Stranger Things: The Vanishing of Joyce Byers

So some time has passed now and I can say with full confidence that Stranger Things 3 is fine...just fine. By now, there's been a good deal of discourse over the newest season and everyone has their thoughts, some more hyperbolic than others. While I wouldn't say Hopper is "ruined" in the third season, I would definitely agree that ST2's bumbling dad schtick has somewhat overlapped ST1's burnout jaded cop veneer, creating a blob of over-the-top brutishness that is, at best, cartoonish and, at worst, exhausting. The fact that Eleven still can't seem to speak in complete sentences and is instead still parroting whatever other people say is irritating, but acceptable given we're all so attached to her "ET phone home" cadence. Hey, that Neverending Story reference sure was fun, wasn't it? I really hope the fans enjoyed that.

I did not.

But I digress. The new characters are fun and watching our favorite gang of D&D nerds grow up is a treat, and I can't say enough how much I enjoy the series' commitment to giving Steve a wicked shiner by the season finale. So while I have my problems with Stranger Things 3, it's far from a failure and is certainly better than certain other continuations of beloved shows these days. But, much like ST2, I probably won't be rewatching it anytime soon.

Really, my issues with Stranger Things as a series comes down to the fact that I don't think it ever needed to be a series at all. The first season is a nearly perfect eight-hour movie that is charming, emotional, scary, compelling, and full of that homegrown Stephen King/Steven Spielberg flavor that goes down smooth every time I watch it (which has been many times now). These "sequel" seasons don't exactly ruin anything--I'm glad that Babysitter Steve and Big Daddy Hopper and Super Sailor Robin exist and it would be a lesser pop culture landscape without them--but they are simply unnecessary given how well-contained and poignant the first season is on its own. Sure, there are a couple of cliffhangers--is Will really out of the Upside Down? Is Eleven still out there somewhere?--but these were questions I was willing to let hang in space indefinitely because everything ended exactly where it needed to.

But because Stranger Things was such a runaway success that literally everyone loved, there was no reason not to keep it going, and that's where things began to fall apart. Now, like any sequel, we've got to do the same things again only bigger, badder, and more bombastic. One interdimensional monster was bad, but how bout a whole colony, led by a huge monster that can get in your head and make you all moody and weird! Top secret government agencies sneaking around and doing crazy experiments is pretty scary, but what about if they were Russian! Yeah, Steve was a big jerk, nothing worse than a high school bully, but what about a completely psychotic new kid who is just as quick to fuck your mom as he is willing to run over a pack of children with his car! AND he's racist!

It's all typical sequel stuff, but one would hope that this show in particular would remain true to its heart and not lose sight of what made it so successful in the first place: its well-drawn, relatable, flawed but endearing characters. These kids who were never precocious or annoying, but awkward, vulnerable and surprisingly strong. These teenagers who let go of petty high school bullshit in order to rise to the call to action. These adults who let their emotional walls and hardened skepticism fall away in pursuit of protecting what is truly important. Stranger Things is still what it always was on the surface, but it's just different now....as if its own adolescence has made it so self-aware and self-assured that it has reached a point of undeserved swaggering--much like Mike is suddenly so ready to be a callous dick to everyone just because he's kissed a girl.

And nowhere do the seams start to show more than in the steady crumbling of the first season's best character: Joyce Byers.

When we first meet Joyce, she is the chainsmoking single mom of two boys who is just trying to keep it all together. She works full time at a grocery store and has raised her kids to be largely self-sufficient, which is why she doesn't immediately freak out when her youngest, Will, doesn't come home one night. But once she's exhausted every reasonable explanation for his absence, her panic is still considered to be too much too soon. We're to understand that it isn't exactly out of character for Joyce to overreact, so she's not taken very seriously by the local authorities or even her own family.

When she starts spouting wild stories about crackly voices over fried phone lines, lights talking to her, and monsters clawing through the wall, she's still told to calm down and be reasonable. And when the unthinkable happens and her boy's lifeless body is pulled from the quarry, she refuses to believe it's him and insists that he is still alive out there somewhere. By all appearances, it's the ravings of a strung out mother unable to cope with the loss of her child due to her own negligence. But we know as well as Joyce that she isn't crazy, and to accept the "reasonable" explanation is the worst thing she could do. So, with no allies and little more than flickering Christmas lights to follow, what does Joyce do? She fucking gears up and travels into the literal abyss in search of her child.

That scene of Joyce sitting on her couch with the alphabet wall behind her, ax in hand and a look of pure mama bear fury on her face, is as iconic as it is deeply moving. This is what Joyce Byers is--somewhere between frazzled and unblinking clarity, focused and ready to fight for what she knows is the truth, even if she can't quite put that truth into words, aimed to defend what is hers without a thought to her own safety. She is the image of motherhood in its purest and most badass form, standing tall alongside the likes of Ellen Ripley and Sarah Conner--but instead of a mecha suit and a bigass gun, all she has is a splintered wood ax and her own moxie. Who better than Winona Ryder to play this unflinching yet vulnerable role, the petite outspoken weirdo screaming at the world to just listen to her? I love Winona in just about everything, but Joyce is the part she was born to play, so deeply felt and painfully alive on the screen that you can't help but grow just as desperate and determined as she is as the story develops.

Stranger Things is, again, a story that thrives with its boldly drawn characters. The kids may be the ostensible stars of the show, but its emotional core is truly experienced through Joyce. We follow her highs and lows, from the frantic hope that Will is still out there, turning to furious anger with "voices of reason" that tell her to go home and get some rest, to the gentle patience of coaxing Eleven into overcoming her own traumas in order to help Will come home. Joyce knows that she is far from the perfect mother, but she does her best and nails it where it counts, from surprising Will with tickets to Poltergeist, to venturing into the Upside Down to pull him back to the surface. The greatest reward for Joyce after all that struggle and grief would be a quiet Christmas dinner with her boys, her little family finally mended together again, stronger than ever.

Now, we all knew it would be hard to top that kind of vivid and visceral journey for a single character in a new story, so I guess it only makes sense that the Duffer brothers didn't even bother to try.

In comes Stranger Things 2, bigger and brighter and more 80's-tastic than before. While the kids go on a high flying new adventure to fight the monsters and Eleven cracks the code on her mysterious past and Hopper comes to grips with the meaning of fatherhood, Joyce...gets a boyfriend. A very nice boyfriend, to be fair--who doesn't love Sean Astin? But other than that, she just doesn't have much to do this season. Her emotional climaxes come with one scene of her pounding her fist at a boardroom full of doctors demanding to know why Will is still being so weird, and then again when her boyfriend gets gutted by a Dema-dog. And...that's it. Even skimming through Wikipedia's summary of the episodes only mentions Joyce's name a few times.

Well, surely, third time's the charm and we'll see a return to form for crazy ol' Joyce Byers giving those naysayers what-for and helping the kids save the day! Well....sort of.

