Let's ROOOOOOOOOOCK!: It's Short Haired Chick Friday, Colonial Marine edition

-Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man? -No, have you?

Let's see I was 14 (perfect age) and the Kon Tiki (that's right the Kon Tiki) theatre in Kettering was holding a double feature of two films I desperately wanted to see. Aliens and The Fly! Double feature, two for one! My Dad took me to a movie EVERY Sunday and every Sunday was movie time! TWO FOR ONE TWO FOR ONE! In previous Sundays we had done two for ones just by paying twice for two movies (Superman III and Jaws III was a particularly depressing example, Roxanne and Superman IV is an odder pairing), but this was an actual event and unlike Superman and Jaws these had a lot more in common than numbers, these were two movies with monsters and creatures and dark themes, exciting stuff for a 14 year old.



That's right, the Kon Tiki. Don't look for it, it's not there anymore. The Kon Tiki was a theatre in Ketting that was themed like an island paradise.



Inside it was dressed head to toe in voodoo masks, little fake torches, bridges over fake ponds, the whole interior looked like a tropical island mixed with a generous amount of that sort of 60's Tiki kitsch which would make a retro KILLING now but nobody was interested in back then and was torn down in the early nineties.



Movies I saw at the Kon Tiki: Swamp Thing, Treasure of the Four Crowns (in 3D), Spacehunter: Adventures In The Forbidden Zone (in 3D), Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn (in 3D), and the Jim Varney magnum opus Dr. Otto and the Riddle of The Gloom Beam, thus ending all conversation over why they tore it down. (scroll down on the above link to see the last three movies ever to play at the Kon Tiki)



Nothing could prepare any audience member for Aliens in 1986. There was no precedent for being THAT entertained, or for a sequel being THAT good. It was off the scale. Watch it again, once Hicks goes up into the ceiling and sees why the motion sensors were reading the Aliens in the room and all hell breaks loose, the movie literally doesn't stop for 40 minutes, and when it does, when Ripley, Newt, and Bishop make it back safe, it's just a fakeout lead-in to the most memorable fight of our 1986 movie lives.

Get away from her you bitch. - and audiences all across the country simultaniously cheer.



But beyond all that action-beat theory stuff Aliens had the best friggin' cast of characters. Movies generally sucked back then. Think When Savannah Smiles, Tank, Supergirl...yeah. And on top of that sequels (with the exception of the holy trinity) super-sucked. But here was a movie which just kicked unholy ass and beyond that was funny and beyond that had all these unique well-defined characters. I had never seen a Hudson-type, or a Gorman-type, and certainly never a Vasquez-type. Throw them all in a pot with The Hicks-type and the Ripley-type, get them in a lot of trouble and watch the results.


I only need to know one thing, where they are.

When my Mom asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I used to say "Han Solo;" recognizing that that wasn't a viable career choice my mom steered me towards what created Han Solo, writers and directors. The weekly jaunt to the movie theatre with Dad for 13 years would seal the deal. In 1986 I was definitely starting to ask what a director did because I liked that Star Wars guy and evidently he does what directors do. At this time all I could do to study directing in Lewisburg, Ohio was to ask myself what makes Terminator/Aliens different from Jaws/E.T.? Thus began a long love affair with that Titanic guy.



A guy who likes his tough chicks.



Our generation is blessed with many perfect storms, combinations of an age in our life and particular movies that made mavericks into legends at an influential age for us, and we got to be a part of it. Aliens was not only great, it was great when I was 14.


Someone said “alien" she thought they said "illegal alien" and signed up.