As I pointed out in my Poltergeist review, I didn't watch much horror as a boy. That's probably a good thing, as even the non-horror flicks I enjoyed often scared the bejesus out of me. You kids today don't know how lucky you have it with your wussy Shreks and your lamewad Pikachus! Children of the 1980s are still in therapy over what Hollywood deemed "family films" back then. The following non-horror mind-screws should prove my point.

Return to Oz (1985)

In high school, I brought Return to Oz to a Halloween movie marathon. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid. Everyone scoffed. "A Wizard of Oz sequel? That's supposed to scare us?" I didn't hear a lot of mockery after the movie started. In fact, nobody said a word until about halfway through, when a friend of mine whispered "Can we please turn this off?" I'm not sure who thought this movie was appropriate for children. It gave me nightmares for nearly a decade.

Dorothy finds a key with an Oz symbol on it, shows it to Auntie Em and Uncle Henry as proof that Oz exists, and is sent to an insane asylum! An evil insane asylum where they give our young heroine electro-shock therapy! That's how this "childrens' film" starts! Once Dorothy gets to Oz, it's a speeding night train of horrors. How about that Nome King? Good LORD! Winged monkeys aren't scary enough anymore, let's give the kids The Wheelers -- sadistic shrieking psychopaths with roller skates instead of hands and feet! Kids today won't be satisfied with just a standard wicked witch, let's really ramp that up too, and ruin their lives! The sequence with the witch's cabinets full of human heads easily rivals anything in the Nightmare on Elm Street series for sheer terror. "Dorothy Gaaaaaale!!!!"

Even the heroes are horrifying! Jack Pumpkinhead? A hybrid stick n' pumpkin creature who calls Dorothy "Mother"? That's your good guy? Not cool, Return to Oz. Not cool.

The Neverending Story (1984)

Along the same lines as Return to Oz, The Neverending Story feels way too dark, weird, and just...wrong to be a kids' movie. I feel my eyes welling up now remembering Atreyu's horse slowly sinking into quicksand and dying. I can't even talk about the Gmork, that big wolfy vampire thing. And a storm called "The Nothing?" Sweet fancy Moses! Also, again, the heroes should not be scarier than the villains! The racing snail? The Rockbiter? That bat-dude? And Falkor? A big flying dog/dragon mutation with disgusting scaly eggs on his skin? We were supposed to root for this hellacious beast?

Another scream-inducing aspect -- one of the worst theme songs in all of 80's film. And that's saying a whole lot!

Last night, the San Francisco International Film Festival hosted the world premiere of Fog City Mavericks -- an entirely appropriate new documentary about the San Francisco Bay Area's contributions to film, from Chaplin to Pixar. The film itself is enjoyable enough (although you have to wonder about a documentary about film in San Francisco -- or about film at all -- that gives more screen time to Chris Columbus than Phillip Kaufman, but that's a minor quibble), but last night it was all about the Red Carpet -- with Bay Area personages like George Lucas, Robin Williams, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Walter Murch, a trio of Pixar's directors and many more. Above, Lucas gives an autograph hound a weary look; below, Robin Williams meets the press -- and there are many more photos after the jump. ...

There have been a lot of 'talking head' documentaries in recent years -- where a person or persons sit and talk about an idea: The Aristocrats, Helvetica, The Kid Stays in the Picture. In Murch, David and Edie Ichioka focus their camera, more or less, on film and sound editor Walter Murch as he talks about the craft of editing and the film's he's applied it to. And really, any 'talking head' documentary stands or falls on whether or not the head doing the talking has interesting things to say -- and by that standard, Murch is a movie lover's delight.

Reading Walter Murch's resume brings to mind the line from Belloq about the big whatsit in Raiders: "We are just passing through history, Dr. Jones. But the Ark ... is history." Murch has cut images and shaped sound for Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, The Conversation, Ghost, American Graffiti, THX-1138, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Godfather Part II, Jarhead. More intriguingly, he's also gone through a significant change in his field, from hand-cut linear editing to digital non-linear cutting -- a change as big as when monks trained in hand-illumination first looked upon Gutenberg's printing press.

But Murch is matter-of-fact about his craft, which is part of the film's appeal. He'll digress -- about the physiology of blinking, about his work technique of editing while standing, about the challenges and opportunities rising out of the films he's worked on -- but it all comes back to the central concern of this film and his work: How do you tell a story?