movies that define their genre

Star Wars. Can enough be said about its impact on filmmaking?

Star Wars. Can enough be said about its impact on filmmaking? } Certainly not. It is the movie that completely changed the industry. Pre-Star Wars no one had ever thought about action figures and marketing tie-ins, now James Bond sells ATM cards. As a result, there are large classes of films that depend on such sales and marketing tie-ins have driven the industry for years.

How about "Airplane" for inventing the spoof? Movies making fun of other movies.

Good one, Autumn.

Autumn, have you ever seen Hardware Wars? It's a spoof of Star Wars. Came out shortly after.

Autumn, I don't think Airplane INVENTED the spoof, but it was very good. I'd give credit to Mel Brooks' movies from the '70s (Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein). The people who did Airplane revived the genre, and did it very well.

You could even consider Monty Python to be a pioneer in this area.

Davy Crockett was a pioneer in this area or a little south of here ---he was pretty funny sometimes and spoofed stuff ---all of his movies, though, were never filmed ---"a regular spoofer too far ahead of his time" is what Pauline Kael used to say (to him) ....Davy always agreed with her (also in the third person) ---wait, is that true? ---yep; I double-checked my sources.

I don't know, Jim, I've seen one of his movies (Disney!) How ya doin', George? Long time, no see...good point about the Mel Brooks' pictures, I had forgotten about those. Tim, I have never heard of "Hardware Wars." Was it dreadful? Because I thought "Star wars" was (oops! Did I say that??)

Hardware Wars poked endless fun at Star Wars. If you had any gripes at all about Star Wars, you will love Hardware Wars.

Hardware Wars? (autumn called you tim, pt, is that what the t stands for? been curious and wondered why you don't use it) i've never even heard of it (course, when ya live out in the boondocks). now space balls was a spoof on star wars for sure (another monty python gem)!

Space Balls was excellent. T does stand for Tim. The system won't let me logon that way.

really? wonder why. maybe there's another user with that name or something. so anyway, what the heck is up with hardware wars? hmmm?

They use common household items to depict the hardware in the movie. For example an iron is an imperial cruiser.

ok, well i'll pass then...

It is tremendously funny, start to finish. It only runs 40 minutes. I think you would enjoy it. The special effects are identical to Star Wars except for the actual hardware.

is this the one with the huge beach-ball alien? the scenes with the beachball had me in stitches!

Hey Jim... You musta missed Davy Crockett's films... they went straight to video before being released... touchy topics of course. The Alamo... remember with the John Wayne Look-a-like. And the movie did look-a-lot-like Shane. Or Old Yeller or what was the one with the goose and the Amish family and the war and the little boy... oh yea... Persuasion... no.. something Persuasion. Damn. Can't remember Strong maybe. Simple... Persuasion something anyway.

"Persuasion Mastaba"? Took place in Egypt? Shot in Morocco? These Amish families that settled on some wavy land next to the Nile? And the little boy and little girl he met at the drive-in theater? Her dad's car had new chrome on it and stuff? And then the mastaba got wiff of them, and it opened up? And out pooped (I mean popped) the mummy? Anyway there was a war goin' on that was tryin' to get alotta the attention, and it (the war) would go around to people and hand out perfume samples, right? I dunno if I'm right about that, cuz I could be gettin' it mixed up with "Saving Private Ryan"? But y'know, wars do strange things to people. But anyway, I'm pretty sure the one yer thinkin' of, Stace, is "Persuasion Mastaba" If I'm wrong, hope that helped a little to jog yer memory some more.

'gentle persuasion', i think the film was called... (starred gary cooper)

Yes!!!

looked it up and whaddaya know "Friendly Persuasion" won best film at Cannes that year (1957) 4 Academy Award nominations, too (1956) musta been worth seein'.....never saw it. so it was the Civil War, Quaker family, I guess Anthony Perkins musta been that boy, Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire his parents

yup, you're right... seen it couple of times, it's a good film from today's perspective, a little surprising that it won at cannes... from what i remember it was a pretty mainstream hollywood film...

Yes, Charlotte, You have the right movie. I'm going to have to see if I can find, "Friendly Persuasion", on video. Sounds good.

it's no SHANE, but it's damn good!

I will definitely have to find it then. Hollywood Video has a good selection of old movies. I'll check there.

The movie that defined the Gangster Opera: The Godfather. The movie that defined the "cool gangster" movie: Reservoir Dogs, although more Americans first saw the "cool gangsters" in Pulp Fiction. The movie that legitimized the horror movie: Psycho. The movie that brought the cheap, gory horror movie to the big time: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the first one). I don't think Ed Wood was alive to see this, but he would probably died of envy if he had... The movie that revolutionized car chase scenes: Bullitt. There were better chase scenes in the earlier It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World but these were not taken seriously (as one would expect...).

The movie that defined the '70's car chase movie: Gone In 60 Seconds, written, produced, directed and starred by H. R. Halicki (sp?). This created the genre from which came Vanishing Point, Death Race 2000, Firebird 2015, Smokey and the Bandit, The Cannonball Run, and many others.