See, one day Joyce notices that her refrigerator magnets suddenly aren't sticking anymore, so through a little detective work she figures that it must have something to do with another mysterious government experiment that will let the monsters in again. So of course she enlists Hopper to help her follow this lead, but he's recently decided that he's in love with her and demonstrates his affections by being really, really shitty about everything. SOOO they go on this wacky little road trip involving Russians and conspiracy theorists and other hijinks, finally culminating in them admitting their feelings for each other just in time for Hopper to (maybe?) disintegrate in an explosion. But before that, yet far too late in the season's run to feel timely, we get this charmer of a scene that lends a voice to what the audience has been feeling through six long episodes:

Isn't that cute? This whole time they've been too busy fighting to realize that they're in love! And isn't that what we've all been waiting for all this time?

Umm...no, not really? Yes, there's been tension between them since their first scene together back in Season One, but their history of maybe some fooling around in high school was a footnote in a much broader story. We didn't especially need a romance between these characters, and the story was all the better for not exploring it. But I suppose a combination of "we don't know what else to do with Joyce" and the TV rule that a man and woman can't be in the same room together without some kind of sexual shenanigans going down is what brought us to this.

It's such a damn shame. Hopper and Joyce both deserve better, but at least Hopper gets the benefit of some funny lines and a noble death. ST3 Joyce returns to her raving maybe-not-crazy schtick, but amplifies it through the romantic comedy formula of "these characters don't get along, but soon they'll realize they're perfect for each other," and the show leaves her with the grief of another dead boyfriend and the responsibility of taking in another kid. Cool, coolcoolcool. Thanks for reducing one of your most compelling characters down to something I could never take seriously no matter how well Winona plays it.

It's hard watching a show you love turn into something so impressed with itself and so caught up in winking at its audience that it becomes something you can't stand. Where the 80's references were once a cozy background to set the action against, they've now become a garish staple of the show to the point there is literally a commerical for New Coke delivered directly to the camera. Where our characters were recognizable kids we grew up with, they're now snarky quippy versions of what adult writers think kids are. Where we once referenced Stephen King's best work--the stuff that struck at the heart more often than the stuff that sent chills up the spine--we're now in the shallower, more obviously cocaine-fueled days.

And poor Joyce Byers, that awesome strong-willed mother who guided us to the underworld and out the other side is suddenly nowhere to be found, replaced by a kooky woman too caught up in romantic foibles to share more than two scenes with her own children. Stranger Things has become that thing we used to praise it for not being, and it's just so sad that its decline is illustrated so blatantly in one of its best characters.

But hey, at least we still have Steve.

#bundyisbae -- An Irritated Response

Since apparently these days we're all watching the same things on Netflix, I'm going to hazard a guess and say that you have seen at least a little bit of Conversations with a Killer: the Ted Bundy Tapes. And, if you're a reader of this blog, it's pretty safe to assume it was not your first venture into the mini-industry that is true crime documentaries.

True crime has never exactly been niche--we've always been interested in the grimy details of even the most horrific incidents. Netflix and Hulu may be the frontrunners now, but they stem from the heyday of the 24-hour-news cycle, the age of JonBenet and OJ, Dateline and Unsolved Mysteries, where the supposed saturation really kicked into high gear with in depth looks at the stories behind the headlines. But it stretches further back--In Cold Blood set the standard for every crime novel since 1965, and records show of murders recounted in explicit detail as far back as the 1500's.

The numbers would reveal that apparently women are even more interested in the genre than men, as the supposed "women's networks" Lifetime and Oxygen regularly run shows and movies focused on crimes committed by and against women. That's not even touching the wealth of not-so-true crime content that floods every corner of entertainment--from the endless Law & Order/CSI spawns, to every other bestseller revolving around an inciting slaughter. Many people claim to dislike horror but will gobble up mysteries and thrillers, no matter how heinous the fictional crimes within.

So, true crime has been a successful and popular as a genre for decades, a fascination that the media itself created by covering every inch of atrocity over and over on the news, yet every now and then some spoilsport journalist has to come along and say "How can you possibly enjoy that?"

Conversations with a Killer may have just been another Netflix original that would have come and gone from the news cycle by the end of its release weekend. But it just so happened to coincide not only with the 30th anniversary of Bundy's death, but also the release of the trailer for Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile, a new Bundy biopic starring America's sweetheart Zac Efron. This created a fervor of conversation on various social media, because of course it did by its very design. And it took maybe the first hour of tweets before the news outlets began to voice their concerns.

Even if you haven't seen series, you've definitely seen these articles floating around documenting the youth of Twitter's sudden Bundy fandom, and all its disturbing implications. Netflix itself put out a tweet begging users to please stop "stanning" Ted Bundy. You can almost hear these journalists wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth in terror. "The kids are out here sexualizing a serial killer!" they cry. "Should you be worried? Because we sure are!"

Chilling stuff.

Insert long beleaguered sigh here.

I've read article after article so shaken by the female response to the Efron-Bundy amalgamation, so troubled by the idea that someone could even notice the charms of an established killer, that they chalk it up to be contributing to the problem that such men exist at all, that to give him any kind of attention only strengthens his legacy and leaves his victims forgotten. This thinking is, at the very least, painting with a broad brush.

First off, the reason Bundy was able to go on as long as he did was precisely because he was good looking, articulate, and charming. He did not appear dangerous, which made him exponentially more dangerous. Even under police custody and at his own trial, Bundy had a charisma that set him apart entirely from every other famous killer seen before, enough to only guard him with minimum security (which allowed him to escape, twice) and grant him permission to act as his own lawyer. He didn't seem unhinged or weird or evil--he was an educated, sophisticated guy that was being accused of crimes he couldn't possibly commit. He was so convincing of this persona that Bundy himself seemed to believe it until mere hours before his execution.

Secondly, Bundy has always had fans. He gained a notable female following during the trial, with young women passing love notes to him in court and proclaiming his innocence on TV. (Let's not forget, he did manage to get married while in police custody as well.) I'm sure the many doomed women he approached back in the day were disarmed by his handsomeness and charm long before they were disarmed otherwise. He was able to use the flimsiest disguise or excuse and still convince women to come with him. The man was able to approach a slender bikini-clad girl in a crowd of thousands and asked her to help him load up his sailboat, and she somehow didn't find it one bit suspicious.

Bundy even drew an inverted kind of fandom, with people even in surrounding states celebrating his execution with beer and hot dogs. The streets outside Florida State Prison were full of excitement as they awaited the countdown, setting up lawn chairs and selling tshirts. One wonders if he got any kind of pleasure out of that, seeing how much he liked the attention--if only he could have heard the cheers when he was finally pronounced dead.

Much more recently but long before the sudden Bundy boom we find ourselves in now, numerous online sellers have made bank on murder memorabilia, from actual artifacts and crime scene pieces, to cheekier merchandise featuring your favorite serial killer--everything from pins to bobbleheads to cross stitch patterns. Way back in 2001, eBay explicitly banned postings of murderabilia for obvious reasons, but it didn't stop the pioneers of internet crafting to make their own homages to America's most notorious. And wouldn't you know it, Bundy is a frequent and high-demand subject. This is because plenty of fans exist for Bundy and the gang--Ramirez, Dahmer, Manson--a number of them surprisingly not just Reddit edgelords, but young women who attempt to appreciate the more "human" side of these monsters of history, for better or worse.

