Some films by master director Steven Spielberg shouldn’t be seen at too young an age. That’s what happened to me with an Indiana Jones movie from which one particular scene burned itself into my head in a particularly unpleasant way
No other director has created as many blockbuster classics in his career as Steven Spielberg. Many people associate the most formative film experiences of their lives with him and were influenced at a young age by Jaws, E.T. or Jurassic Park.
My early youth was also influenced by a Spielberg film, but not in a positive way. Even as a child, I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with my parents, which led to years of trauma.
Ripped out Indiana Jones heart shocked me deeply
As a child, I often watched television with my parents. I was often allowed to watch movies that weren’t necessarily suitable for me. That’s how I came to see Spielberg’s second Indy film for the first time when I was about eight years old.
What fascinated me most at the time was the sequence in which Harrison Ford’s hero, Willie (Kate Capshaw) and Shorty (Ke Huy Quan) are welcomed to the palace of the young Maharajah with a “gourmet” menu of Indian cuisine.
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Culinary specialties such as live snakes, eye soup and the legendary monkey brains on ice seemed so outlandish to me that Spielberg’s adventure rollercoaster ride had already cast a spell over me by this point. After this disgusting highlight, however, came the scene that was clearly too much for my young mind
The trio has stumbled upon an underground temple through a secret passage, where they become part of a grotesque spectacle from a hill, unnoticed. The priest Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) is the leader of a gruesome cult and takes on a new victim in the scene.
(Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
The innocent man is tied up in a dungeon device and is unable to defend himself when the priest tears out his heart to the increasingly threatening sounds on the soundtrack. He then lives on (!) after his ribcage has simply grown shut again, and is lowered into a lava lake to be cruelly incinerated.
Stunned and completely unprepared, I had to watch the scene just like Indiana Jones himself. At the same time, my parents were amused by the spectacle on the TV screen and imitated the cult leader’s terrifying “Kali Ma” babble.
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I didn’t really care about the rest of the movie, because this shocking scene was immediately etched in my mind and I couldn’t think about anything else. Over the next few weeks, the moment when my heart was ripped out and, above all, the terrifying voice and the piercing music kept popping up in my mind.
My parents turned the TV back on every time Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom came on. Sometimes I was glad when we watched a rerun in the early afternoon. An edited version was always shown then, in which the sacrificial ceremony was greatly shortened and over much more quickly.
Nevertheless, formative film experiences of my youth are still inextricably linked with the second Indy part to this day. Steven Spielberg, the supposedly lovable family movie director, caused a trauma in my life
(The poor victim in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)
