Movies, and Velociraptors: Part 2

Jurassic Park was one of the single coolest things to have watched in the early 90’s.  I actually had a chance to watch this movie over at a neighbors house only two weeks after it came out on video (This would almost double the coolness factor, since I would then ruin most of the film for all of my friends) but my sister was with me at the time, and told me with a scowl that she was leaving, and if I wasn’t coming my parents would be told, and bad things would happen.  Needless to say, my opportunity was ruined.  However due to some savvy maneuvering with the tying of shoelaces, I got to stick around for the first few minutes of the movie, and these few minutes scared me to death.

The room we we’re watching it in was completely dark, and my friends had a giant 32″ Sony TV at the time.  A large crate was swinging over jungle foliage, as men in burnt orange hats stared up, as if this was just a normal day on the job. I excitedly thought that this would be my first glimpse of the amazing special effects the movie had to offer, and continued to fumble with said shoelaces while my eyes fixated on the glowing screen in front of me.  I loved dinosaurs at the time, and my favorite one was a triceratops.  My heart pounded faster as I became more and more certain that the 3-pronged dinosaur surely was the one in the crate. 

The call of “Gatekeeper!” echoed out, and chaos ensued.  The man struggling to open the crate door fell, and was dragged screaming into the crate.  Flashes of white light filled the room as the other workers blasted away with some sort of shock guns, and as the gatekeeper’s fingers slowly slipped out of another mans hands and gunshots sounded, I made my quick goodbyes and managed to not quite run out the front door.  All I had seen was a reptilian eye, but it terrified me.  It wasn’t until I was 12 that my parents decided that maybe they could be a little lenient, and decided to rent Jurassic Park for us to all watch together that weekend.  I was scared to death.

I knew this was a big chance to prove that I could handle “adult” movies, and that I just had to pass this test or my parents would hold it over me for another year every time I casually chanced a look at the back cover of a PG-13 tape at Hollywood Video.  To prepare myself, I revisited two movie scenes that totally freaked me out at the time.  The first one was the ending of The Last Crusade.  For me, the tension as one Nazi soldier tried to creep through traps and reach the holy grail, and his sudden beheading, was far worse than the melting faces of Raiders, or some of the gross-out moments of Temple of Doom (how the hell was that movie only rated PG!?).  The second was the Wampa ice cave scene in Empire Strikes back.  There are two common threads in these two scenes.  The fact that my parents owned both the Star Wars trilogy and the Indiana Jones trilogy, and that both these scenes let my own imagination terrify me.  This was, and probably still is, my major weakness with “scary” moments.  I am scared to death of the machinations of my own mind.

Saturday quickly approached, and I grew more and more nervous.  If I turned face and ran now, this would be proof-positive that my tyrannical parents would find justification in their unfair laws.  I carefully weighed the risks (being scared to death, screaming) with the positives (breaking free of parental shackles, a new world of movies being available to me) and decided I would just have to suck it up. 

Dinner was a blur of meat and vegetables, and we lined up to get ice cream for dessert as my Dad started the movie.  I took my time carefully layering different ice cream flavors into my mug (we never used bowls for ice cream), and of course had to pack it down as much as possible to get the most ice cream per unit volume ratio.  Finally content that I would have to place the mug in the trash compactor to increase it’s density any more, I went over to the coach, sat down, and grabbed a blanket and pillow.  That pillow didn’t escape from my embrace for the rest of the movie.

Movies, and Velociraptors: Part 1

My parents were pretty strict about what I could watch as a kid.  Movie ratings weren’t just a general guideline in our household, they were set in stone.  Once after school, I found one of my favorite things pinned on the freezer door with a bright orange magnet.  A small white piece of paper stating in a hurried scrawl that my parents “went for walk, back at 5:20″.  The house was quite, full of opportunities, and all mine.  I quickly listed all the things I could do.  I could search my parents room for interesting items, go play basketball outside before doing my homework, or… my list abruptly came to an end as I saw what sat on the mantel by the fireplace.

 It was a movie, and the title named it “Tommy Boy” starring David Spade and the now-deceased Chris Farley.  With a jolt of excitement I stared at the forbidden label: PG-13.  I was ten years old at the time, and thought my parents were going out of their way to act like Nazis and make me look like crap in front of my friends.  After all, my best friend had seen R rated movies when he was six years old! Six!  Damn, that guy was cool.

I figured my parents wouldn’t be back soon, and I needed this to prove I had the maturity needed to watch this coveted comedy.  I took the tape out of the box and inserted it into the VCR.  I giggled unreasonably at the foul language and over-the-top antics of Chris Farley, but to be honest I was wondering what the fuss was all about.  The movie wasn’t THAT good.  Then came the pool scene.  For those of you that don’t vividly remember, it involved David Spade spending some quality time at a window while a stunning woman swam in the pool below.  Oh, I forgot, she took her bikini off in the process.  I felt like I was peeking into some sort of personal moment that I didn’t fully understand, but the girl was naked!  Suddenly a wide array of new possibilities bloomed in my head.  This was before I was allowed in the Internet, and was the first PG-13 I had seen in my young life.  It went from an underwhelming experience to one I still remember to this day. 

I spent the next ten minutes or so in a daze, that was broken sharply by the slam of a car door.  I pride myself in performance under pressure, and this was no exception. I leaped off the couch and dove at the VCR, my index finger slamming the stop button about 3 times before pressing eject.  Nothing.  I pressed eject again, and whirring slowed to a stop, the VCR clicked and sputtered a few times, and spat out the tape.  I slammed it back into the case and placed it back on the mantel ever-so-carefully.  The title facing away from me, and one corner poking out over the edge exactly like I had found it.  I then snatched the remote, and while flopping back onto the couch changed it off blue glow of channel 3 to PBS.  I think Wishbone was on.  I loved Wishbone, It was one of my favorite shows at the time (we didn’t get cable, don’t make fun of me!), but I couldn’t stop thinking about that girl in the pool.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, I had made one crucial mistake during this time.  I didn’t rewind the movie, and my parents hadn’t watched it yet.  Not only did they find out I had been watching the movie, they knew EXACTLY what part I had stopped watching on, which unfortunately was right after the pool scene.  My parents were outraged.  My mom told me to go to my room for a full hour, and my dad later told me it was against the law to watch that movie since I wasn’t 13, and that I should “be thankful (he) didn’t call the police”.  I am ashamed to admit it, but I believed him at the time.  I was terrified and embarrassed, but I had seen over the wall into the land of forbidden movies, and there was nothing there that could scare me.  Nothing at all.  Then I saw Jurassic Park.