47]

One of those knock-off Cars movies, I forgot the name, but I remember owning those when I was a toddler.

 

[Thomas Highway]

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

I remember when I was about five years old or so, My dad dragged me and the rest of my family to go see this R rated Chinese film in the theater. Except we did not knew it was R rated prior to seeing it. I remember the opening scene or at least one of the first scenes. A Chinese women is shot dead in cold blood at a street corner during a raining evening. I also distinctly remember that was also raining that day in real life as well
After seeing that my mom turned to this fat asian man siting next to us and ask "uh sir what is this movie rated?"
He tells her " Ma'am the movie is rated R".
I remember my mom got angry at my dad for taking us to an R rated film and so we all left the theater immediately after that revelation. I also remember my dad stopping at a taco bell after a long conversation with my mom on the way home. I had a chicken quesadillas. Luckily tensions were cooled down and my parents were fine afterwards
The movie it self would have came out around the time frame of 2004-2007.

 

[Jeff Boomhauer]

I haven't seen this movie, because I genuinely don't know the title of it, but I noticed my parents watching some show talking about it when I was 12-13 or so.

Forgive me, because my memory sucks, but I've been pondering what the hell I saw all those years ago.

So, it looked like a comedy film set in space. There were a group of spacemen, not sure if they were astronauts or aliens, and they all wore these bizarre spacesuits that made them look like Teletubbies, but without the bright colors. Or if you're a boomer like me, you've seen those old, toy space men with little hoops on their heads? (I don't even remember the name for those, but I swear they exist.)

Then, there was a woman that met up with all of them, and I presume it was supposed to be a risque comedy. Like, she was lost in space, but she found herself attracted to all these weird men.

I honestly don't know what decade it was released. It looked like an 80s film, but for all I know, it could have been released in the 90s.

No, this was not a porno. There were people commenting on it between clips of the movie. I think it may have been featured on one of those "I love the 80s" shows on VH1, but I honestly don't remember.

Am I fucking schizo, or is this a real movie?

 

[Dom Cruise]

I saw the Leslie Nielson Mr Magoo movie in theaters no less and I remember nothing about it and couldn't tell you why I went to theater for it, maybe my mom wanted to see it more than me?

Similarly I saw the Brendan Frasier George of The Jungle movie on VHS, don't remember anything and I saw his Dudley Doo Right movie in theaters, I was a fan of Brendan because of The Mummy, but the only thing I remember about Dudley Do Right is some stage musical sequence where a woman is dressed as an ear of corn, no, I don't know why.

I saw Rookie of the Year with some cousins in theaters but I was so little I remember nothing other than scene where a kid has a snot bubble hanging out his nose and someone pops it.

Watched Disney's The Kid with Bruce Willis on video once, don't really remember a thing about it.

Then there's movies I've since re-watched but don't remember much of that first viewing, I saw Mrs Doubtfire in theaters as a kid, I've seen it again since but I remember from that initial viewing is the scene where Mrs Doubtfire is peeing standing up (if I only knew how relevant that sort of thing would be in the future), same deal with Coneheads, a movie I've since re-watched but all I remember of that initial viewing in theaters is when they go their home planet.

And finally and this one bums me out, Jurassic Park, I watched that more times than I could ever count on video as a kid but when I first saw it in theaters all I can remember is the scene where Grant pranks the kids by pretending to be electrocuted.

It's the same deal with The Lion King and Toy Story, saw them in theaters but can't really remember much at all, in those instances my memory probably all blends together with the amount of times I watched them on video (not too many times in the case of The Lion King, but I sure watched Toy Story and Jurassic Park a lot)

Inspector Gadget, thank God. I think.

Dragonslayer was a movie I wasn't even sure if it was real for many years because all I remembered from it was the maiden sacrifice beginning.

Oh weird, I have that same experience with Dragonslayer, I just saw the scene with the maiden sacrifice on TV once when I was really little and it scared the crap out of me, I couldn't believe a movie would kill off a pretty girl lol.

 

[The Nothingness]

A movie I watched with a former friend when we were preteens was Joe's Apartment. All I can recall is said apartment is infested with talking roaches that I think were a combination of animatronics and stop-motion.

 

[Syaoran Li]

Night of the Headless Horseman

It was a direct-to-TV CGI cartoon that aired on Fox back in 1999 and I presume it was probably meant to cash in on the popularity of Sleepy Hollow at the time. It's typical late 90's "uncanny valley" low budget computer animation but I remember thinking it was alright as a kid.

 

[Solar Eclipse Paradox]

People told me I watched the Dark Crystal but I had no memories of watching it.

 

[66andtwothirds]

brother bear (disney straight to dvd thing)
open season (ditto)

the Bionicle movie (used to rent it from Blockbuster when that was a thing)

 

[Yukari Yakumo]

Call me a zoomer (born in 2003 here) but one of the few movies I just remembered existing were Planet 51 and Escape from Planet Earth.

 

[Xolanite]

Spirit. You know, the dreamworks horse movie? It was the first movie I remember seeing in theaters, and I fell asleep watching it.