I lost my horse and my dignity in The Swamp of Sadness.

Fact: The Nev­erend­ing Story is suicide-inducing depres­sion fuel dis­guised as a children’s movie.

Here is but an abridged overview of the suf­fer­ing con­tained within: bul­ly­ing, cop­ing with the loss of your dead mother, child psychologist-concerning lev­els of inse­cu­rity, ass­hole adults, unsym­pa­thetic giant tur­tles, wolf-like beasts that feed on chil­dren, and of course, the sim­ple mat­ter of the end of the world.

But there is one scene in par­tic­u­lar that out-depresses all the oth­ers and never fails to reduce me to a pathetic, snif­fling mess:

When Artax Dies in the Swamp of Sadness

It’s one thing to lose your beloved horse. It’s another thing to watch him slowly sink to his inevitable death while you have no choice but to stand there and watch it hap­pen. But it’s on another level of PLEASE GOD JUST KILL ME NOW all together to have this hap­pen in a place called “The Swamp of Sad­ness.” And that music—oh God, that music.

Over twenty years later, it still gets to me.  Here’s the scene, if you don’t mind hav­ing your day ruined:

I mean come on, that is some trau­ma­tiz­ing shit to see as a child.

Thank good­ness we had the shiny, happy Nev­erend­ing Story theme song by the always hair-fashionable, openly-gay Limhal to lighten things up (which I recently learned  sounds pretty fan­tas­tic on a ZX Spec­trum, by the way), oth­er­wise I might have attempted to off myself with Pop-Rocks and Pepsi at an early age.

Other Lacrimal Fluid-Generating Posts from The League

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from  The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers  was to write about the things that make us cry –what movie, TV show, book, etc. turns you into a blub­ber­ing baby every time you see it? Here’s a round-up of what they said:

• Flash­lights Are Some­thing to Eat always gets misty for The Rookie
• Toyriffic loses it over this Father and Daugh­ter ani­mated short by Michael de Wit
• Green Plas­tic Squirt Gun  tears up over  The Boy Who Could Fly

More stuff and things!