[SOLVED] Hunting for a movie
Tildos, I have a problem.
So, my wife is a huge film buff. However, there is one movie that she had repeatedly rented from Hollywood Video sometime in the early 00's that she has been unable to recall or find, despite all advances in search engine technology.
This would be filed under the 'formative pre/early teen latchkey girl sexual awakening' moments. So she can't really remember much beyond the favorite sex scene, and even then details are scarce. Can crowdsourcing solve what 15+ years of searching has not?
Fragments discovered so far list:
- Not pornography. Probably legitimate film, not skinemax.
- Scifi/fantasy of some sort. Costumes described as "waterworldesq, but not waterworld."
- Scene probably takes place in a desert
- She is sleeping with some other dude's friend
- Missionary. He's loud, and at one point she bites his nipple.
I know. Not much to go one, especially since almost all remembered details highly overlap with porn results.
Other films that have already been well worn by this point:
- Tank Girl
- Waterworld
- The Fifth Element
- Barbarella
Edit: After 2 weeks, @myrrh solves our mystery
...try nightfall, around the 43.00 mark?..
OMG Thank you!!! We have a winner!!! Nightfall (1988)! I'm now at least 5% deafer in one ear, my wife is eternally grateful, and I fear for the fate of my nipple. We'll be watching through tonight after the kids are in bed, 9PM Eastern.
Second place goes to @Spoom, whom also suggested it in a broader list shortly after this one.
Added thanks to @culturedleftfoot for the added vote of confidence.
And to everyone in the thread for helping out, as yall have collectively solved a 25 year old mystery previously thought impossible!
@tomf, @first-must-burn, @DefinitelyNotAFae, @Gazook89, @PraiseTheSoup, @zod000, @TMarcos, @whbbyod, @cheep_cheep, @shu, @Nemoder, @Lapbunny, @l_one, @xk3, @d32, @Exemplary, @TheD00d, @Narry, @j4ke, @smiles134, @dmfiend, @caliper, and @bkimmel
Closure, finally!
incredible. great job, Tildes community. I wonder if enough of us will hunt it down to watch that they have to explain a weird blip in the search algorithms. godspeed, vord's nipple.
Incredible
Glad it's finally resolved!
This will go down in Tildes history. Thank you for updating us, Vord!
Awesome, glad we could solve this mystery.
@vord I've become unreasonably invested in this mystery and have convinced myself that this is the answer you're looking for. Don't leave me hanging
(note that's not the only sex scene in the film, so her memory may be conflating several scenes, but that one best fits her description)
...i rented nightfall from blockbuster one night in the summer of 1990 and haven't seen it again since, but my takeaway was that it's not a bad film as long as you have reasonable tolerance for low-budget independent production and are willing to let it be its own thing, rather than expecting a slavish adaptation of the original short story...
The Blood of Heroes Aka the Salute of the Jugger (1989)? I think your low-man sex scene is at 40:00
I really hope it's this because I want to live in a world where someone can put a question like this on Tildes and get an answer from another human in ten minutes.
haha if it is, I'll be very surprised. A few years ago I posted to /r/tipofmytongue with what was essentially 'low budget action movie where the baddies had matching tracksuits and the hero looked like Jon Arbuckle from Garfield' and this dude replied, 'Courier of Death' and that was absolutely it.
If I can ever achieve that sort of thing... I just don't know :)
Very interesting to see Rutger Hauer in there. According to IMDB, he had five movie credits in 1989, including this one.
No, but additional details procured: "No it was in the daytime."
White dude, long hair. He walks from his desert hut to her desert hut. And somebody dies while they're having sex, and they blame themselves.
Grandma rented it...so it might be sexploitation. Same general vibe as "The Vampire Journals. It's technically a movie, but nobody is watching it unless they ran out of other things to rent from Hollywood Video in 2001.
I think someone does die while they're having sex in this film, is there maybe a second sex scene or is she blending two films together in her head? (It's also possible someone else mixed two films up in their description)
Not them, somebody else.
eg "oh my kid got shot while i was busy."
No, I had read a description that said it was someone else being killed during a sex scene in the film, it's just that it's possible they also got something wrong.
Scorpion King (2002) with Dwayne Johnson? I haven’t seen it, so a real shot in the dark.
I've seen it. There's definitely no nipple biting.
Saw it in theaters, a decent followup to The Mummy. 7/10. Remember how they tried to make Brenden Fraser the next Harrison Ford? IMO he was better than a lot of the other attempts.
But no.
I have no suggestions, but this thread is quite entertaining. Some of these movie suggestions are peak "maybe I'd watch this when drunk in the middle of the night in my 20s".
Additional details unlocked:
Almost certainly older than in 2000.
More Waterworld than Mad Max.
Not action-focused. Think Arrival, not Alien vs Predator.
This is all a fascinating look into how our brains work. A bit of poking and prodding to jostle a neuron or three. Thr memory might be wrong, but there is a spark where there once was none.
...did she have a solid sense of the age of the film?..lots of post-apocalyptic titillation was committed to film in the decade between zardoz and spacehunter...
