By Ben Bussey
You don’t need me to tell you what a distinct period the 1980s were when it came to horror movies. Coming off the back of arguably the most revolutionary era in the genre’s history (if not cinema overall) the previous decade, the artistic and intellectual advances of the 70s gave way to a generally more lurid and cartoonish approach, larger than life visions bursting with practical special effects creations and – as Keri reminisced recently – lit up in bold, unnatural colours. And yet at the same time that mainstream and independent filmmakers alike were churning out successions of horror hits to impressive returns both at the box office and on the exciting new medium of home video, along came the moral crusaders condemning it all, crying out for a return to proper Christian family values and – inevitably – demanding that we think of the children.
I would have been four years old around the time that two very significant though seemingly unrelated events occurred for the film industry on opposite sides of the Atlantic, both of them apparently rooted in thinking of the children. On my home soil of Britain, the Video Recordings Act was passed (or technically it wasn’t, but let’s not get into that here); whilst over in the US of A, the PG-13 certificate was introduced. I’ve often pondered how curious it is that these events came to pass almost simultaneously, for where the VRA seemingly sought to ensure that no child would ever come into contact with that which was deemed inappropriate for young eyes, the PG-13 – in its earliest days, at least – seemed to open up a whole new realm of possibility for the kind of things you could get away with in what were ostensibly family films. Small wonder, then, that the certificate’s introduction brought with it the somewhat short-lived and often-overlooked subgenre of Kiddie Horror, which had a major impact on scores of fledgling horror fans at the time – this writer very much included.
Maybe ‘Kiddie Horror’ isn’t the preferred term for everyone; I really don’t know. I first recall picking up on that phrase in Amazon UK’s official review of The Gate, and it just stuck. It seems to fit. I like that ‘kiddie’ sounds even more juvenile than ‘kid;’ it emphasises the contrast between the two modes (not unlike the current Japanese musical trend ‘Kawaii Metal’). Another phrase we might use, which is perhaps is just a little too cutesy for my liking, is ‘Terror for Tots;’ this was how David McGillivray phrased it in a 1988 article for Films and Filming, lamenting in a somewhat curmudgeonly fashion how the horror of the day seemed primarily geared towards young whippersnappers “who prefer their heroes and a good percentage of their villains to be below school leaving age.” Not that McGillivray coined the phrase ‘terror for tots;’ within that same article (full title: ‘Does Terror for Tots Make Sense?’) he explains this question was originally posed by British magazine Picturegoer way back in the 50s. Clearly, then, the idea that horror movies were implicitly aimed at children was nothing new – yet the 80s took it to a whole new level, and were a bit less shy about admitting it.
Looking back now as an adult (and, for what it’s worth, a parent), I can certainly understand why there were concerns. These were, after all, the days when film studios thought nothing of licencing talking Freddy Krueger dolls, or making children’s cartoon shows based on Rambo and Robocop (with Conan and The Toxic Avenger following suit in the early 90s). Even so, whilst there’s surely no argument that marketing R-rated film properties toward a pre-teen audience is in pretty poor taste, it’s rather more debatable that such measures were in any way truly harmful to the young. It’s not like the content of the Robocop cartoons reflected that of the movies – and in any case, there was plenty of rather startling content making its presence felt in kid-friendly films of the time.
I believe I would have been around about six or seven years old – and, I might emphasise, not a horror fan in any way, shape or form at the time – when I first saw what promptly became a personal favourite: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Years later I would be rather baffled reading complaints that the film was far too dark, nasty and scary for its young audience, as I never recalled being frightened by it at all; hugely thrilled and entertained, yes, but not in any way disturbed, and I say that as someone who was very easily frightened by anything remotely horrific at the time, from the obvious (the Jaws movies, Michael Jackson’s Thriller video) to the more oblique (Worzel Gummidge).
