WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

Hellooooooo,

This is Doctor Sarcofiguy with, yet, another review!

In the gathering gloom of the holiday season, where we will be inevitably submersed in the weft, and weave of the "Harry Potteratzzi," the good doctor started to reflect, zone out that is, and dwell upon the movies he liked as a young, country sapling!

He thought of the greatest movie ever made, once a children’s book. No, not Peter Pan! Sure, yeah, there was a conniving pirate, but he was a harmless, inept yoyo! Alice in Wonderland? Naaah! The Queen of Hearts was a tease. She kept shouting for heads to be lopped off, but it never came to fruition. And if’n it did, it was all off screen, anyway!

I’m talking the greatest, sickest, funniest fantasy film ever made: Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory! Yeah, buddy!

Who can forget the sad tale of Charlie Bucket, and his house full of invalids? Charlie being the only other person working, besides for his dear momma! Who can forget a world obsessed with getting the Golden Ticket, the miraculous invitation that would gain the bearer, and one guest, admittance to the famous/ infamous, chocolate factory of one Willy Wonka?!

And how obsessed the world is! There’s a scene where a woman’s husband has been kidnaped! The ransom? Her case of Wonka bars! Her answer to the ransom demands: "How long do I have to think about it?"

That’s the kind of cheerful, black comedy running throughout Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. And at the epicenter of all this societal upheaval?! Why, Willy Wonka, the original Candy Man, of course! Who needs bumble bees, whenya got OOMPA LOOMPAHS!

Ah, WONKA! "Who can make the sunriIIISE! Scare some people TOOOOO! " Let me rattle off the adjectives, honeys! Eccentric. Snide. Condescending. Dementedly aloof to the cares and concerns of his hapless guests!

"What is this, Wonka? A fun house?!" yells a guest in frustration.

"Why?" Wonka asks innocently, "are you having fun?"

With Gene Wilder in the title role, you get a full tilt performance of a complex, sweetly homicidal maniac, who sadistically brandishes his walking stick, while luring children into his wondrous warehouse of titillating terrors! They set the kids up in this movie in the grand tradition of most horror films, where the ‘expediting’ of characters is uniquely suited to the individual. And all of it done with hideous, and giddy dispatch.

Augustus, the portly glutton who inevitably drinks from a river of pure chocolate, and is ultimately 'partook' himself, by the suction of the pipes beneath the river. "Oh, the suspense is killing me . . . I hope it lasts . . ." says Wonka, gleefully, as the boy is sucked up, and shot out an enormous tube.

Faruka, the bratty rich girl, the golden child who wants everything in the world. Poor lass, when she steps upon the ‘Eggdicator, (the scale contraption that determines whether the golden, chocolate filled eggs, laid by enormous geese are good or bad) she is considered a bad egg, and dropped down a shoot. Possibly to an incinerator!

"Is she really going to the furnace?" someone asks.

"Well, the furnace is only on every other day, which gives her a fighting chance!" explains Wonka, encouragingly.

How sinister! Brava, bravisimo!

The little girl, Violet, has an oral fixations you wouldn’t believe! Incessant gum chewing! She gets her sweaty palms, and anxious jaw bones, wrapped around a piece of experimental gum. It’s supposed to be a miniaturized, three course meal. Unfortunately, the dessert bit causes her to turn into a gigantic blueberry.

"What’s gonna happen to her?" someone asks.

Wonka, matter-of-factly, "Oh, she’ll be sent down to be squeezed...before she explodes."

Ah, the magic! It brings a tear to my eye. My left eye, right here!

While kids are being subjected to tunnels of grotesque, psychedelic images, or turned into blueberries, or unceremoniously atomized, you totally forget that it’s supposed to be a light-hearted musical. And that’s the trick of it really. It’s not a light-hearted tale. It’s very much like The Grimm Fairytales, where the stories were suppose to be cautionary tales. Tales to frighten little children into being good, little automatons. We have Wonka providing that same function, along with his wee, orange henchmen the Oompa Loompas, skittering around the factory, singing songs of bad parenting, and naughty habits!

Ahhhhh, the nostalgia!

So, if the line is desperately long at the gate for Harry Potter, trot on down to the video store. Check out a copy of the wondrously maniacal tale of Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. Sure to appeal to anyone into the macabre,as set to music! Which reminds me, gotta put my giant sized, Santa suited Jack Skellington doll, up for the holidays!

Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. I give it 4 out of 4 Czars! Dos-video-danyia, kiddies! Until we rent a video again!

- DOC SARCOFIGUY!

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