Call them "cult classics." "Guilty pleasures." "Comfort movies." We all have a mental rolodex of flicks that may not be terribly popular but, for one reason or another, they resonate in a very special way. Maybe you saw it at the right moment. Maybe you just see gold where everyone else sees feces. Whatever the case, these are the special favorites that you keep stashed away for sick days. Here are some of ours.
Few people will argue that when it comes to grim, eerie and flat-out bizarre film fare, director Tim Burton is a hard act to match. But even without having seen his take on "Alice in Wonderland," I can guarantee you without a shadow of a doubt that it's nowhere near as weirdly terrifying as the "Alice in Wonderland" two-part television special released in 1985.
Natalie Gregory, only ten years old at the time, starred in "Wonderland" as the titular Alice, an innocent young girl that finds herself stuck in a radical world populated by talking animals and experimental drugs that drastically alter your body size upon ingestion. During her travels, she meets a strange cast of characters played by celebrities with varying degrees of importance such as Scott Baio, Ernest Borgnine, Lloyd and Beau Bridges, Red Buttons, Sammy Davis Jr., John Stamos, Ringo Starr and Sally Struthers.
Aside from having one of the strangest casts in the history of anything, "Alice in Wonderland" is code red on the terror level thanks to its unparalleled ability to dig into the hearts and minds of young viewers for years to come. Twenty-five years have passed since the release of that movie and I still suffer from the nightmare fuel that is Carol Channing.
"Beeeeeeeeetter," Channing's White Queen groans as she inexplicably turns into a sheep right before Alice's virgin eyes. "Muuuuuuuuch beeeeeeee-heh-heh-heh-tter..."
That's not even mentioning The Jabberwocky, a slick beast that has no business popping out of a birthday gift and embarking upon a horribly lengthy rampage at the slow pace of Michael Keaton's Batman — no business, of course, except to scare the living pants right off of you.
While there's no obvious reason that a young child should have to be put through the trauma of the 1985 "Alice in Wonderland," I will say that it puts some hair on your chest a lot earlier than you probably need or want. If you haven't seen the movie before and you're already trucking along just fine through life, you might not be scared by this thing. But if you saw "Alice" as a child and haven't thought about it in the years since... well, I'm sorry for doing this to you.
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