Growing closer and farther: One movie I appreciate more than before and one movie I once loved but now have moved on

Back in 1992 when I was a freshman in high school, I used to love horror movies and every weekend I would try to rent to bloodiest and goriest movies I could find. My older brother and his friends came across two movies called Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2. They left them on the coffee table one day so I watched them. Being the typical adolescent I was, I loved them. So it was around that time when I saw a preview for Army of Darkness (78%). I obviously saw it immediately saw and thought it was the best movie ever made. To me, Bruce Campbell was the best hero ever!!!! I even cut out and saved the Hartford courant review for it. Which is weird, I know this….now

It was out of the theaters in like a week. I was p*ssed that I wouldn’t be able to watch it until I could rent it on VHS months later. Then one day I noticed it was playing at a nearby Drive-in (paired with Scent of a Woman…wtf!) So we went and I still loved it. I have since bought it on DVD and seen the alternate version, but my love for it crumbled down into a mild appreciation for its humor. Technically, it’s a rather budget looking film and the humor can be sophomoric at times, but there are still some classic one-liners in there. The special effects however are severely dated. It’s somewhat sad not liking a movie anymore that you once thought was the greatest of all time. It is because it is proof that you have changed and a reminder that things/love/complete $#%^ing obsession doesn’t last forever. That being said, I still believe it has one of the best movie endings of all time

On the other side

Unforgiven (96%) came out on HBO when I was in high school. I found a blank VHS tape and put it in the VCR and got all ready to record it when my parents came in the room and started watching it too. After several scenes, the dreaded “C” word was said and my stepfather promptly said “that’s too much” and turned off the cable box. Luckily they left the room within a minute so I quickly turned the cable box back on. Now, a brief cable history lesson for the little ones out there, back in the day cable boxes did not work like Tivo does today. If you shut off the cable box during recording, when playing it back all you would see is a blurry preview channel scrolling through channel listings. So, in subsequent viewings of that movie, I always missed that one minute of the movie. (but in that 1 minute I could tell that Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach was on a pretty heavy rotation at the time).

Between going away to college, travelling everywhere and getting situated in a house in a different state, I only recently got to watch this movie again (in a glorious Hi-def dvd format). Maybe it’s because I am older, or perhaps it was because of the incredible detail on Hi-def on my 84” movie screen, or it could even been finally seeing that one lost minute, but the movie was more amazing and deeper than I ever had previously realized. As a kid, I really thought it was just an action movie. There were good guys and there were bad guys. As a kid, you instinctively root for the good guys. If not, well then, good luck in life. I had no idea I was watching a movie that had won Oscars.

Watching it through older eyes, I could see that there really aren’t any clear good guys and bad guys in the movie. The main character, the guy you’re supposed to identify with is a former murderer of innocent people, now reformed. He is reformed because of the death of his wife. She got him off of drinking (which seems to be the cause of his once nefarious ways). Throughout the movie he repeats to others around him that he is different now and not “like that” anymore. The real meat of the story comes in the final 20 minutes when circumstances cause Eastwood’s character to take a drink for the first time in many years. Seeing him take a swig of the alcohol and the look in his eyes, you can tell he transforms back into the man he once was. He was on a mission to destroy anyone associated with what got him to take that first drink. And as he strolls into town through the pouring rain with vengeance on his mind, you see the empty whisky bottle thrown into the mud. This is when you know he will finish what he needs to. No going back.

The west, and movies about the west, were all about rumors and building people into tall legends. These rumors are what this movie is about, or at least deconstructing those rumors. It takes place in the late 1890’s which is around the time the Cowboy way was dying out. Commercialism and technology started prevailing. People started giving themselves nicknames by lying and increasing the numbers of the people they killed, like the Schofield Kid and English Bob did. This is unlike Eastwoods character who actually doesn’t correct peoples stories about him when they under-number the amount he actually killed. After the killing deeds are done you hope the main character digression is temporary, but in the end, all you get is that “rumor has it” about the rest of his life. It’s a great story told during a great time period and the best part is that it is told with such depth.