Countdown to Halloween: Not a speck of light is showing … so the danger must be growing …
Posted: October 4th, 2011 | Author: Max Romero | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Halloween, video | 1 Comment »Without hesitation, I can say 1971’s Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is one of my all-time favorite movies, of any genre or era or whatever. It’s just a great, true-to-the-spirit-of-the-book film that is also Gene Wilder’s best performance ever.
But it was a movie I had to grow into. The first time I saw it — really, the first few times — Willy Wonka left me feeling … disconcerted. It is unrepentantly weird, and fat with the apparent deaths or disfigurements of kids who are, undoubtedly, asking for it. From the first fun house-door and Oompa Loompa song, to sending little girls to the juicing room and hurtling into ceilings in the great glass Wonkavator, Willy Wonka is kind of fucked up (in all the best ways).
This scene, though, is the one that literally gave me nightmares. The first time I saw it, I was seriously shocked: Was that a chicken? Did that just happen? What the hell is that?! For years I would try to find a reason to be out of the room if the movie was on TV and the scene was coming up. Luckily I got over it, and it’s now a part of the film that I make sure not to miss.
Ha ha! One of my favorites. Roald Dahl includes some really screwy, dark stuff in his kids books. Just finished “The Witches” in which the main character is turned into a mouse (by a witch!), and he and his grandmother, who chainsmokes big stinky cigars, get into a discussion of the lifespan of mice, and the kid gets all excited to hear that he’s got only a few years left to live coz Granny’s not gettin any younger and that means that they’ll get to die together. Whoopeee!!!