Now let's talk about Zac Efron. We can all agree that he's a national treasure. He rose up out of the wholesome maelstrom of High School Musical and has gone on to prove himself as a solid dramatic actor, a gifted song and dance man, an adept comedian, and all around great guy. He's the stuff of teen bedroom posters and a god among memes. Zac's the best--he's your handsome jock friend that also gets the lead in the school musical every year and although he's super popular and could easily be a jerk, he's really sweet and funny and friends with everyone and it's impossible to hate him. Believe me, I've tried, and it just can't be done.

Coincidentally, in the right wig, he bears a striking resemblance to Ted Bundy. But apparently, to cast him was a very problematic move. 

Frankly, it's a bit of a knee-jerk response to call the new film sexualized simply because the lead happens to be played by one of Hollywood's sexiest men. Attractive actors play horrible people all the time, but somehow we attach significant meaning to it when the character was a real person. Ted Bundy was, in fact, traditionally handsome and charming, a guy whose good looks put people at ease--it only makes sense to cast a handsome charming guy who no one would ever suspect of violence. It's what made him dangerous then and what makes him interesting now all these years later. 

To brush off Zac Efron as a tool in a grand Hollywood conspiracy to make Bundy a sex symbol is an insult to Efron's abilities as an actor and the young women considered his box office audience. A likeable actor playing a villain is always a treat to watch and an interesting acting exercise, but somehow it's super not okay for a former teen icon to play a serial killer because those silly little girls won't be able to tell the difference. 

More than anything, to wonder if it's problematic that we're so obsessed with "glorifying" such awful horrible white men is to entirely miss the point of why we tell these stories over and over again, why there will always be movies and books and binge-worthy documentary series about them. We are trying to learn from our mistakes. We are trying to understand why and how it happens so it can't happen again. Because these men exist, and they wreak havoc on their own victims in their own way every single day, and we still cannot see them coming.

If I have to sum up exactly what point I'm trying to make, let me just use my own experience. Like any other teenage girl, I had my own stable of fictional boyfriends, many of whom possessed certain traits that could be considered "problematic" by today's standards. Your Edward Cullens, your Jack Sparrows, and so forth. But one character has never made the cut (ha) in my collection of bad boys, and it's that one character I will take literally any excuse to talk about: Patrick Bateman. 

American Psycho is famously remembered as one of the most misogynistic books of all time and, conversely, one of the great feminist films of all time. Bateman takes a great deal of inspiration from Bundy, being clean cut and articulate and luring in female victims with his appealing demeanor. But watching or reading American Psycho is to get a glimpse under the mask, beyond "an idea of a Patrick Bateman" and deep--often, too deep--inside his twisted mind. 

The fact that he's played by Christian Bale is practically incidental, because his chiseled good looks can't hide his true self from the audience. Bateman is not heroic, or sexy, or even remotely charming. He's a murderous monster, but contributing to that, he's shallow, sexist, racist, dishonest, petty, and boring. He's hollow to his core, a bitter spoiled brat and a sniveling coward. 

The reason I can be obsessed with American Psycho but hold no love for Patrick Bateman himself is because I want to learn the lesson the character teaches, and practice it every day. That these men exist, and they are often not what they appear to be. It taught me to be wary of a certain kind of charisma, a certain poise and way of speaking, to not trust a nice guy face so easily. It gives me the tools necessary to take away the power of that kind of man--to see him coming.

For the record, I don't think anyone actually has a crush on Ted Bundy. This is the humor of the Twitter and Tumblr crowd, after all--surreal, sometimes problematic, often incomprehensible, but generally coming from a place of irony. We are talking about the same communities that made Venom (the CGI character, not Tom Hardy) a sex symbol. 

Anyone who watched Conversations with a Killer can easily see the monstrosity lurking beneath the mask by the finale. The truth we know was that Bundy was not a brilliant law student or psychologist, he was not a charming helpless stranger, and he was certainly not boyfriend material. He was a monster and a master manipulator that used his appearance and ability to hold a conversation as his greatest weapon, the sweet-looking fruit that hides a deadly poison. 

Lastly, and a small point but one I feel very strongly about: I deserve to watch the things I'm interested in without some journalist telling me I'm a toxic creep for it. That's the reason these movies and shows exist, the reason horror and thrillers are such profitable genres. We all deserve that comfort, the opportunity to try to understand such incomprehensible evil as a way as feeling in control of it. 

And in any case, we are all susceptible to morbid curiosity. Everyone has their way of finding it, whether its blood-soaked thrillers or leering at car accidents or pimple-popping videos on Youtube, no one is above wanting to see the things that can't be unseen. Basically what I'm saying is, we don't need to further scandalize an already scandalizing story just because people are paying attention to it. True crime can be messy and sensational, and sometimes exploitative and disrespectful, but there is a reason people can't get enough of it.

There is a reason we still respond to the story of Ted Bundy so strongly, whether with disgust or fascination or an odd mixture of both. It's because he's still out there, the spirit of that dangerous kind of man, and it's important, I think, to recognize these roots go deeper than the internet age. That our monsters haven't changed much in 30 years. Bundy wasn't the first and he won't be the last, and the best we can do is try to notice him next time before he can do so much damage. As women, we need to look out for each other and tell our friends when something feels off about that boyfriend or Uber driver or stranger at the club, and the men in our lives need to believe us when we feel uneasy about a seemingly charming friend. 

It's a lesson that needs to be learned again, because it keeps happening. I would like to think we're all a little smarter than these journalists seem to believe. I would like to think that a girl watching the Ted Bundy Tapes or Extremely Wicked will learn from it, that just because a guy looks like Zac Efron does not make him incapable of horrible things. 

American Beauty -- LOLITA (1997)

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

In this age of the #MeToo movement, it's safe to say that no one was asking for some asshole to come out and defend Lolita. But, here I am. In fact, I don't think there's anything I could say that hasn't already been said about this devious little demon of literature. And no, Lolita is not classified as horror, despite the horrific things that happen in it. But sometimes, folks, the slashers and ghosts get a little predictable and it takes a regular old drama to thoroughly creep you out.

Let's get this out of the way right up top: Lolita is one of my favorite books of all time. It has been apart of my life for so long that I've forgotten how we even met (it was probably because of a Police song...specifically this version). My own worn copy was thumbed through many times throughout college, bought used and further fondled by the 19-year-old aspiring novelist whose passions were as sweaty as her chronically wet armpits. I was going through a phase of reading "dangerous" books--not unpopular, not exactly banned, but rather the "bad boys" of books. These are used almost exclusively to be bragged about by baby literature students and/or made into largely forgettable blockbusters. The kind of material an insufferable nerd like me could vehemently defend to her entire creative writing class through a meticulously-researched essay. Most of these edgy books have not resonated with me much past that rebellious first read, but for whatever reason, Lolita stuck.

