Truly Scrumptious

In today's dark and cynical times, where the innocent is profaned for network ratings, a beautiful woman named Truly Scrumptious would be a porn queen. Or some desperate for fame wanna-be starring in her own reality show where she is promised true love as a prize.

But in my world, Truly is the beautiful angel of the best children's musical ever made: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I don't remember when I first saw it - the original release date of 1968 would have put us in Japan at the time. My sketchy memory wants to say that my younger brother and I saw it at the base movie theater in El Paso, which would have been 1970. My brother confessed to me years later that the Child Catcher had terrified him and had plagued his dreams for long afterwards.

So I was very happy to find it airing this morning on The Family Channel. My few minutes of television viewing before naptime turned into two hours of movie watching, punctuated frequently (to the kitten's and Jason's distress) by sing-a-longs.

"It's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," I told Jason. "See, that is Caratacus Potts, he's a crazy inventor who invented the flying car, but his father, crazy Grandpa Potts told someone that he had invented it so they kidnapped him to force him to make a flying car for the Baron of Vulgaria. So Caratacus and Truly Scrumptious and the kids have gone to rescue him, but children are against the law in Vulgaria and the kids are going to be snatched by the Child Catcher and they'll have to rescue everyone but Caratacus and Truly will fall in love at the end and live happily ever after."

He left the room.

And he missed the Baron's birthday party and gift (which was really a clever ruse to infiltrate the castle and take over, set all the children of the town free and save Caratacus's kids.

I love it every time I see it. So call me silly and old fashioned. I don't care.

Loki sez: I liked it too!