Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema 9781350135260, 9781350135253, 9781350135277

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Horror Films for Children

Horror Films for Children Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema

Catherine Lester

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Catherine Lester, 2022 Catherine Lester has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Charlotte Daniels Cover image: Gizmo in Gremlins (1984) © Warner Bros. / Courtesy Everett Collection / Mary Evans All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lester, Catherine, author. Title: Horror films for children : fear and pleasure in American cinema / Catherine Lester. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021017102 (print) | LCCN 2021017103 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350135260 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350265127 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350135277 (pdf) | ISBN 9781350135284 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Children’s films–United States–History and criticism. | Horror films–United States–History and criticism. | Motion pictures and children. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.C45 L47 2021 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.C45 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/6523–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017102 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021017103 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-3526-0 ePDF: 978-1-3501-3527-7 eBook: 978-1-3501-3528-4 Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

Contents

List of figures  vii Acknowledgements ix

Introduction  1 Children and horror: A contradiction of terms?  2 Impossibility and absence: A new generation of horror  7 Viewing as a horrific child: Approach and structure  11 Defining children(’s horror)  18

1 Frankenstein to Frankenweenie: The evolution of children’s horror in Hollywood cinema  23 Fun and fear: ‘Child-friendly’ horror in Code-era Hollywood  25 Children’s horror in New Hollywood and beyond  28 Identifying the ‘impossible’  33 Reanimation: The case of Frankenweenie  41

2 Children behaving badly: Representing and addressing the horrific child in Gremlins  45 Reading the horrific child  46 Suitable for children? Gremlins’ misleading paratexts  48 ‘Children of the night’: Gremlins as carnivalesque pleasure  53 Classifying Gizmo: Gremlins as ratings allegory  60 Conclusion: Restoring the social order  62

3 No grown-ups allowed: The horrific ‘Crazyspace’ of The Monster Squad  67 ‘We’re the Monster Squad’: Empowering the child by undermining the adult  73

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Old friends: Ignorance, intertextuality and monstrous allies  77 De-sexing Dracula: The vampire as totalitarian authority  85 Conclusion: The afterlife of Crazyspace   88

4 ‘As normal as it could be’: ParaNorman and the normalization of the horrific child  93 Un-othering the uncanny child  96 Freaks and geeks: ParaNorman’s ‘abnormal’ production and aesthetics  100 Horror and monstrosity as catharsis  103 Conclusion: Problematizing the new normal with Hotel Transylvania  109

5 A ‘child-friendly’ horror aesthetic: Challenging assumptions with Coraline  115 The subversive uncanniness of stop-motion horror for children  119 Children’s horror films; or, slashers without the slashing  124 Conclusion: Gendering the horrific child  139

6 Man of the house: Gender, space and domestic violence in Monster House and The Hole  145 Gender, domestic space and the horror genre  147 Monster House: Becoming male by destroying the female  152 The Hole: Being the bigger man  163 Conclusion: Against ‘happily ever after’  169

Conclusion: Expansions and absences of children’s horror  173 The horrific child at home  175 The absent children of children’s horror  177

Notes  185 Works cited  192 Index  213

Figures

2.1 Gizmo in severe pain during the multiplication process in Gremlins  58 2.2 Lynn is constructed as a threat as she prepares to stab a terrified gremlin in Gremlins  59 3.1 Adult ignorance in The Monster Squad  75 3.2 The Monster and Maria in Frankenstein  82 3.3 The Monster reaches for Maria in Frankenstein  83 3.4 Phoebe plays by a pond in The Monster Squad’s re-enactment of Frankenstein  83 3.5 The feet of the Monster set an ominous tone in The Monster Squad  84 4.1 Formal distancing strategies in The Sixth Sense construct Cole as a mysterious child viewed from Malcolm’s adult perspective  98 4.2 The framing in ParaNorman aligns the audience with Norman’s empathetic perspective  99 4.3 Norman watching a horror film on television with his grandmother’s ghost in the opening of ParaNorman  110 4.4 Norman watching a horror film on television at the end of ParaNorman, this time with his whole family  111 5.1 The protagonist’s amazement at the magical toys in the other home in Coraline  122 5.2 The protagonist’s amazement turns to suspicion after learning the sinister truth in Coraline  123 5.3 Mise en scène entraps Coraline’s protagonist within her environment  133 5.4 Point-of-view shots from behind objects create a sense of voyeurism in Coraline  134 5.5 An example of framing within liminal spaces – here a doorway – in Coraline  135 5.6 The mother looking at her daughter with disdain in Coraline  136 5.7 Other Mother’s uncanny gaze in Coraline  137 5.8 A point-of-view shot showing that the parents now look directly at their daughter at the end of Coraline  138 6.1 A low-angle tracking shot establishes the formidable presence of the titular Monster House  154

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Figures

6.2 An example of the formal emphasis on boundaries and liminal spaces in Monster House  157 6.3 The emasculated Nebbercracker is dwarfed in size by his ‘housewife’ in Monster House  160 6.4 DJ swings over Constance on a crane, marking his achievement of heroic masculinity in Monster House  162 6.5 Low-angle shots in The Hole frame Dane as a physical threat towards his younger brother  166 6.6 The warped, oversized set of The Hole figures Dane as a vulnerable child  168 6.7 Dane’s defeat of his ‘father’, now appearing as an ordinary human, is emphasized through his high positioning in The Hole  169

Acknowledgements

It seems apt that completing a project about horror would feel at times like quite a horrific experience, and not in a fun way. Just like the child characters discussed in the following pages, it was only with the support of a number of crucial allies that I have successfully tackled this ‘monster’ of a book and emerged relatively unscathed. I would like to thank all of the people who I had the pleasure to be taught by or work with at the University of Hull and the University of Warwick. It was at the former where my interest in children’s horror and in pursuing an academic career began, and at the latter where this continued to be fostered and developed by a rich and supportive research community. In particular, my eternal gratitude goes to Helen Wheatley for her indispensable guidance and mentorship; I would be content to be even half as good a supervisor to my own students. Thank you also to my colleagues at the University of Birmingham, especially Rob Stone and James Walters, for providing feedback on chapter drafts, for reminding me to ‘be kind to myself’ when I really wasn’t, and most importantly for offering me stable employment in academia when such a thing is increasingly rare. As difficult as producing this book was, it would have been even more so in precarious employment. Thank you to all the folks at Bloomsbury (and, formerly, I. B. Tauris) for your patience and hard work turning this bundle of words into a real book. To the friends I made along the way: you know who you are, and your friendship is the most valuable thing I have gained from this long and often ridiculous journey. To my parents, Michael and Jacqui, thank you for all you have given and done for me, especially letting me watch things as a child that I was almost certainly too young for. I suspect this played a big role in how I ended up here. Similarly, it is hard to imagine that this book would exist without the company of two people who have been my dependable ‘horrific child’ co-viewers at overlapping stages in my life: my much cooler sister Rosie for being my trusty viewing companion throughout childhood and beyond, and my partner Craig for his unwavering patience and emotional support, for keeping me well fed, and for putting up with all of the research-related (and non-research-related) cinema trips. I appreciated it every single time – thank you for everything.

Introduction

Roald Dahl’s children’s novel The Witches climaxes with a scene in which the evil witches who intend to turn all of England’s children into mice find that their plot has been turned against them. Each of the witches transforms and shrinks until the hotel dining room setting is overrun by rodents. Predictably, chaos erupts: women were screaming and strong men were turning white in the face and shouting, ‘It’s crazy! This can’t happen! Let’s get the heck out of here quick!’ Waiters were attacking the mice with chairs and wine-bottles and anything else that came to hand. I saw a chef in a tall white hat rushing out from the kitchen brandishing a frying-pan, and another one just behind him was wielding a carving-knife above his head, and everyone was yelling, ‘Mice! Mice! Mice! We must get rid of the mice!’ Only the children in the room were really enjoying it. They all seemed to know instinctively that something good was going on right there in front of them, and they were clapping and cheering and laughing like mad. (1983: 187) This extreme contrast between the responses of the adult and child characters neatly captures a number of issues pertaining to the relationship between children and the horror genre. First, the potential for the horrific and the carnivalesque to resonate with children is confirmed by the location of an imagined child reader within the text in the form of the gleeful child onlookers of the witches’ extermination. This link between the diegetic children and the child reader is made even more explicit in the 2020 film adaptation directed by Robert Zemeckis, which includes an epilogue invented specifically for the film. Having destroyed the Grand High Witch (Anne Hathaway) and her cronies, the unnamed protagonist (Jahzir Kadeem Bruno/Chris Rock) presents a slideshow to an auditorium full of children in order to recruit them to the cause of destroying the world’s remaining witches. With a rallying cry, he calls on the child army of witch exterminators to ‘carry on the fight’ and ‘give those witches a taste of their own medicine’, upon which the children cheer and fist pump the air as illustrations of witches being transformed into mice are projected onto the diegetic screen.

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Curiously, the 1990 adaptation directed by Nicolas Roeg is not nearly as overt as the novel or 2020 film in its on-screen mirroring of the child audience of address. However, this child spectator can nevertheless be located in the off-screen space of the audience, cheering, laughing or screaming with delight and/or terror at the carnage. Whether or not such an empirical viewer actually exists does not matter, but only that both of the films (and the novel before them) construct and address such a viewer who is invited to have a particular emotional response. Both the 1990 and 2020 versions of The Witches are examples of children’s horror films, which this book contends is a specific category of Hollywood cinema that adheres to the iconographic, thematic, narrative and affective characteristics of the horror genre while modulating those characteristics and mode of address so as to meet dominant, adult-constructed perceptions of what constitutes material that is ‘suitable for children’. This book seeks to provide an overview and examination of the development of children’s horror as a genre of Hollywood film; to identify its defining characteristics; to explore how the films conform to, negotiate and challenge dominant cultural conceptions of childhood, children’s media and the horror genre; and how in doing all of this they construct and address a specific form of child spectator.

Children and horror: A contradiction of terms? For many, the meeting of ‘horror’ and ‘children’ is an inherent contradiction on account of the horror genre’s stereotypical associations with violence, depravity and other ‘adult’ content being incompatible with the cultural construction of childhood in Western modernity as a distinct stage of life defined by innocence, naïveté and vulnerability (Ariès [1962] 1996). Thus the idea of the child spectator of horror has long been an object of anxiety and tension. This is where the response of the adult characters in the previous passage from The Witches becomes important. A complete disconnect from the delight of the children, the adults’ response of panic and hysteria functions in the context of this discussion as a parody of how adult society has historically (over)reacted to the idea of children being exposed to the horror genre: ‘This can’t happen!’ The effects of cinema on children have been the subject of public concern from the medium’s earliest years. Horror films were not a particular target to begin with, in part because the generic label ‘horror’ did not exist before the advent of sound. There was certainly such a thing as horrific films in the silent era, but these were described with a variety of labels including ‘weird’, ‘mysterious’, ‘eerie’, ‘uncanny’ and ‘gruesome’ (Phillips 2018: 65; Peirse 2013: 6). It was the medium of film as a whole, rather than any specific genre, that was thought to

Introduction

3

be a threat to society at large and to children in particular (Phillips 2018: 64, 82; Smith 2005: 6). However, the 1930s marked a watershed moment for the horror genre and parallel concerns about child welfare. This decade saw the emergence of ‘horror’ as a recognized category, initiated by what Kendall R. Phillips calls a ‘hinge moment’ between the release of landmark talkie horror films Dracula and Frankenstein at either end of 1931 (2018: 2). As Phillips details in his rhetorical history of horror in early American cinema, the term ‘horror’ became tentatively employed to promote Dracula in early-1931 by Universal Studios, who struggled to find the language to describe this film that did not seem to fit into any established categories, and the term was subsequently picked up by critics. By the release of Frankenstein near the end of the year, ‘the language of horror had become more comfortable’ (2018: 2) and, according to Alison Peirse in her study of 1930s horror films post-Dracula, the use of the term ‘horror’ and the idea of horror as a genre solidified over the following two years (2013: 7–8). Concurrent to this development was the increasing societal concern about the effects of cinema on children, who by the 1930s had become one of the medium’s largest audience segments (Smith 2005: 1). Sarah J. Smith reveals that adult anxieties about child welfare became exacerbated by sound horror films which were ‘immediately controversial’ on account of the perception that sound made them more realistic, atmospheric and thus ‘more thrilling than their silent counterparts’ (Smith 2005: 57). Worse still, if cinema as a whole was already thought to be addictive and able to morally corrupt children, the depictions of sex, violence, the supernatural and subversion of traditional values in talkie horror films were considered by moral watchdogs to be especially objectionable (Smith 2005: 75). Thus the emergence of ‘horror’ as a recognized category of film appeared to give a name to – and inadvertently helped to exacerbate – the growing concern about the effect of cinema upon children on both sides of the Atlantic; this was especially pronounced in the UK, where the ‘problem’ of horror and child audiences directly impacted film censorship. This was first in the introduction of the ‘Horrific’ label by the British Board of Film Classification (then the British Board of Film Censors) in 1933, which marked a film as unsuitable for children while not prohibiting their attendance. This was later followed by the creation of a special ‘H’ certificate in 1937, which formally banned children under the age of sixteen from attending any horror film to which it was applied until its discontinuation in 1951 (Kuhn 2002; Smith 2005: 70–3). Meanwhile in the United States, the implementation of the Motion Picture Production Code was driven in part by a desire to protect children from increasingly subversive film content, horrific and otherwise (Smith 2005: 59–61). These concerns about the alleged potential of horror to harm children did not originate with the invention of cinema, but they are part of an ongoing cycle of ‘moral panics’ about horrific media and child audiences. For example, nineteenthcentury ‘penny dreadfuls’ – cheap adventure stories which sometimes contained

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violence – were blamed for crimes committed by youth (Summerscale 2016: 111–13). These anxieties have continued to surface in relation to a variety of media, from Fredric Wertham’s claims as to the ‘corrupting influence’ of horror comics upon mid-twentieth-century American children (1954: 4) to the ‘Video Nasty’1 media scandal of the 1980s, in which children were thought to be harmed by watching unregulated horror VHS tapes, and children’s exposure to violent imagery via video games and the internet.2 Despite the regularity with which these concerns arise, there is a lack of conclusive evidence to prove that horror media has a negative effect on children’s behaviour, well-being and longterm development.3 More often than not, horror becomes a convenient, easily identifiable scapegoat blamed at the expense of exploring other environmental or psychological factors that might cause violent behaviour in children. These anxieties also seem hypocritical in light of the fact that many forms of centuriesold literature for children, including fairy tales, cautionary tales, rhymes, lullabies, and even the Bible have contained violent and frightening elements (Reynolds 2005: 151). The difference between these and the aforementioned horrific media is that the former are designed to do children ‘good’. Maria Tatar proposes that in this way children’s stories that use fear as a didactic tool reveal less about child readers than adult creators, who ‘instrumentalize narrative violence in order to discipline and socialize children in the name of guiding and healing them’, but actually intend to ‘secure the child’s willing submission’ to adults (1998: 71–3). In a similar vein, William Paul suggests that attempts to protect children from horrific media do not reveal an interest in protecting children, but in protecting adults from what children might become when exposed to it (1994: 277). More often than not, moral panics concerning children and horror rarely involve consulting with actual children, but instead draw upon an abstracted, symbolic notion of the child as innocent, impressionable and in need of protection by adults at all costs. When children’s experiences and views regarding horror are actually investigated, it is found that – like the diegetic child spectators within The Witches – many children deliberately seek out and enjoy frightening media (Cantor and Reilly 1982: 92; Buckingham 1996: 112). Many adult horror fans also claim to have first been exposed to horror films as a child, either in supposedly ‘child-friendly’ entertainment such as Disney animated films (Cherry 1999: 196) or by watching adult horror films (Barker et al. 2016: 2, 59–77; Smith 2019). It is important to acknowledge that empirical studies on children’s responses to horror, or on adults reflecting on their fearful childhood viewing experiences, reveal that many children do experience adverse effects from viewing frightening media, including nightmares, sleep disturbance, anxiety and fear (e.g. Harrison and Cantor 1999; Hoekstra et al. 1999; Cantor et al. 2010). While these studies are illuminating in terms of what they reveal about children’s interactions with and responses to screen horror, they often frame the fearful response as inherently negative, a problem to be solved or mitigated against, rather than acknowledge

Introduction

5

that to be scared is the intended outcome of viewing horror and, as any scholar or fan of horror is aware, a source of pleasure. Emblematic of this flaw is that the authors of one study express surprise about responses from children who describe their experiences of fear in positive terms such as ‘good’ and ‘interested’; the researchers admit that these varied emotional responses ‘were not anticipated’ nor accounted for in their design of the study (Cantor et al. 2010: 8). Despite their limitations, however, such studies remind us of the crucial fact that, just like adults, children and their tastes are diverse and not all children consider the fearful experience of viewing horror to be a positive one. The level of fear a child feels, and whether they wish to repeat this experience, will also be affected by a range of factors, including age, viewing context, level of parental intervention and whether or not the child had chosen to view the frightening content (Hoekstra et al. 1999: 133; Cantor et al. 2010: 12–14). The importance of agency and choice is corroborated by two landmark studies from within the fields of film and television scholarship that offer deeper insight into children’s engagement with screen horror: David Buckingham’s Moving Images: Understanding Children’s Emotional Responses to Television (1996), based on original interviews with children, and Smith’s archival research into children’s cinema-going in the 1930s in Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids (2005). Although the subjects of their research are separated by sixty years and relate to different forms of screen media, Buckingham’s and Smith’s findings share strong parallels in terms of how children interact with horror – especially those children who want to engage with the fearful pleasures that the genre provides. They both observe that ‘[m]ost children deliberately avoid material they find frightening or otherwise unsuitable, but many others enjoy and actively seek out such material, using a variety of coping mechanisms to deal with their own responses’ (Smith 2005: 108–9 paraphrasing Buckingham 1996: 303–7). Such coping mechanisms include turning off the television, covering their eyes, leaving the viewing space or even hiding underneath auditorium chairs to temporarily block out frightening images (Buckingham 1996: 114; Smith 2005: 131).4 In the context of home media, children may repeatedly view entire films, programmes or certain sequences to familiarize themselves with what frightens them and/or work out how it is achieved in the filmmaking process, and thus ‘conquer’ their fear (Buckingham 1996: 113–14). Relating to this, some children regard watching horror as a therapeutic experience, a rite of passage, and that when viewed as a group of peers it can function as an important social bonding exercise (Buckingham 1996: 111). This notion that children’s engagement with frightening fiction is not just a fun experience, but one that can be beneficial to their psychological or social development, is a popular argument within children’s literature scholarship, stemming chiefly from Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976). Fairy tales and children’s horror

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films share a number of commonalities, namely their representation of children within frightening scenarios, under threat from monstrous beings such as ogres, witches and their own parents. This cements the fairy tale as a crucial literary precursor to cinematic children’s horror, and as such arguments concerning fairy tales’ supposed ‘benefit’ for children are applicable to children’s horror films. For Bettelheim, who takes a psychoanalytic approach, the violent and fantastic scenarios of fairy tales provide a positive function for child readers because they ‘depict in imaginary and symbolic form the essential steps in growing up and achieving an independent existence’ (Bettelheim 1976: 73). Bettelheim’s methods and arguments are contentious for a number of reasons, not least because of allegations that he was physically and emotionally abusive towards his child participants – a detail that attests to Tatar’s and Paul’s suggestions of an insidious adult agenda behind horror for or about children.5 Despite this troubling context, Bettelheim’s core thesis regarding the therapeutic or pedagogic benefits of fictional horror upon children is echoed among scholars and creators of horror fiction for young audiences. James B. Twitchell, for example, argues that fairy tales are to the child as horror films are to the sexually maturing adolescent due to the cautionary, moralistic and didactic aspects that they share (1985: 7).6 Horror author Neil Gaiman describes the effect of horror on children in medicalized terms as providing them with an ‘inoculation’ against the darker side of life (‘Neil Gaiman on comics . . .’ 2014). That all of the children’s horror films discussed in this book represent child protagonists who are fans of horror media and/or who come out of their encounters with the monstrous as more well-adjusted adolescents confirms the power that this interpretation has over the production and study of children’s horror culture. It is not just youth who are thought to benefit from the horror genre but audiences of all ages, an argument for which there is no shortage of perspectives. Robin Wood takes a psychoanalytic approach to explain that horror allows repressed socio-historical or psychological anxieties to be confronted and overcome by watching them play out in fictional means (2003: 63–84). Alternatively, Mathias Clasen (2017) takes an evolutionary position to propose that horror films function as threat simulators that train human beings to recognize and respond to danger. Others suggest that horror fiction might have a societal as well as personal benefit in its ability to allow viewers to vicariously revel in and expel anti-social, immoral desires. That horror films might appeal to and temper what Andrew Tudor calls the ‘“beast” concealed within the superficially civilized human’ (1997: 445) is particularly applicable to children, who when they are not constructed as innocents to be shielded are characterized instead as ‘partly savage’ (Lurie 1990: ix) or ‘semicivilised’ (Roald Dahl in West 1990: 116), and thus in particular need of horror’s supposed socializing function. Together, all of these perspectives, as to the positive effect that horror can have on audiences, and youth in particular,

Introduction

7

is a complete reversal of the fears outlined earlier that horror is a corrupting force upon vulnerable and innocent children. The aim of this book is not to prove or disprove either of these perspectives, as the idea that horror is good for children, while tempting, is nearly as speculative and difficult to prove as the idea that it is bad for them. That these two opposing viewpoints exist attests to the paradox at the heart of children’s horror fiction, as observed by Chloé Germaine Buckley in her summation that it embodies a contradiction between ‘the pedagogical function of children’s literature as it has been traditionally conceived on the one hand and the supposedly transgressive nature of Gothic on the other’ (2018: 4). As this book explores, that children’s horror cinema (much like the audience it addresses) inhabits a contested and liminal status between a number of categories – harmful and beneficial, didactic and subversive, children’s and adult content – is one of its defining qualities, and simultaneously one of its greatest assets and biggest problems.

Impossibility and absence: A new generation of horror Children’s horror’s status as a liminal generic category goes some way to explaining the relative lack of scholarship that addresses it. Beyond the attention that has been dedicated to the effects of horror upon children, little consideration has been given to the texts themselves – especially horror made specifically with a child audience in mind. Horror films with an appeal to children, like Frankenstein, have existed for as long as the very concept of horror cinema. So have children’s films of other genres containing frightening elements, such as The Wizard of Oz (Fleming 1939). But what of films that can be generically categorized as horror and identified as deliberately addressing children, or what I refer to throughout this book as ‘children’s horror films’? Although such films appear in a variety of national contexts, it is most prominent within Hollywood cinema where this category has existed since the early 1980s. As I will explain in detail in Chapter 1, this is the point in Hollywood’s history at which there emerges a clear distinction between horror films for audiences of different age groups, including those produced, marketed and addressed to children. It is a varied genre spanning a number of industrial and critical categories: commercial and critical misfires by major studios such as Disney’s The Watcher in the Woods (Hough 1980) and Something Wicked This Way Comes (Clayton 1983); blockbuster hits like Gremlins (Dante 1984); cult films The Monster Squad (Dekker 1987) and Hocus Pocus (Ortega 1993); independent animated features such as ParaNorman (Butler and Fell 2012); auteurist works like Roeg’s The Witches and Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (2012); adaptations of children’s literature such as Coraline

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Horror Films for Children

(Selick 2009) and the two Goosebumps films (Letterman 2015 and Sandel 2018); referential horror-comedies like the Hotel Transylvania trilogy (Tartakovsky 2012– 18); and those within specific subgenres of horror, from The Little Vampire (Edel 2000) to Monster House (Kenan 2006). While a niche category, it demonstrates variety and regularity that is reflective of industrial and cultural shifts relating to children, the horror genre and the relationship between the two. Taken in combination with the contrasting attitudes as to the effect of horror upon children and the empirical evidence that many children have an appetite for horror, it is surprising that it has until recently received scant academic attention. This absence is all the more conspicuous given that Rick Worland remarks that a trend of horror film scholarship is for authors to begin their books with ‘declarations of whether their interest began in childhood or fairly recently, implicitly arguing that one’s credibility to speak about the genre was somehow either enhanced or hurt by just when the writer’s interest began’ (2007: xi). Some, such as Robin R. Means Coleman, quote Worland’s observation only to go on to repeat the same trope, shielded by self-aware irony (2011: xi). If childhood is such a formative time for scholarly interest in horror to begin, it is interesting that it is rare for children’s texts or child audiences to be acknowledged at all in existing overviews of the genre, an exclusion which rehearses the inaccurate perception that horror is a genre for adults. When children’s horror is acknowledged, this is usually in the form of an afterthought or passing mention. Take Roger Luckhurst’s Zombies: A Cultural History, in which children’s zombie texts such as ParaNorman are acknowledged in the conclusion (2015: 169). The BFI Companion to Horror contains a short entry on ‘Young Adult’ horror, but it unhelpfully conflates children’s and teen horror films in a way that does not account for the vast differences in these groups’ age, tolerance for fear and how they are addressed (Scott 1996). Though it does not focus on cinema, Helen Wheatley’s article on British children’s Gothic television series of the 1970s and 1980s is one of the few studies that attends to the topic in detail, but she admits that the article arose from her realization that her earlier monograph Gothic Television (2006) had completely overlooked children’s texts (2012: 383). The forgetting of children’s horror also occurs in studies of children’s cinema. Noel Brown’s history of the Hollywood family film is a rare example that does mention horror films for child and/or family audiences but only once, briefly, in a list of subcategories of the family film (2012: 165). Then again, this absence of attention is hardly surprising. Peter Krämer points out that children’s film as a whole is usually completely absent from monographs or edited collections addressing genre, a gap that is particularly unjustified given that other genres defined by their target audience, such as the woman’s film, are often included in such works (2002: 185). Krämer goes on to suggest that the critical neglect of children’s cinema may arise from unjustified prejudices that children’s films are ‘cheaply made and

Introduction

9

simply not very good’ (2002: 186). Horror films are often subjected to similar generalizations, as well as assumptions that they are debased, depraved and unworthy of serious consideration compared with other genres. Despite this, horror films for adults are the subject of reams of academic scholarship. Moreover, Wheatley admits that her own neglect of children’s horror television was particularly egregious considering that it was in childhood where her interest in the Gothic began (2012: 383). Admissions like this allude to the grip that children’s horror texts can hold over their audience well into adulthood and attests to the need to take these texts seriously as objects of study. The fact remains, however, that children’s horror cinema faces a double stigmatization as a result of both its genre and audience. This goes some way to explaining its lack of academic consideration, while also highlighting a kinship that reveals the compatibility between children’s cinema and horror. Filipa Antunes observes that this stigmatization and undervaluing of children’s horror sometimes occurs as a deliberate way for critics or fans to legitimize ‘adult’ horror by distancing it from cultural devaluations of the genre as juvenile (2020: 9). She points to Kim Newman’s Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s as exemplar of this tendency, in which Newman derisively refers to children’s horror films as ‘kiddie horror’ that ‘no one needs’ because it is too ‘safe’ (2011: 283). Erin Hawley (2016) notes similar dismissals of children’s horror in adult critics’ reviews of ParaNorman and Frankenweenie. This hits upon what I have elsewhere termed the inherent ‘impossibility’ of children’s horror films, in that they must perform a careful balancing act: if too scary they risk being considered inappropriate for children, but if not scary enough they cease to be considered horror – at least, as far as adult critics are concerned (Lester 2016a). As Antunes points out, assessments such as Newman’s are inherently flawed because they judge films aimed at young viewers according to adult tastes and fail to consider the potential worth of such films to their intended audience (2020: 71). A refreshing counterpoint comes from Buckingham, for whom the safety of children’s horror is precisely the point. Children are typically not as well versed in the genre as adults, have a lower tolerance for fear and are very often restricted from watching adult horror films. As such, Buckingham posits that the value of children’s horror texts lies in their provision of a gentle entry point into the genre that allows child viewers to ‘balance “negative” feelings of fear and disgust with “positive” ones of relief’ (1996: 135–6). Following Buckingham, this book treats children’s horror as neither straightforwardly ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ for its audience, and that its value lies in the fact that it addresses a variety of complex emotional desires tailored to cater children’s specific needs. Roughly a decade ago, when I first developed an academic interest in children’s horror, there would have been little else to add to this overview of the field. At the time I was a final-year undergraduate at the University of Hull, and although I had developed a keen scholarly interest in children’s literature

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Horror Films for Children

and the horror genre separately, it had never occurred to me that some of the most memorable texts of my childhood could be classified as ‘horror’ at all; that is, until there was a lecture on ‘Children’s Horror’ on a history of Hollywood horror module delivered by Amy M. Davis, who had also written an unpublished paper on the topic (2011). Aside from this, the brief acknowledgements of children’s horror mentioned earlier, and a 2002 dissertation by Christina Mitchell Bentley, scholarship identifying children’s horror as a specific category of film was practically non-existent. In the intervening years, however, there has been a flurry of work dedicated to this topic (Hawley 2016; McCort 2016; Bacon and Bronk 2018; Balanzategui 2018a; Troutman 2019).7 The timing of this, coupled with the birth of US children’s horror cinema in the 1980s, suggests that the prior absence of scholarship and its recent emergence is (at least partly) generational. Scholars of earlier horror works identify the source of their childhood interest in pre-1980s texts that are not traditionally considered as strictly ‘for children’, such as Dawn of the Dead (Romero 1978) for Coleman (2011: xvi) and Universal and Hammer horror films for Newman (2011: 4). Conversely, much of the emerging children’s horror scholarship is by those whose adolescence overlaps with the late-twentieth-century development of mainstream horror media designed specifically to represent and address children. In Children Beware! Childhood, Horror and the PG-13 Rating (2020), the only other book-length study of children’s horror audiovisual media before this one, Antunes’s argument centres on a parallel between the emergence of children’s horror media and the cultural ‘discovery’ of the Millennial pre-teen as a distinct and marketable category of youth between child and teenager. Of the existing research on children’s horror media, Antunes’s book is that with which this study has the most significant overlap, which I will address later. For now, I extend her observation regarding the timely congruence between children’s horror media and Millennials to explain the spike in scholarship on children’s horror. This spike can be characterized, at least in part, as the work of a generational cohort of academics who seek to understand the texts that shaped them and rectify their exclusion from the canons of both the horror genre and children’s culture.8 In this light, it is only fair to credit Newman’s self-aware acknowledgement of his work’s contentious aspects. In the preface to the new edition of Nightmare Movies he explains that he wrote the volume (first published in 1985) in response to existing scholarship that excluded or dismissed the films that he connected with in his youth. He ponders if he has gone on to become the scholars he criticized, and correctly anticipates – and welcomes – the work that would disagree with him, fill in the gaps and provide alternate perspectives (2011: 4–5). I am pleased to take up this call and declare Horror Films for Children as a part of the evolving body of work that responds to the academic neglect of children’s horror culture from the 1980s onwards. This book seeks to take children’s horror films, their audience and the pleasures that can be derived from these texts

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just as seriously as their adult counterparts. This book claims children’s horror texts as objects of aesthetic, cultural and historical value, revealing them as overlooked participants in the history of the horror genre, children’s culture and Hollywood cinema more broadly. As such, this book continues with Newman’s aim to ‘redefine our understanding of exactly what a horror film is’ by examining its intersection with children’s culture (2011: 5).