And that credit is due to the truly magnificent writing. The best parts about the book will always come back to Nabokov's talent as a writer. (And in case you're wondering, it's pronounced Nah-BO-cov. Don't be like me, the poser saying Nabba-koff for ten years.) He's one of those writers the term "sensuous" was made for, taking all your senses by the throat and injecting them with poetry. He could spin words together that could split your heart in two, and swiftly have you chuckling along with a droll aside to the reader within the same sentence. This is a man who takes time to point out the loveliness of sunlight reflecting of a car windshield and somehow makes it not pretentious.

I think Lolita is worth discussing today for the very thing that gives it such strength as a novel--the writing, for sure, but moreso, the unreliable narrator. While he certainly didn't invent the construct, Nabokov gave it an especially devious twist. To compare, let's look at American Psycho (because I will take literally any excuse to bring it up). Bret Easton Ellis created a more obvious and far less charming unreliable narrator, since you can't ever be sure if Patrick Bateman's nights spent bludgeoning prostitutes are real or fantasy...plus, he's really boring.

What a dork.

Humbert Humbert is a different animal entirely, and even more dangerous than a handsome yuppie with a chainsaw. Humbert's game is all about quiet charisma. If you let your guard down, if you stop paying attention for even a moment, his tender prose and seemingly level head can easily trick you into believing he is the tragic romantic hero he so desperately wants to be. He even hints that he's on to his own game ("you can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style"). He keeps us distracted from the horrors he's inflicting just as he deceives Lolita throughout their road trip, drugging us with pretty words and humble self-deprecation (as well as a few tranquilizers).

It's all a very elaborate, meticulously planned, and surely exhausting dance to convince us that Humbert is not simply a dirty old man. No, he's a romantic with a terrible disease fallen under the spell of an especially devious seductress. And it's here that we come to the "monster" of the story, or what Humbert would like us to believe is a monster--the elusive and deadly nymphet.

• "Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as 'nymphets.' "
  - Part One, Chapter 5

Humbert's quick field guide to nymphets is simultaneously one of the most fascinating and disgraceful of the book's many uncomfortable passages. Pages go on explaining the qualifications of this special breed of pervert ("You have to be an artist, and a madman"), the delicate art of spotting the prey in the crowd ("the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limb"), an thoroughly creepy study of when signs of puberty begin to show in young girls ("10.7 years" for breasts, "11.2 years" for pubic hair), along with name-dropping many famous child molesters throughout history and literature, "and nobody minds."

Humbert uses mythic language throughout these pages to further paint himself as just as helpless against these comely little beasts as Odysseus against the sirens' song. Early in, he hits us with the sad story of his first love, with whom he shared a preteen summer romance before she died of a fever before her fifteenth birthday--therefore he is the perfect target for these prepubescent sexual terrorists preying on his heartbroken arrested development. It's gross, and despicable, and the one of the most ludicrous cases of victim blaming you've ever heard--but it's still deeply fascinating that one man has gone to so much trouble to convince himself that his actions were understandable, given these very specific circumstances.

One of the most famous taglines in film history is as simple as it is salacious: "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" It's a question worth asking, because god, they really shouldn't have. (They did it twice.) The novel was always going to be difficult to adapt for a variety of reasons, but obviously the trickiest would be Lolita herself. How the hell do you go about casting a "sexy" child, let alone directing her to do very unchildish things without being burned at the stake? Well, both versions of the film decided to avoid that problem and created an entirely new one by aging up the character and casting teenage actresses to portray the infamous baby femme fatale: fourteen-year-old Sue Lyon in the 1962 original, and fifteen-year-old Dominique Swain in 1997. Put a pin in that bit of trivia, because we'll be coming back to it.

Here's the problem with talking about Lolita: it's really hard not to accidentally wander into the area of sounding like a pervert. But hear me out. I'm not saying I feel cheated because I didn't get the twelve-year-old child molestation movie I was promised, because good god, I don't wanna see that movie. But I do have a problem with this choice in both generations of the film because it is a great disservice to the character, and it makes this story even ickier than the source material ever intended. For the sake of brevity and the fact that Kubrick's version struck me as pretty boring, we'll be sticking to the 1997 version of the film for this discussion.

Let's start with an example. We are first introduced to Lolita lounging on "the piazza," sunbathing in her bikini and reading a magazine, like girls do. In the book and the original film, she barely regards Humbert as he walks by, offering little more than a glance over her sunglasses before returning to her reading material.

The look that would inspire Lana del Rey's everything.

But here in the 90's, we kick thing up a notch. She's still sunbathing, still reading a magazine, but...in a sundress, lying next to a sprinkler, so thoroughly soaked through that the camera takes the time to linger on every inch of flesh beneath the thin clinging cotton. Not only does this make zero sense (first of all, who does that, and secondly, you're gonna ruin that magazine!), but it's just a thoroughly creepy shot, enough to give you the willies. The music swells and the camera's gaze glides over Lo's girlish curves with all the lust of the source material, but little of the emotional context and moral tension it was meant for. Then she flashes him her retainer-clad smile, and the audience throws up.

Hey, you guys remember Poison Ivy? ....yeah....

Lolita--that is, Dolores Haze--has always been a difficult character. For one, we can barely trust a word Humbert Humbert spews at us, no matter how pretty it sounds. For two, twelve is a rough age. I hesitate to call Lolita "problematic" as a character, although it definitely comes to mind, but then again it's rare that the sexual politics of an era can be practically applied to the utter chaos of puberty.

When you're a girl, you spend so much time just waiting to be a woman--watching what other women do, how others respond to it, what kind of woman your mother is, what kind of woman your mother doesn't like, and so on. That's not even getting into those first strange tinglings of desire--the knowledge of "happily ever afters" and where babies come from clashing with the inherent surge that comes with noticing a cute classmate. For better or worse, girls subconsciously hang onto these little indicators, largely from the culture that surrounds them. They understand that females wield a certain power over men, but they don't have the context to really understand what that power means.

A twelve-year-old girl just coming into her own, not getting enough attention at home and no father figure in sight, spending her days poring over magazines full of handsome movie stars, plus a little more physical "experience" with boys her age than one is comfortable enough to expect--that troubled girl just might stretch out her feminine wiles on her mom's new crush.

Remember, I asked you to put a pin in the casting decisions for Lolita's translations to film. Take that pin out, we've come back to it. Despite tweaking the character's age by a few years for film (while still staying safely underage), not one other aspect of Lolita's personality is changed in the slightest, and that's a big problem for me. I don't know if you remember being twelve or fifteen, but for my money, the difference is, in Nabokov's own words,"as different as mist and mast." There is a miles-wide gap between twelve and fifteen, for many reasons, yet somehow the studios of two separate eras decided it was less perverse to market a babyish fifteen year old to the masses than it was to just go with an age appropriate star. While a child trying to act like an adult is pretty unsettling, a teenager acting like a child is far worse.

