My mind's playin' tricks on me...

There are a lot of things that occasionally make me think I was just born a few decades too late: the types of music I like, from the old big band stuff to the fact that I really believe I would have been right at home at Woodstock.  The television shows I grew up watching, i.e. "I Dream Of Jeannie", "Bewitched", "Gilligan's Island", "The Monkees", etc.  A lot of people actually think that I'm older than I am (and not just because of all the white hairs on my head and beard, thank you!) due to all of the references I make to TV shows and movies from the 50s and 60s.  What can I say?  I just soaked up all of that stuff like a sponge!   I got the first season of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" on DVD - that had obviously come out before I was born, but I just loved the humor and the feel of it.  Mom and I sat and watched some of that together a few years ago and had quite a few laughs. 

I love to watch old movies, too, but this is where I kind of feel that I've been cheated.  I've seen so many movies that have already drawn off of prior movies, and many times been done better, that when I go back and see one of the old ones, it just doesn't pack as much of a punch.  I guess to a certain extent my mind has just been de-sensitized.  Take for example "The Amityville Horror".  I only recently saw that (well, about 5 years ago).  I'd heard for years that it was one of the scariest movies ever.  I guess, though, with all of the horror movies I've seen (especially the "slasher" type stuff, like "Halloween" and "Friday The 13th"), my mind has become so jaded that it just kind of "needs" to have "the scary" forced upon it - not just be subtle, or inferred, like it was in "Amityville", or even more recently "Paranormal Activity".  You had a couple of doors slamming, maybe a light turning on or off, but no actual monsters, or any other ghoul-ey kinda things.  It left it all to your imagination, which, to a certain extent has been diminished by all these years of "in-your-face" horror stuff.  I hope I can watch "Nosferatu" and not be disappointed!

I experienced this again today.  I've really been wanting to catch up on some of these older flicks, especially some Hitchcock stuff.  The only one I'd seen in it's entirety before that was "Psycho".  I saw part of "The Birds", but didn't get all the way through it.  I'd like to see "Rear Window", but I pretty much know the general gist of that from the spoof of it they did on "The Simpsons".

Today I watched "The 39 Steps" from 1935.   While it had a lot of great parts, and I generally enjoyed the film, I couldn't help but to think the entire time that I'd seen it all before - like I could tell what was going to happen before it did.  I blame this on all of the other spy movies I've seen over the years that have ripped off movies such as this, which were completely original 75 years ago!

The ending did surprise me just a little bit, though, and, like I said, there were little parts here and there that I truly did not see coming.

I figured I'd pay tribute to those old movies and TV shows today by making a black and white stroke.