I select a thematically appropriate horror movie for each day of the year and tell you about it.
Why?
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
How do you get to decide what qualifies as a horror movie and where each one goes on the calendar?
I am the Mayor of Horror Movies.
Are all these movies good?
Oh gosh no. But I recommend all of them to the adventurous viewer.
What’s with the CWs?
In horror movies, disturbing material is part of the entertainment package. But for some viewers, elements like sexual violence or bigotry ruin the fun. For those folks, I include content warnings. That said, the warnings are based on my personal reactions and should not be expected to cover all potential cinematic skeeviness, so proceed with caution.
Who are you, aside from the mayor?
I’m Shaenon K. Garrity. I’m mostly a cartoonist. I watch a lot of scary movies while I draw cartoons.
You work with manga — you don’t need to scare-quote that just because a movie’s about kids doesn’t mean its for kids! There’s always idiots willing to show horror movies to kids…
As Shaenon intimates, horror movies actually made for kids was indeed a legit thing in the 80’s. And at the time, it wasn’t unusual for even ordinary kids moves to swing in and out of what might be considered horror-esque dark moments. There were definite stylistic and boundary differences between horror made for kids and horror made for adults. Sort of like how in the modern day you can immediately tell a YA sci-fi/fantasy film from one targeted at an adult audience.
As someone who was a kid in that era, this still feels pretty normal and safe to me. Some of that stuff definitely scared me big-time, but the idea that it was traumatizing or harmful is… I think the product of people who didn’t have that experience themselves, and thus are operating on supposition.
I don’t know if they’re true or not, but I’ve been hearing rumors that there may be a remake of this movie that’s closer to the original novel. Personally, I hope so, because the book was (as so often is the case) better than the movie.
I saw it in the theater. Once.
Starlog said it would have a CGI of the train becoming the carnival, and cgi was so new then I went for the novelty. But there was no such scene. Early cgi made everything look candybox-perfect, but still… Honesty would have been better.
You work with manga — you don’t need to scare-quote that just because a movie’s about kids doesn’t mean its for kids! There’s always idiots willing to show horror movies to kids…
As Shaenon intimates, horror movies actually made for kids was indeed a legit thing in the 80’s. And at the time, it wasn’t unusual for even ordinary kids moves to swing in and out of what might be considered horror-esque dark moments. There were definite stylistic and boundary differences between horror made for kids and horror made for adults. Sort of like how in the modern day you can immediately tell a YA sci-fi/fantasy film from one targeted at an adult audience.
As someone who was a kid in that era, this still feels pretty normal and safe to me. Some of that stuff definitely scared me big-time, but the idea that it was traumatizing or harmful is… I think the product of people who didn’t have that experience themselves, and thus are operating on supposition.
I saw this when it first came out (17 yrs old at the time), and I loved it. Well worth the effort to track down a copy and view it.
Very creepy early performance by Jonathan Pryce, a couple of years before people noticed him in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
I don’t know if they’re true or not, but I’ve been hearing rumors that there may be a remake of this movie that’s closer to the original novel. Personally, I hope so, because the book was (as so often is the case) better than the movie.
I saw it in the theater. Once.
Starlog said it would have a CGI of the train becoming the carnival, and cgi was so new then I went for the novelty. But there was no such scene. Early cgi made everything look candybox-perfect, but still… Honesty would have been better.