Dominique Swain's Lolita is a young woman that is forced to act immature to the point of grotesque. She ties her hair in pigtails, she wears skimpy rompers that go ALL the way up and is rarely seen in an outfit that doesn't reveal her belly button. She snaps bubblegum, kicks the backseat, and she's constantly doling out tantrums, yet she's portrayed as this irresistible force of nature despite MANY red flags that she is an underdeveloped child acting out from obvious neglect. This is a girl who gives a sexual edge to her interaction with a cocker spaniel.

I'm no child psychologist, but I can remember what I was like at fifteen. Granted, I didn't look nearly as cute in a bikini as our Lolita, but I was still at that in-between place, wanting to show it off but not knowing what to do with the attention that came with it. Also, I had acne, BO, and major body issues just bubbling to the surface. So, more often than not, I would choose the "don't look at me" road and stayed in that lane till...well, now. When I look back on fifteen, it's less a trip down memory lane than it is a full-body cringe. Your world as a teenage girl is fraught with self-esteem issues and angst, no matter how graceful your development. My job at the public library means I see plenty of fifteen-year-old girls every day and all of them carry themselves with that same awkward self-consciousness no matter how pretty they appear to be.

Now, twelve? Twelve is completely different. You're still a kid at twelve. You're not worried about grades or boys or really anything. You may be getting your first period and maybe you're already wearing a training bra, but you're far from what anyone would mistake for an adult. You're excitable, prone to occasional tantrums, and although you're certainly not a baby anymore, you're still buying Barbies with your allowance. You pin movie star posters to your walls and moon over boy bands, but your reference point for what a relationship is either your parents or "Stacy and Danny are going out" (even though they never "go out" anywhere because they don't have money or drivers licenses). It's innocence, pure and simple, aware of the grown up world without being corrupted by it just yet.

Maybe it's splitting hairs to argue that an attention-starved fifteen year old is so much more disturbing than an attention-starved twelve-year-old, but GOD IT'S SO HARD TO WATCH. This teenage Lolita is a nightmare of a child, bratty and stubborn and generally insufferable. Even the mourning of her mother is portrayed as a miserable stab for attention, howling in the other room only to trudge to Humbert's room, still howling, and crawl into his arms. She is consistently, obnoxiously childlike, almost to the point of being an act, which bring up a more unsettling possibility--that would mean that she's putting out an image that she thinks is attractive, the only kind of behavior that's ever gotten her any attention. The cinematography telegraphs as much with many of her most childish outbursts swiftly translating to seduction, almost as if the camera wants us to find this behavior just as endearing as Humbert does. And it's not, it's really, really not.

Don't play with your food!

The tragedy of Dolores Haze is best portrayed by the scene where she and Humbert first have sex, which is upsetting enough by its own merits. But note the way our Lolita broaches the subject--as some secret thing she did at camp and can't quite explain, so she "will have to show you everything," as if she's discovered some unknown phenomenon--when you do this with that it makes such wonderful feeling. The way a child would, a child who knows nothing of sex and, for once, feels like they have got one up on everyone else. I don't know how many of you were naive to the gorier details of the birds and the bees at fifteen, but god bless you, because I sure knew it.

What I'm saying is that the idea of a grown man carrying on a relationship with a twelve year old is just as bad as a grown man carrying on a relationship with an infantile teenager, so the film didn't do us any favors by casting a teenage actor besides making us feel a little less dirty for looking at her. The film's version exacerbates, if not glorifies the act of pedophilia, by making the title character (and the undoing of our "hero") forbidden fruit that is both dangerous and irresistible in a way the audience can understand--that is, making her look "womanly" enough that we believe she is not as childish as she seems. It frames Lo's behavior as the outbursts of a tempestuous lover, which just as quickly turns her into a pouting temptress, as if she is the master manipulator all along. That is, she knows exactly what she's doing, and everything that happens to her is her own fault. That is a very damaging and extremely disturbing message to send, even if it arguably stays true to the source material--material that's intentionally written from a self-admitted lunatic's point of view. This robs Lo of a great deal of the innocence that she's meant to represent, because given her age and her behavior, our instincts tell us she should know better.

Look, she's on top! She's in control! That hussy!

See, Lolita succeeds as a novel because it's a constant balancing act between pitying Humbert and being disgusted by him, all because of the language in which it's presented. Humbert repeatedly manipulates us just as he does Lolita, but even more insidiously because, for all intents and purposes, we become Humbert through reading and we are more easily seduced by him than we'd like to admit. There are plenty of moments in the novel where Humbert is so convincing that we find ourselves believing (even for a moment) that he actually is living a great tragic love story because his feelings for Lolita reach such passionate, obsessive heights. And all the while we're completely aware that these intense passages of lust and devotion are directed at a naive little girl.

Here, on film, with little of the novel's powerful poetry to guide us, and under the camera's unbiased gaze, we're simply watching a grown man leering at a teenager, and all we can feel is "ewwww." If I can liken the experience of watching Lolita to anything, just imagine a high-schooler sitting on Santa's lap. That weird mix of revulsion, judgement and guilt you're feeling? That's just about right, but stretched out for two hours.

This story never should have made it to the screen. It's too involved, too intimate to possibly be translated to a blockbuster crowd, this magnetic unreliable narrator instantly revealed as the wretch he really is under the camera's judgement. Even with big names like Stanley Kubrick at the helm or the unmatched talent of beloved actor and personal crush Jeremy Irons as our lecherous hero, Lolita was doomed to forever be that one romance that everyone gags at. And it's a real shame, because for all the debauchery and disgust, it really is a beautifully written novel that deserves more than its back of the box reputation. Just stick to the audiobook read by Irons himself. It's a much more fulfilling, more sensuous and intentionally unsettling experience.

So, in conclusion of a film adaptation of Lolita, in the immortal words of the Cohen brothers: "Well, what did we learn here today?....Well, I guess we learned never to do it again."

Please, please never do it again.

The Beauties of El Superbeasto

If I could make a blog solely to defend Rob Zombie's luminous career in horror film, I would. If I truly felt there was enough material to nitpick and gush over that would be meaningful to anyone but myself, I would create that blog without hesitation. But there are two reasons I haven't done this after many years of consideration:

1. I'm not yet studied enough to properly tackle the subject to the scholarly degree that I would like to, but I'm working on it (I'm also taking volunteers for thesis partners), and 
2. Even with the all the research and passion in the world to back me up, I won't change anyone's mind about Rob Zombie.

Zombie is an alienating name among the horror community--namely for his contributions to your precious Halloween series (which I will get to one day)--and he has a way of inspiring a love it/hate it split between fans. I am staunchly in the LOVE IT camp, all the time every day, but I have entered that zone of fandom where even the annoying tropes about that favorite auteur are inherently lovable. Think more Stephen King, less Quentin Tarantino. Those tropes like how Zombie gives his psychotic murderers nearly lyrical vocabulary but writes cringe-worthy dialogue for suburbanites, or how little time there is between seeing Sheri Moon's face and seeing her bare ass.

