Can't remember / can't forget (undefined)

Watched on 2025-03-06

Films that I saw by mistake, late night channel 4 in the 90s, half recorded on VHS, as a child on a trans pacific flight, summer holiday mornings where the glass screen has too much sun on it to see what really going on.

• In the Aftermath
  This is the quintessential can't remember/ can't forget film. I saw it on late night TV and it took me years to confirm that it was actually a real thing, not just something I dreamed.
• The Young Master
  I saw this as a very young child (4/5?) on our tiny Sony CRT TV. The scene where Jackie Chan gets stuck in the runny orange quicksand stuck in my mind and I was struck by powerful recognition when I watched the film in my 20s. Why was the BBC showing Jackie Chan films in the morning? Did I really see it?
• Little Big Man
  This was one of only two films we had on video when I was young. We'd moved to a country with no TV channels so couldn't record anything new. It was this and The Graduate (I guess they'd had a Dustin Hoffman retrospective on the BBC before we left the UK?) so my sister (7) and I (9) watched this about twice a week for the first 18 months until EM-TV came on air.
• Bad Boy Bubby
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man
  Tried to record this but missed the first 20 minutes was convinced I'd understand it if only I could see that and I became obsessed, but of course this was the 90s in Wilmslow so getting hold of a copy was not possible till I moved to Bristol and they had it in 20th Century flicks. The versions I had imagined in the intervening years were better than the reality
• Eraserhead
• Kiss Me Deadly
• Shock Corridor
• Cry-Baby
• The Kingdom

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.