Childhood is a time for fun, bright colors, and cartoons and kids' movies combine those elements to make entertaining stories. The imaginative plots and visuals of children's movies can lead to some creative and sometimes strange scenes. In fact, some children's movies have given us some of the weirdest scenes in cinema.
It's time for creators like David Lynch to step aside, because kids' movies have some trippy scenes that rival Eraserhead. Pink elephants, terrifying boat rides, and talking pastries are just some of the trippiest scenes in children's movies that left their mark on young viewers forever.
Labyrinth – The Masked Ball
Jim Henson's Labyrinth is a classic film that has never faltered in its popularity. The combination of fairy tales, Jim Henson creatures, and David Bowie is a winning concoction that is truly timeless. It also features some truly weird imagery, especially in the hallucinatory masked ball scene. Sarah (Jennifer Connolly) is traversing the labyrinth trying to rescue her baby brother Toby from Goblin King Jareth (Bowie) when, tired and hungry, she accepts a peach from companion Hoggle.
Hoggle is working for Jareth, the peach is poisoned causing Sarah to fall asleep and see visions of a terrifying masked ball. The ensuing scene is a dreamlike, Faustian party where masked guests swim around Sarah's vision in slow motion, leering and laughing at her. The whole scene is played out within a glass bubble that shatters and drops Sarah in a new location within the labyrinth.
Heffalumps and Woozles – The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh
Winnie the Pooh is a wholesome character, beloved by many. The honey-loving bear's adventures with his friends Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Tigger, and many others in the Hundred Acre Woods are the stuff that childhood is made of. However, in The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, things take a strange and dark turn after a visit from Tigger plants the seeds of a nightmare in Pooh's mind, as he regales him with tales of honey stealing Heffalumps and Woozles.
After Pooh drifts off to sleep, he finds himself surrounded by singing honey pots warning him of the Heffalumps and Woozles coming to steal his cherished nectar. The Heffalumps and Woozles appear, constantly changing color and shape, chasing Pooh and playing with their own body parts as musical instruments. The scene is bizarre and completely unlike anything else in the story. The accompanying song only adds to the madness.
Pink Elephants on Parade – Dumbo
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Disney's classic animated film Dumbo tells the story of a young elephant called Dumbo who is born with gigantic ears that he can use to fly. Already an out-there premise, things only got stranger after Dumbo accidentally drinks a barrel of booze. The ensuing scene has been parodied and homaged multiple times over the years, including being a clear inspiration for Heffalumps and Woozles, and is truly a strange five minutes.
After drinking the alcohol, Dumbo and Timothy Q. Mouse begin to hallucinate a troop of pink elephants parading in front of them, constantly switching colors and locations. The elephants are initially ghostly and see-through, but as the scene progresses, they become more grotesque. There's even one monstrous amalgam entirely made of multicolored elephant heads marching at the camera. It's a complete fever dream, switching between fun, threatening, and beautiful all in the space of five minutes before the pink elephants sink down and become the clouds on the horizon the next morning.
Talking Pastries – Young Sherlock Holmes
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Young Sherlock Holmes may not be held in the same regard as other films on this list, but it is a fun detective romp for younger audiences that sees a teenage Holmes and Watson meet and solve their first mystery together. The mystery centers on strange deaths and cases of hallucinations around their school campus and the surrounding area. Considering the plot revolves around people experiencing hallucinations, there are several strange scenes, but the strangest is a scene where Watson is poisoned and begins to hallucinate.
The scene is brief, lasting just over a minute, but it is extremely weird. Poisoned with hallucinogenic drugs and wandering in a graveyard, Watson hallucinates a display filled with delicious baked goods and other foods. He reaches for one particularly tasty-looking cream cake, and it promptly springs to life along with the other food items. The puppet pastries are terrifying. Long limbs swing at their sides as sentient sausage links trip and bind Watson. Once on the floor, the cakes proceed to try and force-feed themselves to him. It may be the shortest scene on the list, but it is certainly up there with the weirdest.
The Boat Scene – Charlie and The Chocolate Factory
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Also known as the Tunnel of Terror scene, this moment frequently tops lists of terrifying moments in kids' movies, as well as the trippiest moments in cinema. An already bizarre story and setting, things descend briefly into madness for the "lucky" winners and their parents as they board a boat on the chocolate river to reach the next part of the factory tour. Then, the boat enters a tunnel, and it's all a spiraling terror trip for the next few minutes.
The boat begins to pick up speed as the dark tunnel is filled with pulsating colored lights and Wonka begins to recite a chilling poem with increasing intensity. Strange images flash at the passengers from the walls as Wonka begins screaming about seasons, growing danger, and the Grim Reaper. Then as quickly as it began, it ends. The lights go off, and when they come back on, the boat and its passengers are at their next destination and Wonka acts as if nothing happened. In a film full of strangeness, this moment stands out as the trippiest and most fear-inducing.