Then again, the version I saw – the only version released in the UK until the uncut Blu-ray in 2013 – was missing about forty-five seconds from the clip you can see below (with most of the footage between 0.38-0.50 and 1.41-2.12 excised):
We might debate whether Temple of Doom’s human sacrifice is necessarily any more gruesome than the Nazi-melting finale of Raiders of the Lost Ark (though it’s certainly a lot more drawn out, and subsequently feels rather more sadistic), but either way it’s largely accepted today that controversy surrounding this scene, hand in hand with the kitchen sequence from the same year’s Gremlins, was directly responsible for the PG-13’s inception, reportedly at the suggestion of Spielberg himself. Given that it has long since become the dominant cinema rating, more often than not slapped automatically on films which would have earned a PG without breaking a sweat twenty years ago, it’s fascinating to look back at the first films to be released as PG-13: Red Dawn, declared to contain the most acts of violence of any film at the time; Dreamscape, whose nightmarish content reproduced two key terrors of Temple of Doom – a heart removal, and Kate Capshaw (who briefly appears topless); and The Woman in Red, which boasted full nudity from Kelly LeBrock in what is very much a sexual context. Red Dawn’s largely bloodless gunplay aside, it’s doubtful much of this would fly in a PG-13 now, but it was all uncharted territory at the time. The impression I get is that neither the censors nor the filmmakers were quite sure where the boundaries lay just yet, and as such were largely making it up as they went along. I daresay a great many film fans are pleased that they did, as those of us who were kids at the time sure did get some great entertainment out of it.
For me as a pre-teen just finding my taste for the macabre, there were three key PG-13 Kiddie Horror films that defined this era – and the first of these to hit screens (though not the first I personally saw) was 1986’s Critters. Yes, this film is perpetually dismissed as an obvious Gremlins rip-off, and that’s not entirely unfair – but even so, as much as Billy, Kate and Gizmo were afraid of the Gremlins, most of the harm they did (maybe two actual murders notwithstanding?) seemed to comprise of petty vandalism, flashing and being drunk and disorderly. With the Krites, on the other hand, there was no misunderstanding. These were carnivorous alien lifeforms who touch down in middle America with one specific purpose: to eat. We get our first clear evidence of this early on when farmer Jay and his son Brad – Scott Grimes’ young male protagonist providing a clear point of identification for boys like me – find a heavily mutilated cow in the field, though somehow manage to miss the alien spacecraft parked nearby. It’s not too long before the sharp-toothed little buggers also devour big sister April’s boyfriend (an early Billy Zane speaking part) in the barn, and bite off a couple of Jay’s fingers in the basement. No, it ain’t exactly Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead, but as a child who hadn’t seen much horror at the time it was pretty full-on stuff – and boy, did it give me a taste for more gore. They even ticked another of the key taboo boxes by throwing in the one “fuck” that you can typically get away with under PG-13 rules. (We’d have to wait until Critters 2 for a gratuitous tit shot, but those weren’t of quite so much interest back in those prepubescent days.)
The next of the big three Kiddie Horror movies to reach the screen – and the darkest by a long shot – was the aforementioned 1987 Canadian production The Gate. This was the only one of them that genuinely scared me as a kid, and in many respects it find it more disturbing now than I did then. From the outlandish premise, it might sound harmless enough, centring as it does on two little lads (one of them a young Stephen Dorff) who find themselves under attack from mini-demons after inadvertently opening a portal to a hell dimension in their back yard. But it’s this one above all that blurs the line between horror film for kids, and horror film which happens to feature kids in the lead roles (and there is of course a distinction – see Argento’s Phenomena, Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, or Let the Right One In). The comedic overtones of Gremlins and Critters are almost entirely absent here, as the physical and psychological torment the young heroes face is for the most part played utterly straight, often to genuinely sinister effect, and there are a few moments which make me wince to this day (fancy getting stabbed in the eyeball with Barbie doll legs, anyone?) Perhaps the most troubling aspect of it – again, more from an adult perspective – is that the kids are literally on their own, all this occurring while Mum and Dad are away for the weekend, leaving the 15 year old big sister in charge. Watching it as a child, this again just made me feel closer to the story, as though I too could hold my own in a battle with monsters; watching it now, I find myself anxious for the parents to come back.
