My Basement is Full of Creepy Children's Movies

One time back when I was still single my friend Colin hosted a movie night. The film chosen for our evening's entertainment was The Secret of Nimh. Directed by Don Bluth and based on the book Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, it's a classic of children's animation. It's also got one of the creepiest scenes ever: the part where Mrs. Frisby goes to ask the owl for help. After being nearly eaten by a spider, Mrs. Frisby is saved by an owl possessed by the devil, who eats the spider! 

The owl spends the whole rest of the encounter telling her how to save her son Timmy, who has pneumonia and definitely isn't based on Tiny Tim from A Christmas Carol, and telling her to hurry on the way out because he's getting hungry again.

Lest I've scared you away from one of my favorite kids movies, I'll point out that the movie also has a sword fight between genetically engineered rats that may or may not have been my favorite part. There's also an annoying woodland creature named "Auntie Shrew", a magic pendant that wasn't in the book, and a crow that was kind of ridiculous. It was cinematic gold.

During the party someone made the obvious comment that it was pretty creepy for a kids movie. We all agreed, but then I thought about some of the stuff I watched growing up and decided to say something about how most of the children's movies that were available during my childhood were, in retrospect, very creepy. What came out of my mouth was "This is nothing. My basement is full of creepy children's movies." Colin's sister, who met me for the first time that night, later told me that because of that statement every girl in the room swore never to date me. 

Luckily Jessica was not in the room, though I've seen her Mom's movie collection and it's no better. We actually got bored one weekend and watched a lot of those movies. The highlight was when we watched my all time favorite movie from growing up: The Flight of Dragons. I was very happy to discover it's still as awesome as I remembered, probably due to the fact that James Earl Jones (the voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa) does the voice of the evil red wizard Omadon. Not to glory in violence or anything, but here's a picture of Omadon's evil dragon torching a knight:

Jessica loved the movie because all the dragons in it were fat. Here's two of them getting drunk:

There was also an elf, a talking wolf that came back from the dead, and a nerdy guy who gets the girl. Anyone who knows me will understand why I loved this show. It's what tided me over until I was in high school and they finally made a good Lord of the Rings movie.

A similar movie that didn't age nearly as well was a terrifying specter of film-making known as The Last Unicorn. At first glance it should have been cool: it had a wizard, a bull made of fire, and Christopher Lee (the voice of Saruman, Count Dooku from Star Wars, and Willy Wonka's evil dad in the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version). They even had the band "America" do all the songs. However, other than Christopher Lee the voice acting was terrible, and between that, the annoying singing butterfly, and the infamous naked harpy scene, the film failed to come together, and ranks at second on my list of most traumatic children's movies. 

The infamous position of number one on that list belongs to Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. I've never forgiven him for being dumb enough to release the nightmare king, and to this day I can't bring myself to watch that movie again. Case in point, here's some images of said Nightmare King:

This is what happens to any who oppose the Nightmare King

What kind of idiot would release that thing on Slumberland!?

Lastly, we watched all the other Don Bluth movies. I've already mentioned Feivel Goes West, but we also watched the first American Tail movie and discovered the Mousekowitz family were actually Jewish. We also discovered that Rockadoodle is every bit as terrifying and messed up as we both remembered (a kid gets turned into a cat by an evil owl, who then tries to eat him. Not only is that horrible, but it's further evidence that Don Bluth had some kind of a bad experience with owls as a kid). 

We then watched All Dogs go to Heaven. The movie was about like I remembered it, and I'm still not sure what the deal was with the singing mardi-gras drag-queen alligator. Also, this:

Every dog's worst nightmare is being dragged to hell to face punishment for a life of sin

More horrifying was when we learned that Judith Barsi (the little girl who voiced Ann-Marie and was also Ducky from Land Before Time) actually died in a really sad way before the movie even came out. The full bio is on IMDB, and it really made us sad to read it.

Last on the list is one we've given a little coverage to in previous posts: The Land Before Time. I can't say enough good things about that movie. The scene where Little Foot's mom dies still gets me every time, especially since my Mom had the sheet music to the song "If We Hold on Together" from the end credits and used to play it on the piano when I was little.

We also discovered that there's a lot of references to faith, the promised land, and other religious concepts that I never picked up on as a kid. I've also started saying "Yup, yup, yup" all the time. So far no one's called me out on imitating a little girl duck billed dinosaur, but that'll probably change once I publish this blog.