Unlike my own children, who are only one year apart, and thus, fighting everyday, my sister and I are a whole decade apart! Being so far apart in age, my older sister always used to look out for me.
One way she would do this was to warn me away from movies that she thought were too much for me to handle. One such movie was A Clockwork Orange, which I'll get into soon, along with others she warned me against watching and how I felt after I watched them anyway.
A Clockwork Orange
I'll never forget the stark look my sister gave me when she brought up Stanley Kubrick's ultra controversial (and ultraviolent) masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange. Given the subject matter, my sister was vague on what it was actually about, but she made it a point to tell me that I shouldn't watch it.
I was around 10 at the time, so I really wouldn’t have had access to the movie at that point, but my sister said, “I don’t want you watching this film, Richard.” To which I asked, “What’s it called again?”
Now, mind you, this is the same sister who used to scare the hell out of me with Beetlejuice, but I guess that was all in good fun (for her) since she was serious about A Clockwork Orange. Well, I’d have to make it to the age of 14 before I could actually watch it. By that point, I had a job and was buying VHS tapes from the local Suncoast Video.
It was one of the very first movies I bought, and…I honestly didn’t see what the big deal was about its content. Yes, there’s a very disturbing scene where the droogs break into somebody’s house, and it’s a bit hard to stomach, but as for the rest of the movie, I actually found it super engaging and complex.
I had never seen a movie like this before, as it made me question whether you could really change a miscreant into a model citizen, even though they have sociopathic tendencies. After watching it, I wanted to learn more about Kubrick. At the beginning of the tape, there was this montage of his movies, and it blew me away. THIS was the guy who directed The Shining? I remember thinking, since I had seen that one before, and that one really terrified me as a child (especially that ending).
But, A Clockwork Orange was different. It was unique, disturbing, but also thought provoking. It was also unsettling for reasons that I wouldn’t quite grasp until I saw a repeat of one The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode. Lo and behold, I saw Bart dressed up as a droog for Halloween, and I got chills. So that’s where I’d seen that outfit before! I thought. Mercy.
Anyway, I can thank my sister for making Stanley Kubrick my favorite director, since I likely wouldn’t have watched every one of his movies if she didn’t make such a big fuss about A Clockwork Orange.
Kids
Now, as a ‘90s kid, I didn’t really need my sister to introduce me to the movie, Kids, since everybody who grew up in that time period knew about the movie. It had a dangerous mystique to it, and I had seen the poster for it so many times back in the day, that it was pretty much ingrained in my mind.
Still, that didn’t really make me want to actually watch it. Besides, by 1995 (when it came out) I was only 12, so there was no way I was going to get to watch an NC-17 movie. My dad definitely wasn’t going to take me to see it.
However, my sister had seen the movie around 1997-ish, and one thing she told me was that, “Just because the movie is called Kids doesn’t mean you have to act like the kids in the movie,” which of course made me wonder, well, how do the kids act in the movie?
Well, unlike Clockwork, which felt like a film, Kids felt disturbingly real. I had also never seen a character like Telly before at that point. Played by Leo Fitzpatrick, Telly kept spreading H.I.V. to underage girls. Quite frankly, I was appalled. So much so that, even though I was getting deep into the best horror franchises like Evil Dead and Halloween at the time, none of them were as disturbing as Kids, which is honestly saying something.
Return To Oz
I want to go back a bit in my life. Before A Clockwork Orange and Kids, there was Return to Oz and Poltergeist II: The Other Side (I’ll get into that next). I remember my sister talking about The Wizard of Oz, but what she was talking about didn’t make much sense.
I was only partially listening, so I didn’t hear that she said RETURN to Oz, and not The Wizard of Oz. I remember her talking about this robot, and a talking pumpkin, and that it was really weird, and I assumed that she was talking about the book or something, since my sister read a lot. I do remember her saying that I shouldn’t watch it, though, which didn’t make much sense, since I had already seen The Wizard of Oz, and it wasn’t scary.
But, that’s when somebody at my school asked me if I’d seen Return to Oz, and I was again very confused because I had no idea that there was a sequel to the original (even though my sister told me that there was). I went over to his house, and like I discussed in my article about surprisingly scary scenes from ‘80s kids movies, I wanted to cry! This movie WAS weird.
And, I understood that THIS was what my sister was talking about. Return to Oz scared the hell out of me, and I wish I had actually listened to her at the time. It would have saved me some nightmares.
Poltergeist II: The Other Side
Now, I actually watched Poltergeist II: The Other Side with my sister. I don’t know why, but she watched a lot of horror movies with me (like The Shining). I guess she figured that if she was with me, then it would be okay since she could comfort me if I got really scared.
We had watched the first film together, and while it was creepy, I didn’t find it scary. But, I definitely found its sequel terrifying. Namely one specific scene I mentioned when I ranked all of the Poltergeist movies, but it involves tequila and a worm.
I think my sister could sense that something scary was coming up, and she told me not to look. In fact, she said, “Close your eyes,” and I pretended to, but she was so into the scene, that she didn’t notice that I actually saw EVERYTHING.
And, man, it messed me up. My sister apologized and didn’t watch horror movies with me for awhile after that, since she knew it really screwed with my head. That scene STILL bothers me to this day. It’s horrific!
Salo, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom
Lastly, my sister didn’t so much tell me not to watch Salo, as I was an adult by that point, but she did say that she watched a very disturbing film, and that it was the kind of movie that she thought I would probably like, even though she was repulsed by it. I asked her what it was called, and she couldn’t remember the name, but she tried describing it to me, and was having a hard time because the subject matter was pretty grotesque.
Eventually, I figured out it was Salo based on her description of a key moment in the film that I won’t even describe here. I watched it, and…she was right. It was every bit as repulsive as she made it out to be.
She was wrong, however, because I didn’t like it. I got what the movie was getting across, and I understood that it was an important film, but I definitely didn’t enjoy it. It’s too transgressive for me. (Which is the point, I know!) I’m glad I watched it, though, since it definitely pushes the boundaries of what cinema can (and is supposed to) be.
Have you watched any (or all) of these films? For more news on all things cinema, be sure to swing around here often.