Viewing as a horrific child: Approach and structure In spite of the growing cultural and scholarly visibility of children’s horror, a common misconception of my work is that it concerns the study of children in horror films that are widely considered unsuitable for children to view. This derives from two main sources. The first is the common perception that horror is for adults only, incompatible with child audiences and that, therefore, no such thing as ‘children’s horror’ exists (an issue of corpus identification that I will return to shortly). The other source of confusion is the fact that within horror films for adult audiences, the evil, monstrous or uncanny child is among the most enduring iconographic tropes of the genre. However, it is precisely this misconception that forms the basis of my approach and argument. Wood explains that children are represented as a source of horror because they are ‘other’ to dominant adult culture and thus capable of evoking fear and anxiety in the presumed adult viewers of the genre. Whether presented as helpless victims (e.g. Poltergeist [Hooper 1982]), demonic antagonists (e.g. The Omen [Donner 1976]) or a blend of each (e.g. The Exorcist [Friedkin 1973]), children’s inherent ‘otherness’ defines them as ‘that which bourgeois ideology cannot recognize or accept but must deal with . . . in one of two ways: either by rejecting and if possible annihilating it, or by rendering it safe and assimilating it’ (Wood 2003: 65–6). This solution is usually carried out by the adult protagonist in order to return the unruly child to their position as innocent dependent, thus reaffirming the adult–child social hierarchy. Children are one of eight groups of societal ‘other’ identified by Wood which form the basis of monsters in the horror genre, the rest being women, the proletariat, other cultures, ethnic groups, alternative ideologies, sexuality and gender non-conformity and other people (Wood 2003: 66–7). Simply put, Wood reads the typical American horror film as working through and affirming the fears and ideology of adult, male, bourgeoisie, white, heteronormative society. Originally published in 1979, Wood’s argument has become one of the most influential works on the genre and is echoed throughout other seminal contributions to the field. In their work on representations of gender in horror,

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Horror Films for Children

for example, Carol J. Clover (1992) and Barbara Creed (1993) operate from the assumption that the default viewer of horror is male and argue that even films with female protagonists such as Carrie (De Palma 1976) address patriarchal fears and desires relating to female sexuality rather than those of female spectators. Put in Creed’s terms, horror ‘reveals a great deal about male desires and fears but tells us nothing about feminine desire in relation to the horrific’ (1986: 70). However, Wood’s model also offered a progressive reading of some horror films as subverting and undermining, rather than justifying, dominant ideological fears. This reading has been taken up by scholars who seek to explore the pleasures and identifications that so-called othered groups might derive from horror, whether or not such films are specifically addressed to them (Cherry 1999; Pinedo 1997; Benshoff 1997; Short 2006; Coleman 2011; Elliott-Smith 2016). Of particular interest to this study is Andrew Scahill’s The Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship (2015). Employing the term ‘revolting child’ with a dual meaning as one who incites both disgust and rebellion, Scahill reads the depictions of antagonistic children in horror not as simply providing an outlet for paedophobia but as also offering a mode of subversive, queer spectatorship that invites sympathy and identification with the revolting child as they challenge, terrorize and are punished by adult figures of heteronormative authority. As such, Scahill argues that horror films offer a mode of ‘varied, fluid, and often unruly’ spectatorship that shifts between multiple points of identification (2015: 3). If Scahill claims that the revolting child can function as a vehicle of catharsis and empathy for queer adult spectators who are themselves an ‘othered’ group, it is not a stretch to suggest that these representations may also resonate with child viewers. Indeed, it is precisely this possibility that is the root of aforementioned media panics about children’s exposure to horror. The 1993 murder of British toddler James Bulger by two ten-year-olds was allegedly inspired by the horror film Child’s Play 3 (Bender 1991), though again there was not enough evidence to corroborate this. That the film is about a violent childlike figure (the iconic Chucky doll) fuelled this concern. Aside from the reasons I outlined earlier, a major problem with the assumption that children unquestioningly mimic onscreen violence is that it constructs a simplistic and homogenous image of all child viewers as passive, impressionable, unable to distinguish fiction from reality or right from wrong and lacking in knowledge of genre conventions despite evidence to the contrary (Buckingham 1996: 40–3). My approach with this book, therefore, starts from a position of granting children’s horror films and the children they address the same level of complexity as their adult counterparts. Although Horror Films for Children does not focus on the types of horror films of Scahill’s study (because they are not ‘for children’) I adapt Scahill’s logic and approach by examining the identifications and pleasures that can be derived from the representations of children in horror films that are constructed and

Introduction

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addressed towards them. One of the key questions underpinning this book is, therefore, how the aesthetic, narrative and thematic representation of children differs between adult horror and children’s horror films, in which child characters can simultaneously occupy the categories of protagonist, victim and monstrous ‘other’? I propose that, as a result of this, children’s horror films challenge assumptions regarding the simplicity of child viewers and children’s films and construct a sophisticated mode of representation, address and spectatorship that I refer to as the ‘horrific child’. ‘Horrific child’ is employed here as a flexible term that encompasses a number of meanings and functions. It is at once a character type, a mode of address and a reading strategy. I identify the horrific child character in the child protagonists of these films, who are ‘horrific’ in some or all of the following ways: their inherent ‘otherness’ to surrounding adult society; they are literally horrific due to some element of their appearance or behaviour; they encounter and engage with the horrific within the film. These horrific encounters always occur via their need to defeat or overcome the source of antagonism, which most often takes the form of a humanoid adult monster. In many cases, the engagement with horror also manifests in the child’s viewership of horror media within the diegesis of the film. The horrific child is usually but does not always have to be humanoid, like Gizmo the mogwai from Gremlins. In spite of this, Gizmo is the prototypical horrific child, hence his position on the cover of this book: he is a childlike being who occupies the status of a stereotypically innocent, sweet and dependent child but who is simultaneously ‘othered’ and horrific due to his species and his ability to spawn further, even more horrific child-substitutes (the titular gremlins). As pictured on the cover, cowering in fear at something beyond the frame, Gizmo is also horrific in that he bears witness to various forms of horror throughout the film, whether the behaviour of the gremlins, that of the human adults or horror media. Angus McFadzean also notes the diegetic presence of the media in Gremlins and other films, though he reads it as having an ‘ambiguous’ function that can vary from innocuous to dangerous depending on the text (2019: 76). I would counter that for Gizmo and the other horrific children discussed throughout this book, the consumption of horror media is indicated to be at worst a neutral activity that has no bearing on their behaviour or well-being and at best an enjoyable, cathartic and productive outlet that instructs them in defeating the monsters they encounter. This, in turn, constructs an address to a viewer who is invited to derive identification, laughter, fear, catharsis and a variety of other complex, multifaceted emotions from viewing horror. This child viewer of address is automatically horrific due to their spectatorship of horror, which is an inherently subversive act on account of the societal anxiety that arises from the way children’s consumption of horror challenges dominant cultural constructions of childhood. As such, I argue that the horrific child is a defining feature of the children’s horror film. It is as much of a staple within children’s horror as it is in

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Horror Films for Children

adult horror, but with vastly different representational, interpretative and affective possibilities. As a reading strategy, my employment of the ‘horrific child’ follows Umberto Eco’s literary concept of the ‘model reader’: a hypothetical figure who is encouraged to respond to particular signals, or ‘instructions’, within a text which guide them to the appropriate responses made available by the author (1994: 15). Children’s horror films construct and address a ‘horrific child’ model viewer through specific textual, formal and representational strategies that I outline in detail in Chapter 1 and in relation to specific case studies throughout this book. How actual children respond to children’s horror is not within the remit of this study. Rather, my interest is with how child audiences are conceived of and addressed by the horrific media made for them. In so doing, this book explores how horror films for children complicate, challenge and/or conform to dominant Western constructions of childhood, the way we define the horror genre and children’s cinema, the horror genre’s relationship with child spectators and notions of ‘suitability’ with regard to media directed to this audience. This approach is complicated by the paradox that children are rarely, if ever, the sole target audience of children’s films. This affects their content and the interpretative possibilities that are available. I have mentioned earlier that children’s horror films can be considered ‘impossible’, yet this issue faces practically all children’s fiction because of the fact that although it is ostensibly for children, it is in the overwhelming majority of cases constructed by adults. As a result, all children’s fiction created by adults will, to a certain extent, reflect and address the fears, desires and perspectives of adults. This argument stems chiefly from Jacqueline Rose’s The Case of Peter Pan, or The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction ([1984] 1992), and it echoes throughout the field of children’s literature scholarship.9 When it comes to film specifically, this medium is ‘never for children alone’ given that children generally do not go to the cinema unsupervised and are often beholden to the purchasing choices of adult guardians (Donald and Seale 2013: 98). Given the higher financial stakes of cinema compared to literature, children’s films have an even greater incentive to address, engage and be approved by adult ‘gatekeepers’. Rather than contradicting my approach, this fact is fundamental to my argument as it exhibits the tensions at work in these films. On the one hand, they present horrific child characters as unruly figures of subversive pleasure to be identified with and enjoyed by horrific child spectators. However, so as to conform to normative expectations of children’s fiction as needing to provide some form of didactic benefit, these children’s horrific tendencies must always be constrained by the need to satisfy adult notions of ‘suitable’ conceptions of childhood and children’s content. Consequently, children’s horror films inevitably address the very same fears of and for children that inform their representation as innocent victims and terrible villains within adult-addressed horror. These adult-defined

Introduction

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constraints facing the presentation of horrific child characters, who must continually negotiate a balance between being ‘horrific’ and ‘child-friendly’, allow them to function as an effective metaphor for the children’s horror film itself. The horrific child approach is one of the main factors that differentiates this book from existing studies, namely Antunes’s Children Beware!, which was produced in parallel to Horror Films for Children. As a result of this, and the fact that we draw on many of the same primary and secondary texts, there are some points of convergence between our arguments. For example, we agree on the implementation of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system in 1968, followed by the addition of the PG-13 rating to this system in 1984, as watershed moments in the history of US children’s horror cinema. We also concur that the representation of children in children’s horror texts is fundamentally different than in adult horror. (Indeed, most of the existing works on children’s horror align on this matter.) However, Antunes takes a production and reception studies approach to position children’s horror at the centre of broader cultural anxieties regarding shifting boundaries of both childhood and horror in the late twentieth century. While I overlap with and build on Antunes’s work in this regard, a significant point of divergence between Horror Films for Children and Children Beware! is Antunes’s characterization of children’s horror cinema not as a genre, as I conceptualize it, but as a trend or cycle that began and peaked in the 1980s before waning and eventually disappearing in the 1990s, only returning after the millennium as nostalgic, intermittent and less culturally challenging ‘echoes’ (2020: 149). Likewise, in his study of ‘suburban fantastic’ cinema, a category that overlaps with children’s horror, McFadzean (2019) focuses almost exclusively on 1980s texts, finding recent examples fundamentally less interesting or lacking cohesion. I do not dispute that the texts of Antunes’s or McFadzean’s analyses exist within a specific industrial and sociohistorical context that makes them a cycle in their own right, a cycle that differs in some key ways from the children’s horror films released after the turn of the millennium. Putting aside the obvious nostalgic appeal of such texts, I argue that this critical focus on the 1980s overemphasizes the decade at the expense of sidelining the 2000s and beyond as a significant period of interest and value for the production of children’s horror, and by turn its representation of horrific children. It is also useful to turn to Amanda Ann Klein’s distinction between film cycles and genres: Like film genres, film cycles are a series of films associated with each other through shared images, characters, settings, plots or themes. However, while film genres are primarily defined by the repetition of key images (their semantics) and themes (their syntax), film cycles are primarily defined by how they are used (their pragmatics). (2011: 4)

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Horror Films for Children

Following Klein, I argue that children’s horror films from the 1980s through to the present day are defined by ‘the repetition of key images . . . and themes’ that constitute their categorization as a specific genre (2011: 4). One of these ‘key images’ is the horrific child, both as an on-screen character and mode of address. I draw from a combination of methods including thematic, industrial, ideological and paratextual analysis, but which are driven primarily by an engagement with film form – a component that is mainly lacking in existing studies of children’s horror. In this regard I take inspiration from V. F. Perkins’s Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies ([1972] 1993), his defence of the value of textual analysis to Film Studies and in recognizing film as art. Children’s cinema (and to a lesser extent, horror) still struggles to be taken seriously as art within the academy and in popular culture more broadly. To borrow Perkin’s title, I thus see it as fundamentally important to take children’s horror films as films. In so doing, I seek to not just consider children’s horror films in their wider contexts, but to examine how the films themselves are speaking to and about their ‘horrific child’ audience, especially with regard to how this audience is being instructed to engage with horror. The other key point of originality of this book is to map out the generic characteristics and historical development of horror films for children. This is particularly with regards to how children’s horror films negotiate the ‘impossibility’ they face in terms of unifying the iconographic, aesthetic, thematic and narrative identifiers of the horror genre with those of children’s cinema, especially in terms of mitigating horrific elements to allow these films to be awarded ratings that signify their suitability for a child audience. This is the main focus of Chapter 1. In this chapter I also sketch a brief pre-history of key events and films leading up to and then following the emergence of children’s horror in 1980s Hollywood, bookended by analyses of the 1931 Frankenstein, one of the earliest ‘adult’ horror films with documentary evidence that it was enjoyed by children, and Frankenweenie, a contemporary reimagining of the same story specifically for a child audience. My discussion of the horrific child begins proper with my analysis of Gremlins in Chapter 2. Gremlins shares the most in common with adult horror in that it presents horrific child-substitutes in the form of the titular creatures, who are typically considered the villains of the film. Like any child villain in adult-addressed horror, they are eventually defeated by adult representatives of the status quo. However, I read the film as simultaneously offering an alternative mode of address to a horrific child viewer via the gremlins, who function as carnivalesque figures of subversive identification, pleasure and fear. This begins a discussion that is sustained throughout the remaining chapters to provide a detailed consideration of the horrific child in different styles (live-action, animated), forms (medium, ghost, vampire, horror fan), identities (especially gender), historical periods (1980s, 2000s and beyond) and industrial contexts (studio, independent).

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Gremlins is also my starting point due to its industrial role in changes to the MPAA ratings system. Its content was perceived by parents and critics as too violent for its PG rating. This led directly to the creation of the PG-13 rating, which intended to provide a home for borderline content that did not sit neatly within the ‘child-friendly’ G and PG ratings nor the ‘adult’ ratings of R and above. This liminal space opened up new possibilities for late-1980s children’s horror films such as The Monster Squad to address a narrower demographic of a horrific child, the tween. This film is the focus of Chapter 3, where I build on Antunes’s discussion of this era through the application of Máire Messenger Davies’s notion of ‘Crazyspace’ (2005) – a conceptual space within children’s media where adults are unwelcome – to characterize The Monster Squad’s unapologetically unruly and anti-authoritarian mode of address towards horrific children. I argue that the film’s situation within a horrific form of ‘Crazyspace’ that rejects adults is precisely what makes The Monster Squad one of the most fascinating and truly child-addressed children’s horror films. Simultaneously, this factor is responsible for the film’s underperformance and illustrative of the broader ‘impossibility’ of children’s horror cinema. Chapter 4 jumps to the post-millennial period, by which time the representation and address of the horrific child have undergone a significant shift, from the subversive Gremlins and The Monster Squad to less overtly horrific representations of children whose monstrosity poses little threat to normative conceptions of childhood and the adult world. ParaNorman is emblematic of this post-millennial turn towards representing a ‘normalized’ horrific child who balances the transgressive and cathartic pleasures of horror with conceptions of children as agents of futurity, progress and adult redemption. The chapter concludes by questioning the notion of ‘normalization’ and considering the implications of this by comparing ParaNorman with the Hotel Transylvania trilogy, an example of horror for a young audience that has been critically disparaged for taking the ‘normalization’ of horror too far. This reveals the continuing struggle for children’s horror – and the horrific child – to be valued and taken seriously by adult gatekeepers of children’s culture. The final two chapters mark a shift in focus from the historical progression of the horrific child to instead consider some recurring trends and representational strategies in children’s horror films of the post-millennial period. I am interested in both the aesthetic representation of horror for a child audience, as well as the horrific child as a gendered construct. With Chapter 5 I use the stopmotion-animated Coraline to challenge some prevailing assumptions about the representation of horror addressed to a child audience. One of these is that animation automatically functions to mitigate horrific content, while the other is that children’s horror is incompatible with certain ‘adult’ horror subgenres, namely the slasher. Drawing on the concept of the uncanny, I argue that Coraline’s animated aesthetics actually function to enhance, rather than

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Horror Films for Children

soften, its horrific effect through the uncertainty and unease that this medium evokes. The theme of inducing horror through optic uncertainty also informs the second half of the chapter, where I read Coraline as employing voyeuristic formal strategies associated with the slasher subgenre and its antecedent the Female Gothic, thus allowing the film to employ a subversive mode of address through aesthetics rather than through representations of transgressive children. However, this fact is problematic in relation to Coraline’s status as a rare example of a children’s horror film with a female child protagonist, especially given its employment of strategies associated with adult horror subgenres that have been widely regarded as misogynistic. That Coraline is horrific primarily due to its aesthetics rather than through its representation of children reveals a gendered discrepancy in who is allowed to be ‘horrific’ in children’s horror cinema. This concern with gender continues into Chapter 6, which examines and problematizes the male bias of children’s horror in relation to representations of violence and the home. Monster House and The Hole are children’s horror films in which male protagonists’ coming-of-age is defined by their relationship with violence and the domestic, but to vastly different effects. In Monster House the use of violence is suggested to be an appropriate method with which to overcome fear and to become truly ‘masculine’, especially where the source of that fear is a monstrous female figure who transgresses normative associations between femininity and the domestic. The Hole, conversely, equates the use of violence with cowardice and immaturity and explicitly rejects the association between violence and masculinity. This challenging of what ‘horrific’ means in relation to identity extends into the book’s Conclusion, where I consider some of the gaps and problems that remain within children’s horror films, specifically in relation to the children who are excluded from on-screen representation: those who are not male, white, middle-class and implicitly non-disabled, cis-gender and heterosexual. For these groups, the intersection of childhood with other facets of marginalized identity complicates the idea of being considered ‘horrific’ within white, hetero-patriarchal society. For as much as children’s horror cinema might defy normative conceptions of both childhood and the horror genre in Western culture, it cannot be truly subversive as long as it fails to represent all but the most privileged members of its audience.

Defining children(’s horror) With the subject of exclusions in mind, before turning to Chapter 1 and my full definition of the ‘children’s horror film’, this section clarifies my use of terminology and, by extension, the types of texts that are not covered by this book. While the label ‘children’s film’ is generally used to refer to films specifically addressed to children, Ian Wojcik-Andrews suggests that the term could also

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encompass ‘films about childhood, and films children see regardless of whether or not they are children’s films’ (2000: 19). However, by that reasoning, the corpus of this book would have to consider practically all horror films. Such an endeavour is not only impractical but would also undermine my interest in how the Hollywood film industry conceives of child audiences through the way it addresses them. The corpus of this book is thus narrowed to texts that can be identified as children’s films due to aspects of their address, content, age rating, marketing and merchandising.10 Yet as I have acknowledged earlier, children very often watch films in the company of adult guardians. Consequently, most ‘children’s films’ screened in cinemas are deliberately addressed to adult guardians as much, if not more than, children themselves, hence the term ‘family film’ is often used interchangeably with ‘children’s film’. While some have attempted to identify a distinction between these categories, it remains a difficult and elusive task, and is not one I can attempt to solve here.11 It should therefore be understood that in the context of this book, ‘children’s (horror) film’ refers to films that are constructed to address and be suitable for an audience that is expected to include children and which are presented through the perspective of a child protagonist. This follows in the vein of the definition of the woman’s film. Like children’s films, woman’s films are a ‘problematic generic entity’ defined according to their intended audience despite being ‘composed of . . . many diverse subcategories’ (Hollinger 2002: 78). The very idea of the woman’s film can be considered offensive as it implies that all other films (i.e. most films) are ‘men’s films’. Thus, the existence of the woman’s film ‘both recognises the importance of women, and marginalises them’ (Cook 1983: 17). These same criticisms apply to children’s cinema. Regardless, similarly to the children’s film, the woman’s film is a widely recognized category consisting of films which ‘place at the centre of [their] universe a female who is trying to deal with the emotional, social, and psychological problems that are specifically connected to the fact that she is a woman’ (Bell and Williams 2010: 3). By focussing on films that are both for and about children and their fears, concerns and desires, this study largely excludes adult horror films that might appeal to children but have age ratings that indicate their unsuitability for this audience, such as the R-rated The Lost Boys (Schumacher 1987); and horror films that have child-friendly age ratings but which prioritize the perspective and arc of an adult protagonist, such as Ghostbusters (Reitman 1984), the Addams Family films (Sonnenfeld 1991 and 1993; Vernon and Tiernan 2019), The Nightmare Before Christmas (Selick 1993), The Haunted Mansion (Minkoff 2003) and Corpse Bride (Burton and Johnson 2005). Throughout this book, films in the latter category are referred to as ‘family’ or ‘child-friendly’ horror films.12 That ‘children’s film’ implies possession by its audience also guides my use of this term. Children are already underserved by horror cinema, where most horror films are not addressed to them or are restricted through film classification.

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Horror Films for Children

Adults, meanwhile, have the freedom to watch all horror films regardless of age rating or target demographic. ‘Children’s horror’ thus states these films as being for children, and belonging to them, above all other audiences. By extension, my use of the term ‘adult horror’ refers to what are normally just called ‘horror films’, broadly defined here as films that depict the experiences of adult characters and/or contain material that is typically considered ‘unsuitable’ for child viewers, such as extreme violence, gore, intensity, sex and profanity, and which result in a restrictive age classification. Under this label I also group films about children which do not have restrictive age classifications, but which tonally and representationally have more in common with adult horror and which were marketed towards adult audiences, such as M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Visit (2015). Two additional, interrelated complications are what exactly is meant by ‘child’, and where do teen films and teen audiences factor into this? For the sake of simplicity, I conflate adult and teen horror films together under the term ‘adult horror’, which I acknowledge is contentious. Like children, teenagers are a socially marginalized and disempowered group, and films made for them are made by adults who are constructing an idea of what it is to be a teenager. Teenagers, and teen horror, therefore share the paradoxes facing children’s horror films while simultaneously occupying a liminal space between child and adult. Generically, teen horror shares children’s horror’s focus on autonomous youths who are resistant to or without the aid of adult authority, but they often include similarly violent and sexual content to adult horror films. Some of the horror subgenres most associated with teens, like the slasher, are often considered the most violent, sexual and ‘un-child-friendly’ of all. It is precisely because of these associations that I conflate teen and adult, allowing children’s horror, and hypothetical child spectators, to be defined in opposition to these categories. Simultaneously, this separation brings the way that some children’s horror films blur the distinctions between categories into more stark relief, as I argue in Chapter 3 in relation to The Monster Squad, whose children are horrific because they trouble these distinctions and challenge dominant paradigms of how children ‘should’ look and behave, just as children’s horror does for both children’s cinema and the horror genre. My definition of child, and how this is distinct from other life stages, is thus fluid and guided by how each film represents and addresses children rather than following any legal, scholarly or biological definitions of childhood which are themselves debatable and changeable depending on geographic, sociocultural and historical contexts. My final clarification concerns the difficulty in identifying children’s horror films when this is not a widely recognized generic, industrial or critical category. Films that I consider children’s horror are often referred to as genres adjacent to horror, such as fantasy, thriller and mystery.13 While many children’s horror films are necessarily hybridized with these genres to mitigate their horrific elements, it also

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means that actual children’s horror films must be separated from children’s films of other genres, as well as family horror films and teen horror films, with which they are often grouped. This is the case within edited collections such as Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture (ed. McCort 2016), broadcast strategies like ABC’s annual ‘13 Nights of Halloween’ programming and with lists curated by film publications such as Rolling Stone’s ‘12 Scariest Moments in Kids’ Films’ (Ehrlich 2015). In the latter, films that are considered children’s horror in this book, like Coraline, are grouped with films of other genres that contain frightening moments, such as Toy Story (Lasseter 1995) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Newell 2005). A similar problem concerns the categorization of children’s films that share motifs or themes with horror, such as the monstrous in Monster’s Inc. (Docter 2001), but are not constructed with the horror genre’s primary aim ‘to shock, disgust, repel – in short, to horrify’ (Bordwell and Thompson 2013: 341). Equally, what are we to do with children’s films that are received as being unintentionally frightening? To ascertain whether or not a text is ‘scary’ is a highly subjective task, although as I explain in Chapter 1, it can usually be identified when a text is attempting to scare through aesthetic and formal strategies. As such, in this book I focus on films where it can be clearly identified that one of the primary emotional intents is fear. This method risks repeating the same error for which I have criticized Newman, that is judging the ‘scariness’ and generic purity of films meant for children by adult standards. As Antunes rightly points out, this constitutes boundary policing that excludes and devalues how horror may be defined by the very audience for whom these films are made (2020: 10–11). However, I reiterate that my interest in this book is not with how horror is defined and received by children but, quite the opposite, how horror made by adults addresses a child audience. Moreover, given the nascent status of scholarship dedicated to this area, I see it as important to contribute to this emerging conversation by providing a detailed study of a specific interpretation of what ‘children’s horror’ is, and within one national and industrial context: theatrically released feature films in Hollywood cinema. Like Newman before me, I welcome the disagreements, contradictions and wider applications of the ‘horrific child’ concept that might arise from this work.

