Lasting effects of movies...

I love movies... you kind of have to if you want to hang out with my sisters. We quote movies and know where the quotes come from. Gordon and I do that, too... but our quoteable movies are very different as in he doesn't think that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a classic for our generation! But there are two movies that have had negative lasting effects on me... I say they traumatized me...

As a doctor's kid... we saw some pretty gross stuff. All the infectious diseases journals with disfigured body parts and nasty symptoms (think the grossest episdoe of House and multiply it times 10). Also, my mom made us watch "The Miracle of Life"-- the old documentary that follows the life of a fetus-- from conception to birth. Yeah, that was pretty bad. It'll put anyone off making babies for sure. Even now, it makes me shudder. Seeing that as a young kid scared the hell out of me. EW. What I remember most from that documentary? The birth at the end. The #1 reason for why I don't want to have kids. You can still get that documentary-- done by PBS and Nova back in 1983-- at Amazon if you'd like to scare someone into NOT making babies. They did an updated version that everyone STILL loves-- adults watch it and think it is beautiful (silly). Another memory of that movie was me thinking about hiding the video when we moved to our new (current) house so that Mom could never make me watch it again.

Another movie that I have to say I remember TO THIS DAY... "The Day After." There was some discussion about this movie between Jenny and me. With the new show Jericho being about a post-nuclear attack on middle America, we both thought back to when we saw this movie that showed the aftereffectsnof a nuclear attack on middle America. We couldn't remember what it was called but we remembered sepia tone coloring and a general fear of nuclear attacks (and general dislike of mushrooms-- because they can grow in basements even during nuclear attacks is what Mom told us). And then this weekend what is the Sci-Fi channel showing but THE DAY AFTER! So we taped it... and watched it in two parts because . Have to say, still one of the creepiest movies ever! It was very scary and just disturbing. Also disturbing is that in the end they say that the movie's events are less severe than what would happen in an ACTUAL nuclear attack. Great. So it'll be worse than Steve Guttenberg's hair falling out, the military guy's skin and teeth falling out, and the squatters killing the farmer and eating him.

So while I enjoy Little Miss Sunshine and The Departed (if you haven't seen it yet, you should-- I heart Matt Damon even when he's evil)... it's the movies that freak me out that I'll remember the most. Kind of scary because now I don't want to have kids and I'm afraid of a nuclear attack.