There's some real nightmare fuel lurking in Hollywood's latest massive prop auction

Propstore is holding its Entertainment Memorabilia Live Auction later this month, and The A.V. Club is highlighting an eclectic—sometimes disturbing—catalog of movie props. The sale features coveted treasures like a mosquito trapped in amber from Jurassic Park's opening, expected to sell for over a hundred thousand dollars, and a Leeloo Dallas Multi-Pass estimated at sixty thousand. But it's the nightmare-fuel side of Hollywood that's especially striking: a heavily decayed Cat in the Hat costume from the two thousand three Mike Myers film, and perhaps most unsettling, the actual severed toe prop from The Big Lebowski. These grotesque items reveal a hard truth about cinema: props are engineered for short-term screen impact, not permanent survival.

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