As a youth I used to live in the shelves of my local video store. Most summers I would spend my days down at the local strip mall (a scant 1.3 miles away) bowling for hours, reading comics off the rack at the drug store, picking out the most essential candy at the grocery store and finally wandering in the stacks, searching for the perfect movie to watch that weekend. All this time spent in the stacks lead to a curious skill of recognizing films based solely by their cover art, and I’d often know the plot of the films based off of the descriptions on the back. Soon it became a bit of a game for my friends to quiz me on what the films were about, but only the films I’d never actually seen and using simply the cover as a hint.

Of course, back then I was still very young and simply didn’t have the time nor the resources to watch every film I wanted to. So I would pick and choose which I would watch, often leaning heavily towards science fiction and fantasy films (my horror obsession didn’t really kick in until my early twenties). So how is it that I never watched a post-apocalyptic film about a nomadic swordsman? Simple, I hated the cover.

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Well I originally had a different film in mind for my next viewing, but considering the news broke today that Patrick Swayze had finally succumb to cancer* I thought it would be best to select one of the few films of his I hadn’t seen during my formative years. That film being the post-apocalyptic epic Steel Dawn. Why I haven’t watched a film with swords, martial arts and futuristic desert wastelands is beyond me, but hear me now, this oversight shall now be rectified!

*Don’t cry! Hold it back. Let it turn to something else. Just let it turn to something else, okay? Listen to me. Don’t cry. Don’t you ever cry again as long as you live. Never do it. Do you hear me? Let it turn to something else Mattie. Let it turn. Let it turn.**

** See Red Dawn for why this is genius.

Tags: cancer, film, films, genius, martial arts, patrick swayze, post-apocalyptic, preview, red dawn, Steel Dawn, swords, trailer, Where the Long Tail Ends