My suggestions:
Not at first blush, though Knights triggered an "oooh maybe." But then reading plot "No think more tattooine vibe, but no robots." More post-apocaloyptic fantasy than hard scifi.
She also thanks you, because she will watch every single one of Albert Pyun's films now.
Okay, well, this triggered a missing movie (ish) for me. Way back in… '97, I guess… I was seeing a movie in theaters, and got subjected to at least two trailers which gave nine-year-old me nightmares for weeks. One was Volcano. The other was some sci-fi flick with rat creatures tunneling under various loose ground surfaces and far, far too much implied gore for a trailer put in front of a nine-year-old.
(I do not remember what the feature was. It obviously didn't leave as much of an impression.)
I didn't retain the name of either film, but a few decades later I got curious about them. Volcano was of course easy to look up, but the other one eluded me. But skimming your suggestions, it was definitely Screamers. (The trailer scene where a character grabs at a circular saw attached to a homicidal robot for some reason and it spins up to try to saw his fingers off was one I didn't remember until I rewatched it, at which point I very much remembered the gut clench and feeling of "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING"—probably not phrased like that in my nine-year-old head—from the first watching.)
I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in watching either of these movies. But at least now I can satisfy my curiosity about which movie the second one was. I'll take some amusement from the fact that it was critically panned. =)
I love Volcano, it's silly and awesome and it has Tommy Lee Jones! I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good movie, but I find it very satisfying to watch in a "so bad it's great" way.
This 80s-schlock-list has a few candidates for sleazy porny fantasy, e.g.
Hundra or Deathstalker which has several sequels.
Or are these the wrong direction?
The Letterboxd page for Deathstalker has also 'related/similar films'-sections which might be useful?
e: or Gor?
Dune 2000 and Children of Dune had a few mild sex scenes. The blue eyes would have likely made that more memorable though.
Not Dune, the 6 hour Japanese subtitled laserdisc was Thanksgiving watching.
Only based on research, not experience
You said not Cinemax but also might be sexploitation but not full porn, so I'm straddling with a Cinemax movie. But like idk.
She
Phoenix the Warrior aka She-Wolves of the Wasteland (seems like there's maybe only one guy on earth though)
The Barbarians
If she recalls anything, - redhead, body builder guy? Full nudity or blanket covering everything but his chest or something in between?
Anything about the costumes of the post apoc world.. swords?
It has been nearly 25 years, so yea its a mess.
These are all amazing and will be watched. None are it.
However, the costuming vibe is generally correct. She is a bit too Barbarella. And the suggestions are triggering more memories. It was apparently legit movie. And the lady was apparently more of a side character than a lead (full patriarchy mode, as was described to me).
Edit: Dude kinda looks like Obrien from Star Trek DS9, but definitely not him. "Get me an Obrien type," but with dirty-blonde hair. Chick is a brunette.
Got it, does she remember if there is full boob shown or just chest?
Because I have discounted sexploitation films so far but could go back there.
Pretty sure no boob.
I hear it's always where you least expect it. Did you try Finding Nemo, just to make sure?
I see some people just want to sow chaos. Being a Lapbunny is a devious and evil disguise, cloaking your appearance as something so adorable.
Some possibilities:
America 3000 (1986)?
Beat me to it!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090630/
Negative.
@d32
Well it's not Gor, and it's not Outlaw of Gor - the dude is short and has short white hair...
I think I see in your future, you watching hundreds of bad sci fi movies that all almost but not quite match her memory... and maybe that is double good. You get to watch a lot of bad sci fi movies, and the reality is never going to match up to formative memories that have probably been recalled and reconstructed many times.
That has been the fate so far, and so far seems it will always be.
Was a good try though.
I don't know why, but could it have been Teenage Caveman? That feels like something I found on TV super early one morning in the early 00's
Awesome movie, but no.
Wild shot in the dark, but... Steel Dawn?
Edit to add, there is a small chance that this is Battlefield Earth.
No, Too Mad Max.
Battlefield Earth has too many stars allegedly. However, as the proxy I'll comment that it would explain the memory loss.
To be honest, I would forget Battlefield Earth myself if I ever saw it. I’ve heard some people claim it’s camp and that it circles back around to being good, but more reliable sources have told me that that just doesn’t happen.
Logan’s Run, maybe?
Edit: Actually, this pinged memory in my own brain. Is there any chance that this is George Lucas‘s first movie THX 1138?
Nope, but both of those should be mandatory watching for film buffs.
Any chance it was ever mocked ruthlessly on MST3K or RiffTrax?
Edit for another contender:
Krull
...okay, here's a wild card: what about michael radford's nineteen eighty-four?..
It's been a minute since I've seen it, but it sounds a lot like Cherry 2000
It's not Starship Troopers, is it?
Sadly not.
Maybe it's The Hills Have Eyes 1977?
Perhaps A Boy and his Dog ?
*Edit: It sounds silly but for anyone who isn't familiar it is a legit dystopic sci-fi film that has some bunker openings that look like huts in the desert.
I'm just guessing here, maybe Conan the Barbarian/Destroyer? Or is that too much action?
Sounds vaguely like Zardoz?