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I saw the original Fantasia (again) today and it still scares the hell out of me. In particular the Sorcerer's Apprentice, the one where Mickey Mouse gets attacked by millions of angry brooms, to this day I am left to wonder how any of this was ever intended for children. The first time I saw this I was probably 8 or 9 and those brooms have been haunting me ever since. What, to those of you who have seen it, was your reaction the first time you saw it?
P.S: Don't even get me started on the last scene...*shivers*
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It most definitely was not intended for children - evidenced by the naked flying female ghosts.
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I still curse Eisner and his ilk for screwing over Roy Disney and making him pull Fantasia 2008 (or 2006, whichever) because "2010 or 2050 has a catchier sound to it." Or whatever else his stupid reasons were.
Roy Disney was the only reason another Fantasia was made, and I love all these films.
As far as being scared by childhood things...
Hephalumps and Woozles always scared the bejeezes out of me as a kid. Especially that damned song. In French class in high school we had to watch the whole thing in French. I had nightmares for a week.
Edit: Fantasia 2000 was much more geared towards all age groups. But no, the first one was not really intended for children.
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Hephalumps? That reminds me of something...weren't they the baddies in Winnie the Pooh? Come to think of it, you know what scares me even more, that song the elephants sing when they're drunk in Dumbo. I couldn't sleep for weeks...
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Seriously, that scared me too! In the same vein as the H&W scariness. Actually I've only seen Dumbo once or twice, for that reason, that movie was scary as hell for me as a kid. The crow/raven bird whatever it was in that movie weirded me out too.
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When I was 7 or 8, I accidentally walked in on my dad and (older) sister watching "Alien"...right when the guy's chest explodes and a worm came crawling out.
I wasn't able to watch that movie until I was around 16 or 17, and only with my longhaired Chihuahua in my lap.
But on the topic of Disney...
That Hephalump song also scared me, and if I recall correctly the original Sleeping Beauty did too.
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I definitely thought the Heffalump and Woozles song was way out there for little kids. Luckily Thomas was okay with it. I was quite surprised when they brought it back in the Heffalump movie, though.
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I absolutely adore Fantasia, but I think I like it a lot more now than I did when I was younger. I don't know if that has anything to do with my heightened love of classical music, though, due to being a music major, and being surrounded by it daily. I think it did scare me some when I was younger, but I absolutely LOVE it now!
But then, I'm also a complete Disney fanatic...
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Dumbo terrified me. Actually, most of the Disney movies scared me. The evil woman in The Little Mermaid? *shudders*
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I grew up in a single parent household. Because of that the mother being killed in Bambi always filled me with dread. Also the conflagration was terrifying to me as a child. I also had nightmares centered around the Night on Bald Mountain, and the Dinosaur part. (Rites of Spring?)
All the fears of my youth aside, I love Fantasia. I could watch the abstract Toccata at the beginning over an over. I think that the whole project was visually stunning. The music was well chosen as well. Flowers instead of nutcrackers, and hippopotamus ballet dancers. I really appreciate that something so different from anything else out there exists.
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I remembeer as a kid, having only audio recordings to go by, being scared spitless at the Heffalumps and Woozles. I'm pretty sure I'd seen it when that segment was first released, or maybe on a rebroadcast, but Mom had picked up an album of Disney music and that was on there.
i'm not entirely surpised that they brought back the Heffalump, and I'm definitely not surprised that they made them nice this time around. Heaven forbid should they keep anything intact. Pretty soon we'll be seeing Rabbit and the Woozles... and they'll turn out to be the best garden guardians ever.
As for Fantasia, I never had a problem with it (although I don't recall ever seeing it till home video options were reasonably inexpensive, which means I was a teenager at the youngest). My now 9 year old has always had trouble with the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment and whatever immediately precedes the Ave Maria (is that Bald Mountain?). Her favorite is Rhapsody in Blue from 2000.
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My history teacher claims that Fantasia is supposed to be scary, which puts a whole new spin on it.
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What about the second-to-last scene with the demons? That would be pretty scary to children. I first watched it when I was in kg, home with the chicken pox and a bad fever, and it actually comforted me, but, then again, I've always been weird.
The hardest part for me was actually the Stravinsky--I didn't want the dinosaurs to die! It still makes me sad.
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Scary in an 'Adults can watch cartoons too, this is probably a little too mature for your two to six year olds and there are no singing dwarves.' way or scary in some way that can only be inferred by people with more letters after thier name than I have.
I ask that because along side the thematic references to what we see as the fantasy world within Fantasia, there is much in it that references the historical need humans have felt to understand thier surroundings. For instance the need the Greeks and Romans felt to explain thier world in terms of appeasing the whim of fickle gods, or the belief in demons that can come and control the dead and the damned.
I live in a canyon. Sometimes in the late night I will walk just to feel the difference in the atmosphere, and wonder at what it would have been like to live a life so unstable as our earliest forefathers had. Even now the survival instinct lies dormant in the genes, making it is impossible to fully supress the hard wired responses to each sound that might waft out of near pitch darkness to awaken them.
