So, if that trailer the other day wasn’t enough to convince you that there’s something deeply disturbing about Mary Poppins, perhaps this will do the trick: it’s a lengthy essay that details all the ways in which the 1964 “children’s” film fulfills all three dynamics that typically characterize horror films. (The average horror film is usually predicated on only one of these dynamics, so Mary must be extra horrific!) Consider:

…the film’s true ending. Mr. Banks has been either driven insane or replaced by a doppelgänger. Mrs. Banks is now the wife of a man who is out of work and has bad references, and Mrs. Banks is clearly unfit to hold the sorts of jobs available to women in London at this time. The children have been through multiple trips to Faerie, and come through the worse for it, their minds likely in torment because of the conflict between what they know and what they wish they didn’t know. The bank has been ruined, and the Banks’ saving may well be gone. Personalities, social positions, and lives have been ruined, and all because of the arrival of Mary Poppins.

And, for extra credit, take a gander at the essay that the Poppins piece references, which posits that Henry Winkler’s Fonzie character on the old Happy Days series (one of my childhood heroes, by the way) is a Archetypal Shaman in Jungian and Campbellian terms (Cranky Robert, you may find this especially interesting and/or amusing):

Every time Arthur Fonzarelli repeats this shamanic ritual, his power grows, until a good pounding from his fist not only starts the jukebox, but makes any broken mechanical device do whatever he wants. …Though few viewers recognize the truth of it, when examined critically it becomes apparent that the Fonz is literally working magic here. Like any shaman, he has gained an affinity with the specific lower spirits– the gremlins – who can foul or fix the electronics of machinery. By the end of Happy Days’ ten year run, his power of all things mechanical is positively godlike.

I love the Internet…