In light of the recent announcement of a new installment in the saga of the Firefly family, 3 From Hell, on the way, I'd like to highlight one of Rob Zombie's less appreciated ventures. No, not that one. Or that one. I'm talking about the one nobody seems to ever talk about, most likely because it's the one everyone forgets even exists.

Ohhh, right, that one.

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is as much an homage to classic horror as it is Ren & Stimpy. Over the top violence and crass humor meets cartoon physics, with a healthy dose of exploitation thrown in, all with a self-aware meta approach. It all fits together somehow, in that delicious Rob Zombie way. This is truly a film that his fans (perhaps only his fans) can appreciate, highlighting all of his strengths while showing off his goofier side.

WARNING: Many screenshots ahead are definitely NSFW.

The plot--or more accurately the sequence of events that vaguely string together--is thus. The film takes place in a world populated with all the great monsters of Hollywood, plus a variety of other horrific freaks. El Superbeasto (Tom Papa) is a former celebrity luchador who has spent his retirement getting fat and producing porno flicks. He occasionally does bounty-hunting business with his adopted sister Suzi X (Sheri Moon Zombie), although she is clearly more committed to the job than Beasto.

Thanks for the moral support, I guess?

Elsewhere, the evil Dr. Satan (Paul Giamatti in maybe my favorite role, which is saying something) is looking for a wifey in order to achieve his full potential as a super-demon. He searches the globe for a woman with the mark of 666 on her ass, and finds his unholy bride in the luscious stripper Velvet von Black (Rosario Dawson). Beasto witnesses Velvet being kidnapped by Dr. Satan's gorilla manservant Otto (Tom Kenny) and rounds up his sister and his old wrestling buddies to rescue the girl and "get busy tapping that ass." A whole other bunch of crazy shit happens too, including Nazi zombies, spooky stripclubs, horny robots, explosions, mutilations, city-wide destruction, and musical numbers. And tits. Lots and lots of tits.

Here's a souvenir!

I won't sugarcoat it, folks. I hated this movie the first time I saw it. Hell, I didn't even finish it until my third watch. It's is a tasteless mess with lots of hokey jokes and gross imagery, plus some not-so-flattering depictions of women. But, after many viewings, it is precisely those things that I have come to appreciate about this trashy cartoon romp. Especially when it comes to my girls, Suzi and Velvet.

Before we get into that, a personal note: there's something about animated girls that has always been close to my heart. Like any kid, I always loved animation and I paid special attention to the ladies. Back in the 90's, there were maybe two girls in any given ensemble kids show (at least the ones that weren't specifically marketed to girls), and in the movies, even less. They were often love interests and many weren't especially complex. But there were standouts.

I imagine that Jessica Rabbit had a profound effect on most of us at an early age, but for me personally, she was an idol. She was everything seven-year-old me hoped to be one day, a stunning pillar of grace and slink that could cause a whole room to fall silent in awe, all while she pulls the strings behind your back. My big break on the Toon Town jazz scene never did hit, but to this day, I still carry some of Jessica around with me the way others may follow Marilyn's or Audrey's example. The best of these animated beauties revealed the layers of their character over time--like Jessica turning out to be a master sleuth as well as a faithful adoring wife, or Lola Bunny being an exceptionally good basketball player, I could go on--and thus they remain with us as icons, despite the questionable intentions behind their conception and design.

Exactly.

With that in mind, I have fallen deeply in love with the girls of El Superbeasto, because they follow this formula to its absolute unapologetic extreme. Suzi X and Velvet von Black are a thirteen-year-old boy's idea of "strong female characters" and I'm totally okay with it. I'm more than okay with it, I fucking love it from every ridiculous angle, to the point that--just like these other sexy idols of my childhood--I carry a little bit of them with me through my day. Most of that credit has to go to the ladies playing these cartoon pinups, since Sheri Moon and Rosario Dawson are both personal heroes and they seem to really have a blast rolling with the material.

And they've both certainly done worse.

First, there's the bubbly one-eyed badass Suzi X. Sheri Moon is Rob Zombie's muse and makes an appearance in all his films, so it's no surprise that she gets the dream role of impossibly sexy blonde super assassin. Her sex appeal and killer instincts are doled out in spades throughout the film. Suzi's origin story is portrayed as a sexy parody of Taxi Driver--a cheerleader turned vigilante doing pull ups in her closet and holding her arm over a stove burner in a dingy apartment, wearing only a gun holster and a thong. We first meet her infiltrating a Nazi castle guarded by werewolves and topless fembots in order to steal Hitler's preserved head, all while sporting an outfit straight out of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.

Try doing this cosplay sometime.

Suzi's a walking wet dream and the movie exploits that at every opportunity, but the cool thing about Suzi is that doesn't seem to care either way about the attention she gets. She uses all of her skills, including her looks, to gain the upper hand in any situation. And more often than not, she prefers to resolve things with her guns...and her pistols. She's known more for her violent tendencies than her beauty, able to clear out a bar full of monsters at the mere mention of her name. The only ones to underestimate her are those who don't know any better, but they learn soon enough--she responds to a certain scuzzy clown grabbing her ass by clenching her glutes tight enough to break his hand.

Somehow the least disgusting thing Captain Spaulding's ever done.

There only seems to be room in Suzi's heart for her sexually-frustrated robot companion Murray (Brian Posehn). Murray's in the ultimate friend-zone, programmed to adore Suzi while she seems oblivious to his advances. He gets his own rewards, though, like morphing into a vehicle she can straddle or getting the pleasure of watching her change into a new outfit. Personally, I think Suzi has the right idea having a robot boyfriend. He's got the obedience of a golden retriever, the sex drive of a desperate teenager, and he has all sorts of neat uses for the girl on the go.

She invented the multi-purpose boyfriend. Where's her Kickstarter?

On a whole other level of horny animators entertaining themselves, we have Velvet von Black, the star attraction of Monsterland's premier titty bar. She's a chain-smoking vixen with inflatable breasts and a bad attitude, and she remains topless for almost the entire movie. I absolutely love her, and her burlesque theme song gets stuck in my head on a weekly basis.

She invented multi-purpose titties. Where's her Kickstarter?

Rosario Dawson is sublime as the foul-mouthed alpha stripper who doesn't have a nice thing to say to anybody. She dominates the stage with her natural charisma, her act consisting of assaulting the audience with her opposable tits, pouring particular moterboat-y abuse on any poor schmuck foolish enough to tip her. She's nonplussed when a giant talking gorilla appears in her dressing room, and proceeds to trash-talk the brute even as he hauls her over his shoulder "like a mink-ass stole and shit" and takes off into the night.

This woman can take a fart joke and turn it into a sexual power move.

