My grandmother got cable in 1978 and my childhood was effectively over. I had never even heard of cable before, and neither had she, bless her. You have to remember that this was a more innocent time, so when the cable salesman suggested she get the package with HBO, she had no reason to think it was a bad idea with five young grandchildren around.

It was probably a bad idea. To compound the problem, Grandma never really watched TV (except for her "stories" and Johnny Carson) and spent virtually all of her time in the kitchen (makes you wonder how the cable guy convinced her this was something she needed). So we were almost completely unmonitored.

I was eleven-years-old at the time, so my understanding of the world, my attitudes about sex, God, and the human race, and my deepest-rooted fears were formed or altered by what I saw on that screen, as well as by the movies I saw at the Basil Theater in Hermitage, PA. Moreover, my expectations of what high school and college would be like became extremely unrealistic.

10) Jim Abraham’s and David Zucker’s Airplane (1980)
Turkish prisons, grown men naked, movies about Gladiators, I take my coffee black... these phrases became part of my childhood lexicon.

9) Bob Rafelson’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981)
In which we learn that the way to get a beautiful woman (Jessica Lange, no less) to fall in love with you is to sweep everything off her kitchen counter and force yourself on her in ways that an 11-year old mind had never conceived of before, but has thought of plenty of times since.

8) Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
The most damaging thing I learned was that you should play Led Zeppelin IV on dates. It doesn't work, trust me.

7) Floyd Mutrux’s Hollywood Knights (1980) & Bob Clark’s Porky’s (1982)
This was really one movie with two different casts (Hollywood Knights's cast being clearly superior).

6) Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980) and John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978)
Again, the same movie with two different casts.

5) Ted Post’s The Harrad Experiment (1973)
Perhaps Don Johnson's best role. Grandma actually caught us watching this movie, I recall, and we received a brief but excruciatingly uncomfortable lecture on the nature of love and sex from a 61-year-old woman (God rest her soul). Nevertheless, I decided that I was indeed college material.

4) Mel Brook’s History of the World: Part I (1988)
What in the world is a Eunuch?

3) Carl Reiner’s The Jerk (1979)
I have a special purpose, and it's like a ride.

2) William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), Richard Donner’s The Omen (1976), and Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Satan seems to be struggling to find his M.O.--should he make little girls throw up or run for President? For some reason this makes me think of Bill Clinton.

1) Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits (1981)
Nothing really wrong with this movie, but let's just say I shouldn't have gone to the theater that night and leave it at that.

Honorable Mention:
--Randal Kleiser’s Grease (1978): the lyrics to Greased Lightning taught me what to expect when I reached high school (if only I had a cool car instead of a '78 Volare).
--Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980): never, ever, under any circumstances go anywhere with Jack Nicholson.
--Stuart Rosenberg’s The Amityville Horror (1979): never go to Long Island.
--Fred Walton’s When a Stranger Calls (1979): as a matter of fact, stay out of your own house too.