Sunday, October 11, 2009

B Movies, French Kissing, and 2001

I grew up on a series of Army bases as a kid.  In the early 70s, we lived on Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and our house was located about 4 blocks from the base theater.  As a result of the short distance, I was allowed to spend a lot of formative years sitting in the dark watching movies.  Then on Friday and Saturday nights at 11PM, the theatre showed B movies and Karate flicks for just $1.  What a deal!

Before too long all the kids of my age group were attending the movies en mass because our parents let us roam the base since they considered it safe.  So, even though I was not close to getting a driver’s license yet, I was taking girls to movies and had up to two hours in the dark to explore my uneasy transition into adolescence.  Because of this, a lot of my milestone memories are tied two ways.  Some memories were related to music (my first slow dance was to King Harvest’s Dancing in the Moonlight), and others were bound to movies (first French kiss during the psychedelic scene in  2001: A Space Odyssey )

As a result of the cheap late shows,  I saw all of Bruce Lee’s films (always guaranteed to have one topless scene) and a lot of B horror movies like Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? , spaghetti westerns like They Call Me Trinity and of course a few motorcycle movies like Chrome and Hot Leather.

Chrome and Hot Leather was a  good guy/bad guy movie which featured the good guys also riding bikes,  which was unusual for the time period.  It was a poorly made and badly acted exploitation movie,  no argument there -- it was B movie at its best.  But the scene that stuck with me (aside from a young Cheryl Ladd in her first movie) was the scene where the hero and his buddies were learning to ride motorcycles.   It stuck with me because it reminded me a bit of my first ride and because it was funny.  It also crossed my mind when I decided to start riding again because I didn't want my first ride to be like theirs, which is how I ended up in the Harley rider’s course.

Okay, so I took a long way around to explain one of the reasons I took the course.  It was fun reminiscing especially about my first slow dance (thanks Terri) and first French kiss (thanks Mary Ellen).

BTW I only saw Easy Rider in April of 2009,  just never seemed to get around to it before.

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