Ah, Disney. My grandfather worked at Epcot Center and every summer since I was five, my parents would put me on a plane (by myself! Shocking!) and send me down for two weeks to visit my grandparents. They had a pool and cable, which would have been enough, honestly. But they one-upped it by also having passes to Disney World. Every day for a fortnight, I ran around the parks until I passed out from heat exposure. Good. Times.
To my pint-sized mind, there was no place more magical than Disney World. They had ghosts, pirates, princesses, and animals that talked. But for every feel-good, happy-ending animated movie like Oliver and Company, they had to have a nightmare-inducing traumatic live-action film like Old Yeller. Part of Disney's deal with the Devil.
This segues into the above poster.
I didn't see this one as a child, which is probably a good thing. Lady and the Tramp made me hyperventilate in the theater (don't judge). All I knew about the Pound at 5 was that it was where dogs went to die and I lost my shit completely when the Tramp got hauled off. Moving on...
If I had seen a movie about an evil carnival that preys on people's dearest dreams and sends an assload of giant tarantulas to terrify the two precocious boys that stumble upon its nefarious ways, well, I would have developed a distaste for carnies at an even earlier age. As an adult, I can determine that the tarantulas are not generally dangerous to humans and tolerate them. But if I had been a kid when I saw them covering the walls and crawling under the bedsheets, I would have lost my fucking mind.
The production is a bit dated and the effects are very much so, but it's still quite a good film. It makes me want to go read the Ray Bradbury source novel. I kept thinking through the movie that if I had seen it earlier it wouldn't have reminded me so much of Carnivale, and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Still, if you have nieces or nephews of an impressionable age, this is probably a great one to introduce them to the terrors of the dark.
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