Drop Everything Movies
As defined by today’s AVclub posting, “drop everything” movies are those flicks that you come across while flicking through channels and instantly drop everything to continue watching.
For me, it’s Ghostbusters, Aliens, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Commando, and pretty much anything distributed by Cannon Films during the 1980’s.
What are yours?
Comments
- The Big Lebowski
- Groundhog Day
- 5th Element
- The Breakfast Club
- the Godfather 1 and 2
- Star Wars. Any of them. Even the prequels.
- Big Trouble in Little China
- most Batman films
- The Fifth Element
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Ghostbusters 1 or 2
- Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
- Better Off Dead
- most Star Trek films
- Goodfellas or Casino
however, if any of these are shown on channels that edit them for TV, i can usually pull myself away due to the annoyance.
5th Element is the only movie that comes to mind that is also on television a lot.
- The Glass House
- The Replacements
- Constantine
- The Fountain
- virtually anything with Seth Rogen in it.
Hm… It appears I have a boner for Keanu Reeves.
Nowadays with kids running around and so much other stuff to do, it’s rare i can drop anything let alone everything. But typically it would be
- Say Anything
- Any John Hughes Brat Pack Movie
- Deep Blue Sea
- Office Space
- Any zombie movie, no matter how bad.
Semi-related, in college we had a de-scrambled cable box. Not only did this get us every single premium channel (which admittedly back then wasn’t nearly as many as are available now), but pay per view was also unscrambled. Which meant that when a movie was airing that month on pay per view it would be on at least 3-4 times a day. The pathetic thing was that by the end of the month we would have seen some of these movies at least 20-30 times but it would be January 29th and we’d still drop everything to watch House Party, Pump Up The Volume, New Jack City or any other number of movies from around that time.
Kev I also had one of those. There was one summer where I must have watched Toys at least 50 times.
The only other downside was that…..um…..“adult” movies were descrambled as well. At first, like most red blooded college aged males we thought this was the greatest thing ever. But we had one roommate who was pretty much a porn addict. What this meant was that he would watch the same movie all 3 times a day that it aired. He literally never scheduled either 12 noon classes or night classes so that he could always be available to watch the noon and 9PM airings.
None of us ever thought we would say this at the beginning of that school year, but by about halfway through the year the other 7 of us that lived there had the opposite effect of what all anti-porn people say will happen. We didn’t become desensitized to it, we became hyper-sensitized to it in the opposite way you would want. It was like Clockwork Orange and we all developed an intense revulsion. When the porn addict wasn’t in the house, and any of us were flipping numerically up the channels, there was no speed scientifically measured by man that would have been fast enough for us to click through that channel.
bahahahah! that’s awesome.
So, basically, I agree with all of this. Any movie that takes me back to the 80’s, where I had endless time to devote to rewatching things over and over works for me.
I had one of those boxes as a kid and also devoted myself to a ritual of watching the same movie about 15 times in a given month, no matter how god-awful it was (and, yeah, I remember when they played that awful movie “Toys”). Being able to watch something freshly released to rental without going to the store made me feel like I was tromping along at the cutting edge of technology.
I never understood the unscrambled adult movies. Why edit out the penetration shots? Who gets offended when they for porn and see those?
- Hot Fuzz
- Shawshank Redemption
- Goodfellas
- Children of Men
- Super Troopers
- O Brother Where Art Thou
- A Harrison Ford Jack Ryan movie, Patriot Games & Clear and Present Danger
I even own those movies but if they’re on tv, I’ll just watch it from wherever I pick it up.
Good post
For me
Papillion
Cool hand Luke
Star Trek movies
Monty Pythom Movies
No Country For Old Men
And Sammy – that list is awful…The Fountain?? I would not think that is the kid of movie you would watch after coming across by chance unless you had watched it way too many times, and I know you are a better man than that.
Oh yeah, and Air Force One. That movie is hilarious.
Papillion is definitely on my list, to the point where I don’t think I’ve ever sat down and watched it from start to finish, it’s always been something I just watched when it was on.
However, you’re dead wrong about The Fountain. It’s a fantastic movie and I really don’t understand all the flack it gets.
The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Pulp Fiction
Platoon
Friday the 13th movies
The Exorcist
Monty Python Movies
Dirty Harry
Kurt Russel Movies (including Tango and Cash – that’s right, fuckers)
Die Hard 1
Predator
Commando
This list could be impossibly long . . .
Yeah, keep thinking of more. I love watching Die Hard with a Vengeance on regular television, just for the curse word dubs. Hearing Samuel L. Jackson call Bruce Willis a ‘White racist melon farmer’ is worth sitting through the commercials.
Justin said:
I never understood the unscrambled adult movies. Why edit out the penetration shots? Who gets offended when they for porn and see those?
Wait, what’s this about? The one we had, when watched through the descrambling device was 100% full on, hardcore with everything shown. Basically what people were doing Pay Per view to watch. Maybe it was a different cable system being in PA, and all. But I can’t imagine someone paying to watch all the parts scrambled out.
Caddyshack is on the golf channel all the time, that should be at the top of the list.
Fifth Elements is also on a lot.
And Hunt for Red October, the best of the Jack Ryan series.
-Mrs Doubtfire
-The 5th Element
-Harry Potter 1&2
-Sideways
-Super Troopers
-Hook
I forgot…
That Thing You Do!
Someone will throw a brick at me for this:
A Goofy Movie
Sammy said:
- The Glass House
you mean The Lake House
Sammy said:I forgot…
That Thing You Do!
yes. i agree with this. sammy and i have watched this in the glenwood house so many times.
i see a lot of “drop everything movies” in here like casino and pulp fiction but these movies are ALWAYS edited and on bravo or something with a ton of commercials. that’s immediately turns into a “change the channel movie.”
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Animal House
- National Lampoon’s European Vacation
- One Crazy Summer
- Tommy Boy