Geekscape Presents The Top-10 Childrens’ Horror Properties
Halloween! Yay! Halloween! Woo! Halloween! I love it! I love Halloween. Maybe it’s because I peaked at age 10 or so, but I have deep affection for the Halloween traditions. To this day I still love gathering a costume, I still love to chew on way candy corns, I love to buy whatever pumpkin flavored trinkets various retails outlets are offering (the pumpkin pancake mixes and the pumpkin milkshakes are particularly good). I never tire of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” And I love the feeling of pumpkin goop on my hands.
Indeed, so much of the average Halloween-obsessive’s affection can directly stem from positive childhood experiences. I probably wouldn’t be so keen on the holiday today had I not had such a good time trick-or-treating in my ladybug outfit. Yeah, I went as a ladybug one year. You wanna make something of it? I also was always fascinated with horror movies, even when I was of the age that watching horror movies was terrifying and nightmare-inducing. I’ve written in the past of that horrible fucking clown from “Poltergeist” burning holes in the sanity of stern children everywhere.
Rather than sit through another dull slasher, though, or re-watch “The Shining” for the 15th time, this week I’d like to recommend the following kid-friendly horror films, books and stories to re-ignite early childhood nostalgia, and remind you how much fun it is to be scared, even if the movie in question is decidedly friendly and merely spooky. And I’ll say this: sometimes playfully spooky can be more memorable, more fun and sometimes even a bit scarier, than some bland gore-fest or geek show like “The Human Centipede.”
I’ve come up with ten for the purpose of this list, but if there was a television special, movie, book or story you were particularly fond of, let me know what it was. I think an outright database of Children’s Horror is definitely needed in this world. N.B. So as to not be redundant, I will leave “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and “Poltergeist” off of this list for the time being. This list will also be stemming rather directly from my own childhood experiences, so if I skew a bit older, it was because I watched old TV specials in the early ‘80s.
The Groovie Ghoulies (1970-1972)
This was a cheap animated series from Filmation, the same studio that brought us “He-Man and the Master of the Universe,” and the animated “Star Trek” show. The show was about a group of hipster rock star monsters who were tangentially friends with Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Like its contemporaries from Hanna Barbera, “The Groovie Ghoulies” banked on hot pop culture references, and did an arch send-up of 1950s sitcom situations. The Ghoulies were themselves a group of monsters (based, as is universal, on the Universal monsters), who played in a rock band, and lived in a boarding house specially for spooks. The Dracula character, named Drac, was played by Larry Storch from “F-Troop.” The Wolf Man character, named Wolfie, was a clear impersonation of Cheech.
While most kids, especially kids today, will be lost upon the sitcom parody, and probably don’t know who Cheech Marin is, unless they bothered to buy that record he did, they’ll certainly dig the friendly monsters, the wacky ghosts, and the general sense of spookiness that the show exudes. Like I said, it’s cheap (the laugh track can grate on one’s nerves), but it’s still fun. It’s certainly a sight better than “Scooby-Doo,” which also dealt with ghosts and haunted houses, but was just a twinge more insufferable in comparison. I’d rather kids see this little pop-culture oddity instead.
Filmation, by the way, were the producers of the 1986 “Ghostbusters” cartoon that you didn’t watch. You remember the one. Not the one to feature the characters from the movie, but the retread of the ultra-obscure 1975 sitcom that just happened to share a title with the hit 1984 feature film.
General Mills’ Monster Cereals (1975 – present)
Oh how those horrible sugary cereals defined our lives as children. Have you tried something like Lucky Charms today? How did that somehow mutate into an acceptable breakfast food? It has marshmallows in it! And how come so many of them are flavored like chocolate? I like chocolate, but even as a kid, I tried to wait until at least 11am to have candy. Well, when I had the willpower. O.k. Maybe I would have loved to have chocolate for breakfast. Of the sugary cereals that have left the deepest impression on the average Gen-Y pop-culture consciousness, the Monster Cereals from General Mills probably is the most vividly remembered.
To this day, certain grocery stores carry Count Chocula, with the chocolate cereal and chocolate marshmallows (and they’re really bland without at least a half punt of brown sugar and a few ounces of maple syrup). Frankenberry is a strawberry version of the same cereal. Boo Berry is blueberry. From 1975 to 1983, there was a wolf man cereal called Fruit Brute, supposedly lime flavored, although I have not had the pleasure of eating it. Nor have I been directly exposed to Yummy Mummy, which was just Fruit Brute rebranded in 1987. And while the cereal itself is the nutritional equivalent of feeding your kids cake frosting, there was something fun about having monsters in the kitchen. Aiding the mythology was a series of animated commericals advertising the stuff, all featuring the monsters and their various adventures.
A friend of mind recently posited that, since they all appear to live in the same haunted cereal castle, that there was a subtle interplay between the monsters for control of some cereal kingdom. Of the three, I think I always fell on the side of Boo Berry. The ghost looked the coolest to me, and appeared to be the underdog.