I feel some of that same emotion in the powerful music put to illustration in Fantasia. To me it's beauty goes a little beyond what it looks and sounds like, on to the emotion invested by the composers, musicians, directorial and artistic talent.
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I was terrified of the flying monkeys in Wizard of Oz. Saw it about 45 years ago and still remember the fear...
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quote:Hephalumps? That reminds me of something...weren't they the baddies
Only in the most lighthearted of senses.
Same with the dancing brooms- never had a problem. It was the dying dinosaurs that really terrified and horrified me. I mean, the way they die slowly of dehydration, it's absolutely horrible and extremely powerful. I remember it as both scary and very saddening.
I love(d) the hephalump song and never found it or them scary.
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I seem to be the only person in the world who wasn't bothered by the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. I just thought they were ugly and annoying and could never understand why everyone else was afraid....and it's not like I'm always like that, I'm generally just as afraid of movies as anyone else, usually more.
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You know what else has always scared me, that movie where a bunch of rabbits try to cross the country to escape from humans. I can't remember what the film was called, but there were scenes where bunny gangs attacked each other and I remember some of them as being pretty violent (blood gushing etc...). Not to mention the image of the black dead rabbit with white eyes...my god he freaked me out.
P.S: It had that "Bright eyes" song.
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Would it be Watership Down? I haven't seen the movie, but that was the basic plotline of the novel.
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Yeah, I saw that and don't remember much, except a tweaky rabbit going "omg bloodscape!" and freaking out a lot.
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Ersomniac, I have no idea what you mean, but I expect this was part of President Bush's last anti-Terrorism speech, or his speech on immigration set for tonight.
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quote:Ersomniac, I have no idea what you mean, but I expect this was part of President Bush's last anti-Terrorism speech, or his speech on immigration set for tonight.
He's a little late, though, if Disney beat him to the punch.
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Was Fantasia scary? We've had the VHS for as long as I can remember. When my sister and I were little, we'd always pick characters and act out each little sketch as we let the tape play in the background. Our favorites were the dancing mushrooms.
We probably did this at least once a week. My parents probably have it on video somewhere.
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I have always maintained (maintain is one of the few words I have trouble spelling to this day) that older Disney movies incorporated fear as a very important part of the story. The protagonists make us feel happy, the antagonists fill us with dread. Disney today seems to have abandoned that philosophy in light of comical movies (which I am still a fan of) but I miss the personifications of evil that grazed the early Disney movies. Snow White's evil queen who turns into a hag, Sleeping Beauty's Malificent who boasts that she controls "all the powers of hell". I love the old Fantasia, its villains come in so many different varieties (mindless brooms, to satanic demons, to mischievous greek gods. I loved the creation of the world followed by the dinosaurs. I had alittle trouble relating to the artistic interpretation of Bach's music at the beginning, but I enjoyed everything else for its own reason.
Not that complicated or tortured heroes is bad (I love Payback with Mel Gibson ), but I miss having pure evil fight pure good. When I watched "The Chronicles of Riddick" (I am not inviting a movie debate) they say "Sometimes evil must be fought by another kind of evil." I thought that line was just stupid.
I had to hide behind the couch growing up because some of these movies just plain scared the hell out of me, but the art as a reflection of life in me craves the honest story telling that sometimes evil is just evil, and seeks nothing but the destruction of all that is good.
Lastly, I found it interesting that just as often as not (at least initially,)the villains in old Disney movies were women: Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The Rescuers, The Little Mermaid, Alice In Wonderland, One Hundred and One Dalmations. After The Little Mermaid, all the villains are men.
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Disney seems to be moving away from Campbell's hero's journey. The stories seem significantly less forumulaic than they used to be.
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quote:Originally posted by Atlantis: Hephalumps? That reminds me of something...weren't they the baddies in Winnie the Pooh? Come to think of it, you know what scares me even more, that song the elephants sing when they're drunk in Dumbo. I couldn't sleep for weeks...
Pink Elephants on Parade. I actually didn't remember it from when I was a kid, but a couple of years ago, I was watching it with my daughter (who was four at the time), and I couldn't believe they did that. Heffalumps and Woozles was bad enough.
But then I thought about it. I know I must have seen the Pink Elephants on Parade as a kid, and I don't even remember it. And Tova didn't seem all that upset at either one of them.
So my conclusion was, we're all a bunch of overprotective ninnies.
You heard it here first.
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^^ lol that pretty sums up my feelings on the matter. Now I can think "oh what?! thats so drug related!" but as a kid I neither thought that way nor would I have cared if somebody had been upset with the whole scene.
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), but I miss having pure evil fight pure good. When I watched "The Chronicles of Riddick" (I am not inviting a movie debate) they say "Sometimes evil must be fought by another kind of evil." I thought that line was just stupid.
