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.

Optic Blasts are not the Same as Heat Vision

First of all, I want to warn my Mom: Mom, if you're reading this, you may want to just skip this post. There's no pictures of Tori, and it's pretty nerdy even by my standards.

Since the last two posts worked out so well I thought I'd continue allowing our friends to choose my blog topics. This weeks requests comes from Kevin V.:

As you can see, at first I thought he meant lazy eyes, which like any red-blooded child-of-the-Western-United-States-married-to-a-Texan I associate with the classic film "An American Tail: Feivel Goes West".

I'm planning on doing a whole post about Don Bluth animated films at some point, but for now I just want to point out how great it is even as a child I was taught to love and trust Jimmy Stewart to defend us from evildoers, and John Cleese as the nefarious Cat R. Waul ranks right up there with Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life, the corrupt congressmen from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, or even Liberty Valance (I hope you know which Jimmy Stewart movie he's from) in terms of being a jerk who we love seeing Jimmy Stewart beat down. (Offscreen: Wait, you mean John Wayne, Tiger the Cat, and the forces of democracy and a free market economy took those guys down? Then what did Jimmy Stewart do? Moral Leadership!? That's not a beatdown! No I'm not going to change what I said on the blog!  What do you mean the Stewart Family Estate is threatening legal action? All right I'll fix it... grumble grumble).

I've been informed by our legal staff that my previous statements were incorrect. Jimmy Stewart did not beat down any of those people, but instead inspired them by standing up for what's right and providing a blistering Care Bear Stare moral leadership. Also, the Han Solo family estate asked that I display the following image:

Getting back to today's topic, it turns out Kevin meant "laser eyes", not "lazy eyes." On receiving this clarification I became even more on-board with the idea:

Actually, there will probably be several comic-book-related entries in the future. For now, we'll focus on what my day would be like if I woke up and discovered I had laser eyes like Cyclops from the X-Men:

6:30am: The alarm goes off. Jessica shakes me lightly on the shoulder to wake me up. For some reason I'm wearing one of those frilly eye covers that people in old-timey movies wear to sleep in. Even more embarrassingly, it looks like this:

Being the morning person that I am, I take it off my to rub the sleep out of my eyes. The lasers barely miss Jessica, bouncing off the mirror on our bedroom door before adding a new window to our bedroom.

6:45am: having dressed and proverbially powdered my nose, I now turn to the task of shaving. Mistaking my laser eyes for heat vision, I decide to make the best of my new-found destructive powers and shave by looking at myself in the mirror. Instead of burning away the stubble the optic blast knocks me down. Now I'm tired and have a headache.

7:15am: After shaving the conventional way and polishing off my Honey Nut Cheerios, I decide not to risk punching a hole in my computer monitor at work and call in sick. I dig out some sunglasses and paint them with a loose coat of Jessica's red nail polish. Somehow this makes it so I can see through them without blasting anything with my laser eyes. I have Jessica dress Tori and we head to the doctor's office to try and figure things out.

7:25am: As we're getting out of the car at the doctor's office we're confronted by a paraplegic Patrick Stewart look-alike, who offers me a job as a teacher at a school for lazy kids gifted youngsters in New York. I'm hesitant to accept his offer until his surly Canadian bodyguard starts cracking his knuckles and six knives shoot out of his hands.

8am: For some reason there's a jet parked behind the doctor's office. We get in with the mysterious bald guy, who explains that they've been looking for a guy with laser eyes ever since their previous laser-eyed teacher was portrayed as a doofus in a motion picture trilogy and killed by his schizophrenic wife in the third movie, which was critically panned.

8:30am: As we're flying across the country the Canadian notices Jessica's red hair and green blouse and starts asking creepy questions about whether she's ever been to Phoenix. I stare at him pretty hard and tragically blast him out the side of the plane. When I apologize to the bald wheelchair guy he shrugs, looks out the window, and proclaims that "Logan will be fine." I'm unsure whether he means the Canadian or the northern Utah city of the same name which he landed on.

10:15am: After finally convincing me to call him "Professor X", the bald guy starts insisting he's psychic. I'm skeptical at best since the closest he comes to reading my mind is responding to my unvoiced criticism that Shawn Spencer from Psych does more productive things with his "powers".

10:45am: I've now been introduced to the rest of the faculty, who seem strangely ethnically balanced, like the cast of an early 90s cartoon. There's even a memorial in a corner for a dead Native American with the totally plausible and not-stolen-from-Pontiac name of Thunderbird, though I'm told he was an offensive hodgepodge of stereotypes and died after one issue. When I ask what they mean by "issue" the white-haired African lady stutters a bit before saying "I mean he had a blood issue."

11:45am: Lunch is catered by Cafe Rio, and I'm feeling much better about the situation.

12:30pm: I'm walking off my lunch when....

Jessica: When what? What happens next? 
Me: I'm trying to build dramatic tension. I've already bored most of our readers with an extra long post and almost certainly alienated my poor mother, so I thought I'd call it good for now and take your advice to turn this into a two part post.
Jessica: I'm telling you, if the guy who wrote the Percy Jackson books can get away with a gratuitous cliffhanger then you can too.

Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion: same laser-eyes time, same laser-eyes URL!