Military Movies - Military Times

Bright lights, big city, and a misspent youth

Chuck Vinch was born in 1958 in Brooklyn, N.Y., but moved at a very early age to the suburban wilds of Long Island, where he badly misspent his youth.

His formative movie experience came at age 6, when his mother coaxed him into staying up to see the 1932 Boris Karloff classic, “The Mummy,” because his father was working late and she was afraid to watch it alone.

Several years of night terrors later, his parents struck again, dragging him at age 12 to a twin-bill with a back end featuring George Romero’s original “Night of the Living Dead.” Later, while peeling Chuck off the theater ceiling, his parents tried to claim they’d “had no idea what that movie would be about.”

Chuck’s most grueling cinema experiences include taking a reflexive backhand from a stranger who came unhinged at a sold-out showing of “Jaws” during the scene when the decapitated head floats out of the boat hull; and enduring a marathon midnight screening of all five “Planet of the Apes” films with only two bathroom/snack breaks.

Among Chuck’s deepest movie secrets is a strange, inexplicable affinity for the cheesy 1976 Sam Elliott-Kathleen Quinlan flick, “Lifeguard.”

Chuck’s role models include Joe Wladislaw, Snake Plissken, Bluto Blutarsky, Ellen Ripley, Oddball, Rick Blaine, Max Rockatansky and Crash Davis. He firmly believes “Pride of the Yankees” should be required viewing for both high-school graduation and U.S. citizenship.

His hobbies include deliberately annoying friends and family by reciting every line from a wide variety of films — including The Godfather,” “Aliens” and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” — a split-second ahead of the actors.

Chuck lives near Washington, D.C., with his wife, daughter and dog, a St. Bernard-Lab Retriever mix who just can’t get enough of the “Beethoven” quintilogy.

Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail him at cvinch@militarytimes.com.