But when it comes to Kiddie Horror, one title stands head and shoulders above the rest, both in terms of contemporary cult status, and what it means to me personally. It reached screens after Critters and The Gate, but it entered my life first – and, no exaggeration, changed it forever.
The Monster Squad was the movie that made me fall in love with horror movies. When I sat down to watch it for the first time aged 9, I was resolutely anti-horror, utterly perplexed as to why anyone would choose to watch something with the expressed intention of getting scared. 79-odd minutes later, I understood. I was captivated by these monsters, somehow immediately recognising their iconic power; and to see kids more or less my own age doing battle with them made it seem all the more tangible. No, it isn’t really all that scary, and (however Fred Dekker may protest to this point) it is in a very similar vein to The Goonies, but it was enough to really fire my imagination and leave me with a thirst to learn more about this strange, dark underbelly of film and literature that I had hitherto done my utmost to steer clear of. That thirst, as might be obvious, has never gone away, and I will always hold The Monster Squad dear because of this, but even more so than that I truly think it holds up as a near-perfect popcorn movie custom designed for repeat viewing; and I speak from experience, as – while I can’t offer an exact number – I believe I’ve watched it somewhere in the region of 200 times over the part 25 years. It is, I can say with absolute sincerity, my single favourite film of all time.
And I’ll also say this without hesitation: The Monster Squad holds up better than The Lost Boys. Yes, I said it. Joel Schumacher’s teen vampire romp, also a product of 1987 (there was definitely something in the psychosphere), holds a similar place in the hearts of a great many horror fans as The Monster Squad does in my own; there can of course be no question that Schumacher’s film reached a far wider audience. As I recall I saw it not too long after The Monster Squad, and loved it just as much at the time – but while it’s still a film I very much enjoy, I can’t help but feel The Lost Boys is the weaker of the two for the simple reason that it seems to be in denial about who it’s really for. Though R-rated, it just barely qualifies for that higher rating thanks to the vampire action getting a wee bit too gruesome, but it definitely feels like they were going for PG-13; sex scenes and F-bombs are notable by their absence (I know I’m not the only one who watched it in early adolescence and cursed the director for suddenly cutting away to the clouds just as Jami Gertz was getting naked).
It was only in recent years that I learned The Lost Boys had originally been conceived as a children’s movie, something for Richard Donner to do as a sort-of follow up to The Goonies, but was rewritten as a teen movie when Schumacher came on board. This surely explains its somewhat schizophrenic feel. Up to the midway point, when it’s all about Jason Patric’s angst-ridden initiation into the vampire ranks, it all feels very adolescent; but then the focus shifts, the two Coreys (and that other guy) take centre stage and tool up to battle the undead, and suddenly it all feels – well – rather like The Monster Squad. The problem is, whilst taking this somewhat more juvenile direction in the final act, it’s still trying to play up the hyper-cool teenage angle, and as a result it just comes off a bit pompous and absurd – as indeed so many of us do when trying to be cool as teenagers. The Monster Squad, by contrast, wholeheartedly embraces its childishness, never making any bones about being aimed first and foremost at little kids, and it comes off all the more pure and timeless for it. (On which note: Rudy’s leather jacket, white tee, blue jeans and shades = timeless. Everything worn by everyone in The Lost Boys with the possible exception of Jason Patric = so 80s it hurts.) Still, don’t get me wrong: The Lost Boys remains a hugely entertaining film which I’m sure I’ll always enjoy revisiting as much as all the other films I’ve discussed here… just not quite as much as The Monster Squad.
