When I was a kid, my folks weren't very strict with what I was allowed to watch on television or listen to on the radio. I listened to two Guns N' Roses albums before I even turned ten, and I don't mean the neutered combined Use Your Illusion album. But television for me was a whole other breed. I had watched Nickelodeon a lot as a kid, but my folks would allow me to watch stuff like Spike TV with them, even The Sopranos.
Oh what was that like? Well even when I was young I was able to sum up the ending to Members Only in such detail the school gave my folks a call. That was it by the way. Not to mention in a later school we were screened the 2005 adaptation of War of the Worlds. Maybe that's why I wasn't scared of Son of the Mask, I was basically desensitized.
I had seen many flicks, part of them anyways, that stuck in my mind for better or worse, Summer of Sam, There's Something About Mary (well one scene anyhow), Parents (if there's one good thing I can say about Brad Jones is that he indirectly helped me solve that mystery, and Big Fish, among others. But, one movie had alluded me for so long, and the answer was right under my nose. Today I'm gonna go into my experience with a particularly interesting movie scene, and my very quick discovery.
Background
Years ago, ballpark estimate 2002-2004, I was at my grandparents house watching TV. I saw a movie featuring a woman fearfully looking at her refrigerator, then somehow turning up on a game show. Time after, the fridge comes to life and goes to eat her. That was all I remember from this movie.
Going into my later years, I had assumed I saw a relatively obscure b-movie with decent production values. I had rediscovered various movies through good luck and circumstance, and I had hoped to do the same with this movie. But this took quite a while.
My initial assumption is that this was something from the 80s or 90s, like something out of a horror comedy. Maybe it was some dedicated flick? Maybe this was part of an anthology? Maybe the scene was just some non-sequitur that had no bearings on the actual plot and existed solely to shock the viewer? But what would the movie it was part of be like? It was kinda like a Tim Burton movie, but lacking the gothic nature he's known for.
My only lead was this scene, and even the most specific searches didn't get me desirable results. All I got was some hokey short film out of it. My initial lead came in the form of The Refrigerator, a 90s horror film that may've been what I'm looking for. It wasn't, not even close. It didn't even look to have enough of a budget to achieve the effect I remembered in such detail.
So at this rate I gave up. There was no other way for me to find what I was looking for. However, that would change when I actually bothered to go on r/TipofMyTongue. Basically the Lost Media Wiki for those who just want to confirm stuff that is available. I went on their gaming equivalent r/TipofMyJoyStick to identify the only childhood game I couldn't remember the name of, and since I got such immediate results, I decided to try my luck there again.
[TOMT][Movie] Movie Containing a Nightmare Sequence Involving a Fridge Monster
"I caught this on television years ago, well just the scene in particular. The scene had a woman peek through a kitchen door, with the camera going to her refrigerator. It then cut to some kind of dream sequence where she was either on a game show or talk show. Toward the end of it, the fridge came to life, becoming like a monster and going toward her.
That is all I remember. I doubt this was anything more than just a non-sequitur, but this scene was so weird I just want to confirm it's real. The film looks to have come out some time in the 80s or 90s (given the animatronic quality of the fridge monster)
I'm not looking for The Refrigerator (1991), as it looks to be relatively newer than the film I'm discussing here. I don't know if this was just some b-movie that I caught on cable, or if this was a somewhat more mainstream movie that I don't know about."
This was the post I wrote on Reddit, hoping that once, finally, I can put this to rest.
And it was solved the day I posted it.
So it turns out the movie I was looking for, for all these years, was an incredibly popular movie that was essentially right under my nose. That movie was Requiem for a Dream. For those of you about to criticize me for making something out of such a groundbreaking and known movie, imagine if you're a kid who happens to see something incredibly bizarre out of context. This was well before I used the internet too.
Spoilers alert.
The context behind this scene involved one of the characters, Sara Goldfarb, fasting and using diet pills in order to fit into her daughter's red dress so she can turn up on a game show. As Requiem deals with drug abuse and addition, her mind would play tricks on her. I bring up fasting because it makes the fridge scene more logical. This would also explain the game show aesthetic as she would envision herself on the show, but things get weirder.
Her idealized self and the host emerge from the TV and begin judging her living quarters, as she had placed judgement of others above her own. The culmination of this marks the depletion of her sanity, and explains the fridge monster. As she had been avoiding eating to preserve an idealized image of herself, the fridge coming to life and to eat her marked that aforementioned break. Mind tricks are unpredictable, and that was one way to break her and send her on a frenzy.
Given how I phrased my Reddit post and finding out what I was looking for... it's kinda embarrassing. Not only was this a very known film, but even the fridge has its own wiki page on the Villains Wiki. I was way off on my estimation, as this came out in the year 2000, and it only looked older because this was produced for only a few million dollars.
But at least it was resolved.
Conclusion
It's funny how what I remember with the most detail can allude me based on the title alone. If you wanna see what I'm talking about with this scene, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr5aZPIm7o4&t=184s
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