CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (1968)
Look no further than “The Child Catcher.” Yes, this is an actual character in the film. And, yes, he’s a jaunty fellow in brightly-colored cloak and hat who — ahem — stuffs children into a horse-drawn cage on wheels with the intention of killing them. But, oh, it’s worse than that. The Child Catcher actually doesn’t exist, he’s made up by Dick Van Dyke’s character in a series of stories he tells his own children. Did we mention that Van Dyke’s character is recently widowed and clearly hiding major emotional damage? Do we even have to?
SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946)
Speaking of being horribly racist … Disney has been trying for decades to bury Song of the South, but you just can’t keep a good tone-deaf, racially and socially repugnant thing down. Of course, in 1946, old white men meeting with other old white men saw nothing wrong with a chipper little musical about how slavery wasn’t really all that bad for black folks after all. C’mon … some of those white owners were downright cordial! Just keep that in mind next time you hear, or god forbid sing, “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” which came from this little gem of a film (and won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 1947).
