I was gonna be cute and play "spot the theme" but come on. It's Tim Curry.
I always kicked the can down the street on these, and then he passed, and it was just plain time.
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
There! Got it! I know. I know. But it's one of those ones where every time I got a hankering to see it, it would magically pop up on TV.
Nah, I gotta own it.
Not "Shock Treatment" though. No Curry in "Shock Treatment".
Legend (1985)
I have this one on tape, but keep forgetting to upgrade, or that I need to upgrade.
Then I'll rifle through my 80's fantasy Blu-rays, and go "oh, shit, right, I need 'Legend'" and then I forget. And I'd get stuck in that time loop. Curry's passing forced my lazy brain to remember.
I've broken the loop. I got it home.
Pennywise: The Story of IT (2021)
I've got "IT" but now I've got the retroactive bonus materials.
Clue (1985)
This had the same situation as "Rocky Horror". Every time I had a hankering for it, TV would play it.
In the 90's, and 00's. Its kinda tapered off.
They'll sometimes replay it when a new "Knives Out" sequel drops, but that's sparse, and I always seem to miss it.
Well! I've got it!
Muppet Treasure Island (1996)
Yeah, the target audience is kids, it's riddled with corny dad jokes, and the songs are 50-50 in quality, and the very existence of it is bizarre when you stop to think about it for more than 5 seconds, but dammit, Tim Curry's Long John Silver is pitch fucking perfect.
Part of you is like "awwww, he should have been in a REAL 'Treasure Island'!" but that seems to be the big meta joke.
The Muppets people seem to be winking at us, and saying "yeah, but WE got him! 😎".
Ma owned this on tape, and shitty 20-something me rolled my dumb hipster eyes, and then all those old tapes went out to the trash cuz they're degraded by now, and we don't have a VCR to play 'em on the odd chance they had a spark of life left, and my heart felt heavy doing it.
Anyway! I Fixed it with this one! I got it back!
I righted that one fuckup.
...from a mountain of them. Sigh.
I wanted to throw "Ferngully" and "Annie" on the list, but I ran out of money.
This was a pretty decent haul, I figure.
2 comments:
When I was a kid, I confused Tim Curry with Freddie Mercury. This was because Rocky Horror era Curry looks exactly like Somebody To Love-era Freddie, and because images of 70s Fred were still what I saw most of the time as a kid. I do not know when flat-haired, tank-top, acid-jeans, mustachioed Live-Aid Fred became definitive Fred.
I like Tim in "Legend." He is also to this day the only thing I ever liked about the movie at all.
"Clue" was a good movie to show on HBO all the time when I was a kid, because people were apparently irritated by the gimmick of the movie showing a different ending depending on what theater you saw it in. On TV and home video you got all three endings.
That being said, the movies I saw Tim Curry in the most were, actually....*shifts eyes, doesn't want to admit this*...
..."Home Alone 2" (where he gets slapped) and "Congo" (his character wasn't in the book and is there mostly to get killed brutally.)
Ouch. I'm guessing Curry himself wasn't a particularly big fan of those last two (good luck finding very many people who are.)
All right, I've got 'em all watched.
I guess I'll put the reviews in here rather than make a separate post.
Rocky Horror: love it more every time I see it.
Even when I was a homophobic teenager, I admired the courage and confidence of Tim as Frank being all loud and proud.
Plus, now that I know the director of the Universal "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein" was gay, and the actors who played Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius were gay, and that "Daughter of Dracula" was very heavily bisexually coded, I get the parody even more now. Richard O'Brien was a smart cookie, and was just bringing to the surface what was already there in those old movies.
I also love that fan willpower has kept this flick alive, and now it's "made it".
Legend: Seen both cuts, and I prefer the director's cut with the Jerry Goldsmith score. Although there are a few key moments when I miss the Tangerine Dream score. There's no whole missing scenes put back in, just extra minutes and seconds that flesh everything out better.
Now, I'll swear on a stack of "The Dispossessed" that I recognized moments from the director's cut as also being in the VHS cut.
The VHS cut is a third cut that puts some of the extra moments/scenes into the Tangerine Dream cut.
They never mention it. They pretend it doesn't exist.
I think the best mix of original intent and nostalgia is to just watch director's cut, and then the Tangerine Dream "is your love strong enough?" video.
Pennywise: Learned a lot of neat things like the Freddy and Jason ones. Tim Curry was stroke-y by the time they did this, and that made my heart ache a little, but he still had his wits 'til the bitter end. All the same, they used as many archival interviews of his younger self that they could.
Stephen King was all archival interviews. They addressed Jonathan Brandis's death, but not John Ritter's. Seth Green had the best interviews of all the grown up kids. Cuz he's Seth Green.
I found out all the boys of the kid cast had read the book, and knew about the child orgy, and made wisecracks about it to the girl playing Bev, and she didn't get the jokes. Her mother finally gave her permission to read the book, and she was both horrified, and decided to take it as a rite of passage.
Clue: it's just fun. The flick speaks for itself.
Muppet Treasure Island: this was my third time seeing it, and this time I just plain unreservedly enjoyed it with no cringing or whining.
If you just accept it as live-action 90's Broadway Disney with the Muppet characters, and just relax, you'll be all right.
There's only one song I count as cringe, and it's the love song for Kermit and Piggy. But even that cancels out, because there's a prettier version done by good singers in the end credits.
So, yeah, had fun with all of 'em.
Glad I got 'em.
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