Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Scared My Pants Off (This Title Sounds Weird…)
My favorite movie as a child was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It wasn’t the usual Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music. I think my strange love of the movie was due to the fact that it revolved around a dysfunctional family with one parent that was a genius but completely inept at taking care of children due to it. Basically, that was my childhood.
I even loved the scene where Dick Van Dyke and Sally Ann Howes (a.k.a. Truly Scrumptious, which is one of the best screen names ever!) posed as dolls to gain access to the evil king’s castle. It wasn’t creepy to me that they moved robotically while singing to whimsical songs; it was funny and somewhat endearing. Perhaps because I thought that being a robot would be sort of cool.
But the sequence that frightened me to pieces and gave me nightmares for a long, long time? Was the one that involved the Child Snatcher. He was as scary as shit! I don’t think Disney or Pixar or any other studios would greenlight such scenes in this day and age because they are highly sensitive of their audience demographics and viewing preferences and would therefore agree with me that the Child Snatcher would scare the crap out of pretty much every single child out there.
WTF?!!? Who came up with this character and how did he even end up in the final version of the movie? He is one of the scariest villains alive! (Props to the actor, though!! High five! He totally sold it! Unfortunately for me and my nightmares.)
He hunted down children while masked as a (seemingly) adorable entertainer and scoped out houses to kidnap kids only to put them in his “van” and then displayed his criminality (by dramatically dropping down the walls around his escape vehicle, not by doing pervert stuff like…well, you know) while laughing like a hyena as he was driving away. I mean, that was some frightening shit. Especially given the fact that those kids were shaking those iron bars on his getaway? That haunted me for years.
If I had to choose to face down the Child Snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Lex Luther…honestly, I think I would go with the latter. Because I know I could (somewhat) kick his ass.
Despite the heebie-jeebies the Child Snatcher gave me — and the PSA it should impart: “Because We Care, Children Please Stay Away From Weird Predatory Adults” — Chitty Chitty Bang Bang still remains one of my fondest movies. In addition to the superficial parallel to my own life in terms of early family dynamics, it involves characters that explore and speculate; they try to invent things and like to weave imaginary stories about flying cars and customized rockets and create illusions of fantasy to engage children, letting them know that it’s actually okay to be kids and be silly and stupid because that is the only time in your life you can be truly like that.
Kids (not that I have any, I’m speaking from my personal recollections) have that purity of believing in what we adults call the impossible. They earnestly think that magic exists, that there are such things as evil kings and queens that can be vanquished through our strength of character alone. They BELIEVE. Period. No contractual clauses or disclaimers. If you tell them that fairies are all around us, they will say, “I know!”. They are innocent in their early years, untarnished by the news cycles on politics or the state of the economy.
I often wish I could retreat back to that time in my life, as brief as it was. It didn’t last very long, my innocence. I kind of mourn that fact. So I hope that if I ever do have children, I can extend and suspend that time in their lives when they believe anything is possible. Although I’m not quite sure if I will show them Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (until I educate them in the use of deadly force).
