9. Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory (1971)
Oh, so you can take this one, can you? Big man on campus, huh? Whatever. For this writer, anyway,
Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory has always left a sour taste in my mouth. And by "sour," I mean that it leaves me feeling like I wish it wasn't nighttime and I didn't have to go to sleep yet. Point is, Roald Dahl's novels are weird and creepy and dark anyway, so it's a good thing when they're adapted with that sensibility in mind. Dahl famously hated this one, though - maybe it's the truly unnecessary and totally disturbing boat ride sequence that takes place around halfway through that put him off? You know: where all the kids and their parents are subjected to a mind-bending, drug-induced ride into their own nightmares. Why's it in the movie? Why did it need to be there? I see no gain, director of
Willy Wonka. And you can't explain yourself because you're dead. That part aside, anyway, this movie is just creepy in that '70s way. Gene Wilder is genuinely scary.