Two Movies
There are many movies that had a significant impact on me when I was a kid. My dad would often let my brother and I watch movies that we were in no way appropriate for our age - The Exorcist) gave me so many nightmares. Two movies however, have a special, weird place in my mind. I’ve searched for years to find the names of the movies, I’ve had distinct memories from both, but I couldn’t find anything about them. Though the internet and social media can be pretty toxic these days, they can also drop little bits of joy as well. Several years ago, I decided to make a concerted effort to figure out what these movies were. After a lot of digging, I finally found one, a post-apocalyptic survival movie Damnation Alley. I’m fairly certainly a scene in this movie is the source of my aversion to cockroaches. I distinctly remember someone getting eated alive in an old car by giant cockroaches. It was released in 1977, so I would have been six at the time. I remember my dad picked up my brother and I for one of our first post-divorce outings with him. He took us to see Damnation Alley in the theater. Shortly after I rediscovered it, my wife and I streamed it; it was pretty bad but so entertaining and gratifying to fill that memory gap.
The other movie has eluded me for years, until today. I was doomscrolling Instagram Reels and came across a clip from an old movie with a young Tom Hanks about D&D, Mazes and Monters when I recognized one of the other actors, Chris Makepeace. I looked up Mazes and Monsters on IMDB and found Chris’ profile, then searched for his other early movies and found the movie that I’ve been searching for as long as I can remember! It’s a made for TV movie, released in 1982, when I was eleven. It had a huge impact on me; I remember feeling excited by the concept of romantic love and true friendship. I’m sure it impacted my psyche; part of why I’m such a hopeless romantic. Life is supposed to mean something, even if it’s self-defined. Watching bits of it now takes me back - I remember the characters like it was yesterday! It was based, very loosely on a Mark Twain Novella of the same name, The Mysterious Stranger.
It’s so strange and cool that both movies are available in full out there on the internet. I’ve been searching for the Mysterious Stranger for so long, I’m a little blown away that I came across it so randomly today! It’s like the last puzzle piece fitting into place. Now I need to find a new mystery to obsess about.