My childhood was free of traumatic events. I suffered no form of abuse. I never went without. I
only say this because people like to throw the words 'childhood trauma' around
without understanding how much those words can mean, and I don't want to
be confused with those people. I know I led a charmed life.
That said, every once in a while, my skin would crawl. My heart would pound. A pit would open up in my stomach and I would have to take a moment to relax. It was a visceral reaction to an unpleasant memory, and while I won't dare compare it to the kind that victims of trauma have experienced, I won't pretend that it didn't affect me; and in some ways, continues to affect me. I was forever changed by the man in the drum.
This story begins a suburban living room, circa
1995. I am four years old. Video stores still exist, where people pay money to
own a VHS tape for a week. My father brings home a pile of said VHS tapes. I
don't remember what the other ones were. The only one that matters was the one titled 'The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T'.
No, really. Children are allowed to watch it and
everything. In fact, this movie is in large part the work of one Dr. Seuss.
Unheard of! He writes books, not movies! But it's true. Theodor Geisel did indeed
write the script, and his world-famous aesthetic is reflected in the sets and
costumes.
Heavens to Betsy, says my younger self, put it on immediately! I enjoyed Thidwick The Big-Hearted Moose and Yertle The Turtle and was not traumatized by them in any way! What's to lose?
Well.
In a startling coincidence, the story of this
many-fingered man also begins in a suburban living room, though this one is
circa 1953. A boy named Bart is attending piano lessons, which he hates. His
teacher - the infamous Dr. T - is a strict, overbearing curmudgeon whom Bart
also hates.
Bart is lulled to sleep by the tedium of his lesson, and has a nightmare. He enters a world where his piano teacher is the dictator of a chthonic black void hellscape. After so many years I can’t picture the sets very well, but everything I can recall about them feels big and empty and dark.
The ‘dream’ Dr. T wants to build a piano that’s
500 pianos put together; in one long, curving ribbon if I remember correctly.
That means he needs 500 boys to play it; at ten fingers each, he’ll have 5,000
fingers. Very specifically boys. No girls allowed in the nightmare hellscape,
which I happily accepted as a girl.
Two important details:
1) Dr. T, in the dream, is schtupping Bart’s
mom, and she’s down to clown with the evil piano teacher. As my memory goes,
she’s a widow in waking life, so it’s still vaguely appropriate.
2) Speaking of vaguely appropriate, here's Hans
Conried's face:
I present to you the man who plays Dr. T. Do not
be lulled into a false sense of security by this coiffed and necktied
visage. At this time and in my personal opinion, I would not kick him out
of bed for schtupping my mom in the piano dimension. When you're a sensitive
child, the things he does with his eyebrows are deeply troubling. You shall
look upon them, mortal, and know madness.
You’ve likely never seen his face before. I certainly hadn’t, this movie being the sole exception, but most of us grew up listening to his voice whether we knew it or not. If you’ve seen Disney’s Peter Pan, you heard him play Captain Hook. If you watched Rocky and Bullwinkle, which I did frequently, you heard him as Snidely Whiplash. He also played Thorin Oakenshield in Ralph Bakshi’s 1977 production of The Hobbit, not that anyone who’s been within a hundred yards of that movie wants to be reminded of it.
But I digress. We’re here to talk about a
different movie of which no one wants to be reminded. There are several reasons this is not a well-known film, not the least of which being downright awful
reviews upon its release. Of course I did not know this as a small child; I
only found out after a recent visit to IMDB, after which I decided to write down
the memories I did have before they could be coloured by anything new. Hence,
the intro from which I am currently digressing.
I remember nothing about the plot. I'm sure Dr.
T has some evil plan, and it gets foiled, and who could have seen that coming
in a movie intended for children, right? I do have vague memories of Bart
realizing that Dr. T’s not so bad in the end, but that could be me trying to
compensate for the knowledge I gained that humanity is without remorse and
deserves only to be devoured by Azathoth.
The lesser of the actual traumas was the
conjoined twins. I remember them clearly, yet for no clear reason. They share
one long beard, and let’s not forget, it was 1953, so it is referred to as a
‘Siamese’ beard. They do a musical number on rollerskates and it’s burned into
my memory. I have a vivid recollection of staring at them, mouth agape, my poor
little brain overheating as it tried to process what I was seeing.
Then there’s the infamous man in the drum. I think he’s
the reason I don’t remember much else about this movie; it vapourized the rest
in a white-hot flash of trauma.
In Bart's dream, Dr. T is a tyrant. Everything
must be perfect for him; which is unfortunate for the man who failed to keep
the proper rhythm while Dr. T was conducting his orchestra. We don't see any of
this, we're just told about it while Bart is being given a tour of the
nightmare void. What we do see is that this reprehensible fuckup has been
sealed inside a massive drum that is being pounded on from the outside in the
proper rhythm to teach him the lesson. He's learning it, apparently, as he's
pounding on the inside in turn, begging and shouting to be let out.
This scene did two things to me. The first was to scare me half to death. I didn’t have any of the usual childhood fears: dogs, spiders, monsters in the closet, clowns. What I was afraid of was loud noises, especially unexpected ones. Nothing in the world could scare me more. I didn’t even like the vacuum. I would cover my ears any time sirens passed. Don't even get me started on fireworks. The idea of someone being in a space that epitomizes sudden loud noises with no means of escape was a hard thing for me to process as a child.
The other thing it did was teach me that people
are evil. Not only is this man in a sound prison - he was put there
intentionally. This was the first moment I can remember when I realized
that humans could be cruel to eachother simply because they could. That you
might beg someone to stop hurting you, and that they might not feel anything
about it. This was entirely new to me. Of course, I had siblings who didn’t
always stop when I asked them to quit bugging me, but that was bugging. That
was not what, in my mind anyway, was torture.
I can’t say for sure that I even had a concept
of torture before this moment. Retribution, yes. Revenge, even, I understood
that. But causing someone grave injury simply because it was an available
option was not a concept that had ever stuck in my head before, as far as I
know. It’s stuck with me for over two decades now.
People in positions of power can do what they
like to you if you displease them. Humans are both willing and able to be cruel
to eachother with little provocation. If you don't do things perfectly you will
be subject to punishment by a man who looks like this:
Also, I'm just now realizing I grew up
struggling with perfectionism and I've never been able to keep rhythm.
Coincidence? Probably.
Probably.
That day I learned that there was something
scarier than loud noises: people who could subject me to loud noises with no
repercussions.
Haha. Re-percussions. I slay me.
Was that more strange than dogs or spiders? I’d
argue the opposite. As far as childhood fears go, I feel that ‘violation of the
Geneva Conventions’ is one of the more reasonable ones.
And, that’s about it for memories. I think it’s
time to form some new ones. Are you ready? Because I’m not. I’m not sure what
to expect.
Is it a movie that scared me, but is otherwise
good, despite what the critics say?
Is it traumatic AND terrible?
