Discussion about Adam's favorite movies

In another thread about Adam's relationship with his mother, I wrote the comment below. Since with [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] , we thought movies were an interesting thing to research, here is a thread about it as suggested by sscc to keep discussing about movies here.

Neah wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

sscc wrote:

- He didn't want someone who lived with him to be able to speak to the police or media about him after his death

Now that I think about it I think this might be the most plausible explanation of Adam's rationale for killing his mother. He did break his hard drive and tried erasing as much of his online footprint as possible. I get the impression the he wanted to be "unpersoned", if that makes any sense.

Yeah, I thought that too. I don't think he hated her, because I think except when something really bad happen, people rarely hate their parents. They can however stop loving them and simply not care anymore. I think it could be the case with Adam and so maybe he killed her as if she were a human hard drive. After all, she was probably the only one who knew him well. And indeed, because Nancy died there are many things we will sadly never know about Adam. It may also suggest that he didn't seek fame, because usually people tend to forget the shooters when there are very few things known about them. Think about Stephen Paddock...

I know we should be very careful when assuming things based on Adam's favorite movies (especially since I did not see all of those movies and so had to read the IMDB summary). But I thought that maybe he liked several of them because he related to some of the main characters:

Willard - "A social misfit uses his only friends, his pet rats, to exact revenge on his tormentors."

Crawlspace - "A childless middle-age couple adopt a troubled youth they find living in their crawlspace and attempt to get him to rejoin society with tragic results." It could be a hint to understand Adam's feelings toward Nancy. Here the parents have a negative influence on the child because they try to force him to do something, despite his own nature.

Haunts of the Very Rich - "A group of wealthy but secretly very troubled people travel to an island resort but find themselves wondering about their existences after a while. "

The Baby - the eccentric, psychedelic Wadsworth Family, consisting of a mother, two daughters, and an adult son with the apparent mental capacity of an infant." I don't know this movie so I don't know if the son character behaves that way because his mother overprotected him or prevented him from being free or not.

The Killing Kind - "Young Terry Lambert returns home from serving a prison term [...] But his real problem is his overbearing mother, whose boarding house he resides in and who keeps bringing him glasses of chocolate milk. [...] However, while he was serving his prison sentence, Terry developed an interest in rough, violent sex, and gory death. [...]"

Don't Go in the House - "A disturbed young man who was burned as a child by his sadistic mother stalks women with a flamethrower. "

Night Warning - "An orphaned teenager finds himself being dominated by his aunt who's hell-bent on keeping him with her...at all costs."

Pin - "Isolated by his strange parents, Leon finds solace in an imaginary friend, which happens to be an anatomy doll from his father's doctor office. Unfortunately, the doll begins to take over Leon's life, and his sister's life as well."

I am aware that it is easy to find links everywhere once we know what happened, even if it is in fact coincidence but I think here it could be true.

I got into Killer Klowns From Outer Space because of Adam. Never looked back. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it and like cheesy B-Movie style horrors (one that just happens to have a relatively high budget).

I had seen Messiah of Evil and Lemora before I even heard of Adam seeing them. Messiah of Evil is really good, I don't think there is anything to say regarding Adam and the shooting, it's just a mix of Lovercraft's stories and a zombie movie.

Lemora is very weird, I don't remember it very well and intend to watch it again but I didn't like it. It was boring, but I can understand why Adam liked it. It is fantastic, about a young girl whose father is a gangster in prison iirc (again, although it is less striking than in other movies, there still is this parents or guardian against the child theme). And especially, which may be one of the reason Adam liked it so much: a woman is in love, or at least is attracted, by the young girl, so still this sort of pedophilia and gay theme too.

I have seen The Killing Kind, Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Bloody Wednesday because of Adam and they are all good movies. I have nothing to add about the Killing Kind, I already mentioned it in my OP. There are the themes of intrusive and abusing parenthood again, and also the troubled boy interested in murder and violence, so it is possible that Adam related to him.

I don't think we can learn much about Adam's psychology with KKFOS. It's just a crazy and funny horror B-movie, the kind of films he seemed to like very much.

