So I intend to write a tribute to Gitmo at some point since I will be departing this place soon but tonight I just wanted to write something about the distant past rather than the present.

I watched Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland last night and can say that I was definitely entertained if not overly impressed. Burton’s rendition of Caroll’s story was very visually pretty but I honestly thought it would be a lot darker for a Burton film. This lead me to start comparing it other renditions like the 1985 live action movie as well as the well-known Disney flick. On further reflection, it really made me start to think about movies of my childhood (hence the distant past). There were actually some pretty dark children’s movies, or at least dark parts of children’s movies. Like any good southern church-going parents, my parents never let me watch R rated movies when I was young, however some of the flicks I did get to watch had some really scary parts. And I think that’s what made them scary, the fact that because it they were kids’ movies, you didn’t see it coming. Here’s a few bits that scared me personally:

Pinocchio

Yes I know it’s a Disney movie but I can’t think of a better movie to start off the frightening trip down memory lane. The really scary stuff starts to happen when the Coachman shows up and basically buys Pinocchio into slavery. Welcome to Pleasure Island! The Coachman runs an amusement park that encourages misbehavior when his end game is to really turn the boys into donkeys and sell them for profit! (not entirely sure how financially sound this plan is…I mean think of the overhead).

Anyway, as a young child this is completely damaging. Just imagine you’re a kid and you’ve lost all ability to communicate, call for help, bad men are taking you away to a hard life of labor and suffering and you’re never going to see your family again. Even if you did see your family again they wouldn’t recognize you. No one knows where you are and no one can help you. Life as you know it is over and you’ll never see home again. Really Disney? Really?? This is the cartoon equivalent of human trafficking. Horrifying! I think I watched this movie when I was 5…

Next up – Sleeping Beauty

Yep another Disney flick. I really do like this movie but there’s one scene that I could never watch alone as a kid. When Sleeping Beauty is left alone to cry, and the camera pans to the fireplace, cuing the creepy music, I always begged my cousins to come stay in the room with me. The creepy music combined with the creepy green ball that materializes to lead the princess to her doom. The music really makes it worse. Then that slow zombie walk to the tower with the spinning wheel. I just wanted to scream at the TV and tell her not to go in there! She never listened… This scene always sealed the deal on the creepiness factor when, at the very end, Maleficent throws back her cape and shows the princess laying on the ground looking like her neck is broken.

Thanks again for more childhood nightmares Disney!

The last movie I clearly remember that was just completely macabre, yet aimed at kiddies, is The Brave Little Toaster.

This movie is about household appliances on a journey to find their owner. Heart-warming isn’t it? The merry band overcomes great obstacles and is perfectly appropriate for small children until the appliances camp out and the Toaster has a nightmare (didn’t know toasters could dream did you?) The nightmare starts out with smoke pouring out of the toaster and picking up the kid they’re looking for. Then it just gets creepier.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where there’s fire, there’s a pseudo fire-fighting clown?!?!? WTF! Smokey the clown then leans in for a super close up and whispers one word in malevolent glee: “Run.”

I hate clowns…really really hate them. This stupid toaster’s nightmare caused me no end of my own nightmares. But while this scene is scary, the one that really scared me the most in this movie was in the junkyard. The appliances end up at a junkyard where a vicious looking magnet scoops up metal to be crushed into little cubes. The cars in the yard break out into song and start singing about their life stories and impending deaths:

This is the most nihilistic and depressing song I’ve ever heard in a cartoon ever. Cars singing about how worthless, unloved, and abandoned they are until the end when one drives himself into the crusher. Awesome! Anguish-induced suicide in a children’s movie. And people complain about how violent and unsettling movies and video games are nowadays. Any parent that misses the good old days should do well to remember how easily their childhood movies can unhinge young minds.

So there you have it. A trip down my own little terrifying/nostalgia filled memory lane as prompted by watching Alice in Wonderland.

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