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Chapter 1 Frankenstein to Frankenweenie The evolution of children’s horror in Hollywood cinema

In a brief discussion of Gremlins, M. Keith Booker offhandedly remarks that ‘it would have to be characterized as a children’s horror film, which . . . raises all sorts of questions’ (2010: xvi). Booker does not elaborate, but it is easy to surmise that such questions might include: What exactly is the children’s horror film? How does it negotiate the competing demands of children’s cinema and the horror genre? Where did it come from? Beginning with the latter of these questions, this chapter sketches an overview of key films and moments in twentieth-century Hollywood that led to the emergence of the children’s horror film in the 1980s. The second half of the chapter then examines the generic characteristics of latetwentieth- and twenty-first-century children’s horror films in order to map out some parameters and a working definition for this category of film. It is difficult to say exactly when the story of the children’s horror film begins. Historical evidence shows that horror films have been enjoyed by children for as long as the term ‘horror film’ has existed, with notable early examples being Dracula (Browning 1931), Frankenstein (Whale 1931), King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack 1933) and other ‘monster movies’ of early and Classical Hollywood cinema (Smith 2005: 58). However, these are not ‘children’s horror films’ in the same way as the post-1980s examples discussed throughout the rest of this book. Taking Frankenstein as the paradigmatic example, there is little about the film’s concern with the unethical, irresponsible and overly ambitious use of science by the film’s morally questionable human adult protagonist, Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), or its bleak conclusion that appears to align with dominant expectations and characteristics of children’s fiction such as a clear

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moral and a happy ending. However, Lincoln Geraghty and Mark Jancovich stress the importance of taking care ‘not to transfer one’s own understandings of genre terms and their meanings back onto previous periods in which the terms and their meanings might have been very different’ (2008: 3). More instructive, then, is whether the film was conceived or marketed with children in mind as a core part of the target audience? I have not been able to locate any evidence that this was the case. Moreover, despite the fact that the film was hugely popular with 1930s child audiences – a fact in which the film’s star Boris Karloff took great pride (Jancovich and Brown 2013: 251) – children’s very attendance at this and other early-Hollywood horror films was a source of adult anxiety. This was exacerbated by the fact that the only child character, Maria (Marilyn Harris), only appears briefly before being accidentally drowned by Karloff’s Monster. This scene was widely censored to excise the girl’s drowning, exhibiting a desire to protect children both within the film and in the audience. Actual child audiences, however, did not see the Monster as a threat but a figure of sympathy; in Karloff’s words, his child fans expressed ‘such pity . . . for the “poor monster”. They are particularly sorry for any living thing, human or animal, that is ugly’ (Mannock 1933 in Jancovich and Brown 2013: 251). It is also likely that the Monster’s appeal to youth audiences was down to his innately childlike nature, allowing a point of identification with his plight as a misunderstood ‘newborn’ creature navigating the world around him, learning the rights and wrongs of society and frequently getting them wrong, all the while seeking the approval of an antagonistic parental figure, his creator Dr Frankenstein. In this way Frankenstein takes after the fairy-tale tradition, which Tatar argues addresses children’s fears through the representation of adults and authority as ‘the real ogres’ in child characters’ lives (1992: 191). This goes some way to explaining the enduring popularity of the character in later children’s or child-friendly horror texts like Frankenweenie and The Monster Squad, discussed respectively at the end of this chapter and in Chapter 3.1 In light of the film’s popularity with child audiences of the 1930s, and a reading of the Monster as a child, Frankenstein allows a resistant ‘horrific child’ viewing strategy that I trace in later children’s horror films such as Gremlins. Indeed, the two films are linked by their foci on monstrous child-substitutes who are unfairly persecuted by human guardians and their ambiguous endings that can be read as either celebrating or mourning the destruction of these children. Even so, as I discuss in Chapter 2, Gremlins can be clearly identified as a children’s horror film through its marketing and paratexts; the same cannot be said for Frankenstein. Therefore, although I do not consider Frankenstein and its contemporaries to be ‘children’s horror films’ as such, they are important precursors and landmarks in the development of the genre in Hollywood cinema.

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Fun and fear: ‘Child-friendly’ horror in Code-era Hollywood The ability to identify children’s horror films in early-Hollywood cinema is further complicated by the Motion Picture Production Code, which was in place from the 1930s (Frankenstein narrowly avoiding its enforcement) until 1968. This aimed to ensure that all films released in the United States did not contain any objectionable content that might ‘lower the moral standards of those who see it’, inclusive of children (Leff and Simmons 2001: 286). The Code had no age restrictions, unlike its replacement, the MPAA ratings system. As such, almost all films released in the United States under the enforcement of the Code, including horror films, are technically ‘suitable for children’, though, as with Frankenstein, they are not necessarily ‘children’s films’. With that being said, there are two key contexts during Code-era Hollywood in which child audiences intersected with horror film production, spectatorship and exhibition. The first is a group of films that can be identified as deliberately adopting a childlike mode of address, and the second is spaces of horror film exhibition in which children were present, regardless of whether or not the films were specifically addressed to them. The most obvious case study for films specifically addressed to children in Code-era Hollywood is the Disney studio. Walt Disney was adamant that he ‘[did] not make films primarily for children’, but for ‘the child in all of us, whether we be six or sixty’ (in Behlmer 1982: 60). Although this statement is technically inclusive of viewers of all ages it indicates an explicit address to children, whether actual children or an older viewer who is encouraged to adopt a childish sensibility. As such, many Code-era Disney films can be identified as ‘children’s horror’ inasmuch as they are films addressed to a child, or childlike, audience and which adopt horror imagery and conventions. There are early animated shorts, such as The Skeleton Dance (Disney 1929) and Mickey Mouse vehicle The Haunted House (Disney 1929), which blend fun-house style spectacle with slapstick comedy; frightening moments in animated features such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand 1937) and Pinocchio (Luske and Sharpsteen 1940); and adaptations of Gothic literature like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Geronimi and Kinney 1949). Outside of the Disney studio, other notable child-friendly horror films of Code-era Hollywood include the live-action The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (Rafkin 1966) and stop-motion-animated Mad Monster Party (Bass 1967). These and the aforementioned Disney films are all illustrative of broader trends in the provision of horror to child audiences from the Code era to the present day. Mad Monster Party is a parodic take on Universal monsters, who are made ‘childfriendly’ by being divorced from their horrific context and placed in a humorous situation. This dynamic can also be seen in contemporaneous cartoons (e.g.

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Looney Tunes’ Transylvania 6-5000 [Jones 1963]), children’s television (e.g. the  Dracula-inspired Count von Count [Jerry Nelson/Matt Vogel] on Sesame Street [1969–present]), family sitcoms (e.g. The Munsters [1964–6], The Addams Family [1964–6] and Groovie Goolies [1970–1]) and would be later revived in the Hotel Transylvania film series. The blend of horror iconography with comedy is also key to The Haunted House, The Ghost and Mr Chicken and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, all of which present a cowardly, childlike adult (or mouse) within a scary location (a haunted house or, in the case of the latter, a forest on Halloween night), and whose over-the-top frightened reactions result in slapstick pratfalls to be laughed at rather than fear to be mirrored and shared by the audience. In The Ghost and Mr Chicken, what the hapless protagonist (Don Knotts) thinks are ghostly happenings are revealed to be elaborate tricks played on him by the house’s caretaker (Liam Redmond), in an uncanny anticipation of the structure of the horror-comedy cartoon series Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969–70). Horror-comedy hybridity was also key to the output of the highly prolific William Castle, known for promoting his films with gimmicks that encouraged audience participation. Famously, The Tingler (Castle 1959) was exhibited with buzzers installed in cinema seats which would activate at key moments to give audience members the impression that the film’s monster had broken loose from the film’s diegesis and was in the auditorium. On-screen, the star Vincent Price instructed spectators to ‘scream for your lives!’ There is an obvious juvenile thrill to be had from Castle’s interactive approach and, similarly to Disney, he sought to address an intergenerational audience that included ‘teenagers, children, all devotees of adventure and horror’ (Castle in Doherty 2002: 139). In contrast to these horror-comedies, the horrific sequences in Snow White and Pinocchio appear to be intended as genuinely terrifying, but they are nevertheless short and isolated moments cushioned by the surrounding generic contexts of musical fantasy. Take Snow White’s (Adriana Caselotti) flight through the forest early in the film, where what she believes are the menacingly glowing eyes of trees are eventually revealed in the daylight to be those of friendly woodland creatures who lead Snow White to safety. This is illustrative of a notable alleviating method associated with frightening fiction for children, identified by Reynolds as a ‘sense of security’ that is provided when ‘what was thought to be inexplicable is explained, and what seemed dangerous and menacing is made safe’ (2006). Last but not least, these films are animated, a medium that would come to be heavily associated with child audiences and which can also be read as alleviating horror by establishing an obvious separation from reality. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is exemplar of this, where Ichabod’s (Bing Crosby) fear is made humorous through staple cartoon strategies for representing fear: green-tinged skin, bulging eyeballs and hair that stands straight on end. The alleviating strategies identified here are shared by children’s horror films that

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emerge at the end of the twentieth century, which I expand upon later, allowing them to be identified as important children’s horror precursors. When it comes to the viewing habits of actual children during the Code era, evidence shows that children’s horrific tastes extended beyond the films discussed earlier to include films that may not have been specifically addressed to a child audience, but which were positioned as children’s films through exhibition practices. The 1950s and 1960s in particular were key decades for youth audiences in US cinema, for example with the founding of American International Pictures (AIP) in 1954, which actively courted the newly recognized teen demographic with a wide array of low-budget genre films, including horror (see Doherty 2002). For children in particular, television was a key site of engagement with horror; not only because of the family sitcoms mentioned earlier but also because of programmes like The Twilight Zone (1959–64) and the broadcasting of classic Universal horror films which were packaged together under the banner of ‘Shock Theatre’. Concurrent to this, theatrically released horror films were becoming increasingly adult-oriented with influence from arthouse cinema and European imports like Peeping Tom (Powell 1960). Kevin Heffernan supposes that this trend alienated ‘horror fans used to Hammer and AIP product’, which we can infer likely means youth audiences (2004: 131). With this shift, the rising ubiquity of television (and televised horror) in American homes, and the cultural and industrial recognition of the teen demographic, film audiences were becoming increasingly fragmented. This is a fact that exhibitors capitalized upon in the late 1960s, especially with regards to catering children with a thirst for horror that had likely been fostered via television. In his indispensable economic history of mid-twentieth-century US horror, Heffernan identifies children as a highly sought-after demographic. Afternoon matinees, also known as ‘kiddie matinees’ were ‘one of the most important subsequent-run markets for horror and science fiction films’ in the 1960s because children up to the age of twelve provided a reliable and constantly replenishing audience for whom older horror content could appear brand new (2004: 211– 12). Despite the fact that television horror would have been accessible to children for free, Heffernan notes that a crucial draw of the kiddie matinees was that they provided an adult-free space away from the home, and the independence that this provided was likely a greater point of appeal than the films themselves (2004: 212–13). Still, it does not seem a stretch to surmise that the subversive nature of the horror genre likely dovetailed with and enhanced this appeal. A particularly fascinating detail is that one of the most popular horror films shown at kiddie matinees throughout the decade was Village of the Damned (Rilla 1960) which features children in key roles, albeit as antagonists (Heffernan 2004: 187). It is not clear whether this was a point of the film’s appeal for child viewers, but as with Frankenstein it is possible to read Village of the Damned’s depiction of children subverting the authority of adults as allowing an unruly mode of horrific

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child spectatorship, amplified by the viewing context at matinees outside of the control and purview of adults. The thrill of adult-free cinema spaces where children can vicariously enjoy the exploits of on-screen children challenging their elders is a theme I will return to in Chapter 3 in relation to The Monster Squad. Despite its popularity at 1960s kiddie matinees, Village of the Damned raises the important point that all of the films mentioned thus far are almost completely absent of actual child characters, and when they do appear in prominent roles they are antagonists to be destroyed. This is the key distinction between these films and the post-Code children’s horror films that are the focus of this book; in post-Code children’s horror, children are not only deliberately constructed as audience members to witness and enjoy the on-screen horror but are also mirrored by canny and capable protagonists who take on the horrific on their own terms. Curiously, it was precisely the motif of antagonistic child characters in 1960s horror, and its overlap with the waning of the Production Code, that played a key role in the shift towards ‘true’ children’s horror films.

Children’s horror in New Hollywood and beyond Before the Code’s official retirement in 1968, it was gradually being challenged by escalating levels of sex, violence and profanity in 1960s film. Heffernan explains that this, coupled with the lack of an age-based ratings system, made kiddie matinees increasingly problematic as the decade progressed because it was difficult for ‘theatre managers, parents, and the juvenile audience itself’ to distinguish between ‘adult’ content and the ‘child-friendly’ matinee fare (2004: 213). This issue came to a head with the release of Night of the Living Dead (Romero 1968), released just on the cusp of the Code’s abolition and replacement with the MPAA ratings system. As such, children were permitted to see the film. One screening was infamously documented by a disturbed Roger Ebert (1969), in what he called not a review of the film but ‘a review of the audience reaction’ – specifically, that of the many children who attended an afternoon matinee, and who he describes as having been left traumatized by the experience. Two particular targets of Ebert’s concern appeared to be Night of the Living Dead’s bleak ending, in which sole survivor Ben (Duane Jones) is mistaken for a zombie and gunned down by vigilantes, and its depiction of ‘little girls killing their mothers’, referring to zombie child Karen (Kyra Schon). Ebert’s phrasing is interesting, as it suggests concern less for the well-being of the child than for the adult victim, recalling Paul’s suggestion that attempts to restrict children’s access to horror are driven less by the desire to protect children from horrific media, than by an interest in protecting adults from horrific children (1994: 277). Ebert

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concluded his review by lamenting the fact that the film was exempt from the newly implemented ratings system that would likely have prevented children’s attendance. The abolition of the Code and its replacement with the MPAA ratings system signalled a major turning point in Hollywood as a whole, with particular regards to both the horror genre and children’s cinema, and by extension the children’s horror film.2 As noted by Wood, the 1970s are considered the ‘Golden Age’ of the American horror film, despite (or because of) the fact that the horror films produced without the restrictions of the Code could be ‘more gruesome, more violent, more disgusting . . . more disturbed and more disturbing’ than ever before (2003: 63). In other words, horror became more ‘adult’ in nature. Indeed, Heffernan points to 1968’s introduction of the ratings system as being a significant factor in the development of what he calls ‘adult horror’ in the United States. As noted earlier, horror was becoming increasingly adult-oriented throughout the 1960s, but this was intensified by the freedoms posed by the ratings system in terms of what could be shown, and the ability to officially exclude the child audience. Heffernan identifies Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski 1968) as exemplar of the adult horror category, characterized by contemporary settings and the exact elements that Ebert pointed to as being inappropriate for children: explicit violence, bleak endings, and – most interestingly – demonic child antagonists who pose a threat to the adult-dominated world order (Heffernan 2004: 201). Precisely why evil children are such a prominent motif of adult horror films – and how this is subverted in children’s horror – is an issue I will address in Chapter 2. For now, it is undeniable that 1968 marked a significant change in the production of horror in the United States, particularly a type of horror that was ‘unsuitable for children’. But what of horror that was suitable for children (according, of course, to adult perceptions)? Logic would dictate that if the MPAA ratings system resulted in the emergence of ‘adult’ horror films that children were restricted from seeing by virtue of their ratings, this opened up the possibility for an oppositional space where G- and PG-rated horror addressed specifically to children – and which inverted the dynamic of child villain/adult hero in adult horror – could emerge. However, this ability to segment audiences by age did not immediately result in a boom in the production of children’s films, horror or otherwise. Rather, the removal of the Code led for the industry to take advantage of the new freedom and the market became increasingly oriented towards teens and young adults, including the emergence of the teen-oriented slasher subgenre. This resulted in a lack of child-friendly content offered by Hollywood, and a lack of satisfaction with the little that was offered (Krämer 2006: 268). The underperformance of the Disney studio during the period is emblematic of this. By the late-1960s, the Disney brand had become practically synonymous with child-friendly entertainment. As Davis explains,

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In [the] pre-Ratings environment, the Disney name on a film came to mean ‘safe’ – a film anyone in the family could go to see without having to worry about the kinds of depictions of sex and violence increasingly featured in mainstream films of the period – and in that sense, functioned as a de facto, unofficial ‘G’ rating. By the time the MPAA’s Ratings System came into force in November 1968, Disney’s association with family entertainment was firmly established. (2019: 3) Elsewhere, Davis cites a 1967 survey in the women’s magazine McCall’s as evidence of this widespread association between Disney and ‘safe’, child-friendly content. With Walt Disney himself having died in 1966, leaving the studio’s identity in flux, this was a climate in which parents (or at least, readers of the housewifeoriented McCall’s magazine) were increasingly worried about what they could take their children to see ‘now that Walt Disney is dead’ (Hershey 1967: 28 in Davis 2006: 133–4). The difficulties facing the Disney studio in the 1970s and 1980s likely did little to alleviate these concerns. Following its founder’s death, the studio underwent major changes in management, survived aggressive takeover attempts and struggled to adapt to the rapidly changing industry (Gomery 1994: 78–9). For example, it attempted to respond to the unprecedented success of Star Wars (Lucas 1977) with the expensive and tonally dark science-fiction films The Black Hole (Nelson 1979) and Tron (Lisberger 1982), as well as medieval fantasy Dragonslayer (Robbins 1981), a co-production with Paramount. All of these films were financial disappointments even while some of their technical achievements were critically praised. Yet the struggles of Disney at this time also resulted in the studio’s first forays into horror for a child audience in the post-Code industrial climate. These were the early-1980s live-action films The Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Like much of Disney’s output at the time, these films financially underperformed. This was likely due to the uneasy combination of their dark themes and sombre tones with the popular conceptions of the Disney brand as safe and saccharine. Indeed, Something Wicked’s director Jack Clayton pinned the blame for his film’s underperformance on it being advertised as a horror film rather than, in his words, ‘a very classy fantasy picture’ (in Sinyard 2000: 169). With both Something Wicked and Watcher, Disney seemed intent on distancing itself from its public perception as ‘harmless’ family entertainment and showing that it was still relevant in the more adult-oriented New Hollywood climate. This was the most overt in Disney’s positioning of Watcher, which one of the film’s producers referred to as ‘our Exorcist’ (Tom Leetch in Stannard 2011); this bizarre juxtaposition of the Disney brand with one of the scariest and most controversial horror films of all time is self-evident. Trailers warned that the film ‘is not a fairy tale’ and ‘not for small children!’, likely doing little to alleviate the concerns of parents that Hollywood was not appropriately catering children (‘Trailer #1’ [1980] 2002). Both films were

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also plagued with production issues and studio intervention, revealing Disney’s anxieties about the films’ tones and marketability.3 Watcher and Something Wicked are also markedly different from Disney’s relatively harmless earlier experiments with horror, such as Sleepy Hollow, in several ways. While Sleepy Hollow’s hero is a buffoonish adult whose representation reads as amusing, the later films prioritize young characters and their concerns, and appear to attempt to elicit fear over any other emotional response. In Something Wicked, for example, the deepest desire of one of the protagonists, Jim (Shawn Carson), is to grow up. This is implied to stem from the absence of his father, a gap that Jim wishes to fill. This makes Jim vulnerable to the temptations of the sinister Mr Dark (Jonathan Pryce) who runs a supernatural carnival and offers Jim the ability to become an adult; however, Mr Dark has an agenda to steal Jim’s soul. Though Jim is tempted, he is saved by his best friend Will (Vidal Peterson) and Will’s father Charles (Jason Robards). The film, therefore, deals with themes likely to resonate with children in the audience, including maturity, child–parent relationships and friendship. Crucially, Watcher and Something Wicked show no signs of attempting to alleviate their horrific elements through distancing strategies such as comedy or animation, as was the case with earlier Disney horror films. This is unsurprising given that the directors of these films were already experienced in creating horror for adult audiences: Clayton with The Innocents (1961) and John Hough with The Legend of Hell House (1973). This horror heritage is evident in both Something Wicked and Watcher. The latter, for example, borrows heavily from the voyeuristic formal strategies of the slasher subgenre that had emerged in the 1970s and which is representative of the industry’s shift towards more explicit horror content. This is most clearly demonstrated in a scene in which a vulnerable protagonist, Jan (Lynn-Holly Johnson), walks through some woods alone. This is conveyed through an unsteady, mobile camera shot that follows Jan as if from the perspective of an unseen stalker. The adoption of strategies from adult horror films, their foci on sympathetic, identifiable child characters under threat and the lack of any significant mitigating strategies in the form of comedy or animation are likely major factors in Watcher and Something Wicked’s underperformance. Too scary for children who were ill-catered by Hollywood at the time, and not scary enough for teens who were old enough to enjoy the violent thrills of ‘adult’ horror films that were thriving in New Hollywood, the films fell into a gap of irrelevancy. While Disney’s attempts at horror in the early 1980s were unsuccessful, it was not long before two hugely profitable non-Disney films helped to popularize the concept of horror for young audiences: the PG-rated Ghostbusters and Gremlins. Their successes can be attributed in part to their horror-comedy hybridity and their association with popular names that

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gave them mass appeal to viewers of all ages. Ghostbusters starred Saturday Night Live (1975-present) alumni Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd, and Steven Spielberg executive-produced Gremlins. That these films were not plagued with the saccharine associations of the Disney label may also have helped their presentation of family-friendly horror seem more palatable than Disney’s live-action attempts. With its predominantly comedic tone and goofy but affable adult protagonists, Ghostbusters follows in the footsteps of the Codeera comedy-horror films discussed earlier, which have a childish appeal even if not addressed primarily to that audience. Gremlins, meanwhile, was heavily marketed as a children’s film, but it received a backlash when adult audiences and critics considered it too frightening for children (see Chapter 2). This resulted in the creation of a new film rating, PG-13. Situated between the PG and R ratings, PG-13 denotes that a film contains content that may not be suitable for young children but is also not objectionable enough to restrict children altogether. As Antunes (2020) argues, the implementation of PG-13 was a watershed moment for children and horror in the United States as it opened up a middle ground in which children within the liminal pre-teen category could be explicitly targeted and addressed by the horror genre. The combination of Gremlins’ box-office success (despite its controversy) and the greater flexibility of the new PG-13 rating led to a small number of horror films addressed primarily to child audiences in the mid–late 1980s, with ratings of both PG and PG-13: The Gate (Takács 1987), The Monster Squad, Little Monsters (Greenberg 1989) and the 1990 adaptation of The Witches. Like Disney’s earlier attempts at horror with Watcher and Something Wicked, these films feature child or adolescent protagonists having to defend themselves, their friends, families and in some cases the world from dangerous supernatural forces. Meanwhile, adult characters are almost exclusively presented as evil, ineffectual or absent altogether. This leaves – and empowers – the child protagonists to take matters into their own hands. In The Monster Squad, for example, the US Army arrive at the end of the film only to find that the titular squad, a group of children who are horror fans, have already successfully dispatched the monstrous antagonists. These factors of child protagonists, child-centric themes and an absence of reliable adult figures indicate a direct address to child audiences rarely seen in horror films made during Code-era Hollywood or before the implementation of PG-13, and they continue to characterize most child-oriented horror films made since. This is not to say that the genre remains stable, constant or without controversy throughout the 1990s, into the 2000s and beyond; these are developments that I will address in further detail later in this chapter and in Chapters 3 and 4. Nevertheless, the key characteristics and mitigating strategies of children’s horror films from the 1980s onwards are consistent enough that it is possible to map out the generic parameters for this category of film, and to address the problems that arise from this task.

