Captain Spaulding's Favorite Movies

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Let the night air cool you off
Sometimes I'm a cold-hearted, cynical sonofabitch, but The Elephant Man brought tears to my eyes when I last saw it a few years ago. Fantastic film.



This is gonna be a bittersweet thread. The end of Spaulding, who I’m sure I read passed away not too long ago, but it seems he’s come back from the dead because he has unfinished business on this earth...

It’s no surprise to hear about you manic and obsessive nature... I mean, that IS how we know you the best.

But to be honest, seeing your humongous movie count on Letterboxd I was both impressed and worried. Combine that with the biblically long write ups and it was a proof that this clown ain’t playing no tricks...*

While it’s in many ways a sad thing, I’m happy to read how you want to take on different hobbies and try something new and all. And knowing you I also knew that wouldn’t just be left quietly behind. So I’m glad there’s this thread to leave behind a legacy.

Thank you for your service, Spaulding. I will try to be your thread slave while this thing is going on.



Sometimes I'm a cold-hearted, cynical sonofabitch, but The Elephant Man brought tears to my eyes when I last saw it a few years ago. Fantastic film.
I'm a cold-hearted, cynical SOB as well. Those Sarah McLachlan animal cruelty commercials have no effect on me. Nor do those charity things for children with cancer or starving kids in Africa that try so hard to tug on the heartstrings in order to tug out credit cards. I put up an emotional brick wall as soon as I feel like something's trying to make me sad. However, The Elephant Man is one of two movies that consistently moves me to tears.

The other is A Serbian Film.
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I'm a cold-hearted, cynical SOB as well. Those Sarah McLachlan animal cruelty commercials have no effect on me. Nor do those charity things for children with cancer or starving kids in Africa that try so hard to tug on the heartstrings in order to tug out credit cards. I put up an emotional brick wall as soon as I feel like something's trying to make me sad. However, The Elephant Man is one of two movies that consistently moves me to tears.

The other is A Serbian Film.
I'm actually very sensitive and cry at a lot of movies...

(Although I was kind of gleeful when watching that Sheriff staple the photos of their victims to the bodies of Captain Spalding's family members in Devil's Rejects!)



I'm actually very sensitive and cry at a lot of movies...

(Although I was kind of gleeful when watching that Sheriff staple the photos of their victims to the bodies of Captain Spalding's family members in Devil's Rejects!)
How dare you bring up such traumatic memories from my past!!! I'm so triggered right now!!!



How dare you bring up such traumatic memories from my past!!! I'm so triggered right now!!!
I was the only one in the theater rooting for the police.

(I was also the only one in the theater - true story! I went to see it at a matinee and was the only person in the room. The lights didn't go down and the movie didn't start. I had to go find & notify a manager, then went back in and it started. I can only assume they didn't realize I was in there and thought there was a zero show crowd and didn't start the movie at its scheduled time. One of my weirdest movie-going experiences.)



I was the only one in the theater rooting for the police.

(I was also the only one in the theater - true story! I went to see it at a matinee and was the only person in the room. The lights didn't go down and the movie didn't start. I had to go find & notify a manager, then went back in and it started. I can only assume they didn't realize I was in there and thought there was a zero show crowd and didn't start the movie at its scheduled time. One of my weirdest movie-going experiences.)
I'm surprised you watched it in theaters. Admittedly, I don't know anything about your taste in movies. I'm used to just seeing you discuss real-world issues. I wouldn't have guessed that The Devil's Rejects is the type of movie you'd visit the theater to watch. In my vanity, I just assumed that you must've watched it in the last few years to learn more about your co-captain here at Movie Forums.

Hell, I didn't even watch The Devil's Rejects in theaters! It wasn't playing anywhere around me, and I don't think I had transportation at the time anyway. I was certainly interested in watching it, but not overly so since back then I wasn't a fan of House of 1000 Corpses. (It's grown on me over the years, and I've come to terms with my lack of screen time.)



I'm surprised you watched it in theaters. Admittedly, I don't know anything about your taste in movies. I'm used to just seeing you discuss real-world issues. I wouldn't have guessed that The Devil's Rejects is the type of movie you'd visit the theater to watch. In my vanity, I just assumed that you must've watched it in the last few years to learn more about your co-captain here at Movie Forums.

Hell, I didn't even watch The Devil's Rejects in theaters! It wasn't playing anywhere around me, and I don't think I had transportation at the time anyway. I was certainly interested in watching it, but not overly so since back then I wasn't a fan of House of 1000 Corpses. (It's grown on me over the years, and I've come to terms with my lack of screen time.)
All your assumptions are correct, Cap!

There was a period in the mid-2000's when I was between jobs and had begun to view matinee movies alone (something I could never do when I was younger - going to a movie alone just seemed so... embarrassing or something to me... I felt like The Lonely Guy with a spotlight on me!)

But I overcame my social phobia and was going to see a movie once in a while by myself at a local theater that had very few people attending matinees which also had the benefit of being cheaper.

