This paper discusses the film, The Tin Drum, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1979 and was based on the internationally acclaimed book by Günter Grass. The motion picture presents a brilliant exposition of a political allegory, which embodies within it the theme of a child who refuses to grow, and personifies an 'oedipal tyrant'. The discussion centres around the overstimulation of the child, his responses, and the ultimate resolution of his oedipal constellation through metaphoric parricide. Implications for this type of problem in clinical theory and practice are brought into the discussion.