I unironically love these stories. Fish stories from pop culture, the formative memories that got away.
Three of mine were an animated movie called Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, the creepy Hugga Bunch TV movie, and my white whale, UFO Kidnapped.
Three of mine were an animated movie called Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, the creepy Hugga Bunch TV movie, and my white whale, UFO Kidnapped.
It is exactly the one with the girl robot that has...... That scene, yes.
Actually, I guess I've got another one that I didn't list there, which I only figured out what it was earlier this year, I think possibly tangentially to Disney Plus.
Sometime earlier in the fall, people on my timeline were talking about The Watcher in the Woods, possibly in conjunction with Disney Plus. I'm talking weeks or months ago, not related to the megathread today.
I couldn't for the life of me have conjured the name "The Watcher in the Woods" for the weird creepy Disney live action movie with the blindfolds and mirrors, but as soon as I saw people talking about it, *even without those details*, I knew. I knew. I looked it up, there it was.
And in the course of reading the plot summary on Wikipedia... I realized that YES, The Watcher in the Woods was *that* movie, but *that* movie wasn't the movie I had been thinking it was.
I had managed to conflate two movies I saw as a very young child, that I didn't understand.
I had managed to conflate two movies I saw as a very young child, that I didn't understand.
When I was very young, I tended to leave rooms during scary things. Not jump scares or horrible monsters or stuff like that. What made something uncomfortable for me to watch was dread. Atmospheric tension. Long build up. Lots of "this is scary" cues. Couldn't take the suspense.
I was an imaginative child (go figure) and the old "nothing is scarier" trope worked really well on me. I never saw all of The Watcher in the Woods, because of that.
Or Bon Voyage Charlie Brown, for the same reason.
Or Bon Voyage Charlie Brown, for the same reason.
Anyway, there was a TV movie that I saw, and that I assumed was a Disney movie because, well, I suppose those were the only TV movies I was familiar with. Made for TV movies was a Disney thing. I don't think I was watching it so much as I was playing in the room while adults did.
And in my mind, this movie that scared me and that I couldn't stand to remain in the same room as for very long became the same movie as The Watcher in the Woods, and every time that Walt Disney And You commercial reel rolled on a video tape, the blindfold scenes freaked me a bit
But when I read the description of The Watcher in the Woods, I realized... it wasn't the same movie. A key plot point, the only thing I remembered clearly, was missing.
The only thing the two movies had in common was possession and haunting, of a sort.
The only thing the two movies had in common was possession and haunting, of a sort.
The plot point?
The family had lost a daughter in a car accident, after the other daughter tied her shoelaces together for a prank at the son's instigation, and she couldn't get out of the car and it caught fire.
The movie was called Don't Go To Sleep.
The family had lost a daughter in a car accident, after the other daughter tied her shoelaces together for a prank at the son's instigation, and she couldn't get out of the car and it caught fire.
The movie was called Don't Go To Sleep.
I found it *immediately* when I learned that it had nothing to do with blindfolds and mirrors and just searched for the bit about the shoelaces.
And was very surprised to learn it wasn't a Disney movie and had nothing to do with Disney.
And was very surprised to learn it wasn't a Disney movie and had nothing to do with Disney.
In fact, it was a pretty standard "everyone dies" type horror movie, but again, I had been too uncomfortable to follow it closely. Other than the daughter dying in the car crash, I wasn't aware anyone died in it.
This movie first aired in December of 1982. I would have been two and a half. I can't find any information about encore airings. Wouldn't swear it was the original showing, but it kind of fits with the spottiness of my memory.
I think basically, yes?
...I had a possible starting point for you and I went to look it up and realized I'd done it again. For decades I have been misremembering Bean as the main character in Jim Henson's The Christmas Toy, probably by means of conflating The Velveteen Rabbit.
My family daycare had basically ALL of the toy commercial TV pilot movies taped off of TV, but if my mother recorded The Hugga Bunch, I don't think she showed it often.
Honestly, I think some of my antipathy for The Magician's Nephew comes from passing plot similarities to The Hugga Bunch.
Another weird childhood memory is an animated movie that Tammy Grimes was in that doesn't seem to be real - my brain weirdly combined her angry rant in the Last Unicorn with some of her lines as My Little Pony villain Katrina into a vivid monologue that I don't think exists.
....and I just learned that Paul Williams was in that same My Little Pony movie.
