I've got something in my eye...

Aw, heck. I'm man enough to admit that certain movies have left me crying like a little girl (and that comment isn't sexist...just accurate.)

Here's the top 10 film or television moments from my childhood that brought me to tears (or at least had me sitting stone-faced with a lump in my throat, trying to control a quivering lip.) These were all first viewed in my grade school years.


10. KONG TOPPLES FROM THE WTC TOWERS

King Kong (1976)

I saw the 1976 King Kong remake in the theater, and while it was never a well regarded film, I loved it enough at the time for it to earn the coveted lunchbox slot for that year.

Questionable special effects and cheesy sequences aside (did we really need to see Kong blow-dry Jessica Lange with his big, puffy cheeks?), you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be affected by the big ape's final tragic plunge from the top of the World Trade Center towers. The disrespectful photographers scurrying across his lifeless body like eager maggots only added to my grief.




9. SNOOPY'S GOING AWAY PARTY

Snoopy Come Home (1972)

Who on earth thought it was a good idea to use Charles M. Schulz's beloved Peanuts characters as fodder for this sadistic sob fest?

Created and written by.... oh. Alrighty then.

In this feature, Snoopy is guilted into leaving Charlie Brown and the gang when his former owner, sickly and bed-ridden Lila, asks him to come back to her. Charlie Brown doesn't want Snoopy to leave, Snoopy doesn't really want to leave, and Lila, who is portrayed as a friendly and sympathetic character, leaves the audience with no one to root against in this depressing and frustrating situation.

The entire thing comes to a soul-crushing crescendo at Snoopy's going away party, as one character after the next succumbs to despair.

I distinctly remember foregoing dinner the night I watched this on TV... my stomach was already full after a big plate of W-A-A-A-A-H.




8. FROSTY MELTS IN THE GREENHOUSE

Frosty the Snowman (1969)

Little Karen is accompanying Frosty on a trip to the North Pole in this Rankin Bass animated holiday special. But as the weather turns bitterly cold, it becomes clear that Karen's life is in jeopardy.

Frosty carries her in his arms, looking for shelter, when they come across a poinsettia greenhouse. He brings her inside the warm enclosure, but before he can exit, the evil Magician (who wants his magic hat back) locks him in.

I can't tell where Frosty's melted body ends and my pool of tears begins...




7. MAMA ORCA MISCARRIES

Orca (1977)

Basically a Jaws rip-off but with killer whales, Orca opens with scenes of a killer whale couple cavorting playfully (they're monogamous, don't you know), traveling together in pods like a big happy family, and even saving a scuba-diver from a shark attack.

So about the last thing I wanted to see was the female whale being harpooned, reeled in and suspended from the boom of a fishing boat while still alive.

Did I say the last thing I wanted to see? Make that second-to-last.

The last thing I wanted to see was the mommy Orca, still dangling over the deck, miscarry her calf, which drops onto the deck before being unceremoniously tossed overboard.

Daddy Orca roars "No-o-o-o-o-o!" And so did I... (tapping chest) ...in here.





6. LINDERMAN'S BIKE GETS TRASHED

My Bodyguard (1980)

Loner Ricky Linderman (Adam Baldwin) forms a delicate friendship with Clifford (Chris Makepeace) and his circle of friends after defending them against the bully Moody (Matt Dillon).

But despite his reputation as a psychotic tough, Linderman's really a gentle giant, still carrying guilt over the accidental death of his little brother years earlier. So when bully Moody and his new "bodyguard", the macho Mike (Hank Salas), start trouble at the park, Linderman can't even find the will to defend himself.

The despicable pair double-team him, before finally throwing his vintage motorcycle, which he'd rebuilt piece by piece over the past year, into the lake.

The lessons I took away:
a) high school is a horrible, horrible place, and...
b) if you love something, don't set it free--lock it away somewhere. Somewhere where Moody and Mike can't get it.




5. DUMBO VISITS HIS MOTHER

Dumbo (1941)

Dumbo's mother is locked away as a "mad elephant" after aggressively defending her baby from being picked on by a mob of obnoxious kids.

Dumbo visits her one night, but she's chained to the wall and can barely reach her trunk out the tiny barred window. The gentle melody of "Baby Mine", heard while mother rocks baby Dumbo in her trunk, only magnifies the bittersweet scene.





4. HAZEL JOINS THE BLACK RABBIT

Watership Down (1978)

We've followed Hazel on a grand adventure, risking death many times, to find a safe new home for his family after their den was demolished by construction vehicles. In an epilogue set years later, an older, tired Hazel is approached by the ghostly Black Rabbit, who invites Hazel to join him.

After one last look at the younger rabbits of his warren (whom, the Black Rabbit assures, will be alright without him), Hazel lays on his side and takes his final breath.




3. ASLAN IS SACRIFICED

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (1979)

Aslan the lion could have torn the White Witch and her monstrous minions to pieces. But instead, he lets them murder him in a black magic ritual, part of a secret bargain he's made to spare the traitorous Edmund from a similar fate.

Lucy and Susan are watching from a hidden position, and, like the audience, are unaware of what is going on until it unfolds before their disbelieving eyes.





2. WE'RE LOSING E.T!

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

The little alien that we'd grown to love over the past 90 minutes finds himself withering away on an operating table, surrounded by clueless adults who seem to be doing more harm than good.

After the damage is done, Elliot (Henry Thomas) says a final solemn goodbye to E.T., whose lifeless body must now suffer the indignity of being frozen for future lab study.





1. OLD YELLER GOES MAD

Old Yeller (1957)

Old Yeller, the big yellow lab who is adopted by young Travis Coates (Tommy Kirk), proves himself time and again to truly be man's best friend, even fighting off a wild wolf that trespasses on their remote wilderness farm.

