Rock The Cradle Of WTF

Speaking of weirding out over memories of childhood traumas, my old friend Wembly hipped me to the aptly titled Kindertrauma blog, which is where I've been spending my week catching up on all the unnerving little pieces of childhood entertainment from the considerably unfiltered 1970's -- or unfiltered compared to what I've seen children watch or read these days. Or maybe it's all subjective. Being practically adult and all probably colors my world a little differently, I would imagine. But anyway, some of the traumatic pop culture moments from childhood that I had long since put aside in my mind -- and in a way find comfort in others commenting on the affects some of these movies, books, and TV shows had that were almost identical to mine.



I saw the 1977 animated film The Mouse And His Child in the theaters back when it was released, and my 8-year-old brain was forced to wrap itself around the darkness that was toys whipped and beaten into hard labor, a poor overworked toy donkey who was torn to shreds by rats while he screamed for his life, and strangest of all, a disturbingly Beckettian play centered around the concept of "The Last Visible Dog"-- a can of dog food with a label featuring a dog holding the very same can of dog food, which in turn features a smaller version of the same dog holding the same can, and on and on presumably into infinity. This film has been out of print for years but I never even bothered to try and hunt it down because a part of me, loving toys as much as I do, probably couldn't bear another viewing of this torture porn even as an objective adult. But it is available on youtube here. Worth checking out for its animation, voice-over work (Peter Ustinov, Cloris Leachman, and he final film of the late great Andy Devine) . I still haven't got the guts to watch it again. If anything, for the "The Last Visible Dog" routine once more.




I have heard plenty of people tell me how disturbed they were by early Sesame Street episodes from the 70's, from their unsettling music scores, twisted animation, and most of all, their monsters. Over the years, starting with the early 80's, the muppets started taking on more pleasing, less threatening visages, morphing into more child-friendly characters like Elmo (who is scary enough in his own right), a less irascible Oscar, and a Cookie Monster who wasn't such a complete bastard (yes, check out the early days -- that bitch was a straight-up monster). Actually as much as I've always loved Jim Henson's work, his early muppets (including Sam And Friends, and even first season of The Muppet Show) used to scare the bejeezus out of me. Too much to choose from during those early, formative Sesame Street years to place here, but these two skits from around that era kind of give you the idea. I remember once, back when I was a child, asking my mother why Sesame Street was always trying to scare us little kids so much. And she answered, "Maybe (being scared) helps you learn". God help me, I never forgot that.

One that I have completely forgotten until I read about it here for the first time sine I was old enough to comprehend, was the children's book Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, which I think dates back to the 1940's but my mother had bought me the book back around when I was a wee thing, and what an impression it left on me. Although the story itself remains murky, it was the graphics, specifically near the end of the book, where the handmade dolly Miss Hickory, made of a twig body and a nut for a head, gets her noggin eaten by a squirrel ( the floor of his nest littered with nutshells like the skulls of the dead). After which the protagonist wanders headlessly for a spell until she gives up, sticking her neck into a high tree branch until her body becomes a branch itself, arms and legs sprouting leaves in the spring -- and then the little girl who once owned Miss Hickory looks up and notices that the branch looks eerily like the body of the little doll she once owned and mysteriously lost last winter. Man, THAT shit kept me awake at nights! And now strangely enough, I wanna find this book again. Because now, as a level-headed adult, squirrels eating the nutty heads off of dolls... FUNNY! How can it not be?

And now just one more spooktastic memory, this one from the the very end of the 70's so technically it still counts. Anyone remember the 1980 Roger Corman horror camp novelty Humanoids From The Deep? I was too young to see it in theaters, but I distinctly remember the commercials for the film running on local TV continuously, and I was flippin' terrified of what I saw. Or maybe it was just the concept of sea aliens dragging girls down into the ocean to mate with them that kept me from going to the beach that summer more than Jaws did five years before. Anyway, here's the trailer, kind of how I remembered it. Sorry it's so dark, but it was the most lightened up version that I could find.