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TV & Showbiz

The First 10 Movies I Bought from Amazon Prime

A hand holding a remote blurred in the foreground with the Amazon Prime Video logo on a TV screenDeposit Photos

Now that we’re in the 21st century, buying movies now means buying digital versions. Here are my first Amazon Prime movie purchases.

The first home movies I bought were in VHS tape format. (Remember VHS? Surely someone does.) As technology improved, we learned the DVD delivered sharper images without the risk of tape wrinkles. But the current way to buy movies to watch at home whenever we want is in a digital download. I’ve made a few purchases on Amazon Prime to create a digital version of my movie library.

The nice thing about digital downloads, aside from having to have a library of DVDs, is that you can play them in your car through your iPhone and listen to movies. No, I never try to watch a movie in a car. That’s illegal, you know. But sometimes, if it’s a movie you’ve seen, you can listen and enjoy it just as you’d listen to the radio.

Here are the first 10 movies I purchased digitally from Amazon Prime:

1. ‘A Christmas Story’ (1983)

Years ago, TBS started running a 24-hour marathon of A Christmas Story. I’d invariably tune in towards the end of it then stay with it until that showing ended and then watch the entire picture from the start. But I cut the cord with cable a few years back. So I no longer have TBS to rely on for my Christmas Day fix.

I have the DVD, but since streaming is now the more convenient way to do it (and since I can actually listen to it in the car with a streaming title), I figured I’d download it. As you might guess, this purchase happened right around Christmas last year. So I can easily see the story of little Ralphie’s quest to see a Red Ryder BB gun under the Christmas tree every Dec. 25.

(And yes, this Christmas, I watched it on Christmas morning.)

2. ‘Foul Play’ (1978)

Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase star in this comedy that’s a clear take off on Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. Hawn plays a librarian who finds herself caught up in the middle of an assassination plot. Chase is the goofy San Francisco detective who’s out to get the villain and the girl.

I fell in love with this movie when my parents first got cable TV. HBO was not yet a 24-hour channel. It would sign on at around 5:30 p.m. and sign off after midnight. But Foul Play was a popular favorite back then and I saw it enough times that it became a favorite.

3. ‘Evil Under the Sun’ (1982)

Of all of the people to play Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, Peter Ustinov was by far my favorite. I know the Poirot purists will immediately get their feathers ruffled over that. Yes, I know David Suchet looks and acts the part more closely to Christie’s description.

I fondly remember a story about Christie’s daughter, Rosalind Hicks, walking onto the set of Ustinov’s earlier take on the detective, Death on the Nile. Looking at him, she said something to the effect of, “That’s not Poirot! He isn’t at all like that.”

Ustinov’s answer, as the story goes, was, “He is now!”

But Poirot brought a humor and vanity to the classic detective. This particular movie has all of the elements: the intriguing murder mystery, the locale, the score, and a cast that included Maggie Smith, Roddy McDowell, James Mason and Diana Rigg. This is by far my favorite of the few Ustinov takes on Poirot.

4. ‘Desk Set’ (1957)

When you mention the names Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, there are a few movie titles that might immediately come to mind. This one is probably not one of them. But it’s my favorite of theirs, perhaps because it’s set in the headquarters of a television network.

Hepburn plays the leader of a network’s research department and Tracy plays the efficiency expert who has been secretly hired to build a computer system to assist Hepburn and her employees. But things go awry when the workers assume Tracy’s out to replace them. That launches a battle of wits to see which is smarter: Man or Machine? (In this case, I should say Woman or Machine!)

I bet you can guess who ends up winning!

5. ‘The In-Laws’ (1979)

This madcap comedy stars Peter Falk and Alan Arkin as two men who are about to become connected by marriage. Falk’s son is marrying Arkin’s daughter. And in the days leading up to the wedding, Arkin’s Sheldon Kornpett gets to meet Falk’s Vince Ricardo for the first time and quickly finds out that Vince seems to have a few screws loose.