1987 was a golden year, no doubt about it; and yet in subsequent years – the Critters sequels notwithstanding (but not The Gate II, which was an R) – you have to look hard to find many films that really fit the PG-13 Kiddie Horror paradigm. Many would say the Ghoulies series, but aside from the 1984 original (which did not centre on child characters) these were all R-rated; likewise, 1988’s Killer Klowns from Outer Space is arguably more teen-oriented despite being PG-13. There’s the 1989 Fred Savage/Howie Mandel movie Little Monsters, but all in all that’s more kiddie than horror (it was a plain old PG, after all); then we have little Michael Stephenson battling to save his family from those diabolical vegetarian goblins in 1990’s legendary Troll 2, but of course that one’s all in a world of its own (and, bizarrely, went from a PG-13 in the US to an 18 in Britain). PG-13 horror continues to this day, of course, but more often than not in the form of movies which were always geared toward more adult sensibilities; movies which by all rights should have been made for the R rating, but declawed the material just enough to fit the certificate which allows for the largest possible audience. As the sage-like Jerry Maguire told us, we live in a cynical world.
Still, we have had a few great Kiddie Horrors in the past decade. While 2006’s Monster House and 2012’s ParaNorman were both PG-rated animated movies, they did wonders at evoking that 80s spirit for the new generation, albeit in an ever-so-slightly sanitised manner; and while its gore and swearing was clearly too much for PG-13, Attack The Block captured a similar vibe very effectively. But perhaps the best and most sadly overlooked example of Kiddie Horror in recent years came from one of the filmmakers who started it all: Gremlins director Joe Dante, who got back in the let’s-scare-the-young-‘uns-shitless game with 2009’s The Hole. True story: I was working in a London cinema when The Hole came out, and it didn’t wind up doing great business, at least in part because we had a lot of walk-outs asking for their money back. The young teens complained it was too scary, and that they didn’t realise it was a horror movie; meanwhile, the adults were complaining that they didn’t realise it was a kid’s movie. It was very much this line of thinking which Fred Dekker has long claimed scuppered The Monster Squad at the box office; such a shame that audiences still seem unable to accept that a film can be both kid-friendly and frightening, even with the success of the Harry Potter movies. Nor is it just the audiences that have lost touch with that idea; witness the R and 15 ratings slapped on 2010’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, prime PG-13 Kiddie Horror material if ever I saw it, yet somehow deemed that bit too intense.
In his recent, quite beautiful essay on the value of horror for kids, Greg Rucka argues that “horror provides a playground in which kids can dance with their fears in a safe way that can teach them how to survive monsters and be powerful, too. Horror for kids lets them not only read or see these terrible beasts, but also see themselves in the stories’ protagonists. The hero’s victory is their victory. The beast is whomever they find beastly in their own lives. A kid finishing a scary book, or movie can walk away having met the monster and survived, ready and better armed against the next villain that will be coming.” That’s certainly how I recall feeling watching these movies at that age, and that’s the key thing to be taken from all the aforementioned Kiddie Horror movies: the children face their fears, and while they may not go through the ordeal unscathed, they ultimately emerge victorious. For young viewers who will not too long thereafter find themselves unwittingly thrust into battle with that hideous gargantuan terror we all must face – puberty – that thin ray of hope might just go a long way.
There remains a school of thought that PG-13 horror cannot possibly be ‘real’ horror, and I can appreciate where some of this comes from: again, too many horror movies which really belong in the R-category have toned themselves down to fit the lower rating this past decade or so. But the suggestion that ‘family-friendly horror’ is a contradiction in terms just doesn’t ring true to me. The old Universal classics still hold up, and the bulk of them can be shown to little kids; so too most of the creature features of the 50s and 60s, and many of the earlier Hammers. Kids remain fascinated by horror, so why shouldn’t there be horror movies which are accessible to kids? I for one am hugely grateful to have had the Kiddie Horror movies growing up, partly as going direct to more adult-oriented horror without this intermediary step might well have been a greater shock to the system. More so than this though, it was just so great at that age to have horror movies I could directly connect to, protagonists I could easily envisage myself being, the idea of incredible otherworldly forces at play in a world I recognised as my own – and yes, young people standing firm in the face of adversity and living to talk about it. These movies were there for me when I needed them then, and they’re a window through which I can gaze wistfully back at that former state of being now.
Yes, I’m a sentimental 80s cinema nostalgist, and I am not ashamed. If you don’t like it, I’ve got a sneakered foot for your nards.