And Bloody Wednesday is fairly based on the San Ysidro McDonald's massacre so about mass shootings, a troubled man, guns... And the shooter in the movie had hallucinations (or it could be fantastic, it is not possible to say although I personally interpreted as hallucinations and if Adam indeed had hallucinations too it is possible that he also interpreted the movie that way).

I got into Willard because of Adam as well, years ago I watched every movie on his list of favorites, and enjoyed most, some were rather forgettable though. I remember Adam also had Ratman's Notebooks, which is what Willard the movie was based on. Although both are good, the book is WAY better, such as is usually the case with movies based on books imo.

With that one, I can definitely see Adam identifying with the social outcast protagonist, the strained relationship with the mother character, and identifying with the rodents and creating an army of them I imagine appealed to Adam.

The Baby was one I watched and found particularly disturbing. I wondered if Adam felt he was being treated as an infant in the sense his mother was overprotective and overbearing, although not to the extremes the movie portrays of course.

Link! That movie I imagine Adam loved because of the chimp! 'Nuff said.

Crawlspace, maybe Adam identified with hiding away from the world, even within his own house.

Most of the other ones I don't really remember too well having only watched them once years ago. Stalking Laura was based on that case that he was so interested in so that's a-given.

One interesting thing to note about Killer Klowns From Outer Space is that The Dickies did the theme song for that movie, and Adam was apparently a fan of that band as a few CDs were found in his room by them, and one of Flogging Molly if I remember correctly (the latter is a weird choice, wouldn't have figured Adam would be into them but hey!).

For anyone else reading this and wondering, the list of favorite movies Adam posted were as follows:

1971 Let's Scare Jessica To Death
1971 Willard
1972 Private Parts
1972 Crawlspace
1972 Haunts of the Very Rich
1972 Folks at Red Wolf Inn
1972 Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things
1973 The Baby
1973 Messiah of Evil
1973 Don't Look in the Basement
1973 The Killing Kind
1974 Bad Ronald
1975 Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural
1979 Driller Killer
1980 Don't Go in the House
1980 The Attic
1981 The Pit
1983 Night Warning
1985 Deadly Messages
1986 Link
1988 Killer Klowns From Outer Space
1988 Bloody Wednesday
1989 Pin
1989 Beyond Dream's Door
1993 Stalking Laura

AdamnLanza wrote:

One interesting thing to note about Killer Klowns From Outer Space is that The Dickies did the theme song for that movie, and Adam was apparently a fan of that band as a few CDs were found in his room by them, and one of Flogging Molly if I remember correctly (the latter is a weird choice, wouldn't have figured Adam would be into them but hey!).

I wonder if he liked The Dickies because of KKFOS or if he liked KKFOS because of The Dickies. I think he watched the movie first but I have no peculiar reason to think that.

Neah wrote:

(again, although it is less striking than in other movies, there still is this parents or guardian against the child theme)

You know it just occurred to me that of the movies that pitted parents/adults against children, I'm a little bit surprised that Lanza never got into the Nightmare on Elm Street series. That franchise has parent-child conflicts all over the place, it's a violent set of 1980's cheesy horror films, and it features a child killer as its main antagonist; how this was never a movie Lanza sought out befuddles me. Maybe he took it as too mainstream for his tastes.

QuestionMark wrote:

Neah wrote:

(again, although it is less striking than in other movies, there still is this parents or guardian against the child theme)

You know it just occurred to me that of the movies that pitted parents/adults against children, I'm a little bit surprised that Lanza never got into the Nightmare on Elm Street series. That franchise has parent-child conflicts all over the place, it's a violent set of 1980's cheesy horror films, and it features a child killer as its main antagonist; how this was never a movie Lanza sought out befuddles me. Maybe he took it as too mainstream for his tastes.

True, maybe he liked it and simply never mentioned it. Plus there is this kind of weird and ambiguous adult relationship with teenagers. Sometimes Freddy had almost a sensual way to talk and hurt girls.