As a damsel, she's hardly distressed, responding to her imprisonment in Dr. Satan's lair with delight over the jacuzzi and complimentary minibar. She's a nightmare of a hostage, lounging in luxury and still talking shit at every opportunity. Despite being pulled between two men's affections/erections, Velvet is only ever interested in herself. She only agrees to marry Dr. Satan on the promise of financial gain and making her girlfriends jealous, and I don't think she ever even acknowledges Beasto (aside from briefly smothering him with her ass onstage).

Did I also mention how she ain't got time for your bullshit?

Although Dr. Satan needs Velvet to ascend to his super-demon status according to an unholy prophecy, his heart truly lies with Suzi, a torch he's been carrying since they were in high school (because of course). Not a moment after getting hitched to Velvet and triggers Dr. Satan's transmogrification into a giant hell monster does he scoop up Suzi and go stomping off to consummate his pubescent fantasies. So we have two women, both completely uninterested and detached from the primary situation, forced between the affections of a super-powered Dr. Satan. What's a girl to do?

This conflict brings us to the moment we were all waiting for, the Catfight. Two voluptuous badass bitches get down on the pavement to a musical number about how it's totally okay to jerk off to it!

Let's just not even bring up the Bechdel test, shall we?

I'll be an El Superbeasto apologist till the day I die, but there isn't much you can defend with a catfight scene. The first and only interaction between our two female leads consists of shit-talking one another over Dr. Satan's attentions, and swiftly dissolves into a topless street fight that's cheered on by a gaggle of drooling men. I will argue that the scene isn't as much over a man as it is a fight over each girl's self-respect--newlywed Velvet isn't gonna tolerate being cheated on, and Suzi doesn't respond well to name-calling. Since neither of them have romantic feelings for Dr. Satan, their fight is solely between them, so I can rest easy that El Superbeasto at least has that over a number of other films. Plus, this scene provides a truly great moment just before the brawl where Suzi sweetly asks a giant kaiju demon to release her, then coerces him by grinding her stiletto into his palm.

She did ask.

The whole venture ends pretty unfortunately for Velvet, with Suzi serving her a mouthful of pavement and a final crushing blow coming from her new husband's cloven hoof. But it all works out okay, because squishing his wife causes Dr. Satan's power-up to melt away and makes him vulnerable to "a little smashing of the ol' fuckface" from Beasto. We all live happily ever after as Suzi and Murray take off on another adventure, and Velvet recovers under Otto the gorilla's care, occasionally taking advantage of his baser drives. You could argue that tweaking his smart screw is a form of interspecies sexual manipulation...but again, Velvet's in it for her own gain, and if that means switching off a gorilla's sentience to harness his more animal instincts, so be it. Plus, they do seem pretty happy together.

"He's so cute when he goes all rabid on me!"

I have struggled with the feminist interpretation of many movies I love, because whether it's exploitative nonsense or critically acclaimed Oscar bait, it's excruciatingly difficult to find a female character that isn't PROBLEMATIC in some sense. I'm not even sure what the ideal female character is anymore, since a lot of the ones I thought were perfect haven't aged so well in 2018 (did I already mention Quentin Tarantino?).

I'm sorry, Uma. I'm sorry for everything.

AND YET THIS MOVIE. Somehow, for all the sleaze and silliness that saturates every frame of this demented film, El Superbeasto goes down pretty smooth for the perpetually annoyed feminist inside of me. Suzi X and Velvet von Black are prime spank bank material literally by design, but they are also fully realized characters that go for what they want and never compromise themselves, and they get the happiest endings of this entire stupid romp.

Consider that the "main" male characters, Beasto and Dr. Satan, are portrayed as insecure, egotistical buffoons whose only motivation is chasing ass and gaining power, and both walk away empty handed (although Beasto does go on tour with Loverboy, which is alright). Meanwhile, the babes they were lusting after end up with a robot and a talking gorilla, respectively, and not only are these both portrayed as happy fulfilling relationships, but you can also take away that sentient non-human manservants are preferable to actual men.

I AM GIVING A FEMINIST DEFENSE OF A FILM CONTAINING THIS IMAGE. FIGHT ME.

If you hate this movie, keep in mind, I did too once. But if, like me, you just can't get it out of your head, it may be time to give it another shot. This is a movie that repulsed me upon entry and now it's the one I put on when I'm plastered and all that can satisfy me is pure grease (plus, it's better to quote these lines and sing these songs with a slur in your speech). El Superbeasto is trash, but it's such a beautiful mess with zero morality and the salty stench of ham throughout, with just a smidge of loving homage thrown in, that it ascends its original purpose. It's more than trash, it's a masterpiece of trash, and I hope as time goes by, it's one of the more fondly remembered of Rob Zombie's oeuvre.

The Wonderful World of Nightmare Fuel -- Childhood Trauma

I've spoken before about how confronting fear through films can be a rich learning experience for a child, firing up developing synapses that are better practiced in fake danger. You have your classics, of course, the moments that most of us can agree upon as traumatizing--the boys turning to donkeys in Pinocchio, the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz, the entirety of Return to Oz, etc. Of course, with age and wisdom comes bravery, and most of us have come to accept and even enjoy these things that used to keep us up at night. Look at me, I'm a horror fan whose first time "watching" Pet Sematary was spent with ears plugged and eyes shut so tight I'm surprised I didn't rupture something.

Then again, some things, some really deeply scarring things, stick with you forever. I may have eventually come to love the Oompa-Loompas, but you couldn't pay me to watch The Dark Crystal ever again.

Trauma bonds people, but it can also alienate. When you share an obscure moment that shattered your reality when you were seven, you accidentally reveal a lot about who you are--most importantly, what a weenie you can be. How many times have you revealed that, say, an episode of "Treehouse of Horror" kept you up for weeks, only to be laughed at by all your friends?

The point is not all scary things are scary to all people, and some scary things were barely meant to be scary at all. Growing up teaches you many things, but sometimes the most enlightening thing is realizing that you used to be (or still are) terrified of some really dumb shit. But that doesn't mean it's not worth exploring.

So without further ado, here's my list of media-induced childhood trauma!

THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967) -- Kaa the Snake

Out of all the characters in Disney's The Jungle Book that lost their dignity in translation from the source material, Kaa may have gotten it the worst. An ancient and elegant creature in Kipling's stories, Disney's animated version of Kaa is an ineffective antagonist at best and a punchline at worst. He's clumsy, inarticulate, easily overwhelmed, and he shares a voice actor with Winnie the fucking Pooh. He couldn't be a less threatening villain. AND YET. Kaa does one thing especially well, and that's hypnotism. All he needs to do is hold eye contact for a few seconds and the victim is instantly lost in a haze of swirly eyes and dopey grins as he wraps them in his coils. This was incredibly disturbing to me as a child, even if I couldn't really understand why at the time. You could point out the weird sexual aspects, not the least of which being a giggling predator trying to wrap his body around a young boy, but while researching this I stumbled into a dark pit of Kaa slash fiction and I'd rather not go down that road. Ultimately for me, it was a combination of the utter helplessness of the victim, and maybe more so, their big moon-faced smile as their doom coils around them.