The Halloween Tree (1972)
Conceived as a screenplay for an unproduced Chuck Jones feature film, Ray Bradbury’s The Halloween Tree was published in book form in 1972. Bradbury sought to write the ultimate Halloween story, and tried, like a friendly old and slightly uncool schoolteacher, to educate the young whippersnappers in the origins of Halloween, and the various spooky costumes therein. He didn’t just want to teach people about “The Mummy” movies, but actually tell them about the mummification rite from ancient Egypt. Episodic and educational may not sound like very appealing storytelling devices for you at the age you are, but it makes for a dandy structure for kids. Plus, it lets them know why we dress as vampires and beg for candy.
The story is about a group of eight kids, all in various costumes, eager to meet a ninth for a merry night of trick-or-treating. They find that he may have been kidnapped by a mysterious warlock named Moundshroud, and have to climb a giant spooky tree full of jack-o-lanterns to get him back. The tree, in turn, magically whisks each of them through time to explore the origins of their respective costumes.It’s a briskly written and atmospheric little kids’ tale that should be read every year.
In 1992, an animated TV movie was made of The Halloween Tree, and while the animation is kind of crude, and the voice work is boilerplate Saturday Morning (the presence of Leonard Nimoy notwithstanding), it stands above most of its ilk.
Which Witch? (1970)
Picture that awesome board game Mouse Trap, but set it in a haunted house, and you’ll have an idea of how awesome this game was. I hadn’t heard of it until recently, but my wife remembers playing it as a wee lass, and we managed to track one down in a mostly-complete form. The game was an elaborately constructed cardboard house, complete with a plastic staircase and a chimney. Your goal was to work your way through the four quadrants of the house, avoiding witch spells that would turn you into a mouse, and to dodge the marble. The marble was dropped into the chimney, and would randomly land in one of the four rooms. If it knocked over your token, you had to move back.
As adults, board games must be massively complicated, and have huge amounts of critical strategy involved to keep our serious attention and challenge us. As kids, it’s enough to work your way around a circle. But add the elaborate construction of a cardboard haunted house, and you’ve added something magical. And while you’ll be hard pressed to track down this game yourself, there are plenty of online boardgaming communities that have the game detailed to the nth degree. You’re older now, and have access to the right tools. It’s possible for you to construct a game like this yourself.
In the 1990s, the game was repackaged as a “Real Ghostbusters” game.
The Thief of Always (1992)
Young Henry Swick is bored to the point of near-insanity. Luckily for the impetuous youth, he has just been invited to Hood House, a mysterious fog-enshrouded mansion in his neighborhood, to stay for as long as he likes. The house can only be found if you are guided there. Once you are inside, all of your greatest fantasies are brought to life by the mysterious, unseen Mr. Hood. Every night is Halloween night, and every morning is Christmas morning. Your favorite foods are provided. It shouldn’t take a very sophisticated reader to see that Mr. Hood is up to something far more sinister.
Clive Barker’s 1992 young adult novel, which is a modern retelling of the Hansel & Gretel story, is perhaps, despite his huge accomplishments in other genres, Barker’s most solidly-written novel. I certainly felt that way when I read the book at age 14. The book is misty and weird, and teeters right on the edge of childhood horror, and legitimate nightmarish adult violence. It never, however, loses it fable-like qualities, leaving us really close to the childhood imagination. Barker was perhaps best known for his bloody tales of twisted sex and bodily horror. The Thief of Always proves his other strengths when he is being restrained.
For many years, there was a plan to make a Thief of Always feature film, animated by the same team that made “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” but it ended up being stymied in production Hell. Eventually, Neil Gaiman was to author a very similar book called Coraline, and that book would be adapted to film much more quickly. Both stories mirror Hansel & Gretel, so I am loath to imply that Gaiman ripped off Barkerm but the similarities are pretty uncanny.
“The Monster Mash” (1962)
Entering any specialty Halloween store these days will reveal a slew of cheaply-produced Halloween CDs, often hanging out by the checkout register, featuring re-tooled versions of movie theme songs, and mildly talented studio musicians re-singing spooky hits, and maybe, occasionally, trying to compose their own. I have picked up a few of these here and there, and can say with confidence that they are rarely good. Occasionally you’ll find something produced by Elvira, or a spooky sound effects CD that actually adds to ambiance, but for the most part, these CDs are pretty crappy.
Luckily for us, ever since 1962, we have had Bobby “Boris” Pickett and The Cryptkickers’ Halloween anthem “The Monster Mash” to carry each of those crappy CDs into a realm of moderate respectability. It is a song that is very dear to my childhood, and can easily put any toddler on the road to future of horror fandom with a single play. “The Monster Mash,” about a party of monsters, is catchy, silly, a little dumb, but has become such a powerful Halloween institution, that it’s practically unthinkable to imagine a Halloween without it. If there are any Halloween Carols, this would be the biggest.
