A movie from my youth, revisited

A fresh jar of peanut butter -- there is hardly anything better. I can eat the shit out of some peanut butter. Sometimes I will sit with a spoon in one hand and a jar of pb in the other and just shovel the glorious, golden substance into my mouth.

I sound fat.

More often than not I will have flashbacks about a movie from my youth while I am cracking out on pb. And that movie is called The Peanut Butter Solution. Anyone remember this fine film from 1985?

The movie was super weird and I only remember seemingly insignificant snippets of it - random impressions from scenes that don't seem to match up with each other. Now I want to point out that I realize that when I reflect upon times-gone-by, my recollections are rarely accurate (some might even go so far to say that I make up my memories, untrue) but this sequence of memories seemed to be particularly mish-mashed.

So after watching The Labyrinth on a friend's projector a few weeks ago I had a brilliant idea -- I suggested we try to find the movie that has plagued my peanut butter consumption for the last two decades on the world wide web together. My buddies reluctantly agreed to look for a trailer of the Peanut Butter Solution after my description that included details like, "A kid grows really long hair which ends up fueling a paintbrush company," and "someone walks into a painting and gets scared."

I don't understand why they didn't want to watch the movie with me immediately.

Here is what we found:

Marketed as a "Hair-raising, Heartwarming Family Comedy," I was thoroughly confused.
Because I  remember this being a horror film.

Fast forward a few days and I happened to be talking about this movie again (I had been thinking about it nonstop since the trailer viewing) but THIS time my audience/friend had actually seen the movie before. Which is cray. Because as far as I can tell, anyone who possibly saw this movie in the 80's has blocked it out entirely. So she and I immediately set a date to watch the movie in full so that we could find out if our childhood memories about this film served us correctly.

Highlights:
1) By far the most upsetting factor in this movie is that the sister of the protagonist, who looks like a dude, is portrayed as if she were having an affair with her father while her mother was away in "Australia."
2) Next up for terrible-ness: The best friend of the protagonist decides to spread the peanut butter solution (which grows a never ending supply of hair) on his private parts. That actually might win for most upsetting, but the daddy-daughter affair is much more in your face.
3) 20+ children are stolen and sequestered into a concentration camp/slave trade of sorts.
4) Homeless people are involved and effectually stalk the protagonist.

5) Dead people are everywhere.

6) The elementary school teacher is mentally ill and as a result is abusive towards his students. As if teachers need to be promoted any more negatively.
7) All of the theme music scares me.
8) The Asian kid in the Peanut Butter Solution is stereotyped to look like the Asian kid from Goonies. (racism)

Overall, it's a pretty good film.