Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (Widescreen Special Edition)

"Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" is not a child's movie. Not even close.

It's more like an Express Elevator to Hell. Let's be clear on that: whatever it is---aperture to Hell, gateway to a parallel dimension, portal to an alien universe full of diaper-wearing baby-eating carnivores---whatever it is, it's not a childrens' movie.

"Willy Wonka" seethes with Faustian menance and a lurking sense of something sinister afoot, just behind the scenes. It's a kind of cinemo-genetic splice of Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, Satan, and the Teletubbies, with a little shark blood, cobra venom, & curare thrown in for variety.

"Willy Wonka" traumatized me as a child. No kidding. I went to it with my parents, who were under the misconception that this was a fun, light-hearted childrens' romp at the local drive-in; I was digging my nails into my mom's headrest about 10 minutes into the thing. By the time the fat chick turned blue & was about to explode, I'd had it. My Ultra-Conservative, Vaguely Pious Little Boy Instincts had had enough.

My parents practically had to do a bootlegger reverse in our whale-like family Oldsmobile to get me out of there, skirting the puzzled & the damned on their way back to the Horror with their popcorn and junior mints. Even then, on the verge of escape, my fingers clasped over my eyes, I was terrified at what hellish horrors the flickering blue-hued mountain-sized silver screen might burn into my young brain. Why did I look, you ask? Why look, on the verge of escape?

Because I had to watch.

That's the grim, ghoulish secret of "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory", director Mel Stuart's cinematic Weapon of Mass Destruction & a screed advocating genocide against naughty children.

Don't believe me? Yeah, well, they didn't believe the guy who said the alien diplomatic manual "To Serve Man" was a cookbook, either.

"Wonka" is nothing less than the incarnation of what every parent wishes, secretly, to inflict on miscreant children: the Torments of Hell. Oh, and brutal, violent, gory death. And then little men in big-hipped pants come and haul your carcass away.

For one, there is the Chocolate Factory itself, a kind of gingerbread Auschwitz with looming smokestacks to match. The River of Chocolate is actually blood red: not brown, or caramel, or black, but red. Like blood. In fact, I think it is a river of blood, nourishing by way of strange caverns the vile, fleshy plants that fasten themselves along its unclean banks.

Or take the little troglodyte Oompah Loompahs, who shuttle miscreants into the Factory's Death Traps, after which they're never seen again. Where did they go? Wonka glosses this over like the hardened war criminal he obviously is: don't worry, he coos, the Oompahs (the Stasi? the Gestapo? The SS?) are "helping them" get better.

Even as a child I knew better. The Little Fat Blue Girl, for one? Yeah, sure, they're "helping her"---helping mop her bright pink guts off the factory walls after she exploded. Or how about the little boy dragged into a chocolate tube & doubtless suffocated, or Charlie & his grampa's brush with whirring steely death in the Decapitator?

Or what of the hellish topography of Wonkaland itself, where candy vats bubble like Yellowstone paint pots, bubbling, spitting, hissing, ready to snare and clutch and catch the unfortunate, usually a child, who gets too close & is scalded.

This flick doesn't even bother disguising its real agenda: consider its psychedelic tunnel boat sequence, complete with hallucinatory glimpses of a writhing Conqueror Worm, dead birds, ambulatory guts, & the licking fires of Hell, accompanied by a nearly spastic Wonka yammering about Rowers rowing & "the Fires of Hell a-Blowing (a film addition not found in the book).

Or best of all, consider the character of Willy Wonka himself, played by comic genius Gene Wilder. Wonka is obviously deranged. Wilder surpasses himself in bringing a kind of spastic, deranged, dangerous manginess to the persona of the affable old Dickensian eccentric imagined in Roald Dahl's truly childish children's classic (itself a work of pure unbridled whimsy). To a child, Wonka isn't endearing, he's dangerous. He's the Mad Stranger. You don't talk to him.

And why would you, when Wonka looks to be, and let's face it, probably is, a drug addict. Just look at the wretch: the ill-modulated voice, rising from sibilant to screech in seconds. Or the unkempt wispy hair jutting out from the moldy top hat, or the yellowish cankered clothes, or the wild, jerky, drug-addled mannerisms.

Is it so difficult to imagine this candy-coated Mengele with his syringe full of lethal blueberry custard, his vivisections done for the day, dispatching a troop of Waffen Oompah Loompahs to haul the latest batch of child-sized black bodybags out the back door of his Gingerbread Dachau while he retreats to the privacy of his miserable, woeful office to break out the syringe, the needle, and the spoon?

A child, rightly, recoils from such a Monster.

If you let your child be influenced by this tomb-rat, be prepared when he proceeds to torturing small dogs with a cheese slicer in the shed, and from there to trolling the seedier night clubs in search of boyfriends to bring home for sedation, dismemberment, and storage in the refrigerator (or perhaps a chemical vat, in a true homage to the original Sick Willy).

It is instructive to learn that Dahl, horrified by the cinematic adaption, filed a lawsuit against the producers and director Stuart, thus preventing them from using his characters again, and thereby scuttling sequels---and perhaps stoppering up a gate to the Land of the Damned.

Show this infernal concoction of slow death to the impressionable only if you want to literally carry out Christ's injunction: "Suffer the little Children."

JSG

great movie that teaches kids to behave or "you'll get whats coming to you!"....God Dammit anahow!!

wonderful, beautiful, charming, funny, entertaining, will make you long to be a child again, and most of all, be in Willy Wonka's candy world (instead of this crummy world!)

Don't let the star rating fool you. Despite this movie having an absurd plot, largely unlikable characters, particularly Charlie's family, and repetitive singing from the loompas, this is a fantastic movie. But wilder and the boy who plays charlie are the ones who really makes this movie a classic. ill leave the explanation of whats in this movie to the editors and other reviewers.

the reason for the 1 star deduction is because of the transfer quality. some scenes are quite bad. such as the sketchiness of when charlie runs home after finding the golden ticket. since its been ages since i've last seen this movie i have no idea if anything was removed.

Overall, this is a good buy. They're are interviews with cast and directors included on this too which makes even more valuable.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory is an awesome movie. I used to watch this over and over again as a child. My favorite character is Veruca Salt (Julie Dawn Cole) because she was so mean and spoiled. I loved how Veruca always seemed to get her way, it was so funny. This is a great movie that your entire family will surely enjoy time and time again.