Remember your first nightmare? – Not knowing what on earth was happening to your innocent little mind? – How about your first compound fracture? Your first slug to the face? How about this:
The first time TV media took its newest piece of warped cargo and spiked it so far up your butt, you didn’t crap for a year? I remember. That precious cargo was called “Babes in Toyland” – a made for TV movie from our generation’s year of Halley’s Comet.
There I sat. All young and happy. It was Christmas Time, school was out, the presents were piling, the snow had fallen, the living room smelled like Christmas Tree Pine, the music was playing, the parents didn’t hate each other – you know, regular happy time stuff. As Christmas Day neared, I would spend my days sledding and then warming up by the woodstove watching a myriad of Christmas specials as images of joy and goodwill danced before my young and, as of yet, un-raped eyeballs.
Then the soft glow of the TV emanated “Babes in Toyland”, brutally violating my optics in the process. Here I was, a kid at Christmas, feeling alone and frustrated because people obviously on the crack, had stolen a chunk of my holidays.
I distinctly remember having a joke with my brother about “Babes in Toyland” – we only needed to mention the movie’s title, or suggest we watch it again, and we’d peel out laughing. – Because as if anyone who doesn’t like slamming their privates in a door would do such a thing.
Looking back, I’m amazed that a Christmas movie, intended for a young audience could garner the results it did – Children HATING it to the point of tears, when they are just barely old enough to critique a movie in the first place. It takes a special movie with special people to come up with rubbish of such special caliber. Short bus type special.
Here we go: you’ve got your Drew Barrymore and your Keanu Reeves and a few other people that you old folks might remember from “Soap”. Basically, there’s this blurry flaccid-storyline nonsense followed by some sort of accident or dream-like state. Suddenly everything looks like the rainbow went ahead and barfed on everyone. The bad guy basically wants to take over “Toyland” and Neo has to stop him – something about some chick marrying him instead — Like ANY child caught onto that. What really happens is just one long, archaic suck-pot. When it finally ended, I had already started puberty. For a TV movie, it’s REAL long: 2 hours and 20 minutes – add commercials on top of that and you’ve got 3 hours of doing ANYTHING else in life, like grooming the puppy, gone forever. (IMDB has it listed as 140 minutes, some VHS versions have 98 – this confuses me – but not enough to care.)
I hear Evil People still air this movie. Each year ’round this time, you may find it beaming from some lonely, backwash UHF station out in the sticks and being watched by some lonely, twisted man who’s only Christmas present is pissing on himself. The movie is that good.
I could, literally, complete 2 viewings of Superman 4 before getting through one viewing of this. And given the option, I’d prefer it.
Give yourself a Christmas Present this year and give this movie to all your enemies.
as
“Watching The Babes In Toyland Trailer” is to “Watching the Whole Thing”
(Halley’s Comet passed us in 1986.)
Coming Soon… The Worst Christmas Movie. Ever.
