The Most Influential Movies Ever
Published November 02, 2003
This is not a list the best movies, or a list of favorite movies. This is a list of the most influential movies; movies that have had the greatest affect on the film and video world since their release. In fact, with one exception, these are not great movies — some of them are barely even good. But they have all struck a chord that caused the movers and shakers of the film industry to say "I could do better than that" or "I could take a different angle on that" or "I could make fun of that" or, most commonly, "I could make some money copying that."
In reverse order:
Airplane
The movie that provided Leslie Nielsen job security for the next quarter century. Airplane drew on some of the more inane and juvenile farce of the time such as The Kentucky Fried Movie, but sidestepped the skit format for a full length spoof. Followed up with the Naked Gun movies, Police Squad TV series, Top Secret! and, most recently, the Scary Movie trilogy. Charlie Sheen is the new Leslie Nielsen.
Super Cops
You've never heard of this one, have you? If I asked you what the first buddy-cop movie was you would probably say 48 Hours. Wrong! Not only did this predate 48 Hours by many years, it even predated the granddaddy buddy cop duo of Starsky and Hutch by a year. All the elements are there — two street-smart New York cops trying to do good over the objections of their cranky superiors. Rush Hour, Bad Boys, even Men in Black owe a debt to this film that has virtually disappeared.
Sixteen Candles
It's hard to pin down the undeniable attraction of these '80s high school comedies; I suppose they are just fun fantasies with enough recognizable stereotypes and generational conflict to give them validity over their square, hey-kids-let's-put-on-a-show predecessors. Director John Hughes followed this up himself with The Breakfast Club and Ferris Buellar's Day Off among others. Although there have been a few standouts — Clueless comes to mind — this genre is on the wane in theatres to a certain extent, Freddie Prinze Jr.'s career being the exception. But TV has taken ironic, misunderstood teens to heart in the more recent past with everything from 90210 to Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. The Disney Channel is pretty much based on applying teen themes to a younger, more precocious audience. It's enough to make you cry, "Not Another Teen Movie!"
- The Most Influential Movies Ever
- Published: November 02, 2003
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- Section: Video
- Writer: David Mazzotta
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Mortal "K"ombat, that would be with a "k", but beyond that minor copyedit gremlin, I'd say your list is pretty good, David. I hadn't bothered with Kung Fu movies before seeing Enter The Dragon and Halloween is a certain classic.
Did Sixteen Candles predate Revenge of the Nerds? (I didn't look up the dates to see).
Zucker, the brilliant filmmaker behind Airplane, Naked Gun and more recently the line of Scary Movie flicks, showed that there is still lots of humor to be had in mocking sterotypes.
I think it's time to give up on Leslie Nielson though (perhaps a topic for an entirely different thread), as it seems that he has used up most of his good comedy routines. Most the last few movies he's been in I haven't found him as funny as when I first saw him in Naked Gun.
Oh, peeshaw. Super Cops influential? For a movie to be influential, it has to have been successful. Nobody saw Supercops (I did, regrettably). You want buddy cops? How about Car 54 Where are You? Did you ever hear of Dragnet? Even Adam 12 with Martin Milner was a buddy cop series. And I am sure that all those shows were influenced by earlier stuff.
I protest your claim that The Terminator is Halloween with Arnold replacing Michael. I suppose The Exorcist is Halloween with Pazuzu replacing Michael. Sure, Halloween did inspire a lot of horrible movies, though.
dirty harry was not only an influential cop movie, it was also a buddy cop movie, with harry saying goodbye to 4 present or former partners -- 3 on screen (chico, fat man, tyne daly) and one off (fanducci(?) in 68).
a few other "influential" films:
die hard
reservoir dogs
animal house
2001
star wars
platoon
l'il mermaid :-(
bad news bears (a very underrated picture)
sorry-- i meant 5 partners -- 4 on screen and one off. i left out smith, who left the stage in magnum force.
Very interesting - and what of Animal House, which has spawned an almost endless chain of school-oriented sex, drugs, rebellion and rock 'n' roll movies that continue to this day like the American Pie franchise.
