Mysterious media, solved and unsolved
Published: Apr 4, 2022, last updated: Dec 26, 2022
Reading time: 8 min
Below is a list of TV shows, movies, books and games that I remember vaugely from my youth that I’ve since found. I’m noting them here just in case anybody ends up on a similar quest through search engines.
Unsolved
- Animated film about christmas I had on VHS. A kid somehow gets taken via a old flying boat/airship to an area with rooms branching off a central room. For whatever reason, something happens and they run away back to the airship and take him home where all the family issues he had have been resolved.
- British rap duo, from either Birmingham or London, one of the two is likely bald. Not necessarily black, but also not white, unlikely late 80’s, maybe early to mid 90’s. Lyrics relate to living life, having a job, not necessarily stereotypical women/drug/violence themes. Music video or album cover may feature a leather chair in some kind of apartment
- Couple move to a neighbourhood and face racial tensions, because everybody thinks his wife is Jewish? The man is attacked while visiting a town hall meeting then they go on holiday to a lakeside motel.
- Crazy Art Student vandalises school by breaking windows, turns out he was a schitzophrenic and it was him all along. His art is ripped up by a teacher and then put back together with tape by his friends. named something like august underground, but not
- Cyborg sent from the future to avert a space shuttle blowing up on the launchpad from sabotage. Gets shot in the process and throws a baseball pretty far
- Father and son go on a road trip through a dessert in america to find something to do with aliens. They go into a diner and are laughed at by the patrons there.
- Girl wakes up in a white bed on a space station orbiting a planet, dragged back to bed by some dude.
- kids gameshow, possibly CITV in the 90’s in the UK. Towards the end, featured a challenge with 4 players escaping a tower with Metal briefcase split into 4 sections, depending on the position you finished depended on which dye packets in the briefcase went off so there was an amount of strategy involved. Not Jungle Run, Maybe Incredible Games, maybe Virtually Impossible
- Man charged with looking after womans house, has to fax a report on a specific day but accidentally shreds it so begins rewriting it, ‘hijinks’ ensue.
- quote - The x of latent wit shown on QI
- Ship carrying some sort of golden loot goes through wormhole, thieves either board or are already aboard ship as well. Nothing can be done when travelling FTL. Some sci-fi action and theft occurs. Similar art style to Stargate SG-1, however with submarine style door locks.
Solved
- Crisis Command (2004)
tv series (bbc2, early 2000’s) a table full of people are presented with a developing disaster. Only saw one episode, however it went along the lines of plane was hijacked, the team chose not to shoot it down and then it flew into the houses of parliment. - Deathwatch (2002) / R-Point (2004)
Vietnam era horror war movie, one guy is paralysed from the waist down. other soldiers mention that his legs are moving, but pulling back a blanket shows they’re being eaten by rats (r-type/r2?) - Dream House (1998)
HAL9000, guy working out in a gym wins NIN tickets and crushed by weights controlled by evil house computer. - Dressed to Kill (1980)
Woman visits art gallery, has sex in a taxi and then is killed in a lift. Micheal Caine investigates. - Edge of Darkness (2010)
Man picks up daughter from an airport/bus terminal building where she’s gunned down as they leave the house. - F/X2 (1991)
Remote controlled robot clown fights a guy on a balcony while a woman watches on in terror - Falling Down (1993)
Dude on way to work flips out, drives a golf buggy into a lake, threatens a family and kills a neo nazi in a gun shop before firing a bazooka at a construction site - Fortress (1992)
Sci-Fi super prison, guy and girl escape only to be hunted down by an evil van. - Frailty (2001)
Father with 2 sons, makes one dig a hole in the garden and they roll a shed over the top of it. Evil things happens in the newly dug shed basement. - Genesis II (1973)
Guy being operated on underground, room collapses during earthquake burying him. - House on Haunted Hill (1999)
Guy giving a tour of a rollercoaster sends a team up in a lift, which appears to fail and drop in the shaft, but it was all part of the ride - Kannathil Muthamittal (2002)
Bollywood, Adopted child goes on a quest to find her biological mother. - Leftfield feat. Africa Bambaata - Africa Shox