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Identifying the ‘impossible’ The abovementioned pre-history of children’s horror has observed certain strategies that are read as alleviating frightening elements and revealing an address to an audience that includes children. The most significant of these strategies are hybridization with genres of comedy or fantasy; animation; a lack of realism; and swift reassurance after frightening moments. However, these strategies result in a paradox: if the principal intention of the horror film is to horrify, but children’s horror films must largely shy away from doing this in order to remain ‘suitable for children’, how can children’s horror films be classified as ‘horror’ at all? A difficulty in attempting to define the horror genre for any audience is that fear,  as with other emotional responses that form the basis of some film genres (e.g. amusement for comedy, sadness for melodrama), is subjective. This is especially the case when it comes to children. Empirical studies on children’s responses to horror reveal the difficulty in anticipating what children will and will not find frightening. Moomin (1990–1), the seemingly innocuous animated children’s fantasy series about a family of creatures who resemble anthropomorphic hippopotami, is found to have frightened children in two different studies (Buckingham 1996: 104; Lemish and Alon-Tirosh 2014: 147). The subjectivity of fear also applies to adults. A twenty-first-century audience might not be frightened by an early classic of the horror genre, like Universal’s Dracula (Browning 1931), and may be divided as to the ‘scariness’ of more recent offerings, from violent ‘torture porn’ films like Saw (Wan 2004) to the psychologically unsettling The Babadook (Kent 2014). Yet these films are widely agreed to fall under the umbrella of ‘horror’ given their adherence to certain codes and conventions of the genre, that is, the use of recognizable motifs and iconography, themes and narrative patterns. By the same method, we can exclude Moomin for its lack of these identifiers. David J. Russell refers to this approach as the ‘objectivist’ method, in contrast to a ‘subjectivist’ approach that focuses on the genre’s emotional effects (1998: 234).4 For Russell, neither approach is satisfactory in isolation. First, objectivism is too limiting as it does not account for generic variation and hybridity. This aligns with Steve Neale’s theory of genre, which dictates that only focussing on repetitive similarities between films ignores the very things that give genres longevity: variation and difference (2000: 173). Conversely, Russell sees the subjective approach as being far too broad and vague, in that how ‘scary’ something is can vary wildly from person to person (1998: 235). With that said, it can usually be recognized when a film is addressing its audience with an attempt to scare them through ‘objective’ identifiers, like the use of violence and/or gore, the creation of suspense and ‘jump scares’ through editing, lighting, sound and music, and a variety of other tactics; yet there will always be exceptions to every rule, carving out new

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space for genres to develop in what Neale refers to as ‘processes’ (2000: 165). These processes may ‘be dominated by repetition, but they are also marked fundamentally by difference, repetition, and change’ (2000: 165). As has already been noted earlier in relation to The Watcher in the Woods’ use of slasher aesthetics, children’s horror displays generic repetition by employing similar techniques and narrative elements as horror films for adults. Crucially, children’s horror necessitates variation and difference from adult horror in order to strike the balance between being both horrific and ‘suitable for children’. Noël Carroll’s The Philosophy of Horror is one of the seminal scholarly works that attempts to define the horror genre. By focussing on both narrative structures and emotional responses, it offers a balance between the objective and subjective camps, and serves as a useful basis for approaching children’s horror in a generic context. Carroll works from the premise that horror is ‘marked by the presence of monsters’, before pointing out that this would include fairy tales, myths and other stories of a fantastic nature ‘that we are not inclined to identify as horror’ (1990: 15–16). This problem is even more applicable to children’s horror given that fantasy is often used as a way of mitigating horrific elements, resulting in a great deal of overlap between fantasy and horror for child audiences. Carroll resolves this by arguing that it depends upon the context in which the monster appears. In fairy tales, monsters are presented as ‘ordinary creature[s] in an extraordinary world’ while in horror they are ‘extraordinary character[s] in our ordinary world’ (1990: 16). This is useful for differentiating children’s fantasy films that feature monstrous elements, like The Wizard of Oz or the Harry Potter series, from children’s horror films that feature fantasy elements. The latter typically involves a real-world contemporary setting that is invaded by a supernatural, monstrous presence that does not ‘exist according to reigning scientific notions’ (1990: 35). This corresponds with Wood’s assertion that in horror ‘normality is invaded by the monster’ (2003: 71), a structure that characterizes children’s horror films such as Monster House in which the peace of an ordinary suburban neighbourhood is threatened by the existence of the supernatural dwelling of the title. Carroll goes on to argue that horror’s monsters are characterized by the emotional responses they are intended to evoke in the audience, which are fear and disgust (1990: 19). They are disgusting because they are impure: the result of the ‘fusion’ or transgression of categories such as living/dead (e.g. zombies) or human/inhuman (e.g. werewolves) (1990: 43). We can see such monsters in children’s horror, whether zombies and ghosts in ParaNorman or the aforementioned house in Monster House. Carroll’s limitation of horror monsters to those of supernatural origins is problematic as a definition of adult horror as it excludes ‘realistic’ monsters, that is, those that could conceivably exist in reality, such as serial killers. Yet it is typically the gore, violence and immorality displayed in this kind of adult horror that is typically thought to be particularly detrimental to

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children. Carroll’s conception of horror as featuring only supernatural monsters is therefore suitable as a definition of children’s horror, as long as the actions of the supernatural monsters do not result in extreme violence, gore or other qualities often deemed ‘objectionable’ in children’s content. With that being said, many of the issues and themes presented in children’s horror films are realistic, as demonstrated by Jim’s desire to grow up in Something Wicked. Representing realistic fears and anxieties ensures that children’s horror films are able to bear relevance to their assumed audience while using a supernatural filter to prevent them from becoming too realistic or frightening; or, they replicate Bettelheim’s assessment of fairy tales as depicting ‘in imaginary and symbolic form the essential steps in growing up and achieving an independent existence’ (1976: 73; emphasis added). If children’s horror films must refrain from depicting ‘realistic’ horror and violence, this aligns with the policy of the MPAA whose guidelines state that G-rated films should contain only ‘minimal violence’, PG-rated films can contain ‘some violence’ that is not intense, while PG-13-rated films may contain violence that is not ‘realistic and extreme or persistent’ (MPAA and NATO 2010: 7). Although this is a study of US children’s horror films it is also useful to refer to the guidelines of the British equivalent, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), the ratings of which are broadly analogous to those of the MPAA.5 Helpfully, the BBFC provides detailed reasoning of their classification decisions, a contrast to the MPAA’s notorious lack of transparency that has been the subject of much scrutiny and criticism.6 Thus while I do not intend to imply that the methods and reasoning of the BBFC’s classifications align exactly with those of the MPAA, they are a useful substitute that can shed light on broader attitudes about what is considered ‘suitable’ for children according to dominant Western attitudes. The BBFC’s guidelines state that in a PG-rated film, violence should be ‘justified by its context (for example, history, comedy or fantasy)’ (BBFC 2020a). Animation and lack of realism are also cited as mitigating factors (BBFC 2020b). ParaNorman (rated PG by both the MPAA and BBFC) is a representative example, an animated film in which one of the most distressing scenes concerns the witch trial and sentencing to death of a little girl, which takes place via flashback to a historical setting in the eighteenth century. At other points during ParaNorman comedy is used in combination with moments of fear and disgust to mitigate the horror. All of these strategies are evident in the early children’s horror films discussed previously. ParaNorman takes after Disney’s The Skeleton Dance, in particular. Each focusses on generating disgust and amusement by showcasing the undead body’s grotesque lack of integrity and potential for the absurd. Where The Skeleton Dance depicts the skeletons engaging in an increasingly elaborate dance to an upbeat soundtrack, disassembling their bodies at will and using each other’s bones as instruments, ParaNorman’s zombies have sagging skin, detached body parts that can move autonomously and who even burst from

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their graves in comedic ways, with one emerging backside-first.7 Inserting these instances of unexpected levity theoretically helps to prevent frightening moments from becoming too prolonged or intense and, as Buckingham suggests, allows the presumed child audience to balance negative feelings of fear and disgust with positive ones of amusement and relief (1996: 135). ParaNorman, while a good example of a children’s horror film that fits the previous criteria, also contains a caveat to the claim that children’s horror should refrain from realism. In what might be the film’s most objectively ‘disgusting’ moment, the protagonist Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) becomes trapped beneath a corpse while trying to wrestle a book out of its rigor mortis-frozen hands. When the corpse’s tongue flops out of its mouth onto Norman’s face, it is more than just disgusting; it is abject in the specific sense theorized by Julia Kristeva as the response of a living person coming into contact with physical matter of death and being confronted with the knowledge that one day their own bodies will also decay (1982: 3). This is a rare moment of ‘realistic’ horror in a children’s horror film in the sense that it is entirely possible (even if unlikely) for an ordinary child to come into contact with a corpse. However, once again the strategies of animation and comedy function to lessen the horror that this encounter might evoke. ParaNorman is stop-motion animated with a particularly stylized aesthetic that, according to Buckley, adds a layer of ‘fakery’ to the film (2018: 155). The clear lack of realism may therefore function as a distancing strategy that mitigates horror. Indeed, Henry Selick, the director of Coraline – another stop-motion film produced by Laika, who also produced ParaNorman – has reasoned that he thought Coraline might be too scary for children if filmed in live-action (‘Feature Commentary. . .’ 2009). Whether or not animation actually does alleviate the effects of horror within child-addressed examples of the genre is a matter of debate, and an assumption that I challenge in Chapter 5. Nevertheless, what is important here is that children’s horror filmmakers and film classification boards believe animation to function in this way. This is highly revealing of the way that such films address child viewers and are defined by the industry as being suitable for them. The distancing that animation is thought to provide therefore allows Norman’s encounter with the corpse to evoke disgust in the audience of address while theoretically reassuring them that what they are seeing is not real. This disgust will also not match that felt by Norman in this imaginary scenario, which aligns with Carroll’s assertion that the emotions of horror audiences should be parallel to, ‘but not exactly duplicate’, those of the positive on-screen characters (1990: 18). Following Carroll’s logic, ParaNorman also mitigates the horror of Norman’s contact with the corpse through comedy. It is undeniably intended to be funny – if grotesquely so – when the corpse’s wet tongue smacks Norman in the face, allowing the possibility for the audience to feel amusement and pleasure that Norman certainly does not. This is a moment of ‘gross-out’ comedy as much as

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of ‘gross-out’ horror; two forms that Paul argues in Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy (1994) are closely linked by their obsession with the human body’s potential for disgust. Although the pleasure of disgust is also a feature of adult horror, I suggest that child-addressed horror films are where the disgusting potential of the genre is best placed. Despite some concerns that horror is not suitable for children, ‘adult horror’ is often paradoxically accused of immaturity and/or associated with adolescents (Evans 1973; Twitchell 1985; Williams 1991). These claims are often made in order to devalue the genre, but it is also often the case that pointing out the ‘childishness’ of the genre is a compliment. Victoria de Rijke, for example, writes that horror is ‘a childish genre, in the best sense’ (2004: 516) and Stephen King refers to the ‘primitive, childish level’ of horror as an art-form: ‘the good gross-out wallop finds its art in childish acts of anarchy’ ([1981] 2010: 201). The relationship between childishness and adult horror films is also implied in critical writing that refers to the act of watching horror as a game. Vera Dika’s Games of Terror (1990) states this in its title, and Paul refers to the fun and playfulness of horror, likening watching horror to going to an amusement park, ‘where we make a game out of our own feelings’ (1994: 421–2). If horror’s pleasures can so often stem from the childishness it draws out in its adult viewers, then children’s horror is not ‘impossible’ at all, but is entirely possible, logical and makes an ideal match of genre and intended audience. Other children’s horror films operate principally on a subtler form of horror where what is most frightening or disgusting is what is not shown – a tactic that is useful in obtaining an unrestrictive, and therefore ‘child-friendly’ film rating. This strategy can be seen at work in the sequence in The Watcher in the Woods discussed earlier that mimics the extended voyeuristic camera shots of slasher films. This allows the film to build an atmosphere of unease and suspense without showing anything that might be considered objectionable in a children’s film. The overlaps between children’s horror and the slasher are discussed in further detail in Chapter 5. Coraline is also interesting for the way it suggests violence without showing it. The film’s protagonist (Dakota Fanning) is in danger of having buttons sewn onto her eyeballs, and although the film makes passing reference to this violent procedure, it is never shown or described in detail. Rather, the horror and disgust of this are conveyed almost entirely through her reaction to the idea of it, and she survives the film with both eyes intact. Children’s horror films can be further identified and differentiated from other children’s genres through their adherence to a typical horror narrative structure. As mentioned earlier, Carroll identifies the horror genre as being ‘marked by the presence of monsters’; it is the presence of these monsters and what happens to them that many others refer to in their definitions of horror and the genre’s typical narrative patterns. Andrew Tudor, for example, outlines a basic horror plot structure based on a survey of over 900 horror films that is both specific to horror but vague enough to allow for Neale’s emphasis on the need for generic variation:

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‘a monstrous threat is introduced into a stable situation; the monster rampages in the face of attempts to combat it; the monster is (perhaps) destroyed and order (perhaps) restored’ (1989: 81). Importantly, ‘this can be realized in a variety of ways’ (1989: 81). This balance of specificity and variety is also central to what Carroll terms the ‘complex discovery plot’, which consists of four functions: 1. ‘Onset’: the existence of the monster is revealed to the audience, but not the protagonists; 2. ‘Discovery’: the existence of the monster is revealed to the protagonists; 3. ‘Confirmation’: the protagonists must prove the monster’s existence to authoritative figures in order to gain help in defeating it; 4. ‘Confrontation’: the monster is confronted, whereby it may or may not be vanquished. (1990: 99–103) This is a development from Carroll’s earlier work in which he outlined the ‘discovery plot’, identical to these four functions but for the exclusion of the ‘Confirmation’ stage (1981: 23). It is actually this earlier, less detailed ‘discovery plot’ that is more applicable to children’s horror. This is because it is often impossible for ‘confirmation’ to take place in the children’s horror narrative due to the nature of authoritative figures being unavailable, unable or unwilling to help.8 This trope is used for comedic effect in Hocus Pocus, in which a group of children and teens on Halloween night accidentally bring three evil witches back from the dead. They attempt to enlist the help of a man who they assume is a police officer but unbeknownst to them he is actually an ordinary man in a convincing Halloween costume. The man plays into the mistake before dismissing the children, who leave with dejection, and laughing about it with his girlfriend. The children are also unable to get help from their parents, who have been put under a spell by the witches. ‘Confirmation’ is present in Monster House, but only to reinforce the ineffectuality of authority figures and to leave the ‘confrontation’ to the child characters. With their parents away for the weekend and their babysitter uninterested in their warnings, the three child protagonists attempt to notify the police about the monstrous house in their neighbourhood. The officers, who are presented as buffoons, begin to investigate as a way of humouring the children, but when they are eaten by the monster house they provide ‘confirmation’ of its threat and leave the ‘confrontation’ to the children. Just as Tudor provides the qualifier that his basic horror narrative structure can ‘be realized in a variety of ways’, Carroll’s ‘discovery plot’ can form a multitude of different horror plots by dropping one or more of the functions and/or shuffling their order. He cites the science-fiction–horror hybrid Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel 1956) as an example of what he terms the ‘confirmation plot’, in which the monster is confirmed by the authorities but no confrontation takes

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place within the narrative (1990: 110). As it is a widely held belief that children’s stories should have happy or at least resolved endings, most if not all children’s horror films provide some form of closure. As such, Carroll’s ‘confirmation’ horror plot that ends without the confrontation and destruction of the monster does not apply to children’s horror films. The Monster Squad, The Gate, Hocus Pocus, Coraline, Monster House and The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Roth 2018) are all children’s horror films that end either with the total destruction of the monster or the trapping of it in a secure place (e.g. another dimension) from where it cannot return. A third ending, as seen in The Witches (both versions), The Hole, Goosebumps and Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, entails the destruction of the monster with an indication that it will return, or the destruction of the ‘main’ monster, implying that the remaining monsters will be easily dispatched after the film has concluded. These films’ resolutions, far from being distressing, indicate that the protagonists now have the appropriate strength, knowledge and resources to successfully combat any remaining threat they encounter. This concurs with Natalie Babbitt’s argument that children’s stories do not necessarily have to have wholly happy endings, but should at least end with a feeling of hope ([1970] 2008: 7). The happy ending is not a necessary characteristic of children’s horror across all media. On television, especially in children’s horror anthology series such as Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990–2000) and Goosebumps (1995–8), it is often the case that episodes conclude with a lack of resolution or a twist ending that leaves the child protagonist in peril; these endings lack the hope and optimism of their cinematic counterparts. I have suggested elsewhere (Lester 2021) that this disparity may result from devaluations of television horror that consider it to be inherently less frightening than filmic horror due to a number of factors, including its supposedly comfortable domestic viewing context that nullifies the effects of horror (e.g. Waller 1987: 159). Whether or not such dismissive characterizations of television horror are correct, if these are widely shared by adult producers, broadcasters and regulators of children’s media then it would explain why children’s television horror is far more able to ‘get away with’ unresolved endings than its cinematic equivalents. That children’s horror cinema is considered inherently scarier than children’s horror in other media, thus necessitating a more conventionally happy ending, is also indicated by the fact that the 1990 film adaptation of The Witches has a different ending from the novel. In both the novel and film, a recently orphaned boy (nameless in the novel, but named Luke and played by Jasen Fisher in the 1990 film) is turned into a mouse by an evil witch (Angelica Huston). When he and his grandmother (Mai Zetterling) successfully kill her, he seems destined to remain a mouse forever. In the novel the boy accepts this future as he calculates that his lifespan as a mouse will be roughly equal to that of his ailing grandmother, thus avoiding having to face the death of

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yet another guardian and the responsibilities of life as a human. The novel presents this as a bittersweet and moving conclusion, and it has been praised for its subversion of the traditionally didactic function of children’s fiction that comforts and socializes young readers to fit adult-defined ideals (e.g. Bird 1998). Evidencing this dominant view of the ‘purpose’ of children’s fiction, others read Dahl’s ending as a disempowering and regressive move that conveniently allows the boy to avoid resolving his attachment anxiety (LassénSeger 2006: 256), or as potentially ‘untherapeutic’ due to its implication that evil triumphs, even after it has been defeated (Rees 1988: 148). On the other hand, the ending of the film – in which a deus ex machina in the form of a good witch (Jane Horrocks) appears to transform Luke back into a human boy – has been equally disparaged for conforming to a stereotype of Hollywood conventionality, with Dahl himself among the film’s detractors (Treglown 1994: 253). Roeg, defending his adaptation, claimed that the viewing space of the cinema is inherently more frightening than reading a novel, and that his film, therefore, necessitated a happier ending to alleviate the horrific experience of what precedes it (2013: 35). Whether or not Roeg is correct, what is important here is that, as with assumptions about the mitigating effect of animation, an adult creator of children’s horror believes that cinematic horror is naturally scarier than in other media and shaped his film accordingly. Contrary to Roeg’s intention, I suggest that The Witches’ altered ending is potentially scarier than in the novel; rather than the novel’s allowance for Luke to remain a mouse and avoid the responsibilities of life as a human, the film’s ending leaves open the implication that after the impending death of his grandmother he is destined to grow up without any family, and likely within the care system. Read this way, the film’s ending is far from simple and saccharine, as it is often considered.9 The supposed ‘happiness’ of the endings of children’s horror films is a detail I will continue to question throughout this book, especially in Chapter 6, with regard to their subversive and ideological ramifications. This brings me to a final form of ending that is increasingly common in contemporary children’s horror films, where a sympathetic attitude is granted to monsters or others who do not fit within the societal ‘norm’. In films including The Little Vampire, ParaNorman, Frankenweenie and the Hotel Transylvania series the monster is not destroyed, but accepted or redeemed in some way. In order to bring this chapter full circle, the remainder of this discussion focuses on Frankenweenie. A loose adaptation of the 1931 Frankenstein film with which this chapter began, Frankenweenie most clearly demonstrates the development and generic characteristics of children’s horror in Hollywood history: from a group of ‘adult’ horror films that children could enjoy and form subversive identifications with childish on-screen monsters to a genre in its own right that acknowledges, addresses and represents children as a valid and valuable audience of horror.

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Reanimation: The case of Frankenweenie Tim Burton’s stop-motion-animated, black-and-white Frankenweenie adapts the Frankenstein story for a twenty-first-century child audience. Though released by Walt Disney Pictures in 2012, Frankenweenie has a long production history dating back to the early 1980s that further evidences the tensions at the Disney studio at this crucial time for the emergence of children’s horror. The film is at once a reinterpretation and loving homage to Frankenstein and other Classical Hollywood monster movies, and a remake of Burton’s own black-and-white, live-action short of the same name. The short was initially due to be screened in US cinemas in 1984, but it was pulled from release and Burton fired from Disney on account of the studio feeling that the film was too frightening for their target audience of children (Burton and Salisbury 1995: 38–9). That the film was granted a PG rating by the MPAA, then still uncommon for Disney films, was a particular source of anxiety (Burton and Salisbury 1995: 38). Yet this is hardly surprising given the recent underperformance of the studio’s experiments with live-action, PG-rated horror in The Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Even so, Disney’s reluctance to release the Frankenweenie short is ironic considering that it was planned to screen in front of a Christmas reissue of Pinocchio, which has a reputation as a notoriously frightening children’s film (Burton and Salisbury 1995: 38). Despite this initial clash between Burton and the Disney studio, he returned to the material after twenty-eight years to produce it as an animated feature to critical claim, modest financial success and an Academy Award nomination. What is the reason for these vast differences in these attitudes to the two versions of Frankenweenie, both within the Disney studio and the industry at large? That the 2012 film is animated, rather than live-action, is likely a factor given my argument earlier that animation is broadly considered to soften the impact of potentially frightening material. Apart from this, however, the two films are near-identical in tone, theme, mode of address and key story elements. This has led Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock to suggest that Disney’s support of the later film indicates that ‘it is not Burton who has changed, but rather the world around him’ (2013: 25–6). Catherine Spooner goes further in her suggestion that Burton himself led the charge of this industrial, cultural and generic shift through the success and influence of the films he would go on to make, post-Disney, in the late 1980s and 1990s (2017: 49–66). Films such as Beetlejuice (1988) and Edward Scissorhands (1990) demonstrated that critics and audiences were willing to embrace Burton’s marriage of playfulness and the macabre that resulted in his dismissal from Disney in the first place. Following this mainstream popularity, Burton returned to Disney to lend his ‘auteur’ status as producer of

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the stop-motion Gothic-musical-romance Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. It is important to note that this film was originally released under the label of Touchstone Pictures, a subsidiary launched by Disney in 1984 to distribute more ‘mature’ films that did not align with the studio’s family-friendly brand. This indicates that Burton’s return to the Disney studio was not met with an open-armed embrace, but with significant caveats. Nevertheless, Nightmare has since been rebranded as a Disney film (the Disney logo is emblazoned prominently on the DVD reissues) and it remains a successful cult property for the company, especially via ancillary merchandising and through its presence at the Disney theme parks. Although I would not classify Nightmare, nor any of Burton’s other early features, as ‘children’s horror’ according to the terms of this book, it has had a significant influence on later children’s horror films, particularly the stop-motion aesthetic of Coraline (which shares Nightmare’s director) and ParaNorman. Burton’s cultural impact, along with his 2010 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for Disney – his biggest financial success to date – no doubt earned him the goodwill to resurrect Frankenweenie in 2012.10 If the case of Frankenweenie evidences the industrial changes that have occurred around children’s horror from the 1980s to today, its status as an adaptation of Universal’s Frankenstein also showcases the stark intertextual differences in the narrative, themes and mode of address in the provision of horror for a child audience between the 1930s and contemporary Hollywood. Burton’s film moves the setting from eighteenth-century Europe in Frankenstein to suburban America in Frankenweenie. Dr Frankenstein, the megalomaniacal scientist who pushes ethical boundaries so that he may ‘know what it feels like to be God’, becomes Victor (Charlie Tahan), a sympathetic and well-meaning boy with a love of science and monster movies. The tragically misunderstood and victimized Monster of Frankenstein, comprised of body parts from various cadavers and the ‘abnormal’ brain of a criminal, becomes Sparky, Victor’s beloved pet dog who stars in Victor’s amateur horror films. When Sparky is tragically killed in a car accident, Victor resurrects Sparky to be reunited with him. From these details alone it is clear how Frankenweenie, as put by Hawley, ‘re-imagin[es] the Frankenstein tale not only for child audiences but from a child’s perspective’ (2016; emphasis in original). This is an important progression from Frankenstein, a film that was not conceived or marketed towards children as a primary demographic, but which made an indelible mark on child audiences of the 1930s through Karloff’s portrayal of the Monster as a sympathetic and childlike figure of subversive identification. In Frankenweenie and other contemporary children’s horror films, however, to identify with a horrific child character is not a resistant and alternative mode of viewing, but overtly and intentionally encouraged at every level of the film’s production and promotion. I do not wish to suggest that this makes Frankenstein in any way less interesting, important or meaningful than Frankenweenie to actual child audiences, both

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historical and contemporary. Part of the paradox of children’s horror is that it is often the most subversive and horrific texts that children are not ‘supposed’ to watch that are identified as the most enjoyable, thrilling and best remembered. While Frankenstein certainly falls within this camp in the context of its original release, Frankenweenie and other horror films made specifically for children are in danger of being stripped of this taboo element of subversive pleasure as a result of their deliberate construction for child consumption. However, it is also significant that Victor – and the protagonists of many other children’s horror films – is represented as a child who enjoys and creates horror films, a fact that is not a cause for concern by the adults within the text or the society outside of it. This is arguably a positive development that indicates a greater cultural acceptance of children’s viewership of horror, the horrific child mode of viewing, and thus the potential for a greater number and variety of texts that represent and address children as a distinct audience. Not only is Frankenweenie clearly addressed to children, but it is also ‘suitable’ for children according to dominant, adult-constructed norms of children’s media, while also adhering to generic expectations and characteristics of horror. One way that it does this is in its privileging of the theme of friendship and a pedagogic message concerning acceptance of monstrous others. After his resurrection, Sparky is the same affectionate dog he was in life (with a few extra stitches in his skin) rather than a source of disgust and terror that is rejected by his creator. However, this negative response to Sparky is held by other people in the diegetic community of Frankenweenie. In a partial re-enactment of Frankenstein, the frightened and angry townspeople chase Victor and Sparky to a miniature golf course where they hide inside of a replica windmill. The windmill is set on fire by accident and Victor becomes unconscious after falling. Sparky rescues Victor but is killed (again) when he is crushed by the burning windmill. Having seen that Sparky is a gentle creature, the townspeople revive him once more by jumpstarting him with their car batteries. This fulfils the need for children’s horror films to have a happy ending, and also impresses a moral lesson upon Victor, and by extension children in the presumed audience: the need to come to terms with the death of a loved one. After Sparky’s second ‘death’ at the end of the film Victor is able to come to terms with this loss in a way he could not before, as his earlier inability to accept the death of his beloved pet is what led him to resurrect Sparky. Another moral is enforced via a sub-plot in which Victor’s classmates discover what he has done and attempt to resurrect their own pets. Like Dr Frankenstein in the 1931 film, they are doing so not out of love and grief, like Victor, but out of greed, as they desire to win the school science fair. As a result of these immoral ambitions their pets are resurrected as monstrous abominations that proceed to wreak havoc upon the town. Frankenweenie’s ending is obviously a drastic departure from that of Frankenstein, which ends with the death of the monster at the hands of the

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angry villagers. Here it is important to point out that Frankenweenie conforms not to Carroll’s ‘discovery plot’ but his alternative ‘overreacher plot’ that applies to science-fiction–horror hybrids like Frankenstein (1990: 120). The phases of Carroll’s ‘overreacher plot’ are: 1. Preparation for the experiment; 2. The experiment is attempted; 3. The experiment goes awry; 4. The monster that resulted from the experiment is confronted and possibly destroyed. What is interesting about Frankenweenie’s adherence to this structure is that phases three and four only apply to the aberrant pets of the rival children, which are destroyed one by one, allowing the original creation, Sparky, to live with Victor ‘happily ever after’. In this way, the narrative follows the ‘overreacher plot’ even while deviating from Frankenstein by emphasizing the importance of love, friendship, acceptance and the ethical use of science. In this way, Frankenweenie overcomes the ‘impossibility’ of children’s horror by remaining recognizably ‘horrific’ as well as ‘suitable’ for a child audience. This chapter has sketched a pre-history of key films and trends leading up to the emergence of children’s horror films in post-Code Hollywood and beyond, the gaps of which are to be completed throughout the remainder of this book. I have also provided a working definition of children’s horror films that differentiates them from adult horror as well as from children’s films of adjacent genres, such as fantasy. Children’s horror films, as I define them for the purpose of this study, can be identified by their adherence to typical conventions of the horror genre, including the presence of monsters, the evocation of disgust and narrative structures that hinge upon if and how the monstrous presence will be defeated. They are simultaneously able to deviate from established horror conventions in order to meet expectations of ‘suitability’ for children by excluding – or finding strategic ways to alleviate – horrific elements through the lessening of fear, realism and violence through stylized animation, moments of humour and reassurance, and a happy or hopeful ending. These films also display a specific address to the child demographic by placing children at the centres of the narratives as independent, resourceful and identifiable characters who do not need the help of adult characters, who serve as foils, antagonists or unhelpful bystanders. Often, as is the case in Frankenweenie, the child protagonists are themselves constructed as ‘horrific’ in that they engage in a variety of supposedly unchildlike pursuits, from watching or making horror films to resurrecting the dead. The remaining chapters examine key films that fit these criteria with regards to the varied ways in which these films represent, construct and address a horrific child spectator, and the implications and tensions that arise from this.

Chapter 2 Children behaving badly Representing and addressing the horrific child in Gremlins

What happens to the representation of children in the horror film when children are the audience? This is the key question addressed within this book, which proposes that a central feature of the children’s horror film is the construct of the horrific child: a flexible term that refers simultaneously to on-screen child protagonists who are horrific in their defiance of adult authority and hegemonic notions of ideal childhood, and to an equally horrific child viewer of address who is invited to take subversive identification, pleasure and catharsis from these representations. This is at odds with the way that children normally function in adult horror films as victims in need of protection or monstrous, ‘othered’ villains to be tamed or destroyed by adult protagonists; either way, the rescue or destruction of the child by the adult restores the social order in which children are dependent upon and subservient to adults. However, to suggest that children’s and adult horror films offer diametrically opposed representations of children and modes of address would be disingenuous. This is, of course, due to the fact that children’s films are ‘never for children alone’ due to their creation by adults and the fact that adults, whether as critics, guardians of children or independent viewers, are vital to the reception and financial success of children’s cinema (Donald and Seale 2013: 98). Consequently, children’s horror films can never quite escape the trappings of adult horror, especially when it comes to the representation and address of horrific children. These tensions – between child and adult viewers, and between child characters as heroes, victims and villains – are particularly stark in the case of Gremlins. Gremlins has a controversial and central role in the emergence of children’s horror in US cinema because its violent content – largely inflicted by, and upon, horrific children – defies adult-constructed notions of what is ‘suitable’

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in children’s entertainment. In this chapter I argue that it is precisely the film’s role in the development of children’s horror cinema, and its contentious status as ‘for children’, that makes it an apt starting point for analysis of the horrific child construct. First, however, it is necessary to outline the trope of the horrific child in adult horror films before going on to explore how Gremlins both challenges and upholds this representation.