I don't think Crouching Tiger exists without Enter the Dragon. The story might, but without the stylized fight sequences and the tree-walking. Enter the Dragon put that stuff on the road to legitimacy.
2001 was an influence on bringing quality into sci-fi, so I could be missing the boat here. My problem with this is that sci-fi is so focused on sub-genre that it's tough to see direct lineage. It would just as easy to make an argument that 2001 stands alone. The trends in sci-fi often are reserved to a single franchise (Star Trek/Star Wars/etc.) You could make an argument for massive franchises such as Star Trek or even James Bond, but they seem to me to mostly effect themselves.
I'm pretty sure Sixteen Candles and Revenge of the Nerds both came out in 1984 (I don't know which was first). But I don't think RotN is comparable to the slice-of-High-School-life John Hughes flicks.
The cops in Dragnet/Adam-12 et. al. all played it way too straight, in contrast to the smarmy, streetwise, anti-hero-ish types we're now used to. Super Cops was ignored by the public (and rightfully). Even though it failed, I'm guessing the concept wasn't lost of the folks who made Starsky and Hutch which I count as the first popular, modern buddy cops. Also, Super Cops was based on a fairly popular book at that time so the concept didn't completely slip under the radar. (I could be wrong about this, Starsky and Hutch could have been completely independent of Super Cops, but I am not averse to irresponsible speculation, so there you are).
A single-minded, unstoppable, super-being that either does not speak (or can barely string together three words), out to kill a perky young average female for reasons that -- through most of the movie -- aren't clear. That describes both Halloween and the Terminator. It doesn't come close to describing the Excorist, but I didn't claim it did.
Dirty Harry pioneered the anti-hero cop (I believe two years before Serpico), but no way could he and his partners be considered buddy cops. None of his partners were intended to be his equals in the dramatic sense.
There is a lot of cross over between Animal House style debauchery and John Hughes-ian hyper-irony. I would give the edge to Hughes/Sixteen Candles mainly because I don't see as many worthy Animal House successors, and none of note until American Pie. But I am admittedly splitting some hairs here.
Comment #7, I think you're thinking of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a local-to-the-US movie in it's comparison to Enter the Dragon, when in actuality, it's an international movie. Being an international movie, it's influence is not necessarily derived from a US movie, in this case, Enter the Dragon. As I've said before, Hong Kong cinemas were making martial arts movies (string-based effects) similar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for years. The martial arts in Enter the Dragon are vastly different and is why I find the influence unlikely.
Here are a few more influential films that weren't mentioned: JAWS, the grand-daddy of all summer blockbuster 'event' movies that basically changed Hollywood; THE ROAD WARRIOR, a film that catapulted Mel Gibson to fame and inspired countless films with its blend of editing, costume design & stuntwork; And, sorry, HALLOWEEN wouldn't have existed without PSYCHO, the first and best 'slasher' flick. Other influential films - MEATBALLS, not ANIMAL HOUSE, as the daddy of the modern-day 'slob' comedy; SEVEN SAMURAI, YOJIMBO, HIGH NOON, THE THING, 2001, 48 HOURS(The first blockbuster 'cop-buddy' movie)and of course, XANADU(Olivia, baby!).
If you are talking about Dirty Harry as the precursor to anti-hero cop movies, you may have to consider that Bullitt came first.
And not only should you call it the anti-hero cop movie, you should also call it the anti-buddy cop movie. His partners fulfilled the same function as the Enterprise crew members who beamed down with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.
Why don't any of these "most influential" lists have "Goldfinger" on them? "Goldfinger" was, hands down, THE most influential piece of pop culture, movie, film or print...EVER!!
No other franchise element, not "Star Trek", "Star Wars", "Friday The 13th" or anything ELSE, came close to exerting such an overwhelming international rash of imitation and satire! All three networks, every major movie studio, (and a few minor ones!) and every publishing house sought to bring their Bond clones to market after "Goldfinger" proved to be such a hit.
However, it couldn't have been just the monetary aspect that caused the plethora of imitators. I think there was a sincere affection for the character, his suaveness, the cleverness of the movie itself...its production values, music, etc. that also inspired the slew of clones. I respectfully put forth "Goldfinger" as, hands down, the indisputable KING of "most influential movies of all time"!
