March 2008

I really hope Where the Wild Things Are  turns out to be a terrifying, brain-melting, child-warping movie. At least as weird and scary as the movies I loved as a child. I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t been scarred for life by bizarre entertainment ostensibly intended for children. Despite being mortally afraid of every second of  The Dark Crystal, as a kid I couldn’t get enough of it and watched it incessantly. It wasn’t until I took Advanced Visual Soul-Searching in graduate school that I revisited another horror from my childhood: the 1985 TV  Alice in Wonderland with Carol Channing (and a cast chock full of ancient scary actors: “Look, kids! Donald O’Connor!”) and an 8-foot rubber Jabberwocky suit which sent me screaming out of my darkened living room. My mom, once she figured out what I was screaming bloody murder about, said “Honey, are you sure you aren’t just scared of Carol Channing?”
 
Other distinguished members of the “Scared the Piss Out of Me Club” were Lady Elaine from Mr. Rogers, the Skeksis, and pretty much everything from  Neverending Story . The horrors of the unlabelled black VHS tape haunt me still. Your mom tapes a movie for you off HBO and there’s a Cryptkeeper commercial on there and you don’t sleep that night.   
 
It’s time for Did you know: The actor who does the voice of Chamberlain in The Dark Crystal also appears in the adult-brain-warping experience that is Shock Treatment.  He is also known as Pontius Pilate in Jesus Christ Superstar (stage and screen!) and has a bit role in The Shining as the guy who’s not the hotel manager who talks Jack into becoming caretaker of the Shining Hotel. That’s right kids, the mysterious Barry Dennen is the official hero of this column. My point is; I hope  Where the Wild Things Are completely flips out a whole new generation of kids. Maybe then kids would stop being so lame.