Wednesday nights at Nogglestead are often Daddy Movie Nights during the school year because the boys have a church midweek thing and my beautiful wife practices with the choir, which means I can watch a full movie with violence or bad words in it. Or, more likely, an old movie, but I can watch it from start to finish without interruption.
But in the late winter and early spring, I often take a triathlon class, and this year is no exception, which puts Daddy Movie Night on hiatus for a couple of months–almost to the end of the school year.
So tonight, I skipped the triathlon class because I wanted to watch a movie. But the universe repaid me for my perfidy and thwarted movie night.
Here is the actual order of the movies I could not watch and the myriad reasons why:
- Adventures in Babysitting. As you might recall, I just bought this on videocassette, and I have fond memories of it from the 1980s, when it was on Showtime and I didn’t have much to do but watch movies on Showtime over and over again. I couldn’t find it on the unwatched video shelves, though, and I assumed that my children had rearranged things or got it out, as they often get out movies they want to watch and leave them in random places. But, no, I see now that I left it on the scanner when I scanned the cover for this post.
- The Secret Agent, the Alfred Hitchcock film from 1986. I put this in the videocassette player and it started; I wasn’t sure if it was a talkie or not as I know some of his early works are silent. The video had no sound, but it had no titles, either, and the actors mouths’ moved, so I thought perhaps the cheapie video was defective. Besides, I might have it in my collection of early Hitchcock movies on DVD (I later learned I do).
- My Favorite Brunette, a Bob Hope movie, was bundled with The Road To Bali on a DVD called The Road to Comedy. I worked myself up to some enthusiasm for watching this since the box said it was a send-up of noir films. A comedy. Oh, I could use a laugh. It was still wrapped in cellaphane, and when I popped in the DVD, it contained a collection of ten episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. I took it out and looked at it, aghast. The label on the DVD is, in fact, for the Bob Hope two-pack, and I did unwrap it and tear the little no-steal-it plastic from the table, but this damn thing was mispackaged and labeled.
- Charly. I just read “Flowers for Algernon” upon which this film is based, so I thought I would give it a whirl. It was not fully rewound, so I tried rewinding it and then play-rewind when it stopped prematurely on the rewind. But apparently this videocassette is blank, since it’s nothing but static from front to back.
- On the Beach. I figured this post-apocalyptic morality tale would cheer me up after the fiascos noted above. It came right up, but it, too, had no sound, so either the videocassette player is having trouble or something is disconnected on the back of the electronics tangle. I didn’t want to mess with it at the moment (I wanted to watch a movie!).
- Death Wish with Bruce Willis. All right, Roku and Amazon Prime it is, dammit. So I selected this film. I was just passed the very slow first part when I remembered that Amazon Prime movies choke out at about :47 minutes after the hour. They just stop, leaving me with a blank screen until I click Back on the remote a bunch at which point I can restart the movie. I don’t know if the fault is with my ISP, with Roku, or with Amazon Prime, but I do remember that I don’t like to watch Amazon Prime for this reason.
By this point, I was too beside myself to watch anything, and I really didn’t have enough time for a whole movie any more anyway.
So I gave up and did some housework. And wrote a blog post. And, soon, I will check the VCR connections to see if the audio is loose. I hope it’s something simple like that because I have a lot of videocassettes, and we’ve somehow already reached the point where you don’t see used VCRs at garage sales any more.
So let me foreshadow for you: MfBJN will not feature a post on a movie I just watched in the next couple of days.
UPDATE: The VCR uses a computer/TV switchbox to connect to the receiver, and the switch was in the wrong position. BOYS.
I should bookmark this so I know how to solve the problem when I next encounter it in 2024.