Isn't Super Cops the one that stars Bud Spencer and Terence Hill? If so, it's not the first buddy cop movie, since it came out 2 years after the much more influential Peter Hyams film Busting which is more likely the model for later buddy cop films.
And if Airplane is influenced by Kentucky Fried Movie then isn't IT the significant film instead? But really, both of them owe a huge debt to Putney Swope so that's where I'd put the significance marker first.
Dave
Comment #11 above was chosen as Comment of the Day for Saturday 10th December 2005. Congratulations to Photoscribe.
I agree with most of David's choices, also "Goldfinger" and "Reservoir Dogs". I think "Reservoir Dogs" is a tougher choice because we're still seeing that particular wave breaking. "Goldfinger" was influential not just in sequels and parodies but in style. The villain explaining his plan to the hero who escapes inevitable death at the last moment - very reminiscent of the Buck Rogers-era space serials, but brought to a new generation.
"2001" was awe-inspiring, but really didn't inspire similar science fiction. The multi-species, multi-ship warp-speed galaxies of "Star Trek" and "Star Wars" were different.
What about "Summer School", the blockbuster Mark Harmon epic? Dave and Chainsaw, the two high-school stoners with a great sense of humor and no future, were the forerunners to Beavis and Butthead, and Wayne and Garth. There were teenage losers before ("Fast Times at Ridgemont High", of course), but the pairing was a first.
And if you want influential, there's a black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks, a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman...
I think David hasn't taken much interest in films -- influential or otherwise -- except for D rated, American teen aged, drive-in, home watchable junk. I can't agree with any but the first: Airplane which was another low level film but did influence a lot of other low level films. Scorcese's 3 part Godfather was more serious but influenced mostly a bunch of mafia/wise guy action-adventure junk. I never thought much of it except for Brando and a lot of gratuitous blood and gore.
Comments #9 & 11 both deserved a comment of the day for getting closer to influential films of substance.
Let's not glorify Hollywood junk as "influential".
But it does make you start thinking of what really was influential. That will take a lot of thinking.
I think the most influential films were "The Great Train Robbery" about 1910(?) and that Edward Muybridge one with the motion studies of a horse (1899?). Oh, and may as well throw in that one by Thomas Edison of the guy sneezing, or the man and woman kissing.
Alpha
The Godfather trilogy was Copolla, not Scorcese (Ahhhhhh, scored my blogger snipe of the day)
And speaking of Copolla, if your going to include a Kubrik film drop 2001 and go with Dr. Strangelove. That one influenced Catch-22, M*A*S*H, and Apocolypse Now; the whole small but partially classic batch of serious war comedy/satire movies.
And for all those anti-heroes who aren't cops, but are the real anti anti-heroes: Steve McQueen's The Getaway.
Far superior to Bullit.
I agree with some of the most influential movie listings.. i wonder about the ommision of certain movies.. most notably Psycho, Jaws and tim burtons batman.. all of which lead to similar reincarnations.. I would put hitchcocks psychological thriller as the most influential movie of the second half of the 20th century.
I can name two "chopsockey" Shakespeare movies: "Ran," based on King Lear; and "Throne of Blood," based on MacBeth.
BTW, how can you list The Most Influential Films of All Time without mentioning Birth of A Nation? BOAN pretty much defined what a movie was and EVERY movie that has followed has learned the "grammar" of filmmaking from it. Yes. It's misguided and racist, but it demonstrates the raw power of film to stir emotions and influence public policy. BOAN exacerbated race relations in this country for a half-century and the NAACP picketed its showings well into the 1950s. That's power. That's influence. No movie. NO MOVIE has impacted the world as much since.
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Comparing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to Enter the Dragon is quite a stretch isn't it? Besides the animal title and martial arts association, the genre of each films are quite different. Throwing them together simply because of "kung fu" over generalizes them. It is doubtful that one influenced the other since Hong Kong had been making movies like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon since long before Enter the Dragon. Now the Kill Bill association is much closer.
How about 2001: A Space Odyssey for SciFi flicks?