Movies You've Seen A Lot But Never From the Beginning

In the last thread, I asked, is this scene really in the beginning of Planet of the Apes?

I've seen the movie twenty times, and at least once on VHS from the beginning, and have no recollection of this scene at all. I remember the movie from the suspended-animation-malfunction and the dessicated female corpse, and then landing in the lake, etc.

It's odd to me -- I mean, Charleton Heston virtually tells you the surprise plot twist here, doesn't he? He more or less just says, "Oh, by the way, we're way into the future and this is an anti-race-war parable about Earth."

Anyway, a commenter who changes his name a lot mentioned that there are a whole bunch of these movies, movies we watch and re-watch on cable because they're comforting/kinda good, and yet not actually good enough that we've ever rented the DVD or sat down specifically to watch them from the beginning -- so, for some movies, I know them by heart, but I've never actually seen the first twenty minutes and wouldn't know what the hell happens there. (Except some guesses, based on what comes later.)

For me, my major movie like this was The Last of Sheila, which was constantly being shown on the ABC Late Movie in the eighties. I watched it fifteen times, but never saw the set-up. Until ten years after I'd first started watching it, when I finally caught the beginning.

Another movie that would almost qualify as one of these is Body Double, similarly always playing on late-night tv, and one I always come into during the mall stalking/kiss sequence, but in that case, I actually had seen it from the start, once.

You have any movies like this? Movies you know by heart but could not even hazard a guess about their actual beginnings?

Couple More: Looker and WestWorld.

I bet anything that anyone around my age has seen WestWorld ten times but never from the beginning. Okay, maybe once.

One of those movies you always come in at about the same place, and say, "Oh shit, WestWorld."

The beginning is... awful, it turns out. Saw it three years ago with a girlfriend after telling her it was great, and then... was like, "What's this crap?"

posted by Ace at 07:51 PM

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