The tunnel scene from 1971's Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory terrified an entire generation of children — here's all the creepy imagery that flashes during the sequence. Not only is the late Gene Wilder iconic as Willy Wonka, but he also starred in other classic comedies like Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles, The Producers, and Young Frankenstein. He co-starred with the great Richard Pryor in a number of comedies too, including Silver Streak, Stir Crazy, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and 1991's Another You.
Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory was adapted from the 1964 novel by Roald Dahl, who also wrote The Witches and Matilda. The movie follows Charlie, a young boy who receives a Golden Ticket to visit the titular factory and meet the somewhat eccentric owner. While it received a positive response, Dahl was famously unhappy with the final product due to its deviations from his book and disowned it. The movie soon became a classic and was remade in 2005, with director Tim Burton adding his signature gothic flair. A Willy Wonka prequel is currently in the works with Timothée Chalamet in the lead, while Ready Player One is heavily inspired by its structure.
It's something of a tradition in classic kids' movies to have at least one unexpectedly traumatic sequence, such as the horse drowning in The NeverEnding Story. Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory may just have the best of all, thanks to the infamous tunnel scene. Clocking in at a mere two minutes, this sequence finds the tour going through a dark tunnel in which things get very psychedelic. Wonka recites a creepy poem while unsettling images flash on the walls and the tour group becomes gradually more terrified. Here's a quick breakdown of the imagery that appears during the scene.
A flying cockroach
A millipede crawling over a human face
An extreme close-up of an eye
A chicken being decapitated
An image of Wonka's rival Arthur Slugworth
A lizard eating a bug
A close-up of a scorpion's mouth
These images only flash briefly, so they're tricky to make out during initial viewing. They add to the unsettling effect of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory's tunnel sequence, as does Gene Wilder's gently increasing mania as he recites the poem. The other actors in the scene weren't informed Wilder would be delivering the poem in that manner, leading to their genuine responses during the scene.
Why The Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory Tunnel Scene Is So Scary
The Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory tunnel scene is widely regarded as one of the scariest moments in the movie. The images themselves are quite unsettling when considered in isolation. Besides the fact that genuinely creepy imagery is used, the scene is juxtaposed against a magical chocolate factory setting. As kids get picked off one by one, people on the tour start to realize there's more to the factory and the sinister Willy Wonka than they initially bargained for, and the tunnel scene only emphasizes the eerie nature of the location.
It also stands to note that the pictures are spread across the screen in rapid succession, not really giving audience members a chance to digest the unnerving images. All of these factors make the tunnel scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the weirdest and scariest moment in the movie. The Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory tunnel is still considered one of the creepiest scenes in a children's movie, and it's not hard to see why. While the imagery that appears is hardly on the same level as the flashes of Hell from Event Horizon, it still has a very unsettling effect.