A few months back I asked John Klyza if he thought it was safe for a three-year-old to see Scream 4. I can’t remember Klyza’s exact response but it was something like “Are you insane?” or a similar phrase. That’s when I realized there are thousands of parenting books and hundreds of websites offering advice on raising a child, but there isn’t one single guide on scary movies parents can watch with their little ones. As slasher/horror fans we must pass on our love for the genre to the next generation. But we must do it in a way that’s fun for the kids. We don’t want to scare the little ones so badly that they become sci-fi or fantasy fans. Those genres have enough fanatics.
So here’s some horror suggestions for kids 1 to 5. Now, if you don’t have kids that’s okay. This also works for little brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, kids you’re babysitting, and kids you’re taking care of until the parents pay the ransom.
First off is a list of nature films that combat the negative ideas promoted by children’s television. Many kids shows champion wildlife, nature, and the environment. The truth is nature doesn’t care about you or your kids. When a wild animal looks at you all it sees is meat. These films will give kids a real education about animals and nature: Jaws, Jaws 2, Grizzly, Alligator, The Pack, Piranha, Venom (the Klaus Kinski snake movie, not the slasher from a few years ago), Night of the Lepus, Kingdom of the Spiders, Grizzly Man. Okay, so the last film is a documentary by Werner Herzog but it proves nature eats fools. It’s also a laugh riot, even funnier than those other Herzog comedies Aguirre, The Wrath of God, Woyzeck, and Fitzcarraldo.
Parents are told it’s important for their children to have positive role models. I don’t know if the following horror icons are positive role models but they are cool as hell. And sometimes learning what’s cool is more important than learning what’s positive. In other words, when you watch the following films with your kids you should hype these particular actors and their signature performances: Bruce Campbell (Ash) in Army of Darkness, Tom Atkins (Detective Cameron) in Night of the Creeps, Reggie Bannister (Reggie) in Phantasm, Clu Gulager (Burt) in Return of the Living Dead. You’ll know your kids think these guys are cool when they repeat dialog from these movies. And believe me, hearing your child yell “Hail to the king, baby!” or “It’s Miller time!” while playing at the park is incredibly cool.
Children are fascinated by cute yet still kind of ugly creatures. You can find those types of monsters in The Creature from the Black Lagoon, King Kong, Gremlins, Munchies, Killer Klowns from Outer Space, the Critters series, every Godzilla movie ever made except the US version, The Monster Squad, The Crater Lake Monster, The Blob, and every giant bug/monster movie made in the 1950s.
When you become a parent you find it’s hard to keep your kids away from Elmo. That little red bastard from Sesame Street pretends to care about children then tells the kids to buy more merchandise. “Remember, Elmo loves you.” should be “Remember, Elmo loves you . . .as long as your parents still have money to spend.” With that in mind, I sought out safe substitutes children can watch instead of Elmo. Chucky in Child’s Play is much more fun than Elmo. He takes little Andy on trips, rescues him from an orphanage in the second film, and goes to a funhouse in the third entry. And Chucky has a positive message, too. Friends til the end. Ain’t that sweet. Another animated guy who really gets around is the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt and the animated Tales From the Crypt Keeper. C.K. talks directly to the kids at the start of each episode, offers up helpful advice at the end, and does it all with a smile on his face. At least I think it’s a smile. His lips rotted away a long time ago. The old Creep from Creepshow and Creepshow 2 is also a good alternative to Evil Elmo. The Creep teaches children it’s okay to use voodoo amd carnivorous plants to vanquish abusers and bullies, much better solutions than Elmo’s “tell an adult” propaganda.
As for slasher films, there are only two I feel safe showing children five and under. Popcorn isn’t too scary and features a giant bug attack in the theater. There are a ton of costumes and fun props like the screaming skull clock to keep the kiddies interested. The other slasher little kids are sure to love is Terror Train. First, it’s set on a train and kids love trains. Second, there’s a magician and kids love bad magic tricks. Third, kids love funny noises and there is one hellish CLANG (Ben Johnson swings a mean shovel) at the end of the film that will make a kid laugh until milk shoots out of his/her nose.
This final section is dedicated to all of the horror films I watched when I was three, four, and five-years-old at drive-ins and old movie houses. These films are why I’m a horror fan now. They were safe for me then so they should be safe for today’s little rug rats. The Car, Fulci’s The Psychic, The Children, Up from the Depths, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, The White Buffalo, The Changeling, Demonoid-Messenger of Death, The Legacy, The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. I highly recommend The Car, a great killer car movie, and The Changeling, one of the best haunted house movies ever made.
|
||||||||
Tags: Child's Play
very cool article, i love this site very much. i visit it every single day. very much appreciated. word
oh and by the way Happy Halloween my fellow Slasher fanatics!!!
I was about 5 years old when I saw the original Halloween and Friday the 13th on cable while on vacation in 1983. My mom loves horror films and she let my brother and I watch them all. So I got to see alot of the slashers and classic horror films at an early age. Growing up I had Jason, Micheal, Freddy, and the Universal Monsters all over my walls. Honestly, my mom probably should have not let me watch those films at such an early age, but I turned out fine. Skip years later…I have a four year old who loves to watch the universal monsters. He wants to see Halloween and Friday because I have Michael and Jason stuff all over the house and he’s aware of the characters. I don’t don’t think he is ready for those kind of films, but he can see worse things on TV. And it makes it hard when you have Michael and Jason costumes for toddlers! So when is a good time for him to see these films???? It’s up to the adult to decide….
Happy Halloween everybody!
While I grew up on horror movies I don’t think I’d show one to a three-year-old. Maybe seven or eight, providing it was escapism like a slasher and nothing too twisted (like a Takashi Miike), but not a pre-schooler. Not that I think it would warp their mind and do lasting damage, but perhaps at that age it would be too scary for them. Especially a movie about a talking doll.
Would you show porn to a 5 year old? No adult in their right mind would. They are not equipped to deal with it, emotionally or intellectually. Did I see porn long before I turned 18? You betcha. Do I wish I hadn’t seen it? Quite frankly, yes.
OK, so the porn example is a little extreme, but horror isn’t all that different, just replace cum shots with splatter. The thing is, you never know what it is that’s going to mess with their minds, be it “mild” horror or not. The Changeling is on your example list, I saw that film as a well experienced teen horror fan and it deeply upset me. Many years earlier I saw Mortuary and proceeded to see black hooded figures EVERYWHERE for months afterwards (and probably had nightmares to boot). Getting out of the shower, behind every door, there was Bill Paxton scaring the crap out of me. To this day I cannot watch that movie in the dark. If I happen to be watching it and it gets dark, I turn it off!
Monster movies maybe, Alligator was great fun when I was a kid, Gremlins without question and Death Ship too; the ship is a quasi monster – I can’t tell you how many times we saw that when I was a kid, but pure terror films? No. Keep those for when they’re at least 12 or so, preferably a little older.
Yes, it is fine for a 3 year old to watch horror films and explain to them that it’s fantasy. I started watching them at that age and I am 24 yrs old and didn’t turn out to be a psycho.
It depends on the kid. Sometimes something you think might scare a sprog doesn’t and other tomes it does . My son has no interest in forror films whatsoever, claims to hate gore, but will sit and wathch CSI and loves Rambo. When he was 3 years-old he was petrified of Zurg in Toy Story 2.
I think I saw Dellamorte Dellamore/ Cemetery Man when I was five. That zombie biker scene was the only thing I kept recalling before i saw it again in High school, and I thought the scene when that undead biker and his equally undead motorbike bursts out of the grave was kinda cool!
Then of course there was Jason Voorhees, my hero til the end!