Reading the horrific child The classical era of the horrific child in adult horror is the late 1960s and 1970s. This period saw the release of quintessential ‘evil child’ films Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist and The Omen, the resonance of which tend to be attributed to socio-historical anxieties. As discussed in Chapter 1, Heffernan (2004: 185) observes that the emergence of this motif occurs concurrently with the abolition of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1968, which allowed for the content of US horror films to become more violent, sexual, bleak and otherwise more ‘adult’. This meant that evil child characters and their actions could be presented in ways more horrific than ever before, perfectly timed to tap into contemporaneous adult anxieties concerning a loss of control of children to the counterculture (Paul 1994: 282; Skal 1993: 295). However, the resonance of the horrific child in adult horror is not limited to specific socio-historical periods. The trope extends beyond historical, national and even generic boundaries and is subjected to a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, as evidenced by the wealth of academic literature that has emerged to address this subject over the last decade and the diversity of texts discussed within them: from ‘classic’ evil child films, to films about the horror of children’s toys like Child’s Play (Mancini 1988), to the misbehaving children of reality television.1 As suggested by Wood’s categorization of children as ‘others’ (2003: 65–6), the ongoing cinematic exploitation of paedophobia indicates that there is something about children and childhood that is inherently unsettling to the adult ‘norm’. Indeed, children are inherently ‘monstrous’ due to their continual growing and changing, both mentally and physically. As such, children align with Carroll’s definition of horror monsters as the result of the ‘fusion’ or transgression of categorical distinctions, in that they blur the boundaries between youth and age, innocence and corruption (1990: 43). This liminal status of children results in a ‘schizophrenic vision’ that goes some way to explaining their presentation in adult horror as both victims and villains (Kincaid 2015: 7). Children are informally referred to as ‘little monsters, devils or beasts’ as often as they are ‘little angels’ (Bazalgette and Buckingham 1995: 1). Expanding on this biblical connotation, Marcia J. Bunge outlines the conflicting views of the child within Christian thought: in some views, children are

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born with original sin from which they must be saved, but in others infants are born innocent and only learn to sin as they mature under the influence of adult society (2001: 1–28). These contradictory positions are united by the idea that the child must be saved or redeemed from corruption. However, there is also a self-serving adult interest in protecting the state of childhood which arises from the Romantic belief that ‘the qualities of childhood, if they could be preserved in adult-hood [sic], might help redeem the adult world’ (Cunningham 2005: 72). In relation to this, childhood is also conceptualized as merely a ‘developmental stage’ to be passed through and where ‘all manner of things may go monstrously awry’, hence the tendency in psychoanalysis to turn to childhood memories in order to ‘cure’ adult trauma (Bohlmann and Moreland 2015: 12). Paul argues that this interest in protecting or redeeming adults by controlling or ‘saving’ children is the impetus behind several moral panics that have occurred throughout twentieth-century US cultural history, driven by fears that children will become corrupted, uncontrollable ‘little monsters’ who pose a threat to adults if they are exposed to horrific media (1994: 277). These moral panics provide important context for this discussion and the chapters ahead. Of the most significant of these were the concerns surrounding comic books sparked by Wertham, who claimed that violent imagery in horror comics caused juvenile delinquency (1948 and 1954). Similar concerns regarding the potentially negative effects of children’s exposure to horror and the occult have been rejuvenated in debates surrounding the Goosebumps and Harry Potter franchises and, as I detail later, Gremlins. Of the more extreme reactions to texts such as Goosebumps are the claims they will ‘get [children] interested in evil, wicked things’ or that they have been sent by the devil himself (in Tanner 2010: 5). Such unevidenced, overblown claims reveal a fear of children as much as, if not more than, a desire to protect them. Ironically, the calls for censorship that often accompany these debates tend to forget that the restriction of access to an item often makes it more desirable. This is expressed with admirable stubbornness by David Pace Wigransky, a child respondent to Wertham’s criticisms of comic books. ‘If a child is told not to read a comic book’, argued the fourteen-year-old Wigransky, ‘he will break his neck to do it’ (1948: 20). Wigransky also echoed Bettelheim’s sentiments on the ‘benefits’ of fairy tales by arguing for children’s right not to be kept in ‘complete ignorance of anything and everything except the innocuous and sterile world that the Dr. Werthams of the world prefer to keep them prisoners within from birth to maturity’, as this will leave them unprepared to deal with ‘a world of violence and cruelty’ (1948: 20). This impassioned defence of children’s access to horror anticipates Buckingham’s empirical work, in which he details the pleasure and potential long-term benefits that children may gain from watching horror (1996). Crucially, Buckingham posits that the extent to which children are adversely affected by watching horror depends upon ‘the social contexts in which they watch and

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subsequently talk about it with others’ (1996: 136). Wigransky’s letter and Buckingham’s research indicate that rather than shield children from violent or horrific content altogether, adults should respect children’s desires to engage with it and assist them in understanding it in order to prevent them from becoming ‘horrific’ in turn. It is important to keep in mind that, as with negative side effects, the potential benefits of horror upon children remain unproven. What does matter here is that the sentiment regarding the positive outcomes of horror upon children is expressed within a number of children’s horror films, thus indicating to the child audience of address that they will receive these same pleasures and benefits. Gremlins is one of these films.

Suitable for children? Gremlins’ misleading paratexts Gremlins takes place at Christmas, when a struggling inventor named Randall Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) gives an unusual gift to his son, Billy (Zach Galligan), that he bought in Chinatown. This gift is a mogwai – a fictional, teddy-bear-like creature that is as cute as it is mysterious – which they name Gizmo. Caring for Gizmo comes with three deceptively simple rules: keep him away from light, especially sunlight as it will kill him; keep him away from water; and never feed him after midnight. Of course, as in any standard fairy tale or horror film, these rules are broken over the course of the narrative. Artificial light hurts Gizmo, and when exposed to water he spawns further mogwai who are almost identical to him in appearance, but more mischievous in temperament. These new mogwai trick Billy into feeding them after midnight, causing them to transform into malicious, reptilian creatures known as gremlins. The gremlins proceed to wreak havoc upon the film’s setting, the suburban town of Kingston Falls. Throughout the film Gizmo remains a cuddly and good-natured creature, and assists Billy and his love interest Kate (Phoebe Cates) in killing the gremlins and preventing them from multiplying further. The last remaining gremlin, Stripe, meets a gruesome end when the sun rises and kills him. Gremlins’ status as a children’s horror film is somewhat debatable in large part due to its notoriously horrific content. The titular gremlins are responsible for, and subjected to, numerous acts of graphic violence throughout the film, which juxtapose with its PG rating that indicates suitability for most children. This clash of expectations and reality resulted in some outcry from parents and critics upon the film’s original US release in 1984. However, far from disqualifying Gremlins from being a children’s horror film, this context establishes it as a vital part of the emergence of this genre in Hollywood history. This is particularly due to its role in the implementation of PG-13, a liminal rating that opened up a space within

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Hollywood for horror films directed specifically to the pre-teen audience. This background to the film provides valuable extratextual context for the themes within Gremlins and my reading of the film’s representations of horrific children. Gremlins’ questionable status as a children’s film is evident from the age ratings it received from differing national classification boards. While in its home country the film was classified PG, in Britain it was rated 15, thus preventing anyone under that age from legally viewing it in a cinema and marking it as definitively ‘not for children’. In spite of this, the film’s paratexts help to identify it as a children’s horror film specifically within its national context (Bentley 2002: 9–10; Antunes 2020: 57). Jonathan Gray emphasizes the importance of paratexts to film reception by explaining that films ‘often begin long before we actively seek them out’, as the information we receive about a text before seeing it, namely through posters and trailers, is as crucial to the construction of a text’s meaning as the text itself (2010: 47–8). In this way, paratexts can be a key identifier of a film’s audience, especially with regards to children. Gremlins was marketed heavily in the United States as a family-friendly film akin to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), directed by Steven Spielberg, who also executive produced Gremlins. The two films share in common their presentation of a relationship between a boy and his unusual inhuman companion, and this association was reinforced through the Gremlins poster. Like the poster for E.T., it displays a pair of hands on a dark blue background. On E.T.’s poster the hands belong to Elliott (Henry Thomas) and E.T., touching their forefingers in reference to Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (c. 1508–12), while on Gremlins’ poster the hands are those of Billy holding a box that contains Gizmo. Spielberg’s name is also featured prominently on both the poster and trailer – ‘Steven Spielberg presents Gremlins’ (‘Theatrical Trailer’ [1984] 2014) – further inviting ‘family-friendly’ associations between the two films. It is possible that Spielberg was at this time far more heavily associated with the horror genre than I am implying here due to his producing credit on the family horror film Poltergeist and his own Jaws (1975), and, therefore, that audiences may have expected similar levels of horror from Gremlins. However, behind-the-scenes footage that was used to promote Gremlins shows Spielberg confidently stating that it ‘is certainly not a horror film’ (‘Gremlins: Behind-thescenes featurette’ [1983] 2014). Either Spielberg was unaware of the film’s horrific content, drastically underestimated how it would be received and/or that he may have anticipated this generic association and deliberately tried to mitigate against it so as not to harm its box-office prospects. Regardless, this statement, along with the fact that the Gremlins marketing materials bear such a close resemblance to those of E.T., sent a strong message of child-suitability. More than anything, it was the merchandise associated with Gremlins that signified for the US market that it was suitable for children. Gremlins was released in the wake of the original Star Wars trilogy, which had broken new ground in terms of demonstrating the financial benefits of ancillary merchandising and of

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integrating ‘toyetic’ elements (i.e. characters or props within the film that could be sold as toys) into films to boost profits. In the case of Gremlins these products were predominantly child-oriented, and included soft toys, figurines, lunchboxes and novelty cereal. It is particularly interesting that some television adverts for these products made links between children and the gremlins in misleading ways. The Gremlins cereal commercial ([1984] 2017) asks the viewer, ‘Are you hungry? Hungry as a . . . gremlin?’ and shows children with the recognizable gremlin ears which disappear after they have eaten the cereal, thus falsely implying that a gremlin is no more harmful than a hungry child. Another advert for the fast-food chain Hardee’s promoted a set of read-along audio books which tell the story of the film (‘Hardee’s (Gremlins offer)’ [1984] 2011). Notably, the story of the film was adapted for these books to exclude most of the violent content. The form and content of the advert itself continued to promote this misleading sense that the film was suitable for young children. A lullaby-esque melody accompanies two young children reading together in a tent in a garden bordered by a white picket fence, a ubiquitous signifier of the very kind of suburban tranquillity that is viciously attacked by the gremlins in the film. A non-diegetic choir of children sing, ‘You love Gizmo and Gizmo loves you’, completing the wholly saccharine and idealized view of childhood and American family values which is bizarrely at odds with the content and tone of the film. Similarly, an advert for a Gizmo soft toy contains an upbeat jingle that declares, ‘It’s fun to care for Gizmo’, and not, as in the film, a very serious responsibility and extremely stressful experience which, if any mistakes are made, could lead to the destruction of an entire town (‘1984 Gizmo (the Mogwai from Gremlins) plush toy commercial’ [1984] 2012).2 In light of this oblique marketing strategy, it is understandable that some American parents may have believed that the film would be suitable for children and why they were then shocked that the film is not a wholesome successor to E.T. but a violent horror-comedy with a biting, satirical tone. Antunes suggests that a core part of the negative reception of the film was due to its desecration of core American, Reagan-era values such as the nuclear family unit and the sanctity of Christmas (2020: 60–1). These objectionable qualities are exemplified by two of the film’s most notorious sequences. The first takes place in the Peltzer family kitchen, where three gremlins are brutally dispatched by Billy’s mother, Lynn (Frances Lee McCain), who up until this point in the film is presented as a mild-mannered housewife. Later, Kate recalls in a harrowing monologue that, as a nine-year old, she witnessed the discovery of her father’s corpse stuck in a chimney and dressed in a Santa costume, as he had been intending to surprise her on Christmas morning. Her story concludes ‘and that’s how I found out there’s no Santa Claus’, presumably revealing the truth about Santa to many unsuspecting child viewers. Gremlins followed just two weeks after the release of another controversial film with ties to Spielberg, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Also erroneously

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rated PG, the film is famed for graphic sequences including one in which a villainous character rips the beating heart from the chest of a live man. Due to the dark tone and violent content that characterizes both Gremlins and Temple of Doom, cinema owners reported that parents who took their children to see these films felt that their ‘faith in the movie ratings system [had] been shaken’ (in Zoglin 1984: 46). The MPAA’s response, spurred by a suggestion from Spielberg himself, was to introduce a new rating, PG-13. Still in place today, this signifies that a film contains content that may not be suitable for young children but is not objectionable enough to warrant an R rating, which bars children under the age of seventeen from seeing a film unless they are accompanied by an adult. Despite the numerical reference in the name of PG-13, children under thirteen years of age are allowed to attend a PG-13-rated film unaccompanied by an adult, making the rating cautionary rather than restrictive. Spielberg has aptly described PG-13 as PG with ‘a little hot sauce on top’ (in Higgins 2016), aimed at the liminal demographic situated on the cusp between child and teenager who have out-grown G and PG-rated films but are not yet old enough to see R-rated films at the cinema unsupervised. Unfortunately, the implementation of PG-13 was too late to warn audiences of the horrors of Gremlins. In addition to disapproval from parents, the film received negative critical reception due to its graphic content. Of particular interest to me here is that this criticism replicates the reactionary discourse that emerged from earlier moral panics about children’s exposure to horrific media – that is, the concern that children will imitate fictional violence. Roger Ebert (1984) and the Daily Express (‘Gremlins! Will You Let Your Children See them?’ 1984) reported having, in Ebert’s words, a ‘queasy feeling’ that children may try to echo with their own pets the scene in which a gremlin is blown up in a microwave, a reference to the popular ‘pet in the microwave’ urban legend. As with other moral panics, there is nothing to indicate that Ebert’s anxiety ever came to fruition (Olivier 2020: 30). As explained in the Introduction, moral panics responding to famous cases of child violence construct the horror genre as a scapegoat, one simple and contained enemy that deflects attention from more complex environmental or psychological factors that might inspire violence in a very small minority of children. With regards to Gremlins, I argue that the shock and gore of the microwave incident is effective enough to deter ordinary children from re-enacting it with their own pets. Moreover, in the next discussion I propose that the gremlins function as points of subversive identification for a horrific child viewer of address. This results in a disturbing reading of the microwave scene as a parental figure brutally attacking their own child. Although several critics did note this implication, it is curious that Ebert seemed more concerned about what might befall children’s pets than the potential distress suffered by child viewers, in an echo of his own review of Night of the Living Dead (see Chapter 1).3

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However, to read the microwave scene as only allowing a binary identification with either Lynn or the gremlin is, arguably, far too simplistic, and feeds into derogatory assumptions that children’s films and their viewers lack the complexity of their adult counterparts. It is widely accepted within scholarship pertaining to adult horror that the films allow viewers to enact complex systems of identification, shifting between villain and victim and the feelings of power and helplessness that come with each (Clover 1992: 12; Shaw 2001: 2). This is argued especially with regard to horror audiences who belong to ‘othered’ groups, such as women (Cherry 1999; Short 2006). Similar theories have been proposed in relation to children’s cautionary tales, which are read by Justine Gieni not as straightforwardly didactic, as they are often characterized, but as instead offering child readers the subversive and sadistic pleasure of seeing other children punished in brutal ways (2016: 38). As children’s horror is a form that takes after adult horror and cautionary tales in equal measure, it follows that it offers similarly complex forms of identification. The Gremlins microwave scene, therefore, allows its imagined child spectator to experience a combination of fear, disgust, pleasure and power, not to mention the potential for laughter that comes from the moment’s sheer absurdity. Whatever the source of the appeal, the fact remains that it is appealing. This is demonstrated by an interaction between a parent and child observed by Dante at a screening of the film, which echoes Wigransky’s assertion that children will do anything to watch what they want and will only be further incited by being forbidden: ‘After the microwave scene, some woman stormed out with her child. . . . The kid didn’t want to go, and a couple of minutes went by, and the kid runs back in the theatre having apparently escaped her mother’ (in Klein 2000). Though anecdotal in nature, this story and the concerned critical responses to the film attest to the notion that adult anxieties about children’s exposure to the horrific reveal more about adult interests in preserving socially constructed ideas about children as a homogenous group, rather than with the complex and varied desires, tastes and tolerances of actual children as individuals. In light of this, my reading of the film considers the ways that Gremlins offers subversive pleasures to a horrific child viewer of address. As already established, the film’s paratexts clearly indicate a simultaneous address to children and adults as equals, who are led to believe that the film conforms to prevailing expectations about ‘child-friendly’ media. This can be classified as ‘dual address’ according to Barbara Wall’s definition as when a text addresses adult and child viewers on the same level to allow a ‘conjunction of interests’ (1991: 35). Within the film itself, there is a ‘double address’ at play – when a text addresses adults and children as separate audiences (1991: 35) – that results in vastly different readings of the film, and of the gremlins themselves. The dominant and widely accepted reading of the film arises from a predominantly adult viewing position that accepts the gremlins as the film’s villains – representations of monstrous

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children – who must be annihilated by the film’s ‘positive’ human characters. This reading targets the hegemonic adult fear of the horrific potential of children and the threat they pose to the adult–child hierarchy, in line with adult horror films of the ‘evil child’ category as I have outlined earlier.4 The alternate reading that I perform in the remainder of this chapter is of the way the film addresses a child viewer much like the one in Dante’s anecdote; that is, a child who is able to gain vicarious pleasure and fascination from the gremlin creatures and the chaos that arises in their wake, and who will rebel against adult authority to do so. In this reading, the gremlins function as representations of children who wish to revel in unruly and forbidden behaviour, mirroring a horrific child audience for whom the act of viewing Gremlins is itself subversive and subject to adult worry and restriction. From this viewing perspective, I perform close narrative, formal and character analysis to argue that the gremlins are not the film’s villains, but unfairly maligned victims of incompetent adult authority figures. As such, Gremlins functions as a defence of children’s right to enjoy horror, and an anticipation of contemporaneous changes to and debates around film classification and child audiences.

‘Children of the night’: Gremlins as carnivalesque pleasure As with many cinematic horror monsters, the gremlins have been read as representing a number of different social groups.5 In the film’s context as children’s horror, I read them as analogues for naughty, monstrous children who pose a threat to the adult–child social hierarchy. Although real human adolescents do feature in the film, including protagonist Billy, they are portrayed as obedient, respectful of their elders and hard-working: in other words, ‘ideal children’. Yet the film also presents a distorted hierarchy in that these characters are more responsible than their own parents. The film’s more accurate representations of children are therefore Gizmo and the gremlins, as noted by reviewers such as Pauline Kael, who identifies Gizmo as ‘the good child; the other mogwai are its aggressively vulgar, beer-guzzling brothers – children of the night’ (1987: 188). As alluded to by Kael, the contrast between Gizmo and the gremlins sets up a number of binary oppositions relating to cultural constructions of childhood: angelic/evil, vulnerable/dangerous, child/teen. To extend this analogy to the film’s socio-historical and reception context, Gizmo is a sweet and naïve child who has been adequately protected from the ‘corruption’ of horror films, and the gremlins the depraved, monstrous children who are feared by dominant adult society to result from the consumption of horror. Indeed, Kael echoes Wertham’s comments about the effects of horrific media on adolescents when she refers

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to the gremlins as ‘a gang of happy juvenile delinquents’ (1987: 188). Bentley affords the gremlins a more charitable reading by highlighting their behaviour that is relatively innocuous childish fun, like wearing fancy dress and watching and singing along to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and by noting that their bad behaviour can function as wish-fulfilment for the child audience of address (2002: 22, 30). The more playful and innocent side of the gremlins is an important point I will return to later. Even so, Bentley acknowledges the extreme contrast between the Gizmo and the gremlins, which is central to her reading that the eventual destruction of the latter is symbolic of Gizmo, the film’s true protagonist, defeating the monster within himself – literally and figuratively, as the gremlins spawn from him. This draws from Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic reading of fairy tales, where a protagonist’s negative qualities are mirrored in the villain (1976: 127–8). Thus, Bentley posits that the film plays out Bettelheim’s thesis that ‘villain and hero are bound together as one’, and that Gizmo must vanquish the evil side of himself in order to live happily (2002: 28–9). This reading, while compelling, is undermined by the conclusion of the film which presents anything but a ‘happy ending’ for Gizmo. After assisting with the destruction of the gremlins, Gizmo is returned to the box in which he was imprisoned at the beginning of the film by his former owner, the Chinese shopkeeper (Keye Luke), from whom Randall purchased Gizmo. Instead of being rewarded for his triumph, as are the protagonists in fairy tales or the child heroes of the other children’s horror films discussed in this book, Gizmo is punished. Bentley’s reading therefore aligns the film more closely with adult horror films in which horrific children are rendered safe or destroyed. Instead, I want to make the case that the film presents the gremlins as points of subversive identification for the child audience, and their reckless behaviour and gleeful destabilization of the adult status quo as a spectacle of infantile pleasure. If the film aligns with fairy tales at all, it is in its depiction of child characters, the gremlins, who are threatened and persecuted by adult authority figures, including the parental figures who are meant to protect them. It is a recurring trope of children’s horror, and children’s stories in general, to present the adventures of children who are liberated from, or deliberately rail against, adult rule; but Gremlins is one of the most extreme examples of this. The revolt of the gremlins is a spectacular illustration of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalesque, a literary mode that showcases ‘temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order’ (1968: 10). As summarized by John Fiske, the carnivalesque is also characterized by excess – particularly of the body and its functions – bad taste and taking pleasure from causing offense (2011: 243) This may as well be a definition of the gremlins themselves, whose behaviour includes imitating a flasher, dressing in drag, greedily consuming alcohol and junk food, reproducing in astonishing numbers, attacking a man dressed as Santa, singing butchered renditions of Christmas carols and cackling

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with maniacal glee (laughter being a crucial component of the carnivalesque). That a consistent target of their attack is the very concept of Christmas is particularly apt: or rather, they attack a very specific and idealized form of Christmas concerned with peace, goodwill and community. The film makes this link explicit with an intertextual nod to It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra 1946), which Billy’s mother watches on television. Some critics (such as Ebert) also noted the resemblance between Gremlins’ snow-covered, small-town setting and the Christmas-themed paintings of Norman Rockwell. Gremlins rips away this image of wholesome Americana to revel instead in the far less picturesque Christmas traditions of indulgence and raucousness that are entirely in keeping with the carnivalesque’s ‘opposition to morality, discipline, and social control’ (Fiske 2011: 243). In the film, these orderly qualities are represented not just by the idea of Christmas but also by the human characters and the cute, well-behaved Gizmo who attempt to uphold them. The gremlins’ childish, carnivalesque defiance and upending of adult authority and adult-defined social norms contrasts with other New Hollywood blockbusters, particularly those of Spielberg and George Lucas. Wood identifies one of the major characteristics of these films as the restoration of patriarchy, which comes at the expense of the subordination of marginalized social groups (2003: 152). Wood uses one of Lucas’s Star Wars films, Return of the Jedi (Marquand 1983), as a prototypical example: the sole female in a prominent role, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), is largely sidelined while her twin brother, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), completes his destiny. The film concludes with the redemption of Darth Vader (James Earl Jones/David Prowse), Luke and Leia’s father and the patriarchal villain of the series (2003: 154). Wood concludes, ‘the project of the Star Wars films and related works is to put everyone back in his/ her place, reconstruct us as dependent children, and reassure us that it will all come right in the end: trust Father’ (2003: 155). What is particularly interesting about Wood’s argument is that he dismissively mentions Gremlins in a footnote as a ‘pervasively sick’ film that reveals the ‘essential ugliness’ of the ‘patriarchal morality’ of 1980s fantasy cinema (2003: 155n1.). Indeed, the film’s restoration of normality after all of the gremlins have been dispatched coincides with the serendipitous return of Mr Peltzer (henceforth Randall) who spends much of the narrative away at a work-related conference. Randall is also given the voice of authority through his narration, which bookends the film. However, this hints towards the film’s satirical tone that Wood appears to miss, as Randall’s narration implies an omniscience and control that is impossible given his near-total absence from the action and his representation as a fool, as I detail later. This, and the gremlins’ carnivalesque subversion of norms, allows the film to be read as satirizing and undermining the very ideology that Wood disdains. In this way, Gremlins actually aligns more closely with a selection of bleak and subversive 1970s horror films that Wood

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celebrates for their inversion of the typical horror structure in which ‘normality is invaded by the monster’. In these films, normality itself is monstrous – an outlook that, for Wood, was stamped out in the mainstream 1980s genre cinema that followed (2003: 85). Emblematic of Wood’s thesis is It’s Alive (Cohen 1974), in which a seemingly content heterosexual couple give birth to a deformed, bloodthirsty baby. For Wood, the abhorrent infant is a representation of the couple’s deep-seated incompatibility and unhappiness that is repressed beneath their outward projection of middle-class affluence and ‘strained cheerfulness’. This prompts Wood to pose the rhetorical question, ‘what but a “monster” could such a union ultimately produce?’ (2003: 89). Gremlins poses this very same question. To establish the problems with the society in which Gremlins takes place, it is useful to start with the human child and teen characters. As mentioned before, these characters are presented as obedient and hard-working to the point that they are barely children at all. The only ‘real’ children in the film are Billy’s prepubescent friend Pete (Corey Feldman), the unnamed grandson (John Louie) of the Chinese shopkeeper from whom Randall buys Gizmo and some child extras seen briefly in the early scenes of the film. Despite being children, Pete and the Chinese boy both seem to have more responsibility than their elders. Pete is employed hand-delivering Christmas trees that are larger than he is. The Chinese boy holds more agency and responsibility than his grandfather, as he leads Randall to the store, takes on the role of salesman and has a concept of financial urgency: when his grandfather refuses to sell Gizmo, the boy reminds him that they need the money, before selling Gizmo to Randall behind his grandfather’s back. The other human ‘children’ in the film, Billy and Kate, are presented with even more ambiguity. This is also observed by Bentley, who points out that the film resists showing Billy until he has been firmly established as a child: he is introduced via Randall’s narration at the start of the film, which informs us that Randall is trying to buy a Christmas present ‘for [his] kid’ (2002: 19). It is therefore surprising when Billy is shown on screen and appears to be a fully grown man, but this makes sense with the context that an earlier draft of the script presented Billy as a thirteen-year-old. He was later aged-up, but Dante explains that ‘he retained almost all his childlike aspects’, including the fact that his best friend, Pete, is a child (in Sragow 2015). This narrative decision might seem puzzling, but it serves the film’s continual blurring of the boundary between adult and child characters by reinforcing that Billy and Kate are stuck in a perpetual state of ‘post-childhood’ (McFadzean 2017: 8). Further complicating matters is that Billy and Kate are never shown attending school (although Billy has retained a friendly relationship with his former teacher), and instead they have jobs at the local bank. Kate also works part-time at a bar, further entrenching her within the adult world. For Billy, however, the status of responsible adulthood that his job implies is quickly undermined when he arrives late for work, hides his dog under

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his desk (which displays an upside-down nameplate) and hastily attaches a clipon tie. Despite this, Billy still seems relatively responsible when contrasted with his own father, and the fact that Billy is not a wholly responsible adult himself only amplifies Randall’s failure. Randall is the epitome of an ineffectual patriarch. The little time that he does spend at home is occupied by his work, and he then leaves for a conference before the mogwai transform into gremlins, oblivious to the chaos that he has triggered by gifting Gizmo to Billy. His failure as a father extends to his vocation as an unsuccessful inventor whose motto is to make ‘the illogical logical’, but in actuality his products are nonsensical gadgets. A contraption that appears to be several fly swatters attached to an electric drill and an artichoke connected to electric cables (akin to a potato battery) are two of the more ridiculous examples. Even the more plausible gadgets – an orange juicer, a coffee machine, a portable shaving kit – inevitably malfunction and end up covering the user with sludge. In this way, Randall’s inventions invert the way that the mainstream use of domestic appliances intended to liberate overworked housewives, instead further entrapping Lynn within a home that he has turned into a space of domestic terror long before it is invaded by gremlins. Further to this, Randall’s unsellable inventions undermine his ability to fulfil a traditional role as provider for his family. This leaves Billy to carry the burden of responsibility and become the household’s principle breadwinner, despite also being treated by Randall as a child. This results in a tragicomic inequality highlighted by Kael, which is that Randall’s offer to buy Gizmo for $200 is flippant, irresponsible and unjust given that this money likely comes from Billy’s own earnings (1987: 187). The world of the film is therefore one with a strange hierarchical order in which ineffectual patriarchs remain in charge, and children are exploited for their labour and prematurely pushed into the responsibility of adulthood in order to make up for the failings of their elders. This is detrimental to the diegetic community, as evidenced by Billy being given Gizmo, who is coded as a baby when cradled the arms of Billy, his surrogate father. Chaos ensues when it becomes clear that Billy is not yet mature enough for this responsibility. However, Billy cannot necessarily be blamed for his ineffectual parenting as it is a result of the ineffectual care by his own parents who have pushed him into adulthood too soon. To echo Wood’s question about It’s Alive, What but ‘monsters’ could ultimately result from this? It is this heritage of unsuccessful parenting, and the misunderstanding and mistreatment of the creatures that result from it, that causes the havoc inflicted upon the town. Billy’s ineffectual parenting begins when he drops Gizmo, injuring him. Billy and Pete then break one of the rules by spilling water onto Gizmo and causing the other mogwai to spawn. Gizmo is visibly and audibly in severe pain during this process, shown writhing on the desk, wide-eyed and squealing (Figure 2.1). Despite this, Billy takes one of the new mogwai to the high school science teacher (Glynn Turman) who forces it to also go through the painful multiplication process.

