Easters with Chuck

 

We had a nice, relaxing Easter down here in Texas, our third. True, we miss the old traditions, dining and family visits back in the northeast, but down here I’ve turned the holiday into one of recuperating and recharging. My faith has been growing stronger these past few years, due in part to some combination of circumstance, the church we joined, and some spiritual practices I’ve, er, been practicing. So that angle is covered. I focus on trying to wring some inner strength to take on the next day and keep on keeping on.

I’ve been taking Good Friday off since I’ve been down here. In the past with my girls we’d visit the darkened church and return home to watch The Passion of the Christ. But due to scheduling beyond my control, my oldest daughter was six thousand miles away in Ireland and my youngest was with my wife for six hours at one of those giant Texas fairs Texans are so fond of having.

I decided to watch Ben-Hur by myself then. It’s been sitting on our DVD pile for almost a year since I found it at a thrift shop for $2. I’ve always wanted to get the girls into it, or at least experience it, the same way we do when we watch The Ten Commandments every Easter afternoon. But such was not to be the case. Which was all right with me. I stretched out with a blanket and popped the DVD in and watched it nonstop – three hours and forty-five minutes of Judah Ben-Hur obtaining his vengeance upon Messala and encountering Christ several times throughout his life.

Sunday afternoon, for something like the twelfth year in a row, we watched Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. True, it felt off because Little One was not here, but it was still enjoyable. We can anticipate somewhere around 75% of the lines before their spoken and a jaded Patch still enjoys the dated – though spectacular at the time – special effects.

Bottom line is I spent nearly eight hours with Charlton Heston this Easter weekend.

Which got me to thinking … how many movies have I seen with this guy in it? I remember him a lot when I was a kid – he seemed to be in so many awesome science fiction flicks. He was confident, boisterous, in-charge and non-nonsense and even a bit hammy. Even with a jaunty scarf around his neck trying to figure out what that weird flaky food is made out of.

... Soylent Green is ... ?!?!?!?!!!

So now I had to pull his filmography and go through it. Turns out, to greater or lesser extents, I’ve seen Mr. Heston in 15 movies.

The most viewed one is, obviously, The Ten Commandments, clocking in at about 15 viewings. Ben-Hur I’ve only seen about five times or so. That’s it for the epics, though there are a handful more of his I’d like to watch and will have to put on my Saturday afternoon viewing list.

The fun part of his filmography are all the films I devoured as a kid. First of all, The Planet of the Apes. I must’ve watched that a dozen times, if not more. Channel 7 ABC was always having a “planet of the apes” theme week of 4:30 movies. I watched it with the girls when they were single digits and I even watched it with Little One a few months ago – at her suggestion – before she went abroad. The sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, has a Heston cameo in the last 15 minutes of the film, so I count that too.

The Omega Man was another favorite – eight times – as was Soylent Green, though the latter to a lesser extent – four times. My friend once called me up to tell me Omega Man was on, just after telling me about it when we were hanging out earlier in the day. And though not strict SF, I watched the movie Earthquake a bunch of times too in the late 70s.

A pair of military themed Heston movies were always on HBO in the late 70s and I watched them as much as I could: Midway and Gray Lady Down. Probably ten times, for each. After I met my wife and began my cinephilia, we watched Touch of Evil, The Big Country and The Wreck of the Mary Deare, each a single time and all needing another viewing. Touch of Evil was particularly memorable. That goes on the Saturday list, too.

Rounding out my 15 are films in which he has small parts, In the Mouth of Madness and Tombstone. I watched Madness about a year back but haven’t seen Tombstone in about 20 years, though when it came out I saw it at least a half-dozen times.

But getting back to my family’s Ten Commandments tradition: in some bizarre way Charlton Heston has become the Voice of Easter for me. I am fine with that. We get some confident, in-charge no-nonsense hamminess in some very riveting, wholesome and enlightening entertainment. I think when the girls ask me what I want for Christmas this year, I’ll say, “Nothing more than my girls so sit and watch Ben-Hur with their dad!” They’ll laugh and say no way and buy me a book and a record, and I’ll say, “Just wait ’til next year!”