I was freaked out by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now, these days, I love Gene Wilder in it and think the little bleeps were asking for it. But as a kid, I didn't really get what they had done wrong (being a rather wild and misguided thing myself) and the kid getting stuck in the tube was just horrifying. I still hate the part where Willy Wonka yells at the good kid. It always struck me as totally unprovoked and nasty. I know, it was supposed to be a test, I don't care. It was a bad call.
The films I remember haunting me the most were more obscure things. Disney did some troubling kid movies back in the day, let's face it, and even though there have always been different levels in kids' films... those more suitable for older kids, some for younger... parents back then seemed to think kids' movies were kids' movies. So I would be sitting with my older siblings while they watched little girl ghosts telling live boys to find their bones in the well (Child of Glass), or alien kids running from scary mean adults (Escape to Witch Mountain) and a lot of other silly things that a smaller kid wouldn't understand. Watership Down was another kids' movie that kids shouldn't have seen. The rabbit caught in the snare has provided me with a mental image I never forgot.
Plus, I had teenaged brothers and so pretty much any movie or show was watched by all. So I grew up watching M*A*S*H and All in the Family, tv specials and kung fu shows and made for tv movies and mini-series' like Shogun. I remember one movie about a poor family, The Dollmaker, with Jane Fonda. There's a scene where a little girl, sitting under a still train car at the railroad yard, has her legs cut off when another train bangs into the one she's under... of course she dies. And another movie we saw was just one long tale of misery... all these things seem to have little girls getting slaughtered! Carried off by indians, catching fire after being stupid and jumping over the campfire... ugh. My family was not really discriminating. The war movies left little impression, the samurai films, no big deal, M*A*S*H taught me some things I didn't need to know yet... but I remember vividly three little blond girls (which is what I was) dying horribly (or disappearing). And I used to have nightmares about being lost and alone, no one knowing what had happened to me.
What are people thinking?
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"Pack up my head, I'm goin' to Paris!" - P.W.
The world loves diversity... as long as it's pretty, makes them look smart and doesn't put them out in any way.
There's the road, and the road less traveled, and then there's MY road.