This started months ago, I believe in October. Tom and the cadre of neighbors we hang with were bandying around some ideas of how to entertain ourselves during these tight economic times. They struck on the idea of watching our DVD of Clash of the Titans one Tuesday night. We all gathered at Sue's, did a potluck dinner and watched 80's camp fantasy unfold in front of our eyes. We'd all seen it before, of course, but it was great watching it again, especially in a group setting. So, the idea came to make it a weekly ritual. We'd get together on Tuesday nights, and watch an 80's fantasy (then Sci-Fi) film with a potluck dinner and lots of company. The film had to be rather campy. So, we ruled all ruled out The Dark Crystal, deeming it too good. After Titans, we watched Legend. And The Beastmaster. Then Excalibur. Then The Last Starfighter. And Flash Gordon. Etc.
The bulk of the films come from our individual libraries, so it's not like we're spending oodles of cash every week. We also try to theme the food we're eating to the film we're watching. For Flash Gordon, we did a Mongolian-style stir fry. Since the setting of The Last Starfighter is a trailer park, we did a lot of trailer trash cuisine (which meant a lot of mac-'n-cheese w/franks). Frequently, we'll make too much food for the group (which ranges in size each week from 5 to 9, depending on who's available), so we'll have plenty of leftovers to eat throughout the week.
We exhausted the 80's sci-fi with the one-two punch of the seriously obnoxious, smug, boy-it-doesn't-hold-up-well Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. We all universally hated it. I didn't remember digging it too well when I saw it on cable way back in '85, but yeesh, it's awful. The following week, we sat through Heavy Metal, the boobtastic "adult" animated fantasy film. It's not a good movie, and it did not go over well at all. Frustrated by all the boob and no peen action, our neighbor Mitch said she'd take care of the film for the following week... which was the excellent Forgetting Sarah Marshall. So now, we are each taking turns surprising each other with our movie selection. Last week, Shawn brought us Slither, which was pretty awesome. The week before, Sue put on The Wizard of Oz... but set to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The best section is when Dorothy lands in Oz and arrives in Munchintown, and... well, just watch.
Pretty amazing, no?
The whole point of this is that you can entertain yourselves cheaply and thoroughly by just going through your own movie libraries, venturing into your kitchen, and calling some friends. Pretty easy... and tons of fun.
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