7. The Creepy Guy Is Always The Nicest Man Around
It's hard enough to teach kids how to be safe. Little buggers will run out into the street, touch a hot stove, and give out personal information on the internet if you don't teach them right. And what's one of the number one rules that parents teach the young ones? "Don't talk to strangers." It's a pretty simple rule! For much of childhood, it's simply better to train them to identify teachers, other parents, police officers, and to ignore the man with the unkempt beard, scary dog, and the offers for candy. So, leave it to Hollywood to completely turn that moral upside down. For example, in the Sandlot, the kids who range in age from what appears to be 10-15 depending, are worried about entering the yard of a man with dead grass, rusty crap laying around, and a vicious dog that ends up chasing the oldest through town, terrorizing a 4th of July parade and ruining a perfectly good movie theater screen. Those things aren't cheap, either! I'd say it's perfectly reasonable for a child to be hesitant to enter that yard or talk to the person who lives there. Yet, in the end, not only does everything work out, but they trade their crummy old baseball signed by Babe Ruth for a fancy ball signed by him along with
all the rest of the Yankees. In exchange, the kids just have to come by and talk baseball with this mysterious stranger at his house where he lives alone. I hope their parents signed off on that. Of course, the quintessential creepy man with a heart of gold is Willy Wonka. A recluse business man that gives (okay, sells) candy to children. That's all well and good, and sure even the factory tour contest seems alright. Though throughout the course of their adventure inside his confectionery house, horrible things happen to the kids while the owner of the facility expresses an almost psychopathic level of apathy and idle amusement. Oh, sure, Gene Wilder is delightful, and we all love to watch the brats get their comeuppance and everyone's favorite youngster wins out in the end. Let's just make sure that if the kids ever really do encounter a man like Willy, they know to stay as far away as possible.