The Perils Of PG

Now if you have a child, or take care of one, or just plain kidnapped one, eventually you have to take them to a movie.

Movies geared for children fall into many categories. Disney represents safe family fare for most parents, and their cartoon classics like Bambi and Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs are re-released occasionally in theaters to terrify new generations of impressionable tots. Fodder for therapists in the years to come: hunters shoot at cute, talking animals; a witch wants to cut out Snow White’s heart; they even blow away Bambi’s mother for Christ’s sake. I recall showing Bambi to a friend’s young girl- we’d actually watched the movie a lot when she was a toddler and it always delighted her. But that day she turned and asked, “What happened to Bambi’s mother?’ It was a question I’d feared for years. I gulped and quickly said, “I think the hunters captured her,” which mollified her, thankfully. Dodged another bullet.

But in a way, I think it’s a good thing to be traumatized in a theater at an early age. There’s nothing like turning to your youngster to inquire if they’re having a good time, only to see their eyes dilated and their little pudgy hands cupping their face protectively. It’s a heartwarming sight.

My mother used to retell a story of when I was 5-years-old and she took me to a double-bill of Underwater! (starring Jane Russell) and Monster From The Ocean Floor. My mother had been taking me to the movies since I was a baby and I never fussed once. I’m convinced that was probably the cause of my lifelong passion for cinema. But it was during Monster From The Ocean Floor, a deadly dull movie about a giant octopus, that my mother looked over to ask how I was liking it and my seat was empty. I had run down the aisle, out of the theater, and was half way up Main Street when my mother caught up with me. God know what it was that freaked me out about that film. Now when I watch it I’m stunned at how tedious it is. I can’t fathom what it was that terrified me. It’s a funny thing about kids- you never know what’s going to unsettle them. How many children watch The Wizard Of Oz at an early age and are unfazed, while others run out of the room screaming at the sight of the green-faced Wicked Witch of the West. Our friend’s son used to watch any number of incredibly violent movies when he was a kid and nothing bothered him. But then he saw C.H.U.D., about cannibalistic monsters that live in the sewer tunnels under New York, and freaked. I suspect what scared him was the fact he lived in the same neighborhood where a little dog is dragged by a creature down a manhole in the movie. But you just never know with children.

When I was taking care of Willem Dafoe’s young son Jack, I innocently bought tickets for Return To Oz, a live-action movie, at Radio City Music Hall. I’d read a lot of the L. Frank Baum books to Jack, and there a big stage show with witches on stilts and dancing monkeys which was jolly enough. Then the movie started and poor Dorothy is dragged off to an insane asylum because of her “Oz” delusions and strapped down and given electroshock treatments. I was stupefied. I looked around at all the other ashen-faced mothers in my aisle. Dear God, what the hell was this? Then they get to the evil Princess Mombi and her special room where she keeps the dismembered heads of her enemies and children began openly weeping. I felt so bad that I’d inflicted this movie on Jack, who seemed okay at the time. Years later he admitted that it was pretty unsettling.

In the pantheon of PG, certain movie titles provide an almost Pavlovian response. Old Yeller, for instance. Made in 1957, it’s a live-action story of a boy and his faithful dog with the distinction that the dog is shot to death at the end. When I saw it with my family as a young boy, I only recall being relieved when the shot rang out, for it signaled that the movie was almost over and I could go home. I was so bored with that film I felt like screaming. But what astounded me while walking out was the pandemonium it caused. Sobbing children were literally being carried from the theater in droves by their guilt-ridden parents.

When I was a kid in the late 50’s, parents used to drive you to the local movie house on the weekend and drop you off for the day. This was during the heyday of monster movies, And was it ever a scene. Giant bugs, killer shrews, Tinglers, dinosaurs, Vincent Price, teenage mutants (and not ninjas), Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D. The kids would go wild- throwing popcorn, running up and down the aisles, screaming and carrying on shamelessly. Inevitably, the harried manager would make an appearance on the stage in front of the screen and threaten to stop the show and throw everybody out if they didn’t settle down, only to be pelted by a crossfire of candy and popcorn boxes. My good friend Deborah Mish screamed so loudly during House On Haunted Hill she was hoarse for a week.

What was so great was that there was an exclusive solidarity about it all. Parents just didn’t “get it.” They thought The Brain Eaters was a vulgar title and probably a stupid waste of celluloid, just as parents today roll their eyes in disgust at their children’s wild anticipation of the next Marvel comics super hero movie.

One of my key memories was the shy, reserved boy I was, sitting at the Palace Theater watching Sleeping Beauty and the evil queen Maleficent rising up in all her black fury to bellow at the Prince, “I will see you in HELL!” When she said that word, “hell,” it was as if an electric current surged through the theater. The children sprang maniacally from their seats and began rioting joyously.

“If you brats don’t quiet down, I’m shutting this movie off!” the bedraggled managed begged again from the stage.

“Hell no!” I screamed back at him, shocked at my own outburst. And suddenly I was up out of my seat running down the aisle, liberated at last.