Yes, there is a musical film based on it. Yes, countless others have covered it. But there’s something pure and spooky about the song that the imitators cannot trump. Seriously, mang. “The Monster Mash.”
“Mad Monster Party” (1967)
I’m sorry to repeat this particular film two weeks in a row (I mentioned it in last week’s “White Sheep” article), but I did see this film on TV as a young child, and it was a hugely impactful film. It cemented my nascent love for stop-motion animation, and indulged my little boy desires to see monsters without scaring me too much. Watching the film again shows not only the skilled-yet-old-timey animation from Rankin & Bass, but also seemed to reveal the inner guts of the entire Goth movement. If it weren’t for “Mad Monster Party,” you see, there would be no Tim Burton. With no Tim Burton, there would be no Goth movement. We may still have had Bauhaus or The Cure, but an entire subculture owes their existence to this film.
The story is pretty plain: A beleaguered Dr. Frankenstein wants to give control of the world’s Monster League to his long lost nephew, upsetting Dracula, The Bride, the voluptuous Francesca, and the rest of the monsters. Felix, the nephew, is a plain-spoken Jimmy Stewart type who fecklessly deflects the attacks of the various monsters. The animation is a bit crude by today’s standards, but still imminently watchable. The gags are dumb, and the presence of Phyllis Diller will mean nothing to little tykes. But if you’re a fan of the Rankin/Bass Christmas cartoons, then “Mad Monster Party” is required viewing in October.
“The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993)
It’s o.k. to include one ringer, right?
I don’t think I need to describe Tim Burton’s and Henry Selick’s now-classic 1993 film to anyone at this point, as it seems to have permeated culture in a way that only Disney seems to be able to do. The film is dark, spooky, and is possessed of an aggressively idiosyncratic style that has not been reproduced (that film version of James and the Giant Peach notwithstanding). The score by Danny Elfman is offbeat and seems to be deliberately imperfect, making for songs that, while not necessarily hummable, still manage to be earworms. Even the story, about a skeleton who escapes Halloween to take over Christmas for one year, seems a bit shoddy. But, y’know, in a punk rock sort of way. In high school, my peers and I, proto-Goth and theater-obsessed, repeated lines from this film obsessively. It was watched every October. “Mad Monster Party” was the origin of the Goth movement, but “The Nightmare Before Christmas” was its terminal velocity.
It became a cult byword, this film. It wasn’t until six or seven years had passed that Disney began to bank on the film’s growing cult, and soon started licensing “Nightmare” merchandise to teenagers. Now you see striped socks and Jack Skellington’s face in every Hot Topic in the country. Some of the merchandising (as it always is) is insufferable. But the film itself is a new classic for the kids. Scary, weird, awesome.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (1981)
I’ve seen plenty of books geared toward children that mean to spook them a little bit, and give them something to repeat around a campfire. The vast bulk of these books, however, just don’t have the right balance of tones. They’re either too scary (which leads me to suspect their secretly geared toward teens), or they’re too silly to be spooky at all, making for cynical 6-year-olds to dismiss them.
There was, however, one book that, at least in my childhood, seemed to get it just right. Something that was simple enough for kids, and scary enough to give nightmares, but without traumatizing them. That was Alvin Schwartz’ 1981 classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, perhaps the best anthology horror book for children ever written, and perhaps the finest example of children’s horror. As I said, it struck the balance. The stories, despite being written in 1981, felt like they had dust one them; like they were old and classical. The writing was just succinct enough. I realize that this may have been more the age at which I personally discovered the book, and less the actual writing (I haven’t revisited the tales since college), but it was clearly doing something right.
What was just as important as the writing, though were the REALLY FUCKING CREEPY pencil illustrations by Stephen Gammell. Gammell’s drawing were all sticky, dead things, coating in strands of inky blood, and appeared to be coated in dry, dry dust. The skies were misty and grey. The creatures seemed to be made of actual rotting flesh. One drawing in particular, of a nose-less, eye-less zombie ghoul woman, was featured in several of my nightmares. There was a period in elementary school where I couldn’t go a day without seeking out that picture just top freak myself out again.
Kids, I have said before, like to be scared more than they let on. It’s fun to be scared. That’s why Halloween is so enjoyable. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is the perfect exemplar of fun scares for kids. Pleasant nightmares.
Witney Seibold is a ghoul living in a giant spooky mansion at the end of the road. It is said he eats little children who wander too far from home. If you walk by the mansion at night, you can see his shadow in the window above, peering out into the street, dreaming of victims to drag inside. He has a movie review ‘blog – which he updates perhaps too infrequently, called Three Cheers for Darkened Years! He is also half the voice of The B-Movies Podcast on Crave Online.
