Thursday, October 22, 2015

Young Fears 22: Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

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.

Many people of the same approximate age as me have a similar story about Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. You're watching an odd but very funny comedy when all of a sudden you reach a very weird scene where a truck driver relates a scary story then makes a horrifying face at the camera. You stop the film, then rewind and watch it again. "Huh. Weird, but pretty funny," you think. Even your juvenile mind recognizes that the shift from comedy to horror is a stylistic choice which is meant to be funny in its own right. You like that scene. You tell your friends about it.

But in future viewings when you're leading up to that scene, you find something else to look at at the pivotal moment.

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