music video - guy walking along made of porcelein, he somehow breaks a foot off and hobbles around but in the end falls and smashes completely. - Mission: The Roman Challenge (1997)
Acorn computer era software, windows 95 time period. You were a roman walking around a town making bread, scraping oil and other things of the time period. - Monica Hughes - Dream Catcher (1987)
Girl lives under a dome with psychic powers and ventures out to other domes in a post-apocalyptic world - Ocean Girl (1994)
Crew man a station underwater, kids sometimes visit an island above the surface where a native girl lives. - Phenomenon (1996)
Inventor in the countryside gets psychic powers and goes batshit insane in a bar and the rest of the town hate him. - Red Planet (2000)
spider dog type robot hunts down astronauts on mars, eventually the astronauts take off their helmets, find breathable atmosphere and refuge in an ancient martian building - RocketMan (1997)
possibly a jim carrey film where he’s onboard a shuttle and he skips going to hypersleep, and instead eats all the food and draws on the ceiling with it. They eventually land on Mars - Seconds Apart (2011)
Brothers have psychic powers to control peoples perceptions. One uses their power to sleep with the others girlfriend. In the end they’ve been tricking each other into beliveing they’re normal, but their parents are horribly disfigured and their house is rundown. - Sliver (1993)
Woman moves into apartment, gets a telescope and is spied on. - Species II (1998)
live action 90’s movie about an astronaut who while blacked out is infected with a virus, then spreads it when he returns to earth - Stigmata (1999)
Girl in New York(?) starts experiencing religious signs, seeks a priest who explains they’re stigmata. She gets posessed, writes on a wall which is photographed and discovers some conspiracy. - The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996)
Group of boys riding on a minecart track get splashed with water and turn into donkeys - The Ambushers (1967)
Un/Im*ables. Guy storms enemy compound with a homemade sword from a cold wet belt. James Bond spoof. - The Core (2003)
Space shuttle struggling to land on runway so lands in a storm drain in a city, almost colliding with some scaffolding setup by a bridge as it comes to a stop - The Cottage (2008)
Chavvy woman in her mid 20s is kidnapped, or arranges her own kidnapping and is holed up in a rural house in the UK/Australia/New Zealand - The Damned / La caduta degli dei (1969)
60-70’s film about a family in nazi germany that the son and mother have an incestous relationship in, at one point there’s some kind of orgy in a bar/brothel type building. One of the nazi’s is a pedophile who preys on a girl called sophia/sophie - The Great Race (1965)
Comedy wacky races/cannonball run esque race through a frozen tundra. one of the cars coping mechanisms was a metal rod that heated up and glowed red to melt the ice. - The Haunting (1999)
People staying over at a creepy haunted house, hallucinations afoot in huge rooms with spiral patterned floors. - The Kid (2000)
Bruce Willis goes back in time to try become less of a dick - The Mandalorian (2019)
Sci-fi TV show where a group of people board a prison ship, they eventually leave one guy behind. The lighting turns red when the group is detected. The guards on board may have been robots. There may have also been a bomb/timer - The Producers (2005)
Theatre producers discover they can make more of a profit on a bad production than a good one, subsequently make something about Hitler. - The Secret Island (1938)
book about a group of children who run away from home and decide to live on an island in a treehouse without windows. They visit a local town for supplies and are chased back by men who can’t access their cave as the access hole is so small only a rabbit could fit through. They end up intentionally sinking their boat to hide it from people looking for them. - Toolbox Murders (2004)
Couple move into apartment, neighbours are stalked and killed by a deformed thing. Woman solves a puzzle to enter abandoned half. - Unkle - Rabbit in Your Headlights
music video - guy gets repeatedly run over by cars in an underground tunnel. at the end he stands up, about to get run over again but the car disintergrates around him like hitting a bollard. - Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)
Suave black vampire seduces a girl who can see into the future who predicts her own death and ends up pinned to a cross on a church.