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One mogwai is then kept by the teacher for experimentation, which involves taking a blood sample that, again, causes the mogwai clear discomfort. In the following scenes, the mogwai at Billy’s house (excluding Gizmo) and the mogwai at the school are mistakenly fed after midnight, causing them to be encased inside cocoons from which they hatch as gremlins. From this point the gremlins begin to be killed by the humans, which is initiated by Billy finding the teacher unconscious at the school, having been attacked by the gremlin there. However, the method the gremlin chose was to stab the teacher with a hypodermic needle, likely the same needle with which its blood was taken. Therefore, the gremlin’s attack can be understood as just revenge against the teacher for being kept in a cage and being put through unnecessary pain. After Billy finds the teacher’s unconscious body, he presumes the gremlins to be dangerous and calls his mother to warn her. This leads to the infamous kitchen scene, the crucial catalyst that leads the gremlins to revolt against their human oppressors. After receiving Billy’s call, Lynn discovers three newly hatched gremlins in her kitchen and kills them one by one. First, she approaches a gremlin from behind as it eats cookies. A low growl indicates that it is bad tempered, but it has, of course, just awoken from a long hibernation and metamorphosis, and is now innocently helping itself to breakfast. When it climbs inside of a blender to eat the contents, Lynn turns the blender on, killing it while it is in a vulnerable position. Lynn is then attacked by another gremlin, as it has just witnessed her kill the first one. Lynn responds by stabbing it to death with a kitchen knife. As I have suggested in my earlier reading of the microwave moment, this sequence allows for a fluid variety of viewing perspectives. Audience spectatorship is chiefly aligned with Lynn through the camera’s focus on her, or the conveyance of her perspective via over-the-shoulder shots as she stalks the gremlins. However, at crucial moments the camera aligns with the gremlin victims when they are killed: as Lynn stabs the aforementioned

Figure 2.1  Gizmo in severe pain during the multiplication process in Gremlins.

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Figure 2.2  Lynn is constructed as a threat as she prepares to stab a terrified gremlin in Gremlins.

gremlin with a knife we are positioned as the receivers of this violence through first a close-up of the gremlin’s terrified reaction, followed by a low-angle, over-theshoulder shot from the gremlin’s point-of-view, constructing Lynn, not the gremlin, as a threat (Figure 2.2). The stabbing is witnessed by a third gremlin, which also retaliates. In response, Lynn sprays flea killer into its eyes, figuring the gremlin as a pest, which forces it to back into the open microwave (again presented as a low-angle, over-the-shoulder shot that places the spectator within the creature’s experience) in which Lynn traps it and cooks it until it explodes. Thus, a knock-on effect is triggered in which Lynn and Billy kill the remaining gremlins thinking them to be dangerous, to which other gremlins respond out of what can only be interpreted as self-defence and revenge for their fallen comrades. Finally Stripe, the last gremlin, escapes. Presumably having realized that fighting back individually is a futile endeavour and that there is safety in numbers, he heads to a public swimming pool to multiply into an army of gremlins. Close analysis of these instrumental sequences in the film therefore allows a reading of the gremlins as innocent victims, aligning the film with Messenger Davies’s definition of children’s stories as concerning childlike characters ‘at the mercy of bigger, older, and more powerful beings’ (2010: 137). The film’s address to children is also signalled by the mischief that the newly multiplied gremlins cause in Kingston Falls: cutting brake lines, taunting police officers, taking over a bar and swinging from Christmas lights. Reynold Humphries reads the gremlins in these moments as ‘the return of the repressed of infantile drives refusing any constraint’ (2002: 134), and indeed, although some of their actions could have highly dangerous results, there is pleasure to be had in their reckless, carnivalesque liberation from the established order and suspension of prohibitions. Central to this is the gremlins’ treatment of the elderly Mrs Deagle (Polly Holliday), whom the gremlins kill by tampering with her stair-lift, which malfunctions and launches her from a window. While this behaviour would usually be considered

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unforgivable, it is important to note that the film has constructed Mrs Deagle as a two-dimensional villain who poses a threat to the Peltzers and other families in the town. As Bentley suggests, ‘[t]he most dangerous thing one can have in the Gremlins universe is authority’ (2002: 21) and Mrs Deagle has the most authority of all: a Scrooge-like property magnate and capitalist, her first appearance in the film shows her cruelly denying a family an extension on their rent, and then she threatens to kill Billy’s dog. That the gremlins dispatch her in a way that is violent, yet cartoonishly absurd, is therefore to the benefit of the other human characters in the film and functions as a moment of anarchic pleasure for the horrific child viewer. Most of the gremlins are eventually killed all at once inside of a cinema, where they have gathered to watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the film’s most obvious mirroring of its child audience of address. This is yet another scene that revels in the mischief that the gremlins cause: throwing popcorn, cackling maniacally and meddling with the projector. However, like Lynn’s blending of the unsuspecting gremlin in the kitchen, this is also a moment at which the gremlins are at their most childlike and vulnerable and further demonstrates their cruel mistreatment by the human characters. The gremlins are momentarily distracted from causing havoc as they all stop to sing ‘Heigh-Ho’ along with the dwarfs in Snow White (who are, in turn, substitute child characters). Entranced, having fun and not inflicting harm on anyone else, they are as childlike as can be, right down to their choice of film. However, Billy and Kate take advantage of the gremlins’ innocent vulnerability to set the cinema on fire. The only gremlin to survive is Stripe, who once again seeks a large body of water – this time an ornamental fountain in a department store – to reproduce, gain reinforcements and save his species from extinction. That he also attempts to enact violent revenge on Billy and Kate, gremlin exterminators, is quite understandable given the context. The question that remains is how Gizmo’s presentation functions in this reading? He is on the ‘good’ side with Billy and Kate, and coded as such through his cuteness and obedience. Yet he is also complicit in the unjust extinction of his gremlin brethren. He, therefore, occupies a liminal position between the human child characters and gremlin rebels, all united in their status as children who are exploited by the corrupt adult society of the film’s diegesis. Through Gizmo, the film also presents a critique of regressive and reactionary attitudes towards children’s consumption of horrific media, and a prescient allegory for the changes to film classification that followed in the film’s wake.

Classifying Gizmo: Gremlins as ratings allegory As a child-substitute governed by rules, Gizmo’s treatment is an obvious analogy for strict parenting. Gizmo is the ultimate example of a sheltered child, the rules

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governing him so strict that, until being given to Billy, his entire life was spent inside of a box. Moreover, it is indicated that Gizmo shows awareness of the three rules and a willingness to comply with them when he turns down food offered by Billy. He also cries after the other mogwai have spawned, clearly fearful of the consequences and with good reason: when his fellow mogwai transform into gremlins they mercilessly bully Gizmo by pinning him to a bullseye and throwing darts at him, evidently seeing him as a goody-two-shoes. Compared with the violence the gremlins target at the human characters, this is perhaps the least forgivable of their behaviour given that Gizmo is one of them. However, it is particularly effective at inviting viewer sympathy for Gizmo, offering up a ‘good’ child to identify with and balance out the subversive identification with the gremlins. Gizmo’s treatment by the gremlins, coupled with his conditioning to see rule-breaking as fundamentally wrong, explains his willingness to assist Billy and Kate’s destruction of them. This leads to the conclusion that the child audience of address are instructed to do the same, that is, to be good children who are complicit in upholding the adult–child hierarchy. However, as I mention earlier, this reading is undermined by the fact that Gizmo is punished rather than rewarded for his efforts at the end of the film. It is in this context that the film offers its critique of parenting at two extremes – both the over-strict parenting of the Chinese shopkeeper and the careless parenting of Billy – the deadly combination of which results in the vulgar monstrosity of the gremlins. The sudden change from sweet mogwai to violent gremlin is representative of the conceptual shift from compliant child to rebellious teen. In the context of Gremlins’ status as a particularly controversial children’s horror film, it also functions as a metaphor for societal paranoia that a once innocent child can become a monster overnight if exposed to horrific media. Indeed, Richard Corliss likens the gremlins to ‘children who learn everything from TV, rock ‘n’ roll and B movies – and make the worst of it’ (1984). Yet within the film itself, it is Gizmo who takes lessons from the ‘corruptive influence’ of audiovisual media. He is shown watching television numerous times, including a broadcast of the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When the gremlins enjoy Snow White, Gizmo can be heard singing along with them. His televisual habits are then shown to have a beneficial outcome when he is inspired by a racing sequence in the film To Please a Lady (Brown 1950) to hijack a toy car to assist in defeating Stripe.6 While still a sweet and well-behaved ‘child’, the film suggests that gradual, rather than sudden, exposure to media (both horrific and unhorrific) can be both beneficial and enjoyable. In this way, the film also functions as an allegory for film classification, and prescient of the need for the PG-13 rating that the film accidentally helped to create. Gizmo can be likened to the G and PG ratings, that is, largely associated with childhood innocence. The gremlins in turn are equated with the R rating, indicating explicit material which is unsuitable for children. As we know, Gremlins

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was rated PG despite it containing material more akin to R-rated fare, resulting in backlash and concern for the film’s effect on child viewers. This panic is echoed in the film, where the sheltering of Gizmo results in the monstrous gremlins at the first sign of breaking the ‘rules’, like a child who is prematurely exposed to R-rated material after having been fed a diet of only ‘child-friendly’ G/PG material. PG-13, therefore, provides an ‘in-between’ stage which allows children to be exposed to darker material in film gradually, in line with their age and individual tolerances. With regards to Gizmo and the gremlins, this ‘in-between’ stage would be represented by a creature/child that has been gradually weaned off the strict rules, thus preventing a monster from appearing at the first sign of freedom. This is represented by the cheeky mogwai who spawn from Gizmo and before they transform into gremlins. These mogwai engage in annoying but harmless behaviour, like fighting over an arcade game, spitting and giggling, much like children pushing at the boundaries of parental supervision. Like PG-13 itself which is given to films that are too violent or adult for the PG, but not enough for the R rating, they represent the transitional child that the PG-13 intended to cater: not unruly, violent or disobedient, but not completely innocent, angelic and over-protected. Or, to borrow Spielberg’s description of PG-13, these mogwai are Gizmo with ‘a little bit of hot sauce’. Unfortunately, in the film these unruly pre-teen substitutes, and their more anarchic gremlin forms, are short-lived. By the end of the film the only remaining mogwai/gremlin is Gizmo, who best fits the model of the ideal child, and the lessons he learned from television are quashed by the shopkeeper, who takes Gizmo back at the end of the film, puts him back in his box and berates the Peltzers for their careless rule-breaking; interestingly, he seems just as reproachful about their allowing Gizmo to watch television – an unspoken fourth rule? – as he is about their woeful failure to follow simple instructions.

Conclusion: Restoring the social order With Gizmo’s return to his oppressive box at the end of the film, the end appears rather bleak: adults regain control, and Gizmo and Billy will presumably return to their former existences as, respectively, a sheltered child and an ambiguous child–adult burdened with too much responsibility. The Bakhtinian carnival of liberation and subversion that the gremlins brought with them is over, and ‘order’ restored, as marked by Randall’s return. This ending appears to conform with the conventions of adult horror films about evil children, thus prioritizing an address to adult fears of horrific children over an address to a horrific child audience. However, the film’s playful tone and double address remain even after the gremlins have been vanquished. This is most evident in the film’s final line, spoken via Randall’s narration: ‘You never can tell – there just might be a gremlin

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in your house.’ To an adult audience of address representing the dominant social order that the gremlins temporarily subvert, the line functions as a warning about the potential horrors of their own children. However, to a horrific child viewer who might identify with the gremlins, enjoy their gleeful recklessness and resent the rules enforced by their own parents, it is a sly wink and a call to arms to embrace the monster within. In spite of this subversive message that can be taken from the film, some paratextual materials created after it was released continued to attempt to restrain the horrific child. In November 1984, five months after the film’s theatrical release, MTV aired a public service announcement that the US government commissioned from Warner Bros. as part of a drug abuse awareness initiative (Seidman 1984). Making the film’s metaphorical link between the gremlins and adolescents strikingly literal, the one-minute broadcast shows Gizmo sitting on the lap of the shopkeeper character from the film, who explains the rules for the ‘proper care and feeding of a teenager’ (‘GREMLINS public service announcement’ [1984] 2014). These recall the rules for caring for the mogwai from the film. The first two rules are to not let teenagers drink alcohol or let them get into a car with a driver who has been drinking. Each of these rules is illustrated by a clip from the film of the gremlins drinking and joyriding. The third rule, ‘never, ever, under any circumstances allow them to take illegal drugs’, is illustrated by a harrowing shot from the climax of the film of Stripe’s disintegrating body – an exaggeration of what might happen to a teenager who takes drugs. The shopkeeper concludes, ‘To grow up a happy, healthy teenager is important. If you love them, you take good care of them.’ Although this broadcast is clearly well intended, the tone comes across as patronizing and contradictory to the carnivalesque pleasures of the film, as well as MTV’s youth-oriented, antiauthoritarian brand identity. Whether or not it had any effect, positive or negative, is unclear, but it certainly reads as a misjudged attempt at damage control from the studio to atone for the shock that the film caused upon its release. If the gremlins in the film made behaving badly and defying authority look like fun, this public service announcement reinforces that their fun antics met a sticky end, and seeks to reestablish the power hierarchy of adults over teenagers and children. This ideological project continues within many subsequent children’s horror films featuring horrific children. These also continue to exhibit the tensions and difficulties in delivering an address to horror-hungry children while satisfying adult expectations of ‘child-friendly’ cinema and societal constructions of childhood innocence and compliance. Gremlins spawned a sequel, Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Dante 1990), and a wave of imitators such as Critters (Herek 1986), but the creatures in these films do not easily support readings as horrific child-substitutes, or display a clear address to children. Instead, films like Little Monsters and the 1990 version of The Witches address a horrific child viewer by

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inviting identification with child characters who are themselves horrific because they undergo transformations into inhuman creatures (a monster and a mouse, respectively). Although each of them initially finds that their new form affords them a great deal of freedom (from school, parents and responsibilities) and opportunities for mischief, they come to realize that this lifestyle is inferior to human childhood, and they are eventually returned to this form in a restoration of the status quo. A similar narrative plays out in The Little Vampire, but in this case a child vampire who desires to be human, Rudolph (Rollo Weeks), befriends a human boy who desires to be a vampire, Tony (Jonathan Lipnicki). Although Tony and Rudolph briefly indulge in some thrills of vampirism – including flying and bouncing on a blimp like a trampoline – Tony comes to realize the drawbacks of this lifestyle and helps Rudolph become a human again. Further to this, Rudolph’s horrific qualities are significantly mitigated to ensure that he conforms as closely as possible to a socially acceptable form of childhood that the child audience of address are intended to mirror. He is a non-violent ‘vegetarian’ vampire who only drinks cows’ blood, has respect for his elders and evokes a Romantic conception of childhood when he expresses his longing to see ‘blue skies’ and ‘flowers in the sunlight’. It is hard not to read Rudolph’s representation as an apt metaphor for the tensions facing the children’s horror genre as a whole: temporary indulgence is acceptable, as long as it does not resemble ‘true’ horror and ultimately complies with restrictive, adult-defined expectations of what is ‘good’ for children. A more generous reading of vampires in children’s fiction, which can be extended to horrific children and children’s horror as a whole, is offered by Simon Bacon and Katarzyna Bronk in their suggestion that the vampire ‘carries a power and agency’ that is so appealing to children that ‘even pretending to be a vampire can be enough to gain its power’ (2018: 6). As with my reading of Gremlins, this takes into account the possibility for the horrific child viewer of address to adopt a resistant reading strategy that revels only in the carnivalesque elements of a text while rejecting the prescriptive moral enforced at the end. While I welcome and support this interpretation, it remains unclear how actual children receive these texts; and it is a point of concern that a majority of post-Gremlins children’s horror films continue to attempt to restrain and socialize the horrific child within their diegetic narratives. In this context, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (Amateau 1987) is one of the most subversive of all children’s films – perhaps even more so than Gremlins. Based on a popular trading card game that is itself a parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids toys, the titular Garbage Pail Kids are childlike creatures, each with an absurd deformity or exaggerated bodily function that is identified in their name, like Valerie Vomit. At the end of the film, these horrific children get revenge on their bullies, escape their guardian and ride away on stolen quad bikes to the sound of jubilant, non-diegetic rock music. Sadly, the film’s subversive message

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has been obscured by universally negative critical reception. Although reviews fairly disparaged the film’s poor production values and script, it is telling that adult critics also took umbrage with the disgusting Kids themselves, thus replicating the attitudes of the villainous adult characters within the film. Seemingly without irony, the New York Times quipped that the film ‘is enough to make you believe in strict and faraway boarding schools’ (James 1987). The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is now best known for being one of the worst films ever made. This disjuncture between the pleasures that horrific child characters can provide and their reception by adult critics is a recurring pattern of the children’s horror genre. While all of these horrific child films are PG-rated, some children’s horror films emerged in the post-Gremlins climate that took advantage of the availability of PG-13 and the additional potential that this provided to subvert adult authority: 1987’s The Monster Squad and The Gate. These do not represent horrific child characters in the same way as the films discussed here, as the children in them are ordinary humans. However, these are horrific children nonetheless because, in a mirror of their target audience, they are shown engaging with various forms of ‘horrific’ media: horror fiction in The Monster Squad and heavy metal music and the occult in The Gate. These films took advantage of the way that PG-13 posed the potential for a film’s target demographic to be more narrowly defined, to the extent that Antunes suggests that the rating emerged as a ‘marker of new boundaries for childhood as well as the horror genre’ (2017a: 28). In theory, then, PG-13 formed a new ‘child only’ space in which horror films could be appropriately classified as being suitable for child viewers looking for the ‘hot sauce’ element. The next chapter closely examines one of these films’ attempts to take advantage of this new climate, and the difficulties that it faced in doing so.

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Chapter 3 No grown-ups allowed The horrific ‘Crazyspace’ of The Monster Squad

Messenger Davies proposes that a space exists in contemporary television culture that is ‘exclusively for children’ and which, despite being created by adults, is a space that ‘adults do not notice’ (2005: 393). Within the space itself, ‘children are better than adults’ and adult authority is subverted by carnivalesque, childish means such as gunge and games (2005: 398). Messenger Davies dubs this ‘Crazyspace’, a term borrowed from the British children’s television series The Demon Headmaster (1996–8), in which schoolchildren resist the attempts of their totalitarian headmaster to take over the world using his powers of hypnosis. The child characters make use of an online network known as ‘Crazyspace’ in order to communicate without adult detection through the use of coded, nonsense messages that only children can understand. Although Messenger Davies’s discussion of Crazyspace is limited to children’s television, it should be evident that this is a concept that has much in common with the characteristics of children’s horror films, namely the focus on agentic child characters who are empowered to defeat evil supernatural forces in the absence of competent adult supervision. The temporary subversion of the adult–child hierarchy by the monstrous child-substitutes in Gremlins forms such a Crazyspace that is hybridized with horror. In Chapter 2 I argued that Gremlins holds a double address to adults and children, overtly addressing adult societal concerns of children out of control while covertly constructing and addressing a child viewer who is invited to identify with and take pleasure from the actions of the horrific children on screen. This child viewer of address is also horrific precisely because of their consumption of horror, an inherently subversive act that defies traditional conceptions of the genre as being for adults only and potentially harmful to children. In this chapter I continue to consider how children’s horror

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films negotiate this double address in the post-Gremlins Hollywood climate of the late 1980s that was brought about by that film’s role in the implementation of a new MPAA rating, PG-13. Although the diegetic Crazyspace formed by the gremlins is eventually destroyed by adult authorities, along with the gremlins themselves, the film’s impact on the ratings system presented the opportunity for subsequent children’s horror films to take advantage of a non-diegetic Crazyspace that emerged in the intersection between the horror genre and children’s cinema. The paradox that children’s films are never solely for children is especially true in relation to G- and PG-rated children’s films at the lower end of the ratings scale that are accessible for viewing by children of all ages, including small children who are not considered old enough to attend the cinema without adult supervision. Although it is possible for some older children to attend films of these ratings without adult supervision, these ratings do not allow for a clear differentiation between children of different ages and tolerances. This can be a particular problem for horror, as demonstrated by the PG-rated Gremlins and the backlash the film received for challenging dominant notions of acceptable levels of violence in children’s cinema. Except for controversial anomalies like this, the horror genre in the early 1980s generally remained the purview of teenagers, adults and the restrictive R rating. As Antunes argues, the implementation of the PG-13 rating in 1984 thus provided an official acknowledgement within the Hollywood film industry of the existence of an emerging tween demographic who could be explicitly targeted by horror, which was now ‘no longer entirely restricted but . . . still not endorsed for all child audiences’ (2017a: 39). Following the emergence of PG-13, the mid–late 1980s saw an increase in youth-oriented genre filmmaking, spanning fantasy (e.g. Return to Oz [Murch 1985]), adventure (e.g. The Goonies [Donner 1985]), science-fiction (e.g. Explorers [Dante 1985]) and teen horror films (e.g. Fright Night [Holland 1985] and The Lost Boys). Strangely, however, these are all rated PG or R. As for children’s horror, Antunes claims that PG-13 was a ‘boon’ to the category in the late 1980s (2020: 69), but in spite of the availability of the new rating there are surprisingly few PG-13 horror films at this time, and only two appear to be targeted specifically at tweens: The Monster Squad and The Gate. I argue that this alludes to a problem with the sustainability of horror cinema for this narrow demographic. As for what a tween is, exactly, its situation between the already liminal and ambiguous categories of child and teenager means that cultural conceptions of the tween are ‘contested, shifting and dynamic’ (Kennedy 2018: 2). However, The Monster Squad and The Gate represent a specific conception of the tween as: a white, middle-class boy between the ages of about eleven and fourteen and who is experiencing, or is about to experience, puberty; part of a nuclear family unit, but who has the autonomy to navigate the world outside of their family home without adult supervision; one who actively resists and attempts

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to subvert the authority of adults, including parents, teachers and law-makers; and a fan of horror who engages with this hobby in private ‘Crazyspaces’ that exist at the margins of the adult world. This constructs and addresses a tween audience in the image of this on-screen representation. As ratings are an important marketing tool as well as demographic identifier, the new PG-13 rating allowed for the possibility of a horrific, childonly Crazyspace within the context of cinema exhibition. This would not have been an entirely new concept; the provision of daytime children’s matinees in early-Hollywood cinema sought to segregate child audiences in order to preserve conceptions of childhood innocence and vulnerability by maintaining a separation from adult audiences and content (deCordova 2002; Kirkland 2017: 60). These matinees are described in terms that evoke a particularly unruly and chaotic form of Crazyspace, with reports of children using food as payment, littering, screaming, running around and even urinating in the auditorium (Smith 2005: 142–5). This also strongly mirrors the anarchy inflicted upon the cinema space by the titular childlike creatures in Gremlins, suggesting that this scene is not an extreme exaggeration of a past reality. These child-only exhibition spaces became slowly phased out in tandem with growing concerns about the emotional and psychological effects of films upon children as well as their physical safety within cinemas, the implementation of the Production Code, and Hollywood’s recognition of the intergenerational family audience as a lucrative demographic in the 1930s (Brown 2013). As explained in Chapter 1, so-called kiddie matinees – at which horror was a mainstay – were again popular in the 1960s until the advent of the MPAA ratings system. PG-13 thus posed the potential for this space to be unofficially revived within 1980s US cinema and emancipate the tween audience by offering specialized access to a genre that is normally restricted and addressed to adults. Whether or not this space actually existed is not something I intend to prove here, but rather that PG-13 afforded this possibility, and that children’s horror films with this rating utilize a mode of address that reinforces this Crazyspace. In theory, this is a space for autonomous tween horror fans, old enough to attend the cinema alone but not old enough to attend R-rated films without adult accompaniment. Although PG-13 films are theoretically open to viewers of all ages, the PG-13 label provides a warning to parents that a film might be unsuitable for their younger, more dependent children. Simultaneously, older horror fans are notified that a film bearing this rating will not contain the R-rated content and teen-/adult-centric storylines that they are accustomed to expect from the genre. Content and marketing strategies help to manage this perception. Thus, PG-13 allowed for the possibility of a child-only (or tween-only) Crazyspace to exist within the horror genre, both on- and off-screen. On-screen, child characters take up the call to defeat supernatural forces of evil, who usually take the form of monstrous adult figures, while ‘good’ adult characters are oblivious or unable to assist; in turn, the focus on these children’s perspectives

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constructs and addresses an off-screen horrific child viewer who is invited to revel in this cinematic ‘playground’ of horror, outside of the confines of adult supervision. The concept of Crazyspace, where children are free from adult rule, can also be identified within the broader US culture during this time. The 1980s were the site of a range of attitudinal shifts about childhood and parenting in the United States, specifically that a lack of supervision and unregulated access to media was causing children to ‘grow up too fast’. In a mirror of the concerns surrounding children’s cinema-going in the early twentieth century, some feared that the state of childhood – or rather, the culturally constructed version of childhood as a time of safety and naïveté – was disappearing altogether. This threat was identified in Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood ([1982] 1994), which emerged in tandem with a number of similarly themed works, including The Hurried Child (Elkind 1981) and Children without Childhood (Winn 1983). Rising divorce rates and mothers working outside of the home meant that children, known colloquially as ‘latchkey kids’, were increasingly left to their own devices both inside and outside of the home (Rogers 2002: 95). According to Postman, this lack of supervision combined with unprecedented access to media – especially via television – meant that children were also privy to ‘adult secrets’, which were ‘rapidly eroding’ the divide between childhood and adulthood ([1982] 1994: 84, 12). These concerns were exacerbated by the cultural recognition of the tween as a stage of adolescence that further blurred the already tenuous distinctions between child, teen and adult (Antunes 2020: 12). Postman’s sentiment overlaps with the societal fears of children that were represented in adult horror films of the era (see Chapter 2). While those fears stemmed from the threat that children might pose to adult society, the concurrent worrying about latchkey kids reveals the flipside of this – that is, that children would be in danger without adequate supervision from trustworthy adult guardians. In addition to potential harm from exposure to horrific and other ‘adult’ media, this concern for child welfare manifested in anxieties about childhood innocence being corrupted by sexual or physical abuse from unknown adults, or ‘stranger danger’.1 Although these fears have existed at fluctuating levels throughout the twentieth century and before, the 1980s experienced a ‘surge’ of these concerns to the extent that it ‘constituted a revolutionary and perhaps irrevocable change in American culture’ that has continued into the new millennium (Jenkins 1998: 5, 118–19). This shift occurred in spite of a lack of evidence to support these anxieties and the fact that they conflicted with the reality that children were more likely to be harmed by adults already known to them (Jenkins 1998: 135). While the fears in this cultural moment were ostensibly about children, they are also highly revealing of anxieties about parenting – specifically, of parents failing to adequately protect their children, and an existential threat of redundancy facing parents of a generation of increasingly autonomous and ‘unchildlike’ latchkey

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kids. This is not to say that stranger danger was an adult-only fear. Televised public service announcements (PSAs) featuring popular cartoon characters made sure that children were aware of the issue, carrying on the didactic function of cautionary tales and fairy tales that warn child characters and readers to be wary of big bad wolves, wicked witches and other monstrous strangers. However, stranger danger is nonetheless a predominantly adult-constructed fear passed on to children via media created by adults who are concerned with protecting childhood innocence. This results in the PSAs utilizing a mode of paradoxical double address where molestation is referred to in vague language, like being ‘touched in a bad way’, that simultaneously attempts to shield children’s sexual innocence while also warning them about potential threats to it (Baker 2014). This cultural climate characterized by an intensified adult desire to protect children from harm, while simultaneously preserving their innocence, strongly informs my interpretation of the Crazyspace of children’s horror in this era. Returning to Postman and his contemporaries, although their ire is directed mostly at television – and disputed by actual children’s television scholars, notably Messenger Davies (1989) – they also group films under this category due to the likelihood that children could be exposed to films meant for adult viewers via television. Interestingly, Postman was particularly worried about the negative influence of horrific and/or sexualized images of childhood in adult films like The Exorcist (1994: 111). These films would normally be restricted to children within the cinema due to the ratings system, but could be more easily accessed via broadcast television due to the medium’s less stringent restrictions. If children were increasingly being left at home unsupervised, it follows that they would be more likely to be exposed to such films without adult intervention. Although my focus in this chapter is on the space of the cinema, Postman’s distaste for television, whether warranted or not, is relevant. If Postman worried that television was eroding the boundary between children and adults, Antunes argues that this erosion was also occurring in cinema via PG-13 (2020: 12). Although Postman and others were writing prior to the implementation of PG-13, it can be surmised that this development had the potential to both alleviate and exacerbate their concerns. On the one hand, PG-13 provided a buffer against the R-rated material that these critics were most worried about, and formed a ‘safe space’ in the cinema for children in the tween demographic to access the horror genre without being prematurely exposed to the ‘unsuitable’ content of teen/adult-addressed horror films. On the other hand, the fact that PG-13 acknowledged the existence of a tween demographic that does not ‘conform to expectations of children’ (Antunes 2017b: 216), and allowed them easier access to horror, would likely have been met with disapproval from those who were already concerned about the effect of the media upon this demographic. Furthermore, PG-13 allowed for the possibility of a Crazyspace to exist within horror cinema that is enjoyable precisely because it exists outside of the constraints of adult surveillance and control.

