Sunday, October 18, 2015

Young Fears 18: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Each October I like to run a series of Halloween-themed posts on this blog. All this month, I'll be telling anecdotes about things which frightened me while growing up.

I've spoken already about the impact the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark had on me and how the film was largely too-adult for me as a child. The sequel, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, was a lot more kid-friendly, probably because of the broader comedy material and kid sidekick Short Round. At the same time, of course, this was a film which contained so much violence and gruesomeness that it changed the way motion pictures were graded for audiences. But heck, my parents had no problem showing it to me...

I'm not certain which scene bothered me the most: the disgusting dinner scene? The heart removals? Indy being brainwashed? The guy who gets crushed under a wheel? The many encounters with creepy insects and/or reptiles? Hey, it all creeped me out back then. As a child, I didn't appreciate that Steve Spielberg and George Lucas were trying to homage earlier films they'd enjoyed as children - I only knew this was an intense film. I think I loved it from beginning to end - but I took it pretty seriously. After all, it featured people eating monkey brains - that's sober material, right?

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