Neah wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

Neah wrote:

(again, although it is less striking than in other movies, there still is this parents or guardian against the child theme)

You know it just occurred to me that of the movies that pitted parents/adults against children, I'm a little bit surprised that Lanza never got into the Nightmare on Elm Street series. That franchise has parent-child conflicts all over the place, it's a violent set of 1980's cheesy horror films, and it features a child killer as its main antagonist; how this was never a movie Lanza sought out befuddles me. Maybe he took it as too mainstream for his tastes.

True, maybe he liked it and simply never mentioned it. Plus there is this kind of weird and ambiguous adult relationship with teenagers. Sometimes Freddy had almost a sensual way to talk and hurt girls.

Well when I was referring to parent-child conflicts I was talking about the dissonance between the teenagers that are Freddy's victims and their parents. In damn near every film the adults either do not understand their children's nightmare problem or don't give a shit about them.

QuestionMark wrote:

Neah wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

Neah wrote:

(again, although it is less striking than in other movies, there still is this parents or guardian against the child theme)

You know it just occurred to me that of the movies that pitted parents/adults against children, I'm a little bit surprised that Lanza never got into the Nightmare on Elm Street series. That franchise has parent-child conflicts all over the place, it's a violent set of 1980's cheesy horror films, and it features a child killer as its main antagonist; how this was never a movie Lanza sought out befuddles me. Maybe he took it as too mainstream for his tastes.

True, maybe he liked it and simply never mentioned it. Plus there is this kind of weird and ambiguous adult relationship with teenagers. Sometimes Freddy had almost a sensual way to talk and hurt girls.

Well when I was referring to parent-child conflicts I was talking about the dissonance between the teenagers that are Freddy's victims and their parents. In damn near every film the adults either do not understand their children's nightmare problem or don't give a shit about them.

I had understood your comment. But maybe the issue for Adam was that they were not troubled teenager. Usually he seemed to like movies where the teenager whose parents were annoying or abusive was troubled and violent or could become a killer. I don't remember well the first Nightmare on Elm Street but I don't think the teenagers were troubled iirc. Only Freddy was violent and evil. But I don't know, maybe all the things I said are just overthinking.

AdamnLanza wrote:

I got into Willard because of Adam as well, years ago I watched every movie on his list of favorites, and enjoyed most, some were rather forgettable though. I remember Adam also had Ratman's Notebooks, which is what Willard the movie was based on. Although both are good, the book is WAY better, such as is usually the case with movies based on books imo

They remade Willard in 2003. I’ve heard good things but I’ve only seen the original. They also made a sequel to Don’t look in the Basement in 2015.

Adam wrote movie reviews so I hope those get released.

I have seen Driller Killer but I don't think there is anything interesting to say about it, except that the main character has urging visions of blood and a desire to kill.

Also, here is an extract from Adam's PM where he talks about a few movies (and how they relate to him):

Quote :

From: Smiggles

Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 3:56am

I don’t have the persistent sense of fear that you described, but around once every couple months when I’ve gotten arbitrarily fatigued and it’s around 12:00-5:00 in the morning, I have images of distorted faces flashing through my mind. They’re sort of similar to the ones toward the end of the movie Terror House, at about 75:00. When I first saw the scene, I mentally flinched for a moment because of its similarity to what I have imagined in the past.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] [NOTE: dead link]

On a tangent, this is probably among my favorite movies (although its ending was disappointing). I searched for it after reading an IMDB review, and I eventually found this link. The review said that it was similar to Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and Don’t Look In The Basement, both of which have aspects which I enjoyed. I first knew from about 5:00 to 5:30 that I was going to love the movie for its style of atmosphere. I wouldn’t expect most people to enjoy this movie nearly as much as I do, but I’m surprised that it has received so little attention. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which I haven’t seen; I’m not interested in that sort of movie) has a similar plot scenario, but this one preceded it by a few years.

About the images- they’re not exactly like the ones in that movie, but that’s the best I can do to display an example of them. It’s not the normal screamer type of pop-up for me; the faces are fairly mundane, and they sporadically rapidly appear without any context and then disappear.

AdamnLanza wrote:

I got into Killer Klowns From Outer Space because of Adam. Never looked back. Worth a watch if you haven't seen it and like cheesy B-Movie style horrors (one that just happens to have a relatively high budget).

Same and I enjoyed the film thoroughly