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This chapter focusses on The Monster Squad as emblematic of the niche possibilities of PG-13 to represent this horrific, tween-centric Crazyspace where adults are unwelcome. As a result of this, the film also paradoxically reads as a response to adult society’s anxieties about the uncertain state of childhood, child welfare and the threat of parental redundancy. Messenger Davies acknowledges that such a paradox is a necessary characteristic of Crazyspace, as it must depend on adults for its very existence while simultaneously rejecting and subverting adult authority (2005: 399). This applies equally to on-screen and off-screen Crazyspaces. To take an example from The Monster Squad, the eponymous group of children have a treehouse in which they meet to discuss all things relating to monsters. Decorated with horror memorabilia, it is their own private Crazyspace free from adult intervention. However, this space could not exist without adults building it, maintaining it and allowing it to exist within the safety of a larger adult zone (the back garden of a family home). Similarly, while The Monster Squad has a very clear anti-authoritarian address to children, it is a film created by adults and reliant on an adult audience (whether as viewers, critics or those who fund their children’s leisure pursuits) in order to be profitable. Much like the children’s horror genre as a whole, Crazyspace therefore toes the line between possibility and impossibility. In her own account of the impact of PG-13 on late 1980s children’s horror, Antunes focusses on the production background and reception of The Gate as emblematic of the tensions between (adult) expectations of horror and definitions of childhood (2020: 65–83). Here I want to explore similar territory but from a different vantage point – The Monster Squad’s situation within Crazyspace – and thus examine the view from an alternate angle. The Gate and The Monster Squad are almost twins: released three months apart in 1987, PG-13-rated, now remembered fondly as cult texts, and notable for their representations of autonomous, empowered tweens that resist the evil child trope of adult horror cinema. However, The Monster Squad is fascinating precisely because it is what The Gate was not: a critical and financial bomb. The Gate’s comfortable box office can be attributed in part to the fact that it was marketed as a typical horror film more than a children’s film, and therefore likely drew in adult and teen viewers in addition to tweens. Antunes also notes that The Gate was critically praised for its fairy-tale qualities and positive messages (2020: 77–8), thus indicating that it was more acceptable to adult-defined notions that a ‘good’ children’s film is a film that is ‘good’ for children. Another way to put this is that The Gate’s approval by adults compromises its positioning within Crazyspace. By contrast The Monster Squad actively rejects the adult audience, but by simultaneously acknowledging that they are fundamental to the existence of Crazyspace in the first place. I argue that the film’s negotiation of this paradox is not only central to its pleasures but also responsible for its commercial and critical failure. By extension, The Monster Squad is indicative of the impossibility of a sustainable ‘Crazyspace’ of children’s horror cinema that is truly for children only.

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Specifically, I argue that The Monster Squad appears to respond to the contemporaneous adult anxieties regarding stranger danger and the ‘disappearance’ of childhood – ‘appears’ being the operative word. The eponymous Squad have their horror knowledge put to the test when they must defend themselves and their town from an invasion by Count Dracula (Duncan Regehr), the Wolfman (Jonathan Gries), the Mummy (Michael MacKay), the Gillman (Tom Woodruff Jr.) and Frankenstein’s Monster (Tom Noonan). That these adult villains are monsters corresponds with the way that the contemporaneous media culture characterized paedophiles as inhuman deviants suffering from a ‘deep-rooted sickness or moral taint’ (Jenkins 1998: 188), which in turn draws from an ongoing Gothic tradition of representing fictional paedophiles as literally or figuratively monstrous (Baker 2018).2 The link between monstrosity and paedophilia is explicitly invited by some of The Monster Squad’s promotional paratexts. One, designed in the style of a wanted poster, figures Dracula and the Mummy as criminals. Their crimes are listed as puns nodding to iconography of their identities, for example, Dracula is wanted for assault and ‘bat-tery’ and the Mummy for ‘statutory wrap’. While the wordplay of the former seems likely to go over well with a childish sensibility, the latter reference to child rape seems to be intended to be understood only by a knowing adult audience who may already be experiencing heightened anxiety about paedophilia. In this chapter I refer to this hypothetical audience as a ‘worried adult viewer’ that is constructed and addressed by the film. However, once drawing this viewer in, the film refuses to alleviate their worries about children, instead subverting and ridiculing them through a combination of formal, representational and intertextual strategies. Consequently, the film’s treatment of adult characters, viewers and their concerns functions as carnivalesque pleasure to be enjoyed by the horrific children onand off-screen. I begin this discussion by examining the representation of the ‘well-meaning but myopic “good adult”’, an essential character type within Crazyspace whose ignorance and failure leaves the child characters at risk while simultaneously constructing an environment in which they are granted the autonomy to thrive (Messenger Davies 2005: 396). Throughout this chapter it should be understood that for the sake of simplicity I use the terms ‘child/ children’ and ‘tween’ interchangeably, unless specified otherwise.

‘We’re the Monster Squad’: Empowering the child by undermining the adult If the target audience of the aforementioned wanted-style poster was confusing, The Monster Squad’s other marketing materials more clearly signalled a child

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audience of address. One of the ways they did this was through intertextuality, starting with its tagline. Making reference to Ghostbusters’ famous ‘Who ya gonna call?’, The Monster Squad’s marketing posed the rhetorical question: ‘You know who to call when you have ghosts. . . but who do you call when you have monsters?’ The unspoken answer is obviously not a group of adult scientists, as in Ghostbusters, but the cluster of ordinary children who make up the Squad. This irreverence and dismissal of adult authority continues in the film itself, which opens with a lengthy intertitle that describes how Van Helsing (Jack Gwillim) and his associates attempted to ‘save mankind from the forces of eternal evil’ one century before the film’s main narrative begins. The dramatic and heroic significance this implies is then humorously undercut by the final line, which simply reads: ‘They blew it.’ This failure is presented in detail as a spectacular battle sequence set in a Transylvanian castle. It ends with a cut to black followed by an establishing shot of a present-day middle school, making clear who will step in to take over and defeat the monsters for good. This edit literalizes director Fred Dekker’s description of The Monster Squad as a meeting of the Our Gang short films (1922–44) and classic Universal horror (Jones 1987: 32). It is possible to see this reference to earlier children’s and horror films as employing nostalgia to address an adult audience. However, as Our Gang was a mainstay at early-Hollywood children’s matinees (LiVollmer 2007: 544–5), Dekker’s reference can also be read as evidence of a desire to revive a child-only mode of address towards 1980s children. The pairing of Our Gang with Universal horror also neatly encapsulates The Monster Squad’s presentation of children as largely autonomous and capable without adult help (as in Our Gang) and who engage in a variety of childish and ‘horrific’ pursuits (such as watching Universal horror films and then battling those monsters in real life). Put another way, the film unapologetically presents its protagonists as typical latchkey kids who confirm adult society’s worries that children, and tweens specifically, were increasingly looking, talking and behaving in ways that ‘do not seem very childlike’ (Winn 1983: 71). Throughout the film the Squad members wield shotguns, dynamite and other dangerous weapons, use homophobic and ableist slurs, and swearwords including ‘chicken shit’, uttered by the five-yearold Phoebe (Ashley Bank). The film also veers into teen movie territory when one of the boys spies on a teenaged girl when she is undressing, in an echo of influential sex comedy Porky’s (Clark 1981). As is evident from their fandom of horror monsters, the children watch and engage with horror media throughout. Sean (Andre Gower), for example, uses binoculars to watch a drive-in slasher film that is visible from the roof of his house and wears a T-shirt adorned with the slogan ‘Stephen King Rules’. King, of course, is known predominantly as an author of adult horror, but who has written numerous works representing groups of autonomous tweens similar to Sean and his friends, who challenge dominant notions of childhood innocence. The Monster Squad is also littered

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with references to horror films that are usually associated with adult audiences, from the intertextual connotations of the monsters to the opening prologue which, with its Gothic castle, vampire maidens feasting on corpses and Van Helsing battling the forces of evil, might easily be mistaken for a sequence out of a Hammer film. Whether or not real children in the audience have seen these films, it is the ways in which The Monster Squad blurs the distinctions between ‘children’s’ and ‘adult’ content that marks the film as targeting a tween demographic that also blurs these distinctions due to their situation in a liminal social category. Importantly, the presentation of children engaging in violence and other ‘unchildlike’ acts would not likely have been permissible in children’s horror cinema before the implementation of PG-13. Like Gremlins, then, the film constructs and addresses a horrific child viewer through its representation of children who engage in taboo behaviour, including watching horror films. Where The Monster Squad differs to Gremlins is that it not only allows its horrific children to live but suggests that their combination of childlike exuberance and horror genre insight makes them uniquely qualified to save the world. Of course, within Crazyspace it is important for this to go unnoticed or underestimated by the ‘good’ adults within the film, whose ignorance is humorously played upon in ways that amplify the film’s carnivalesque pleasures. This is demonstrated by a sequence that references the archetypal childhood fear of a monster under the bed or in the closet. Eugene (Michael Faustino) claims to his father (Robert Lesser) that a monster is in his bedroom closet. The father humours his son by opening the door to the closet and, without looking inside of it, exclaims ‘Ooh, look at that big scary monster!’ Unbeknownst to him, but visible over his shoulder to the audience and to Eugene, there really is a monster in there (Figure 3.1). This shot encapsulates the tone and approach that the film takes to the issue of double address and specifically to moral panics about child endangerment. It clearly taps into adult anxieties that parents might not be able to adequately protect their children from monsters or other strangers, even within the family

Figure 3.1  Adult ignorance in The Monster Squad.

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home. Other children’s horror films from this era that engage with stranger danger, such as the earlier Something Wicked This Way Comes, attempt to alleviate these worries by shifting perspective from that of the child characters who are under threat to that of a redemptive adult character, Charles, the father of one of the children. Charles, who is unusually old for the father of a pre-pubescent boy, gradually overcomes his insecurities about his age in order to save the children, whose agency is stripped away in order to frame them as victims. The film thus privileges and resolves the fears of an adult viewer of address. The Monster Squad refuses to provide such comfort through its persistent depiction of adult figures of authority as inferior to children. This is acknowledged by the children when they befriend Frankenstein’s Monster; Patrick (Robby Kiger) suggests seeking help from an adult, but Sean refuses based on the assumption that they would imprison or dissect the Monster. Other adults are presented as downright foolish, such as a teacher (Gwill Richards) who makes a failed attempt to adopt youth slang to connect with the children: ‘I think science is cool. I dig it, man!’ It is through Del (Stephen Macht), the father of Sean and his younger sister Phoebe, that the film provides its most stark representation of adult ineffectuality, as he is both a parent and a police detective.3 This dual identity becomes ironic when his commitment to his career distracts him from his roles as a father and a husband, leading to marital strain with his wife (Mary Ellen Trainor). If the ‘billowing concern about the safety of unsupervised, latchkey kids’ in late-twentieth-century US society related to the decline of the traditional nuclear family structure (Rogers 2002: 95), The Monster Squad directly addresses this through its implication that the parents’ marital problems draw their attention away from their children, who roam the town unsupervised, including at night. Although on the one hand this leaves the children vulnerable to monstrous strangers, it also grants them the freedom to get on with defeating those very monsters without the interference of ordinary adults who would otherwise prevent them from doing so. This link between the parents’ unstable marriage and their children’s autonomy is made clear in a sequence when Sean can overhear his parents arguing; left to his own devices while they are distracted, he gets to work investigating Dracula. This is presented in a low-key lit medium shot that captures Sean’s silhouette against a set of blinds, on the other side of which are his parents, oblivious to his presence. As with Figure 3.1, this privileges the child’s perspective and illustrates the inverted hierarchy in which children are superior and privy to adult knowledge, including the inner lives of their own parents. Parallel to the Monster Squad’s quest, Del and his partner (Stan Shaw) attempt to deal with the chaos that is being caused by the monsters. However, Del’s ability to do so is consistently undermined. He shoots Dracula to no avail and then tries to blow him up with dynamite, only for the Wolfman to interrupt by attacking Del. These failed uses of weapons of violence – which also read as phallic objects – signal a crisis of Del’s masculinity and patriarchal authority. That his attempt to

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kill Dracula is foiled by a werewolf is also significant given lycanthropy’s common interpretation as symbolic of excessive masculinity, the implication being that this is something that Del lacks. Importantly, Del’s narrative of patriarchy in crisis is left unresolved (unlike Charles’s in Something Wicked), which empowers the child characters to prevail where he and other adult authority figures cannot. After his failure to blow up Dracula and near-death by the Wolfman, Del is saved by Sean, who – enacting the weapon as phallic symbol motif – stuffs the dynamite into the Wolfman’s trousers. This suggests a generational passing of the torch from Del to Sean, who takes up the position of protecting the family that Del can no longer occupy. Other Squad members triumph in similar ways. Horace (Brent Chalem) kills the Gillman with a shotgun in the process of saving two boys who had been bullying him earlier in the film and now look upon him with awe. Meanwhile Rudy (Ryan Lambert) is granted a striking moment of masculine dominance when he kills each of Dracula’s brides by stabbing them in their hearts with wooden stakes – weapons that are also easily interpretable as phallic objects. If parenting discourse of the era fretted about children ‘growing up too fast’ through their exposure to horror, media violence and other areas of the adult world, The Monster Squad refuses to alleviate these concerns and makes this a key point of pleasure for its child audience of address. The inability of adults to protect children in The Monster Squad therefore serves the child characters by demonstrating their ability to take matters into their own hands, and indicates an address to a child audience who are invited to derive pleasure from these moments and the Crazyspace in which they are situated. It is possible to read this as also addressing an adult viewer by providing reassurance that children can be capable of taking care of themselves in the absence or failure of adult protection. Indeed, following the defeat of the monsters, Sean and Phoebe embrace their parents, suggesting the restoration of the nuclear family and the role of adults within this. However, Sean quickly breaks away to greet the US Army, who have arrived on the scene only to find that the monsters have already been defeated. Sean confidently introduces himself and his gang by presenting a hand-made ‘Monster Squad’ business card. He turns to high-five one of the other Squad members while the army general looks on in confusion and a non-diegetic synth-track begins, affirming the children’s continued autonomy and superiority to even the most masculinized models of adult authority.

Old friends: Ignorance, intertextuality and monstrous allies In Bride of Frankenstein (Whale 1935) the Monster briefly takes refuge with a blind, elderly gentleman (O. P. Heggie) and the two strike up a short friendship, united in

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their shared situation at the margins of ‘normal’ society. The Monster Squad also features a version of Frankenstein’s Monster and a kind, old gentleman identified only as Scary German Guy (Leonardo Cimino). The two characters have little interaction, but are similarly linked through their ‘otherness’ that allows each of them to become important allies to the child protagonists. Therefore, while the ignorance of other ‘good’ adults is necessary to the existence of Crazyspace, Scary German Guy and Frankenstein’s Monster are granted privileged access to this anti-adult zone because they share a marginalized status and perspective that aligns them more closely with children than with other adults. As per his nickname, Scary German Guy is initially presented as a dangerous hermit, but this assumption is revealed to be incorrect and he becomes an important ally to the Monster Squad. The children require his assistance in translating Van Helsing’s diary, which details the ritual that must be performed in order to defeat the monsters. In an ironic twist on his name, Scary German Guy is indicated to have been imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp: when the children observe that he is unusually knowledgeable about monsters, he mournfully agrees and the film cuts to a close-up of his wrist to reveal a serial number tattoo. This experience with human ‘monsters’ appears to give him the motivation, experience and knowledge of the capacity for evil to help the children. This innate belief in and solidarity with the children sets Scary German Guy apart from other adults in the film and is a characteristic he shares with several other elderly allies in children’s horror.4 The archetype of the elderly ally is not unique to children’s horror, as it is a staple in many stories associated with children dating back to myth and folklore (Propp 1968: 79; Campbell [1949] 1993: 49). However, the intergenerational relationship between children and the elderly has a specific meaning in children’s horror, where the amicable representation of the elderly inverts their common representation in adult horror as abject, evil ‘others’ to ‘normal’ adults, as seen in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich 1962), Rosemary’s Baby and Don’t Breathe (Álvarez 2016), in much the same way that children’s horror films invert the representation of horrific children. As such, children and the elderly, united in symmetry by their situation at opposite ends of the life cycle, are ‘two generations of people who stand apart from the everyday world where adults of working age make the important decisions’ (Peirse 2010: 118). In the paradoxical context that Crazyspace must exclude adults while simultaneously depending on them for its existence, the elderly ally provides a convenient loophole to this rule. Importantly, while Scary German Guy and elderly allies elsewhere in children’s horror provide assistance to the child protagonists, they are physically unable to help the children at crucial moments. In The Monster Squad this is during the climactic battle between the children and the monsters, in which Scary German Guy is easily incapacitated by Dracula. As with ‘non-elderly’ adult characters like Del, elderly allies function to serve the personal growth, maturity

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and empowerment of the child characters, while being spared the presentation of other adults as ineffectual or ridiculous. Frankenstein’s Monster is also granted privileged access to Crazyspace despite his appearance as a monstrous adult male that groups him with the other villains. However, like Scary German Guy, Frankenstein’s Monster is set apart from the other monsters and ordinary adults. As I noted in Chapter 1, popular depictions of the Monster represent him as a misunderstood, childlike being due to his status as an unwanted creation of an indifferent parental figure. This goes some way to explaining why the Monster appears so frequently in texts for or about children. The Spanish coming-of-age film El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (Erice 1973), for example, focuses on a girl’s (Ana Torrent) fascination with the Monster as depicted in the 1931 Frankenstein, suggesting that children have an innate ability to empathize and identify with him. The Monster also appears frequently within US children’s horror texts that rework the Frankenstein myth into a story that aligns more firmly with the characteristics of children’s fiction. For example, Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein (Castillo 1999) shares The Monster Squad’s sympathetic treatment of the Monster and his acceptance by child characters. In both texts the Monster becomes ‘adopted’ by children who integrate him into contemporary childhood culture. In Chipmunks this involves teaching him how to make friends and to share, but The Monster Squad takes a more irreverent approach that is in keeping with the film’s overall tone and approach to representing children. The Monster is welcomed into the Crazyspace of the Squad’s clubhouse where he is taught youth slang like ‘Bogus’ and ‘Gimme a break’, becoming an honourable horrific child. With that said, Scary German Guy and Frankenstein’s Monster are both initially presented as potential child predators, thus appearing to feed upon adultconstructed societal fears of stranger danger. It is therefore important to consider this in relation to the film’s mode of address and its construction of Crazyspace. Scary German Guy is constructed as a threat through the child characters’ referral to him in fearful but fascinated tones. The outward appearance of his home helps to build an image of him as a hermit who might have nefarious intentions towards them, as it is dilapidated and unwelcoming in appearance with an overgrown garden and chain-link fence. Despite this compelling evidence that Scary German Guy lives up to his name, the children decide to approach him for help. Hesitating in front of the house, Patrick jokingly asks, ‘What’s the German for “Please don’t murder us”?’ To their horror, Scary German Guy approaches them from behind and answers the question. To extract as much suspense as possible, the film cuts from this interaction to an equally tense scene involving Phoebe and Frankenstein’s Monster, which I will return to below. When it cuts back to Scary German Guy’s house, the setting has moved to the living room and Scary German Guy is shown in close-up holding a knife as he warns, ‘Your time is almost up’. However, as he brings the knife down the film cuts to another

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close-up of a pie on the coffee table. He finishes, ‘It’s your last chance for pie’, as he brings the knife down to slice it. The camera tracks back to reveal that the children are safe and happy, as confirmed by Horace’s exclamation that ‘Scary German Guy is bitchin’!’ While editing and shot scale encourage the perception of Scary German Guy as a threat, this is also achieved through the use of iconographic tropes associated with psycho killers – the knife and the decrepit outward appearance of his home – in adult horror films. Similarly, the initial misdirection of Frankenstein’s Monster as a predator explicitly references the 1931 film. This brings me to an important point that has only been hovering at the edges of this book so far, which is the role of intertextuality in the modes of address of children’s horror films in general, and in The Monster Squad in particular. It is tempting to assume that child audiences are ignorant of allusions to horror films that they might not have seen, especially when those films are primarily made for, associated with and given ratings that restrict them to adult audiences. However, that the child characters in The Monster Squad are fans of horror constructs a horrific child viewer who is expected to share this knowledge and fandom; or rather, as Buckley suggests, this viewer may not already have this knowledge, but they are encouraged to seek it out and cultivate their own genre literacy as a result of having seen the film (2018: 157).5 Yet The Monster Squad’s use of intertextuality is complicated by its entwinement with implications of sexual deviancy. This is another area of ‘adult knowledge’ of which children tend to be assumed to be ignorant, and in need of shielding by adult guardians. However, as most of the child characters in The Monster Squad are tweens on the cusp of puberty, some of them do have sexual knowledge. This is limited to their own sexual curiosity (when Rudy spies on a female neighbour, or when Sean and Patrick ruminate on whether the Wolfman has testicles) and crucial logistical information (as the Squad learns that the ritual that will defeat the monsters can only be performed by a virgin). This kind of sexual knowledge is distinct from adult worry over children’s potential vulnerability to sexual abuse. Jen Baker, drawing from James R. Kincaid’s work on the cultural sexualization of children (1992 and 1998), explains that the cultural construction of the paedophile figure forms a way for adult society to deny child sexuality, thus maintaining the illusion of childhood as naïve, innocent and pure, and instead defer the blame for the sexualization of children onto a convenient scapegoat (Baker 2018: 198). The context of 1980s anxiety over the tween’s blurring of boundaries between sexually ‘innocent’ childhood and ‘awakened’ adulthood seems especially pertinent in this regard. The Monster Squad resists this deferral of childhood sexuality onto monstrous adult figures by acknowledging the sexual curiosity of its tween characters. Concurrently, however, it works to misdirect an adult audience of address into expecting that the monstrous adult characters are stand-ins for paedophiles. This misdirection occurs through the

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intertextual meanings these monsters bring with them. The sexual connotations of Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula will be addressed shortly, while Scary German Guy’s initial presentation as a psycho killer invites associations with the graphic and often sexual violence subjected upon vulnerable youths that characterizes the slasher subgenre. This addresses an adult viewer who is privy to Scary German Guy’s intertextual and sexual connotations, the latter of which are encouraged by the societal moral panic about paedophilia of the decade, and invites the assumption that he poses a (figurative) sexual threat to the child characters. The implication of this reading is that it disadvantages the child audience, who may not have the intertextual, sexual and societal context to come to the same conclusion. This poses a problem as it contradicts the carnivalesque politics and mode of address of Crazyspace. Buckley responds to this inequality in her discussion of ParaNorman’s and Frankenweenie’s uses of horror intertextuality. Buckley refuses a binary distinction between adult and child audiences and proposes instead that these films construct a ‘sophisticated naïve’ viewer as the ideal subject of address. ‘[N]either “adult” nor “child”, neither genre savvy nor illiterate’, this viewer ‘is able to decode the parody and, at the same time, enjoy the texts naïvely as genuinely frightening’ (2018: 165).6 If we apply this to The Monster Squad, it does not matter if the child audience are ignorant of intertextual or sexual connotations of Scary German Guy because he is initially presented as frightening through choices in editing, mise en scène, performance and the simple fact that the child characters in the film refer to him as ‘scary’. The ‘sophisticated naïve’ child viewer does not need any further ‘adult’ knowledge in order for the film’s subversion of expectations to work, or in Buckley’s words, they do not have to be ‘in the know’ to get the joke (2018: 139; emphasis in original). While I find the concept of the ‘sophisticated naïve’ viewer persuasive in the context of Buckley’s work, I find it less applicable to The Monster Squad because I see the film as reinforcing a split between adult and child viewers of address. Instead, I want to fold the concept of the sophisticated naïve viewer into my own notion of the horrific child viewer, and to propose alongside this that The Monster Squad constructs a second form of hypothetical spectator, the ‘worried adult viewer’. This spectator is addressed to share the child characters’ and viewer’s initial fear of the monsters, but whose fear arises specifically from concern about the corruption of childhood innocence by metaphorical paedophiles. The film deliberately invites this concern through intertextuality and sexual allusion only to subvert this expectation and favour the horrific child viewing position. To clarify, I am not arguing that this imagined child viewer is entirely ignorant to the dangers of sexual abuse by strangers, but that this is an adult-constructed fear projected onto children in the name of preserving a cultural construction of childhood innocence. Thus, if Crazyspace is a place where ordinary adults

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are not welcome, then neither are their concerns that threaten to invade and undermine this space and the autonomy of children who reside there. This use of intertextuality and sexual coding to deliberately invite a misreading from the worried adult viewer is demonstrated by the film’s presentation of Frankenstein’s Monster. The Monster Squad’s presentation of Frankenstein’s Monster draws upon Universal’s 1931 version directed by James Whale. This is especially relevant to this discussion as the 1930s in the United States were, like the 1980s, a time of heightened moral panic regarding sexual ‘abnormalities’, including paedophilia (Freedman 2013: 187–9). In this context, the Monster functions as a proxy for a child molester. This is invited by a famous scene in Whale’s film in which the Monster brings harm to a little girl, Maria. In the scene in question, the Monster encounters Maria next to a lake and joins her in tossing flowers into the water, delighted at how they float on the surface (Figure 3.2). When he runs out of flowers, the Monster reaches towards Maria (Figure 3.3). A cut away does not reveal what happens until later in the film when the girl’s father (Michael Mark) is shown carrying her lifeless body through the streets. This strongly implies the Monster’s role in her death and, according to James Curtis, may have strongly implied rape for a 1930s (adult) audience in the midst of a moral panic about child molestation (1998: 154). It is important to note that this scene was the result of heavy cuts made by the Production Code Administration in 1938, after several state censorship boards had already made their own cuts to the film earlier in the decade. In the uncut version of the scene, the Monster is shown throwing Maria into the lake in lieu of flowers, not understanding that she will not float. The harm that comes to her is thus an accident which paints the

Figure 3.2  The Monster and Maria in Frankenstein.

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Figure 3.3  The Monster reaches for Maria in Frankenstein.

Figure 3.4  Phoebe plays by a pond in The Monster Squad’s reenactment of Frankenstein.

