When I was a tiny Beard child, The Beard Father used to borrow VHS cassettes from a guy he knew at work. The guy had a huge collection of films, I mean literally huge. He had so many that he couldn’t watch them all. So he had a load of films hat he just didn’t know the content of.
I had a Beard Father who was happy to get the films for me to watch, but did not have any real knowledge of film. And the last ingredient in this perfect storm of parental responsibility, was The Beard Mother. Who took advantage of their trancelike effect on me, to leave me alone to do housework.
This made for a good number of interesting visual experiences for The Baby Beard. I now break these down into their different effects:-
The “Is This Actually a Cartoon?” (ITAC) Effect:-
The Beard Father began by borrowing what he thought were cartoons. As I was only 4 to 7 at the time, he clearly thought this was a good move.
The cartoons happened to be Japanese Manga. It simply blew my mind. I have no idea which ones I watched, because this was well before the time of Akira (arguably the most famous Manga). I remember one set in space, one of the villains was prone to executing these bunny things, for no reason, presumably just to enhance his bastard credentials - the bastard. The hero was a space cadet. In the end he turned into a baby, and his android companion turned into a human. This just happened on a beach, I’ve been suspicious of sand ever since.
There was another one about this boy whose parents were dead, and he was stuck on this planet. This bird thing tried to eat his brains and he needed a metal skull cap, to stop his brains leaking out, or something. Eventually, he found some companions, and they escaped to this old dude’s ship. However, in the end you see the old dude’s got the same skull cap thing. He’d rescued himself, during some crazy paradox!!!!
The “Mild Trauma Caused by Lack of Understanding?” (MTCLU) Effect:-
The film most responsible for this would be ET. I just didn’t get the bit where he died but then came back to life. I actually saw this at the cinema. I got through the whole film no problems. By the time The Beard Family got to the lobby I managed to say “The Alien died” before bursting into tears. This also happened to me at home, after watching “The E-WOK Adventure” just substitute the word “Alien” for “E-Wok”, and it was exactly the same scenario. Except my house didn’t have a lobby, and ET didn’t actually die. It was a different time of the day. Come to think of it, it’s not that similar at all, but I’m not going back to delete it now.
The “Am I Supposed to be Watching This?” (AISWT) Effect:-
The strength of this effect waxed and waned. At the beginning I felt like that because there was alot of swearing in the Manga films. I eventually got used to it, only to be hit by the lightning bolt of Jamie Lee Curtis in “Trading Places”. If you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about. I’d simply never seen anything like them in my entire short life. This also coincided with me discovering the function of the pause button.
The “Emotionally Scarred for Life” (ESL) Effect:-
There are loads of films that fit into this category. The most significant impact was Aliens. There’s a scene where the heroes find a young woman, who has an Alien inside her, which eventually bursts out of her chest. She begs them to kill her, shortly before it does. I had nightmares for about a week. I kept picturing loved ones talking to me, going all green, and exploding aliens bursting out of their chests. I really, really don’t know how I got to watch it.
It’s not just limited to that, I also have to give honorary mentions to an execution scene in “Missing In Action” (Chuck Norris B movie), and the killing of “Murphy” scene in “Robocop”.
The “Oh My Fuck, What The Fuck Were You Thinking? You Call Yourself Parents?” (OMFWTFWYTYCYP) Effect:-
One of the very few films that got the better of me as a child: “Day of The Dead”. I never watched it all the way through. This is a film about a group of scientists who do experiments on zombies with the help of the military. The military eventually finds that some of their infected compadres are also being experimented on. So you can perhaps see how this is not a suitable film for a tiny child. But I watched it. What the fuck were they thinking? The synopsis is clearly on the box, as are the faces of several blood thirsty zombies. I couldn’t even hear the music without having a minor nervous breakdown. I had to look out of my window, to make sure their were no zombies in the streets before I went to bed, for about 6 months. It was scarier than the original "Moomins".
It did help me in the end, because I’m dead inside now, so I don’t spend as much time crying over dead E-Woks, which means I have more time for other stuff - like blogging.
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