I was in a really weird mood when I went to see Devil's Rejects (there were no new sci-fi's playing at the time or anything else that caught my interest) and I was just in the mood to be shocked by violence and gore while enjoying the darkness of an air conditioned theater on a hot summer afternoon. Generally, I'm not a horror movie or slasher film fan.

I never really thought about this before, but if I had them start the film late (I waited about 15 minutes past the start time wondering what was going on before I went out to find somebody)... then did it interfere with the next scheduled showing? (They don't usually leave too much time between showings.) Maybe they lucked out and no one showed up for the next showing either. I'll never know.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Love your posts and appreciate it when you check in on my threads to offer your insight. Let's sit down, grab a drink and watch a movie together.




As for the two films posted already; The Elephant Man is on my list for Personal Rec HoF. So I'll get to that sooner rather than later.

As for Pulp Fiction, well...that movie has been listed as my #1 since I started posting on these forums. I always felt like no other movie could knock out a #1 spot because it was your #1 movie. Am I sure about that today? Who knows, when I craft my Top 100 again (this year I hope) I'll be able to answer that question.

I first saw Pulp Fiction in Grade 10, I met this guy in my communications technology class and we started talking about movies. We seemed to be on par with each other in terms of knowledge and likes, something I had yet to find with anyone else in my life. So we became friends quickly. What sealed the deal (for both of us I think) was when we chatted about the Oscars and I mentioned how I believe they will give Peter Jackson the Oscar for Best Director for Return of the King as an award for the whole trilogy. He scoffed and said, if they didn't do it for George Lucas and Star Wars, they won't do it for Peter Jackson. I said, well, Lucas didn't direct the other two Star Wars movies.

I walked away with a smile while he sat there straight shook that I bested him in movie knowledge. I'm sure he felt like an idiot, but we became close friends since then. I was the best man at his wedding and he at mine.

Why am I bringing this up? He introduced me to Pulp Fiction. It was his favourite film of ALL-TIME and said I had to watch it. So he gave me a copy on VHS to watch since he didn't want to lend me his precious DVD copy. Come to think of it, he's kind of a dick, ha.

So I popped it in my VCR and hit play. I was taken on a journey that I couldn't describe. I finally got the joke from Space Jam!!!



I fell in love with it. I was already in love with movies, but I think this was the first time I fell in love with a specific film. The dialogue, the direction, the music, the acting, the humour, everything seemed to click for me and it instantly became my favourite film.

Flashback to the year 1999 - New Year's Eve and the y2K scare is coming in. Big year, hitting 2000, oooohhhhh.... My uncle asks everyone to write their top ten movies, put them all together in a tin and then read one by one the movies, then we'd have to guess who the list belonged to. In the year 2000, I was 13. So the movies I had on my list were Dumb & Dumber, The Matrix, A Night at the Roxbury and other nonsense. I don't remember what I put as number one, but I do remember my uncle calling it trash. Had I seen Pulp Fiction by then, it would have been my #1.

I've seen it several times, of course, I don't think it can be a #1 without repeat viewings. The film is a
in my books, but I do intend to revisit it and question, what makes a movie my #1 movie. If Pulp Fiction checks those boxes again, I'll be happy. If not, I'm interested in seeing what does.
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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



Love your posts and appreciate it when you check in on my threads to offer your insight. Let's sit down, grab a drink and watch a movie together.

You're already exposing me as an amateur surgeon by performing a better head transplant than I've ever done. But yes, let's watch a movie together! I'll bring the beer, you whip us up a batch of meth!!!

I finally got the joke from Space Jam!!!

I always loved that moment in Space Jam, even though I didn't yet understand the reference. I used to have one of those Talkboys that Home Alone 2 popularized, and I'd record random moments from movies and play them back. That short clip from Space Jam with the sample of "Miserlou" was one such moment that I captured.

So the movies I had on my list were Dumb & Dumber, The Matrix, A Night at the Roxbury and other nonsense..
Hey now, all those movies will be appearing in here at some point. (Yes, even Night at the Roxbury. While we're tweaking, let's don some shiny suits and head out to the club. Just don't break my window with your sideways head bobbing.)

Anyways, thanks for checking in. I love hearing personal stories like that in relation to how people first connected to certain films. Since you were in charge of tabulating the ballots, I'm hoping you did the right thing and made sure that Pulp Fiction came out on top of the new MoFo All-Time Countdown.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
Anyways, thanks for checking in. I love hearing personal stories like that in relation to how people first connected to certain films. Since you were in charge of tabulating the ballots, I'm hoping you did the right thing and made sure that Pulp Fiction came out on top of the new MoFo All-Time Countdown.



I'm looking forward to the Lebron version being terrible so I can use it as further evidence that Jordan's the GOAT.