But mother Katie (Dorothy McGuire) realizes only a rabid wolf would attack so boldy. There's a poignant moment where the audience sees, just by the expression on her face, that Katie grasps the terrible implications for Old Yeller, then just as quickly masks her concern, so as not to upset her children. It's the moment when we first realize things will soon take a dark turn.

Old Yeller must be isolated in a shed for several days until they are sure he hasn't caught "the madness". But soon the sickness has transformed him into a savage beast, too dangerous to be kept alive.

Travis assumes the responsibility for putting him down. Classic Disney films are sometimes stereotyped as being sugar-coated frivolity (dare I say... Pollyannish?) but that isn't always true, as anyone who's seen Old Yeller can testify.




Whew--all that remembering about stuff that used to make me cry has made my eyes itchy. I'll just turn my head away and dab them with a Kleenix.

Every title is available on DVD.

The Haunted House (1975, Disney's Wonderful World of Reading)

Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto explore a spooky old house after running out of gas in this 1975 Disney book, The Haunted House.

And no, this isn't Disneyland's Haunted Mansion... although Mickey visited that in an Oct. 1969 issue of Walt Disney Comics Digest (covered at Doombuggies.com).

This dilapidated old house is perched on top of a hill in a forest of gnarled, leafless trees, spider-webs, and a skyfull of swooping bats.

The trio encounters a portrait with shifty eyes...

...a bat-infested library...

...and a jiggling skeleton...

Buy it here.

Strangely Enough! (C.B. Colby, Scholastic Book Services)

Strangely Enough is a collection of unusual tales, "good yarns" and stories of the supernatural, collected by writer C. B. Colby, who, according to the book's preface, used to run them in his newspaper column, "Adventure Today."

Illustrated by David Lockhart (save the unusual alien landscaped cover of the edition pictured here, which is by Harvey Parks), Strangely Enough was originally printed in 1940, but has resurfaced in various editions since (the copy pictured here is copyright 1963), although I somehow managed to miss this title when it turned up as a selection in the Scholastic Book Club in the 1970s, and only recently became aware of it thanks to a recommendation by reader Jeanlass.)

Colby makes no attempt to either validate nor debunk any of the stories here, presenting them without judgment as pieces of entertainment. As he states in the preface:

I think it is better to be like the little old lady who said, "I don't believe in ghosts--but I'm afraid of them!" than never to have enjoyed a bit of spine-tingling at the personal encounter with something for which there seems to be no sensible explanation.

Some of the stories presented here are recognizable from urban legend, while others are alleged to have actually happened. Two of the stories here (one about the ghostly appearance of faces at sea, the other about moving coffins in a Barbados crypt) have reappeared in another collection of supernatural stories, Ghosts-The Eerie Series (1976, Seymour Simon).

Here's a sampling of some of the ninety stories contained in Strangely Enough...

THE WHITE DOVE is a folk tale about a widowed husband whose departed wife returns in the form of a white dove.

THE SUICIDE TREE is not as sinister as it sounds. The author discusses some unusual trees he's seen, including one that seems to be killing itself by splitting its main trunk with one of its own branches.

THE SEABIRD is the name of a mysterious sailing ship that, in 1880, beached itself on the shores of Newport, Rhode Island, without a single passenger found aboard.

THE LIGHT IN THE WINDOW tells of a haunted painting of a real Scottish castle, depicted with a single lit window. Purchased in a "dingy little store", the buyer keeps the curiosity in his home for many years before noticing the painted lit window has mysteriously darkened, with no evidence of tampering. After researching the history of the castle, he learns the phenomenon is related to a person who died in that room 500 years ago.

THE LADY ON THE HIGHWAY, one of two variations of the "ghostly hitchhiker" tale to appear in this book, tells of an old woman which mysteriously disappears after having been picked up by a pair of traveling businessmen, who later learn she had died years earlier.

The second hitchhiker tale, LAVENDER, in which the ghostly passenger is lent a coat that is later found lying at the woman's grave.

THE GHOST IN THE GRAVEYARD is the humorous story of a frightening white form seen moving in the graveyard at night, which turns out to be the white head of an otherwise black cow.

NO GRASS ON THE GRAVE tells the story of John Newton, who, upon being falsely convicted of a crime in 1821, correctly prophesied that no grass would grow on his grave.

The HAUNTED SCHOOLHOUSE tells of an 1870 haunting in Newburyport, Massachusetts, by a ghost manifesting itself incrementally over several days, first as a glowing light, then a disembodied hand, then an arm, and finally a schoolboy.

NEW ENGLAND'S DARKEST DAY accounts an unusual dark sky that occurred in the middle of the day in May of 1780.

In LORD DUFFERIN'S STORY, presented as a traditional English story of the supernatural, a British diplomat is haunted my visions of a man dragging a casket on his back. He later encounters the same man operating an elevator, a sight so frightening he refuses to board. The elevator subsequently malfunctions, sending several people to their deaths. Variations of this story, in which the mysterious figure drives a hearse, and utters the foreboding phrase "Room for one more...", has turned up in urban legend, and even as an episode of The Twilight Zone, "Twenty-Two".

FALLING OBJECTS FROM HEAVEN describes unusual instances of walnuts, stones and even bones apparently falling out of the sky.

CIGAR IN THE SKY is one of several accounts of encounters with apparent U.F.O.s, this one in 1882, in the skies over Greenwich, England.

Strangely Enough is out of print as of this writing, but can be had on the second-hand market... strangely enough!... for about the same price as the edition pictured here went for new back in 1963.