Monday Movie Madness

So, after last night, I've decided to start reviewing the movies watched during Monday Movie Madness. This may actually only last one time, or it might actually become a regular thing on this blog. We'll have to wait and see which.

Anyway, last night was "The Brave Little Toaster". It was one of my favorite movies as a kid, being nearly as old as I am (1987). Although, now that I've seen it as an adult, I wonder how my parents could have let me watch it--they were afraid to let me watch the Wizard of Oz because the witch might scare me.

First is the short version of the plot. Five appliances--a toaster (duh), a radio, a lamp, an electric blanket, and a vacuum cleaner--have been left in a cottage for at least 6 years--the vacuum makes reference to 2,000 days--by their "master" and eagerly await his return, keeping the house clean for him. The air conditioner--a minor character--had also been left in the house, and despairs of the master ever returning. The other five leave to go in search of the master in "the city of light". They have many hardships on the road, and finally get to the city, shortly after the master had left to go retrieve them so he can take the outdated appliances to college--because what male college student doesn't want a whiny, yellow electric "blanky" for his dorm--and they decide to wait there for him. The master's new appliances throw them into the trash, and they are taken to the junkyard where a sadistic crane magnet keeps throwing them onto the conveyor for the crusher. The master finally finds them, but gets pulled onto the conveyor with them, and is trapped under all the metal, being pulled toward the crusher.

I won't ruin the end for you, but if you want, the Wikipedia page will ruin it for you.

This movie is terrifying--there's a portion that I will call "7 minutes of absolute horror", after which one of the guys was curled up in a ball (I was halfway there myself). But let's begin at the beginning and point out things that make this "children's movie" into something inappropriate for kids. First, when "Blanky" hears a car coming, they all build a tower so that he can climb up into the attic and look out the window. He sees a yellow station wagon coming up the road, but he slips into a delusion, seeing a blue car with the master inside. He floats down to meet the master at the door with a very "mellow" look on his face.

After the car goes by, the air conditioner starts talking to them, telling them that the master's not coming back. The others reply that he's just grouchy because the master never played with him, which begs the question, the kid was allowed to play with the toaster--not to mention the vacuum? Anyway, the AC has a fit and starts banging against the window frame, cracking the walls around him, and spitting sparks everywhere. After a while, he explodes and falls silent, with his "mouth" falling to the floor. The rest just kind of go "Oh well, he was a jerk anyway" and decide to leave.

On their journey, they reach a meadow, and meet a lot of woodland creatures. The toaster runs away, because all of the creatures are staring at their reflections in him. He finds a flower in the woods who seems to be very attracted to its reflection, and runs away again. He looks back, and the flower is dead due to abject loneliness. The toaster returns to the rest, and sees that Blanky is being dragged underground by his new mouse "friends".

--Now begins the 7 minutes of absolute horror. Please turn away now if you are easily scared--

They leave the meadow and come into the woods. After a short time, they decide to stop for the night, and look for a place to shelter themselves. The lamp finds a hollowed out tree, and turns himself on to show that it's nice and roomy. However, it looks like a giant, scary jack-o-lantern. The others hide from it, thinking the lamp is being eaten. The lamp comes out and looks back on the tree, finally seeing the horror in it--and lit from the outside, the tree is not only jack-o-lantern shaped, it also has the texture of the skin of the orc army's leader in Return of the King. He runs from the tree, and they all notice that Blanky has made himself into a tent.

They all fall asleep, and Toaster has a nightmare. Please do not watch the video unless you are brave--this is the scariest part of the movie--but here it is. I have not the heart to describe it to you, but I now know why I started hating clowns as a child, and still hate them to this day.

Toaster wakes up from his nightmare, just in time to see a strong wind blow Blanky away. The lamp tries to look for him, but their Junko brand battery dies. The lamp refuses to give up on the battery, and stays plugged in and stretches towards the sky, and proceeds to get hit by lightning and collapse. The next scene starts without the lamp, but after a short time, he pops up and makes a Holocaust reference (which I didn't notice until someone else said it).

--Thus ends the 7 minutes of absolute horror--

They continue on, and come to a waterfall, where the vacuum has a seizure and starts eating his own cord. The others manage to revive him, and try to cross a chasm above the river below. Toaster--on the side they're going to--keeps fighting off having a seizure himself, but drops the cord, which yanks him off the edge. The vacuum--holding up the other end--tries to keep them up, but the cords come undone and the rest plummet into the river.

The vacuum saves them, but exhausts himself in the effort, so the others take to pulling him along. He falls in quicksand, dragging the others behind him. The last one above the surface is the radio, and just before his antenna drops below, a hand grabs it and pulls them all out.

Our heroes are taken to a little shop and put in the back room. The owner gets a customer who wants a blender motor. He comes back in and shoves a blender into a vise, then cruelly operates to get the motor. Cut away to show oil dripping from the vise handle to the floor. The appliances in the shop then sing "It's a 'B' Movie" and we see that some of them are cobbled-together from different appliances--à la thereifixedit.com--and all are absolutely insane.

They escape and make it to the master's apartment, meeting the cutting-edge appliances that the boy doesn't want--he'd rather have the ancient stuff he had as a kid--who then throw our heroes into the trash.

At the junkyard, the junked cars sing a song simply titled "Worthless" as they are picked up by the sadistic crane magnet and crushed into 1-inch cubes. The master arrives, due to blatant hints from the old black-and-white TV set that was friends with the old appliances, and goes looking through the junkyard with his very strong girlfriend--she rips the grille off of a car with her bare hands. Our heroes keep escaping the crusher, but the magnet won't let them get away, chasing them and putting them back on the conveyor, ultimately pulling the master with them, who gets pinned underneath other metal and can't escape the crusher--at least, not on his own......

Now that you know a fair amount of the movie, don't you just want to run out and show it to all the little kids you know? No? What's wrong with you? It's a kids' movie from the 80's. What could be wrong with it? So the two sequels are definitely out then, too? (I just learned about them from Wikipedia) Fine. Be that way.