THE HAUNTING (1999) -- Just the trailer

As much as I love horror movies now, I couldn't go near one as a child. (Looking at the other entries on this list, it's easy to see why.) Trailers and video box art were as close as I ever got to real horror in those days, when the cover of Street Trash was enough to give me nightmares. For whatever reason, one that sticks out to me is The Haunting in 1999--not the full trailer necessarily, but the TV spots that showed the highlights of the spookshow. I remember this film being set up to be a real blockbuster (it was not), so the commercials were played often enough to be burned into my brain as I lay awake in bed, waiting for little wooden baby heads to start wailing in the night. I avoided this movie for years out of pure terror, until finally one day my friends made me sit down and watch it. Imagine the embarrassment, and the triumph, of realizing what a laughably awful film Jan de Bont's The Haunting is. The story is a mess, the acting is lousy even with a (mostly) star-studded cast, and the CGI is awful even for its day. But I do have to give credit where it's due: without this movie, I may never have become the horror fan I am today. If I never faced that fear of poorly rendered weeping statues, who knows what else I may have never experienced.

THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER -- Every ten minutes

Many people my age claim to love this movie. My question is, "How?" How can you enjoy something so viscerally upsetting? How can you claim to love a thing that clearly does not have your best interests at heart? Brave Little Toaster is not for children. It does not exist to tell a story. Its only purpose is to attack its audience with unsettling questions and dark violent imagery under the guise of being a cute family film. If your memory is fuzzy on the plot, skim through the Wikipedia summary, and realize that not only does it read like a fever dream, but more importantly, nothing good happens to any of these characters throughout the entire film. For every few precious minutes of wholesome sweetness with a gang of talking appliances going on an adventure, there is an onslaught of surreal terrors waiting just around the corner. And I'm not even talking about that evil clown dream sequence. Remember the AC unit that has a meltdown and literally explodes in front of his housemates? Remember when the vacuum cleaner chokes on his own cord and is reduced to a jibbering vegetable for a while? Remember the flower growing all alone in the woods that falls in love with its reflection in Toaster's surface, and when Toaster runs from it, it instantly DIES OF A BROKEN HEART? Do you remember that bit of sickening tragedy that comes out of nowhere and leads to nothing? That's only a sample of the horrors that lurk in this harmless-looking film. And don't even try telling me it has a happy ending--how many 10 year old household appliances do you still own, let alone cherish? This is not a movie, this is an assault.

A GOOFY MOVIE -- Max's Nightmare

I love A Goofy Movie. You probably love A Goofy Movie. Even my Disney-hating husband with his heart of stone got choked up watching A Goofy Movie. It's practically perfect. It's got catchy songs, crisp animation, and great voice acting. It may never have the prestige of The Lion King or Beauty and the Beast, but it's still one of Disney's finest and is just as enjoyable today as it was in 1995. What could I possibly find to be nightmare inducing in this otherwise lovely film? Well, I was five when A Goofy Movie came out, and to my memory it was one of my earliest experiences in the theater. So imagine a sweet little child sitting fairly close to a huge screen when that gorgeous dream sequence begins and swiftly turns into a nightmare rife with body horror and teen angst. Again, I'm five. I don't understand the comedy of the scene, nor the context. All I see is a boy whose body has turned into a giant monster. It doesn't even matter that the monster looks like Goofy, not with all the screaming and lightening and scary music. That's a really rough start for a five year old to take in, but thankfully the movie moves right along with the bright colors and pop songs. And that's why it's a masterpiece.

THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO -- Lorenzini's transformation into Monstro

Listen, nobody loved Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the 90's the way I loved Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the 90's. I was too young to even understand what attraction was and I was still in love with JTT to the point I would watch him in literally anything, even a movie involving that which I feared most as a child: human-looking puppets. The Adventures of Pinocchio is not good in any sense, but it is memorable if only for being deeply unsettling to look at. Besides the passable hideousness of Pinocchio himself, the human characters are decked out in the most ridiculously foppish garb and filmed in garish golden-hour sunshine at odd angles to make them look even more bizarre. This movie is too interesting-looking to be ignored, yet too boring to actually be interesting, aside from the inherent delight of hearing Martin Landau struggling with a "mamma mia!" Italian accent. The film is largely forgettable, aside for one little moment on Pleasure Island, and shockingly, it's not the one you're thinking of (although that scene is pretty upsetting too). Pinocchio and his friends clap back on the villain Lorenzini (Udo Kier) by pushing him into the magic water that transformed them into donkeys. Inexplicably, the water doesn't turn him into a jackass but something else entirely--a half-formed fish man that will eventually become Monstro the whale. The makeup effects here are quite good and tastefully revealed in shadows and warped reflections. Still, those few seconds of a man's eye bulging out of his head as his skull rearranges is something you simply cannot forget.

These random moments of weird surreal terror aren't ranked in any particular order, but every list needs a number one ultimate top pick, and baby, I saved the best for last. Before the big reveal, here are some honorable mentions:

Ren & Stimpy -- all of it, the whole thing, every single second
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? -- Dr. Doom's toon eyes
Altered States -- that one part I caught on TV where a hairy naked man feasts on a goat
The Last Unicorn -- the laughing skull
Jumanji -- giant vicious mosquitoes with seizure-inducing stings
The Hobbit (Rankin/Bass version) -- friendly dwarves animated to look like living Troll dolls
Anaconda -- winking Jon Voight corpse

And now, my top tier, number one, all time greatest movie-induced childhood trauma is........

E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL -- Fuck this movie

Look, I'm not a monster. I love Steven Spielberg. I love Drew Barreymore. I love movies about aliens finding their humanity. I love animatronics. But physically, mentally, and emotionally, I cannot love E.T. I've tried, believe me. It's one of those movies you're not allowed to dislike because it is goodness in its purest form--sweet story, good directing, great score, an all-around classic. Far be it from me to try to convince you that it is not. Even I don't know why I don't like it. Maybe it's when we first meet E.T. as nothing but a set of icky probing fingers in the woods. Maybe its when he secretly takes over Elliot's mind and gets him shit-faced. Maybe it's when E.T. falls ill and they find him rotting in a ditch like a discarded powdered doughnut. Maybe it's the overall design of the puppet--as if somehow big blue eyes would save that wrinkly turd of a sinking ship. Maybe it's how every other shot of this film is framed with smoky mystery and inexplicable dread. Maybe it's not any single trait. Everything about this film unsettles me to my core and I have never been able to overcome my inherent deep-seated fear of it--not when I was a baby watching it on VHS, not when I was a teenager watching it on remastered DVD, not now as a grown ass woman struggling to get through the trailer without getting stomach pains. E.T. is as far from heart-warming as it gets for me. This is a scary, scary movie, and honestly, it deserves more of that recognition.


There you have it, my list of the most memorable childhood nightmare fuel. I hope I could help conjure up some repressed memories for you. Perhaps adulthood doesn't bring bravery, only awareness, and if we can't overcome all of our greatest fears, we can at least laugh about them.