The next update was supposed to be Black Christmas (1974), but I've realized that trying to tackle 150 favorites with this level of time commitment is just too ambitious. I think I'm going to scale the list down to 120 (and possibly lower if I don't soon pick up my pace), which means Black Christmas no longer makes the cut. A few thoughts on the film, however, since I already watched it and took notes (consider this an honorable mention, I guess):

If we disqualify proto-slashers like Psycho and Peeping Tom, as well as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (which to me has always been its own separate beast), then Black Christmas is the best slasher ever made. It bugs me a bit that Halloween gets all the attention when Black Christmas did it first and did it better. The latter didn't even make our updated Horror Countdown, while Michael Myers clocked in at #6, and also received enough love to crack the top 50 of our current All-Time refresh. Meanwhile, some members admitted that they'd never even heard of Black Christmas! I guess that's not wholly surprising. Halloween was a box-office smash, spawning countless imitators and numerous sequels, whereas Black Christmas has always flown under the radar. The large disparity in popularity probably has something to do with the seasonal focus as well. October is synonymous with horror, while most normal, well-adjusted humans are likely watching heart-warming family films instead of blood-curdling slashers in the lead-up to Santa's visit. Let those people have Bob Clark's other Christmas flick, the one about obnoxious, four-eyed pipsqueaks fantasizing about Red Ryder air rifles, while I cozy up with obscene phone calls and deranged serial-killers.

Most slashers are beholden to formula and tropes. Black Christmas feels fresh in that regard since the formula and tropes didn't yet exist. Here we have a non-discriminating killer. The first victim is a "professional virgin," in the words of Margot Kidder's acid-tongued Barb (the best character in the film). Conversely, the "Final Girl" is already with child. The frank discussions about her pending abortion feel progressive even by today's standards. No moralizing, no judgement. The strong independent female characters, none of whom allow themselves to be swayed from their ambitions by the opposite sex or society's expectations, provide the film with a very pro-feminist slant without annoyingly beating viewers over the head with it like the abysmal 2019 remake. I love the dark humor and how it slowly tapers off as the film progresses. Sergeant Nash is treated as comic relief during most of his scenes, so the change in tone when he implores Jess not to go upstairs, that the calls are coming from inside the house, really brings home the gravity of the situation. Watching the house-mother retrieve liquor bottles from odd hiding spots is amusing, but it's a sad humor -- similar to Barb's unchecked alcoholism. Both are examples of the film's emphasis on the depressing loneliness many experience during the holidays.

The discordant score, achieved by tying forks, combs and knives onto the strings of a piano to warp the keys, is extremely unsettling, and it works perfectly in conjunction with the film's expert handling of the red herring. I love the mysteriousness of the killer. We never discover his identity or his motives. However, we can piece together fragments of a disturbing backstory involving incest and child abuse if his outbursts are based on his actual upbringing and aren't just the random ravings of a lunatic. You can think of his hiding place in the attic -- with its cobwebbed rocking horses and bird cages and dust-covered dolls -- as a physical manifestation of his Freudian trauma. "Billy" is an anti-Santa Claus, crawling down from the attic instead of the chimney. ("He sees you when you're sleeping / He knows when you're awake") The suspense becomes nearly unbearable down the stretch, culminating in a forget-to-breathe crescendo of tension in the basement of the house. (If the attic symbolizes the fractured mind, I guess the basement could symbolize the uterus, given the events of the plot and who is "aborted," so to speak.) The ambiguous yet bleak ending never fails to give me chills, and easily segues into one of the most haunting closing credits of any horror movie.




28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
I love Black Christmas but hate the TWO remakes that have come out since. I remember when I asked for this movie for Christmas one year and my aunt bought it for me. We went to her house for boxing day and I thanked her, she just looked at me and said; "I was wrapping the presents and came across this, forgot who I bought it for and wondered...Who the hell wants a movie titled Black Christmas?"

Great Canadian cinema.



I love Black Christmas but hate the TWO remakes that have come out since. I remember when I asked for this movie for Christmas one year and my aunt bought it for me. We went to her house for boxing day and I thanked her, she just looked at me and said; "I was wrapping the presents and came across this, forgot who I bought it for and wondered...Who the hell wants a movie titled Black Christmas?"

Great Canadian cinema.
I can't remember any specifics about the 2006 remake besides Michelle Trachtenberg, but its general putridity still wafts in my memory. I watched the 2019 remake just a few days ago after revisiting the original. It would likely my list of least favorite movies. I thought at first that the script was trying to satirize "woke culture" on college campuses, making every character an amalgam of the obnoxiously self-righteous blowhards on Twitter who try to cancel everyone and everything. It would've been fun watching them get picked off one by one. That turned out to be wishful thinking. As one reviewer on LB said, "Its message isn't just on the nose -- it IS the nose." Every line of dialogue felt like it was cut-and-pasted from users on social media who proudly label themselves "social justice warriors." Throw in the bloodless PG-13 rating and the idiotic supernatural twist, and you get one of the worst movies I've seen in recent memory.