This Wholesome Streaming Family Film Traumatized Rob Zombie as a Child: “It STILL seems freaky”
Rob Zombie has surely traumatized countless youngsters who snuck a peak at one of his films before they were ready for the visceral content contained within. On that basis, one might assume Zombie had a similarly traumatic cinematic experience as a child. As it turns out, he did have a memorable reaction to a film that he took in at an impressionable age. But the picture that ruined his childhood is absolutely not what you’re expecting.
A while back, Zombie sat down with Collider to discuss his experience making Halloween II. After the site asked about the production process, they pivoted a bit and probed about the first film to scare Zombie as a child. Instead of Black Christmas or something similarly macabre, the musician-turned-director gave a less-expected response.
“I think probably the scariest thing, as weird as it sounds, was The Wizard of Oz and the flying monkeys with the witch,” Zombie told the outlet. “I remember seeing that. It STILL seems freaky. That was f**ked up.”
Though Zombie’s response is unexpected, it makes quite a bit of sense. I seem to remember being traumatized by both The Wizard of Oz and its criminally underrated sequel as a youngster. Not to mention, Wicked is currently playing in theaters and will likely inflict witch-related trauma on a new generation of impressionable moviegoers.
This setup for The Wizard of Oz is this:
When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and en route, they meet a Scarecrow (Ray Bolger) who needs a brain, a Tin Man (Jack Haley) missing a heart, and a Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who wants courage. The wizard asks the group to bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton) to earn his help.
If you are keen to revisit The Wizard of Oz to better understand why the film traumatized a pint-sized Rob Zombie, you can do just that. The film is available to stream on Max as of the publication of this post.
That’s all we’ve got for you at present. Stay tuned to the site for more anecdotes from popular creators in the genre space as we succeed at unearthing them. And if you’d like to tell me which films traumatized you in your formative years, come find me on Threads.
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