Movies that left a lasting impression on you

Star Wars tops my list. That movie made me the science fiction nerd that I am today. Lucas's storytelling can be simplistic and his dialogue can be clunky, but the guy had a gift for world building and the use of practical effects.

 

Lucas would have strongly benefited from a punch-up guy.

 

I always liked "Warning Sign" from 1985.
An ag research facility doubling as a bio-weapons manufacturer has an outbreak and people are trapped inside.
It was the first movie that ever scared me — not the mutant, zombie-like transformations, but the fact these facilities like this could exist and that there is the possibility of some accident causing huge problems.

 

Honestly, I overlooked these movies because the impression they made on me was so long ago (in a galaxy far, far away), but really, Return of the Jedi is the film that made love the movies before I knew what that really meant.

I was 3 when it was released and my dad was big into Star Wars, so my parents took me and my sister to a midweek matinee figuring we'd run around the theater not paying attention while they watched. Seeing Return of the Jedi is literally my earliest memory — the throne room lightsaber battle, in particular. No movie has made a bigger impression upon me than that one.

 

Night of the Living Dead for the same reason.