It turns out Vince is with the CIA and involves Kornpett, a Manhattan dentist, in an international caper.

You couldn’t find two more unlikely characters to throw together and Falk and Arkin masterfully play off each other.

By the way, there was a remake made several years back. To be honest, I’ve never found any reason to watch it. This one was so perfectly done that it never should have been remade.

6. ‘9 to 5’ (1980)

Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton stand together against misogynistic boss Franklin Hart, played by Dabney Coleman. Coleman wants to keep the girls in their place, but the “girls” aren’t having it.

When Tomlin nearly poisons the boss by accident, he gets wind of it and tries to blackmail them. They quickly turn the tables, but it’s a battle right to the end to see who comes out on top.

Perhaps one of the reasons I always liked this film was the fact that the late Colin Higgins, who wrote and directed Foul Play, also did those same double duties on this film.

7. ’12 Angry Men’ (1957)

What if you were on a jury and you and 10 others were convinced of the defendant’s guilt, only to be stopped by that 12th juror who refuses to just vote “guilty” so he can get home? That’s the premise of this stark movie staring Henry Fonda as that holdout juror. He’s joined by the likes of Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, Jack Klugman and E.G. Marshall as they pick apart every fact in the prosecution’s argument.

And the more they do so, the more the case seems to fall apart. But it quickly becomes clear some of the jurors are more interested in prejudice than justice, which is a scary thought for anyone who might find themselves wrongly accused of a crime.

Almost all of the movie takes place in the jury room. It feels tight and cramped. That discomfort is intentional, I think. It makes the viewer feel the tension even more as different jurors make their cases for guilt or innocence.

This is definitely a classic you shouldn’t miss.

8. ‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ (1963)

When I saw that this one was available on Amazon Prime, it was a no-brainer to buy it. A group of witnesses sees a car go flying off a mountain road. They rush down the mountain to help the mortally injured driver. Just before he kicks the bucket — literally — he tells them about a six-figure jackpot buried under a “big W” in Santa Rosita State Park.

He unwittingly launches a wild race to get there first to claim the cash.

The movie stars Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Ethel Merman, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters and Buddy Hacket. That’s just to name a few. The star power also includes Jim Backus. Terry-Thomas, Dick Shawn, Phil Silvers, Don Knotts, Peter Falk and Eddie “Rochester” Anderson. You’ll also find cameos from Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis and the Three Stooges.

If you like mad-dash style screwball comedies, this one is worth a watch!

9. ‘WarGames’ (1982)

Imagine a teenager somehow accidentally hacking into a military computer system and nearly starting World War III. Just as home computers were becoming a thing, this little picture with Matthew Broderick proposed that scenario.

Yes, the film is pretty dated these days with its dot matrix printers and green monochrome monitors. (And there’s a shot of a giant floppy disk no one has seen since the mid-1980s that will undoubtedly make you chuckle.)

But as a thriller, it still packs a punch. And for those of us of a certain age, we still have fond memories of the primitive nature (by today’s standards) of those fancy computers we were so impressed with way back when.

10. ‘Murder By Death’ (1978)

Before there was Clue, we had this Neil Simon film. The premise here is that an eccentric millionaire gathers together the world’s greatest detectives at a sinister looking mansion. He offers $1 million to the sleuth who can solve a murder that hasn’t yet been committed.

But which of the great crimefighting brains will actually earn the prize?

Simon’s script is packed with quick quips and one-liners and the great detectives will all be familiar since they’re spoofs on famous fictional characters.


That’s the first 10 movies I purchased on Amazon Prime. I surprised myself with the list just a bit because I didn’t expect so many of them to be from the late 1970s and early 1980s.

I wasn’t surprised that none of them are particularly recent. But then most of us know that they just don’t make movies like they used to!

How about you? Have you bought any?

Which was the first you purchased — or the first you’d buy if you had Amazon Prime?

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.
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