The clever clues of the movies I would eventually understand

All of my life I have been surrounded by the media, and I always wanted to know how it was made. My mother would play me the songs that she liked, and she became my gateway to classic movies and the timeless songs that she couldn't wait to play for me in the car. She would tell me the stories about movies I would watch when I was much older about how a man named John McClane said this one phrase that I should never say in front of my grandmother. How Prince was told off by his father and said he never be a musician because he never memorized his music in his mind. I listened to all the stories and eventually would watch the movies at my mother had told me about. But there were some movies that I did see, or figurines or posters and I look at them and not understand what they were at that time, but I never forgot the time I discovered what I didn't understand.

The movie poster that made me lose time

The title is the best way to start out this story, and you'll see why. At another comic book shop, my mother would go to on the hunt for more cards for her eBay business, I was taken along for the trip, and again, she would trust me to stay nearby. She knew I was in the movie section to look at the Sailor Moon VHS tapes. With the set up on the shop, the anime section always had the movie section. My five-year-old eyes would go down the line from anime to comic books, to movies.

As I gazed at all the rows of movies, the stories of films I had no idea at the time I would see when I was older. My curiosity grew as I continued to walk down the movie section, then I turned around and saw a movie poster that I could not understand, and it was the first time I’ve ever seen something that I could not comprehend. It was a poster of a man stretching his mouth out and inside his mouth was a monster, this would be the poster for They live, but I was a five-year-old that disliked scary things. I had no idea I was looking at a comedy horror film about the controlling of a society. The only things that I was watching was Powerpuff Girls and Sailor Moon, something colorful and wholesome and I did not realize that there would be material made that would be darker and scary looking. I did not think that things would be made to be terrifying, it was a realization that I had as a child that when they were good stories there are also scary stories and I did not know what exactly the scary story would be just by looking at the poster.

This is why the title of a section is called the poster that made me lose time, because all I did was just look at that thing and I was still, I didn’t blink, I couldn’t move I was held by something that I could not understand. I have wondered from an outside perspective if anyone had looked at me and wondered why is that five-year-old staring at that poster? Should we go check on her?

Years later, I was doing my usual scouring on IMDb, picking random movies to read the synopsis and move on. Then I had to stop when I saw the film that stopped me in my tracks as a five-year-old. I had to chuckle to myself as I remembered where and when I saw this poster. Whenever I do get the chance to watch this movie, I'll be thinking of the scaredy little girl I was at that comic book shop.

The strange toy at the comic book shop

Comic book shops were a staple of my childhood. On the days after school, my mother would have to go to comic book shops to find the sports cards for her eBay business. Those days we went to the comic book shop were my highlights because of my interests. My early days consisted of two things: Superheroes and anime, this was the first time, but then there were things I saw there that was different then the cartoon I saw on TV. I would look at all the comic books and try to see if I could understand the story by looking at the book, a lot of the characters are very voluptuous and risqué, so it was a lot to take in as a small child to see something a bit graphic just from looking at the poster. When I looked into the glass cases at the figurines there was one that I couldn’t understand even though my five-year-old mine knew that it was a toy, but it was a toy that was very alarming for the way it was created. I read the name labeled on the toy, it said “Mars Attacks!” I had no idea what that was I was too young to know that it was a Tim Burton box office bomb turned cult film. All I knew from the first impression was it was a very scary alien with wide teeth and big eyes and a big head and I’m not gonna lie I lost time again, I couldn’t comprehend what I was looking at, why there would be a toy that looks so scary looking and why someone would want to buy it. I preferred my toys that had smaller eyes and a warm smile, I had no idea at that time that toys could look menacing. Needless to say, after I got back to reality from staring at something that was too advanced to comprehend as a toy from a movie and only saw it as a terrifying monster, I went to where things made sense, being stuck to my mom's side.

But goes around, comes around. I was skimming through Netflix one day and saw a title I hadn't seen since that day I saw it in the comic book shop. I had forgotten what it was about Mars Attacks that made it familiar, and I put it on for interest to see what it was about. It wasn't until the scene came up where the aliens disguised themselves as a woman. When I was watching that scene, I couldn't help but know it was familiar even though I had never seen anything in this movie, and then I remembered where and I had to laugh to myself

It was the toy in the comic book store that scared me so much I lost time.