Monster as a misunderstood and unfairly persecuted victim (Towlson 2014: 39). Nevertheless, the missing footage was not restored to the film until 1986, making the censored version of the film, which inadvertently depicts the Monster as a sexual and physical threat to children, the dominant narrative for several decades. By referencing the censored version of this scene from Frankenstein, The Monster Squad appears to deliberately construct the Monster as a potential child molester in order to address a worried adult viewer. The Monster Squad’s re-enactment of Frankenstein begins with an establishing shot of Phoebe playing happily by a pond (Figure 3.4). That the subject of this sequence is Phoebe, a five-year-old girl and not one of the male tweens, is significant. Although Phoebe shares some of the ‘unchildlike’ behaviour of the boys, as a very young girl she conforms more easily to a dominant construction of childhood innocence, vulnerability and in need of adult protection. That she is

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Figure 3.5  The feet of the Monster set an ominous tone in The Monster Squad.

framed as the victim of Frankenstein’s Monster (and later Dracula) can, therefore, be read as further baiting the worried adult viewer to read the Monster as a paedophile. The film then cuts to a close-up of Phoebe’s face as it becomes obscured by a shadow and the footsteps and heavy breathing of another figure are heard. This is followed by a cut to another close-up of the large feet of the figure in an over-the-shoulder shot, accompanied by further breathing and an ominous note on the soundtrack, before cutting away to a different scene (Figure 3.5). Five minutes pass before Phoebe is revealed to be alive, safe and that she has befriended the Monster. The sequence is therefore deliberately constructed to elicit tension, whether this is experienced from the position of the worried adult or horrific child. Arguably, however, those who are ‘in the know’ and recognize the reference to the censored version of Frankenstein are invited to expect that Phoebe may suffer a similar fate to Maria, only for this knowledge to be used against them. As a result, the film encourages the worried adult to instead adopt the horrific child viewing position that recognizes the Monster as a potential threat, but where the possibility of sexual endangerment is not as dominant a concern, if a concern at all. Scary German Guy and Frankenstein’s Monster function as examples of ‘ideal’ adult viewers, that is, adults who are allowed into the film’s Crazyspace because of their ability to stop worrying and share, empathize with and elevate the childish point of view. I do not want to ignore the potential real-world negative repercussions of showing a child audience that strangers might actually be important allies, or to undermine actual cases of child abuse. However, we must consider The Monster Squad in light of its irreverent tone and its production context in a societal environment characterized by heightened adult-constructed concerns about child autonomy. This allows a more generous reading of the film as undermining these concerns about children in order to instead prioritize the concerns and experiences of the children inside and outside of the film. In so doing, The Monster Squad grants children the trust and autonomy to navigate the world and make their own judgements about

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adults, especially which ones are allowed into Crazyspace. This use of monstrous characters to deliberately misdirect the worried adult viewer reaches a peak with its presentation of Count Dracula, the leader of the monsters and the film’s true villain.

De-sexing Dracula: The vampire as totalitarian authority Horror scholarship widely acknowledges that vampire films ‘are always, inevitably, about sex on some level’ (Weinstock 2012: 7). David Pirie argues that the erotic constitutes the primary appeal of vampire cinema (1977: 6), while Richard Dyer reads the biting, bloodsucking and exchange of bodily fluids involved in vampirism as sexual acts (1988: 54). Dyer goes on to perform a reading of the vampire as a subversive vessel with which to explore homosexual desires, given that ‘vampirism can be taken to evoke the thrill of a forbidden sexuality’ (1988: 64). Conversely, for Twitchell it is precisely ‘inappropriate seduction’ where the horror of Dracula lies (1985: 160). Universal played into the obvious sexuality of the vampire by releasing Tod Browning’s 1931 version of Dracula on Valentine’s Day and publicizing it with the tagline, ‘The story of the strangest Passion the world has ever known!’ What, then, are we to think when vampires appear in children’s fiction? Most tend to be represented as tame, friendly vampires who are more likely to teach arithmetic or play rock music than drink blood, ala Sesame Street’s Count von Count or Adventure Time’s Marceline the Vampire Queen (Olivia Olson) (2010–18). However, The Monster Squad’s Dracula is an exception to this as an antagonistic vampire who pursues young female virgins. If we accept Weinstock’s assertion that ‘what each vampire film has to say about sex obviously will vary depending upon time and place’ (2012: 7), to read Dracula as a sexual predator of children from a worried adult viewing perspective is entirely justified given the film’s sociocultural context. Vampires have long-held associations with paedophilia in adult horror fiction (Baker 2018: 207–9). This association intensified in the wake of the 1980s moral panic about child sexual abuse, as the term ‘vampire syndrome’ entered the cultural lexicon as a way of explaining the cycle-of-abuse theory that people abused in childhood would grow up to become either an abuser themselves, or the spouse of one (Jenkins 1998: 138). Dracula’s presentation in The Monster Squad both resists and reinforces reading him as a sexual predator. With regards to resistance, there is nothing overtly sexual about the way that Dracula is performed. If the performance of Duncan Regehr is compared to that of Bela Lugosi in the 1931 Dracula, there are striking differences. Lugosi performs Dracula with a sophisticated, gentlemanly seduction that comes through in the combination of his intense stare, his gentle, melodic and heavily accented

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voice and his graceful movements and gestures. Regehr’s Dracula, by contrast, is performed with a haughtiness that comes through in his stiff posture and upper-class English accent. This codes The Monster Squad’s Dracula as less a sexualized figure than a representation of totalitarian authority in the vein of other child-hating villains from children’s popular culture, such as the eponymous villain in The Demon Headmaster or Matilda’s Miss Trunchbull (Dahl 1988). Where other adults in the film are comically ignorant and impotent, Dracula is evil precisely because he is terrifyingly powerful. This is made clear when he burns down the Monster Squad’s clubhouse, the sacred Crazyspace they had carved out for themselves away from their parents and teachers. Yet if ‘it is next to impossible [for adults] to think the cinematic vampire without thinking sex’ (Weinstock 2012: 22), and vampires are frequently read as embodying sexual deviance, we must also consider the possibility that The Monster Squad’s presentation of Dracula addresses a worried adult viewing perspective. This occurs through allusions to paedophilia that arise from the film’s inclusion of familiar Dracula motifs from throughout popular culture. For example, Dracula kidnaps three teenage schoolgirls who are coded as virginal through their modest clothing of highcollared white blouses. Dracula turns them into his vampire brides, whereupon they take on more sexualized appearances in billowing, white gowns. His sexual threat to children reaches an apex with regards to Phoebe, whose encounter with Dracula forms the film’s climax. With the earlier sequence of Phoebe and Frankenstein’s Monster by the pond, the film has already taken advantage of Phoebe’s status as a vulnerable young girl to elicit anxiety. This is enhanced further through the film’s emphasis on her virginity. The Monster Squad discovers from Van Helsing’s diary that a virgin must read an incantation from the diary while holding a magical amulet in order to open a portal to limbo, where the monsters will be trapped. The gender of the virgin is not specified by the diary but, for reasons that the film does not explain, the boys assume that the virgin must be female. I see this as less a sign of the boys’ sexual ignorance and more that the film itself is perpetuating a misogynistic cultural view of virginity as inherently more valuable in females than in males. Indeed, the film’s treatment of Patrick’s older sister (Lisa Fuller), who the boys approach to be their sacrificial virgin, is troubling. Patrick and Rudy ask the (unnamed) sister probing questions about her sexual activity. When she refuses to answer they blackmail her with nude photographs that Rudy had taken of her earlier, while spying on her from the Squad clubhouse. She claims that she is a virgin, but during the film’s climax she confesses that she lied. She, therefore, finds herself the victim of a double standard: she is of interest or of use to the Squad members as a sexual object to be gazed upon unknowingly, but becomes cast aside at the revelation that she may have engaged in sexual activity without their knowledge or permission, and for her own pleasure. No matter the film’s seemingly subversive, pro-child agenda, its treatment of female

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characters indicates that the film’s Crazyspace is unwelcoming not only of most adults but also of other youths who are not boys. The male bias of children’s horror is taken up in more detail in Chapter 6. Upon the revelation that Patrick’s sister is not a virgin, Phoebe is recruited instead. Up until this point, Phoebe had been denied membership of the Squad on account of her gender; clearly, some girls are welcome in the Squad, but only if their sexual status proves useful to the male protagonists. Importantly, however, that Phoebe is unambiguously young and virginal once again serves to bait the worried adult viewer into expecting that she might fall prey to metaphorical sexual abuse by a predatory male. The point at which Dracula approaches Phoebe, having realized that she has the amulet and is the virgin who can foil his plan for world domination, is presented as the most suspenseful point of the film. Dracula spots Phoebe from a distance and strides towards her with unhurried purpose. Scary German Guy is easily pushed aside, and Phoebe’s parents are too far away to do anything but watch as Dracula reaches Phoebe and extends his hand to gently stroke his finger on her cheek. This gesture takes full advantage of readings of the vampire as a sexual predator in order to elicit anxiety and suspense. Dracula then grabs Phoebe by the chin and lifts her from the ground. Concurrently, the musical score builds in intensity and volume before halting in anticipation of a climax. Dracula’s status as a vampire and the allusions to paedophilia within the film invite the assumption that Dracula is about to bite Phoebe, a violent act that is, from the worried adult perspective, ‘part seduction and part rape’ (Weinstock 2012: 7). To do so would be to play into adult anxieties concerning child molestation, yet Dracula does not even attempt to do this. Instead, he says with cold menace, ‘Give me the amulet, you bitch!’ This is, undoubtedly, an unexpected turn of events; not simply the fact that Dracula does not bite Phoebe, as vampires are wont to do, but also due to the transgressive use of the word ‘bitch’ in reference to a child in children’s film. As such, what is built up to be a moment of pure horror becomes a juvenile prank. Specifically, it is a prank at the expense of the worried adult point of view, and which prioritizes and addresses the horrific child audience as a thrilling moment of subversion. This echoes an earlier interaction between Sean and the Wolfman. ‘Hey asshole’, Sean yells, drawing the monster’s attention towards him. He follows this up with ‘Made you look’ before smacking the Wolfman in the head with a baseball bat. This ‘bait-and-switch’ encapsulates The Monster Squad’s approach to resolving the paradox that Crazyspace must simultaneously rely on and exclude adults. That is, it deliberately draws adult attention in order to use this against them and spectacularly eject them from Crazyspace. Phoebe’s attention from Dracula, and the promise of childhood youth and purity that she represents, functions similarly to divert the worried adult, or ‘make them look’, only to punish them for doing this very thing. The diversion allows Frankenstein’s Monster to sneak up unnoticed and remove the adult invasion represented

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by Dracula. Drawing together the key pleasures of both children’s horror and Crazyspace, this is done in means that are specifically childish (the Monster’s declaration of ‘Bogus!’) and horrific (the Monster’s gory impalement of Dracula on a spiked fence). Crucially, The Monster Squad’s ‘fooling’ of the adult perspective demonstrates that the thrill of Crazyspace is not simply that it is free from the presence, authority and worries of adults, but that it must constantly and deliberately bring this status into jeopardy in order to reassert it.

Conclusion: The afterlife of Crazyspace While The Monster Squad successfully represents a horrific Crazyspace on screen, deftly negotiating its paradoxes, it was less successful at creating and maintaining this in the off-screen spaces of cinema exhibition and spectatorship. The PG-13 rating’s ambiguous and liminal situation between children’s and adult categories allowed a narrower, tween demographic to be identified and explicitly targeted by the horror genre, thus inviting autonomous latchkey kids to delight in the horrific antics of on-screen children who look, talk and behave like them, and without the need for adult accompaniment that might disrupt the thrill of this space. However, given the paradox that Crazyspace must also rely on adults in order to exist, the viability of this space within US cinema culture did not come to pass. Despite The Monster Squad’s attempt to come to a compromise in its mode of address, it severely underperformed at the box office. This gestures to the problems with horror being economically viable when targeted at a narrow, ambiguously defined and marginalized demographic. This is especially problematic in the industrial context that 1980s Hollywood experienced a boom in mass-appeal family blockbusters, while the horror landscape of the decade is characterized by R-rated slasher films oriented towards teens and young adults, a demographic with far more financial and personal independence than their tween counterparts. Further to these industrial factors, I suggest that The Monster Squad’s underperformance was, at least in part, because it was too successful at creating a Crazyspace that is designed to elevate children by undermining and rejecting adults, as both potential viewers and on-screen characters. Consequently, the film repels the wider audience that may have helped it to garner mainstream success. Although my discussion of adult viewers has focussed on parental worry about child safety, the film had the potential to appeal to other groups of adult viewers, such as horror fans who may have been drawn to the nostalgic appeal of the film’s intertextuality. However, the box office indicates that the film also repelled this demographic. Meanwhile, most critics were put off by the film’s juvenile tone, tween perspective and relative lack of scariness compared to adult horror. Missing the carnivalesque point of the film entirely, one derisively

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referred to the child characters as ‘profane little brats’ (Hinston 1987) while another identified with neither the child nor the parental perspectives that the film constructs, but with the tragically uncool teacher character (Freedman 1987). The Monster Squad, therefore, demonstrates the impossibility of both children’s horror and Crazyspace to prioritize a child audience of address while meeting the economic demands and generic expectations of Hollywood horror cinema – expectations which are primarily set and measured by adults. Antunes argues that the horror genre’s subsequent shift into what she calls the ‘R-rated 1990s’ was a deliberate move by the industry to exclude youth from the genre and reassert it as being for adults only (2020: 87–108); I suggest that this also occurred because exclusively addressing a pre-teen horror audience was simply not economically viable. The niche potential of PG-13 was quickly discarded, as it went on to become one of the most sought-after film ratings for Hollywood entertainment precisely because its ambiguous situation between ‘children’s’ and ‘adult’ content helps to mark a film as both suitable for and appealing to as wide, and thus lucrative, age demographic as possible (Brown 2012: 277–8). Children’s horror did not go away entirely after the 1980s, but it did look different. Antunes observes that parallel to the ‘R-rated 1990s’ was a dramatic shift in child-friendly content from ‘children’s horror’ to ‘family horror’, like the two Addams Family films and Casper (Silberling 1995) (Antunes 2020: 109). These are PG and PG-13 horror films that target the family as an intergenerational audience of address, thus containing a broader and more financially viable appeal. This is reflected within the films themselves, which are nostalgic adaptations of existing properties about families and which bring adult characters from supporting roles as foils, impotent bystanders and villains to leads or co-stars, while horrific elements are significantly lessened through greater generic hybridity. Antunes ties these films to broader trends in Hollywood family films of the 1990s and reads their focus on child–parent relationships as responding to and alleviating contemporaneous parenting anxieties regarding the importance of family values to child development (2020: 109–27). In other words, the ‘worried adult viewer’ I have identified in The Monster Squad evolved from the butt of the joke to the primary target audience. Consequently, the horrific children in these films look very different. Gone are the children of The Monster Squad who swear, wield shotguns and openly discuss the sexual organs of famous monsters. Their closest 1990s counterpart is The Addams Family’s Wednesday (Christina Ricci), a parodic exaggeration of the horrific child whose potency is nullified by her situation within a family in which everyone is horrific, and the idea of being ‘normal’ is what is considered truly abhorrent. Antunes goes on to argue that children’s horror media that is primarily addressed to children shifts instead to spaces other than the cinema, namely novels and television series such as the Goosebumps transmedia franchise, Eerie, Indiana (1991–2), Are You Afraid of the Dark, and Disney made-for-television movies

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like Tower of Terror (1997) (Antunes 2020: 107–8, 128–47). This development corresponds with Messenger Davies’s definition of Crazyspace as specifically televisual, which is logical given that the economic stakes and demographic models of children’s television differ to those of cinema. If the segmentation of child audiences into narrower age groups in the context of cinema is problematic and untenable, as demonstrated by the case of PG-13 and The Monster Squad, this is the norm in the context of television where entire scheduling blocks or (in the digital age) whole channels can be ‘explicitly designed to be kid-only spaces’, some of which are for specific age groups (Mittell 2015: 112; Antunes 2020: 129–33). Given that one does not have to leave the home or pay up-front to view television, children of all ages are more freely able to watch content that is specifically designed for them (and even that which is not) without adult permission or supervision, especially in the context of the growing population of latchkey kids in the late twentieth century. This ability for television to sustain Crazyspaces of children’s horror in ways that cinema struggles to do proved to be particularly advantageous for The Monster Squad. After its underwhelming box-office performance, the film was granted a second opportunity to thrive and reach its target audience thanks to its availability on home media formats, including frequent broadcasts on television channels like HBO. Consequently, The Monster Squad attained a cult status among child/tween viewers of the late 1980s and 1990s who were able to enjoy the film within the private Crazyspaces afforded by home television viewing. In later years, as these young fans became adults, awareness of the film has grown through anniversary cinema screenings, releases on special edition DVD and Blu-ray, and a documentary focussing on the film’s cult fandom, Wolfman’s Got Nards (Gower 2018). The documentary takes its title from one of the film’s most quoted lines among its fans, which comes from a moment in the film when the Squad members confirm that the Wolfman has testicles by kicking him in the crotch – a testament to the film’s deft blending of horror iconography with crass, juvenile pleasures. As is common in cult film spectatorship, fans are encouraged to quote-along with memorable lines like this at screenings. The phrase ‘Wolfman’s got nards’ is therefore illustrative of how The Monster Squad is a beneficiary of what Barbara Klinger calls ‘replay culture’, in which the repetitive viewing of a film allows for ‘scenes, characters and dialogue [to be] burned into the viewer’s memory, becoming signature aspects of meaning and pleasure and, possibly, providing common ground for the title’s collective appreciation’ (2010: 4). This was only possible through the film’s availability on home media formats, where its audience could watch and re-watch at will, alone or with other children. The irony is that the growing popularity of the film that resulted from this, in tandem with the ageing of its original audience, returned the film to the space of the cinema where it is enjoyed primarily by collectives of nostalgic adult fans, some

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of whom may take the opportunity to introduce the film to their own children. How and if these now-adult fans’ viewing positions may have changed over time is not an issue I can address within the scope of this book. However, some of the adult fans interviewed in Wolfman’s Got Nards speak of watching The Monster Squad as a return to the safety and comfort of childhood; by virtue of opposition, this suggests a desire to distance oneself from the anxieties of adulthood, and thus the worried adult viewing position. Although the film is by no means unique in providing this nostalgic return for adult viewers, its generic status as horror frames this response as a resistance to regressive assumptions that the relationship between children and the horror genre is one of corruption and harm. Even in its cult afterlife, therefore, The Monster Squad continues to demonstrate Crazyspace’s paradoxical reliance on the adult audience, but also the affective, cross-generational and beneficial possibilities that the horrific child perspective can provide viewers throughout their lifetimes. The Monster Squad’s afterlife thus reveals a fascinating intersection between children’s media, the horror genre and cult fandom. This is evident, for example, in the adoption of the ‘Stephen King Rules’ T-shirt that Sean wears in the film as a piece of merchandise worn by fans to signal their fandom. To an outsider, the T-shirt would appear to mark the wearer’s fandom of Stephen King, while covertly signalling to those ‘in the know’ that it is in fact a signal of fandom of The Monster Squad. Thus, as a form of secret communication between fans, the T-shirt functions as an example of both the nonsense language of Crazyspace and Fiske’s concept of ‘enunciative fandom’. In Messenger Davies’s conception of Crazyspace, child characters communicate with each other through coded messages that cannot be understood by adults (2005: 398). Similarly, enunciative fandom describes fans’ appreciation of a text through ‘fan talk’ or the wearing of clothing and accessories that are specific to that fandom (Fiske 1992: 37–8). Though some recent scholarly work has addressed the intersections between cult texts, spectatorship and children’s media (e.g. Sandars 2017; Geraghty 2018) this remains an understudied area, and one in which horror does not feature. Yet Geraghty observes a ‘growing adult fan culture centred on the remembrance of childhood’ made possible by digital culture (2018: 161). If, as Wheatley suggests, frightening texts viewed in childhood can continue to haunt us into adulthood as uncanny, half-remembered and affective experiences, then the integration of horror into these emerging discussions of cult children’s media makes for a rich site of further enquiry (2012: 384). This characterization of children’s horror as thriving best in cult spaces, home media formats or the context of the overtly comedic family film suggests a bleak future for the genre in twenty-first-century cinema. However, the turn of the millennium sees a re-emergence of children’s horror films that both represent and prioritize an address to horrific children. The remaining chapters of this book turn to this period, when industrial and cultural shifts have allowed the children’s

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horror genre, and the horrific children it represents, to become more viable and normalized concepts that are less challenging to dominant adult-constructed conceptions of childhood and children’s cinema. As we will see in the following chapters, however, ideas of ‘suitability’ for children remain varied, contested and able to both conform to and subvert adult worry and control.

Chapter 4 ‘As normal as it could be’ ParaNorman and the normalization of the horrific child

The turn of the millennium was the site of significant shifts in the horror genre in Western culture. These shifts centred on its relationship to childhood. Sage Leslie-McCarthy (2012) and Jessica Balanzategui (2018b) trace a change in the representation of children from the evil child trope that dominated mid–latetwentieth-century adult horror films to more sympathetic portrayals of uncanny children from the late 1990s onwards. With prominent examples being the child mediums in The Sixth Sense and Stir of Echoes (Koepp 1999) and the ghost children of The Others (Amenábar 2001), these children are uncanny precisely because they are neither good nor evil, ‘at once familiar and alien, vulnerable and threatening, innocent and dangerously indecipherable’ (Balanzategui 2018b: 12). Although these characters continue to draw upon the inherent ‘otherness’ of children in order to evoke fear in their adult audience of address, this gives way to revelations that the children’s uncanny abilities to facilitate communication between the living and the dead can be utilized as a force for good (LeslieMcCarthy 2012: 11). This draws upon the long-held symbolism of children as adults-to-be who embody the potential and hope for social progress and futurity.1 In the context of the millennial turn, this resonates particularly with anxieties surrounding ‘change, flux, and the tangling of beginnings and endings associated with the transition from the 20th to the 21st century’ (Balanzategui 2018b: 16–17). While children in adult horror take on new roles as beacons of optimism and reconciliation in a period of societal uncertainty, uncanny child texts nonetheless have a pervasive atmosphere of unease and dread that conforms to dominant

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expectations of the horror genre. Alternatively, Spooner traces a parallel strand of twenty-first-century horror that is distinctly ‘comic, romantic, celebratory, gleeful, whimsical or even joyous’ (2017: 3). Referring to this by the term ‘happy Gothic’, Spooner notes that it is pervasive not just in fiction, such as the films of Tim Burton or Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight novels (2005–8), but also in fashion, stand-up comedy, tourism and children’s toys such as Monster High, thus evidencing a shift in the cultural situation of horror and the Gothic from marginalized sub-culture to mainstream trend. In this context, argues Spooner, the role of horror is not to shock, disturb or function as a reservoir of societal fears, but to form an oppositional, celebratory space in which difference can be enjoyed and embraced.2 While Spooner’s notion of the happy Gothic is not specific to children’s media, it should be evident how its blend of horror aesthetics and themes with laughter, playfulness and hope relates to children’s horror. Indeed, the widespread normalization of a happy Gothic mode in the twenty-first century intersects with the re-emergence of children’s horror films, and their representation of and address to horrific child characters and viewers, after a relative absence in the 1990s. These films include The Little Vampire, Monster House, The Hole, Coraline, Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, the two Goosebumps films and The House with a Clock in Its Walls. In her charting of the development of children’s horror in US media, Antunes dismisses this new wave of children’s horror films as sporadic ‘echoes’ of their 1980s predecessors rather than, as I see them, evidence of the genre’s continued evolution and an ongoing cultural interest in it (2020: 149). However, it is true that post-millennial children’s horror films differ quite dramatically from those of the more turbulent 1980s in their form, reception, mode of address and representation of the horrific child. As a result, they face little cultural resistance or backlash because they are not as challenging to dominant conceptions of childhood, children’s cinema and the horror genre. This chapter takes as its focus a children’s horror film that best exemplifies this shift through its drawing together of the uncanny child motif and the happy Gothic mode: the stopmotion-animated ParaNorman. ParaNorman’s protagonist, Norman Babcock, is a pre-pubescent boy who can see and communicate with the dead. Although this initially causes him to be treated with concern by his parents (Leslie Mann and Jeff Garlin) and derision by his peers, Norman learns that he can use his supernatural power to save his town, a Salem-like New England location named Blithe Hollow, from a 300-yearold curse that awakens the ghost of a witch and the zombified corpses of the people who condemned her to death. Like the members of the Monster Squad before him, Norman is also a fan of the horror genre. This, combined with his power, makes him a horrific child who exhibits unchildlike behaviours. Despite this, Norman does not pose a threat to the adult–child hierarchy and status quo because, like the uncanny children discussed by Balanzategui and Leslie-

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McCarthy, he uses his horrific skills and knowledge in ways that are beneficial to adult society. As in Gremlins and The Monster Squad, adult characters are still presented as largely idiotic, fallible and inferior to children, but wholly evil adults do not exist in ParaNorman because they are eventually redeemed as a result of Norman’s ability to ‘restor[e] a dialogue between the past and the present, between family members and within communities where communication has broken down’ (Leslie-McCarthy 2012: 11). Like Norman’s restorative power, ParaNorman unites child and adult viewers under one intergenerational mode of address. This is reflected in the fact that the film is rated PG, as are most of its post-millennial children’s horror contemporaries. This is interesting given that, as I have explained in Chapters 1 and 2, the classification of 1980s children’s horror films like The Watcher in the Woods and Gremlins with the ‘child-safe’ connotations of the PG label was a point of great tension. Why, then, is the PG classification of children’s horror films now relatively unproblematic? As Antunes corroborates, this is down to the emergence of PG13 in 1984 (2020: 151–2). Though PG-13 initially appeared to solve the problem of categorizing children’s horror by providing a compromise between the PG and R ratings, and thus children’s and adult content, we saw in the previous chapter that this became untenable in relation to children’s horror due to its target of a niche demographic of tweens, rather than the broader and more lucrative family market. As such, PG-13 instead acts as a buffer that ‘filter[s] all challenging films out of the PG bracket’ and essentially reaffirms PG’s associations with wholesome entertainment for all ages (2020: 151–2). In the post-millennial climate, then, it is far less risky from a financial standpoint to construct the ‘horror’ of a children’s horror film as moderate enough to achieve a PG rating, thus signalling that a film is appropriate for a wide age-range of children and the guardians who approve, supervise and finance their cinema-going. ParaNorman’s PG-appropriate, intergenerational mode of address is a departure from earlier children’s horror films Gremlins and The Monster Squad, which ‘split’ child and adult viewers through double address (see Chapters 2 and 3). As with those films, I consider ParaNorman as constructing and addressing a ‘horrific child viewer’, but this concept has evolved into a mode of dual address that draws together child and adult viewers under one umbrella.3 These viewers are placed within the empathetic perspective of a child protagonist, Norman, whose horrific characteristics enable him to resolve a conflict that was the result of adult negligence, but in a way that is ‘productive, not destructive’ in that it does not pose a challenge to adult authority (Buckley 2018: 167). Further, ParaNorman fulfils the function of the horrific child viewing position as inviting its audience to identify with and take pleasure and catharsis from horrific child characters. I therefore read the film as normalizing both the horrific child and the idea of horror as a beneficial pastime for children. The ‘worried adult’ viewing position that I proposed in Chapter 3 has not gone away, nor have concerns for child

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welfare that it addresses; as Frank Furedi (2006) argues, these concerns and the restrictions of children’s freedom and autonomy that arise from them have only intensified in the oppressive ‘culture of fear’ of the twenty-first century. However, where the satire of Gremlins appeared to justify those fears, and the Crazyspace of The Monster Squad gleefully refused to humour them, ParaNorman works to alleviate them. As such, I argue that ParaNorman’s difference to its predecessors is not necessarily that it is more ‘child-friendly’. Rather, with its protagonist whose horrific qualities do not compromise the symbolic role of the child as agent of progress, futurity and adult redemption, ParaNorman presents a version of the horrific child that is adult-friendly.

Un-othering the uncanny child This discussion begins by examining Norman as a revision of the uncanny child trope. Although Norman’s ability to communicate with the dead categorizes him as an uncanny child, he differs from his equivalents in adult horror in key ways that are reflective of the film’s normalization of the horrific child. In order to demonstrate Norman’s difference to other uncanny children, it is first important to acknowledge that this motif has antecedents in films like The Innocents and Village of the Damned. The children in these 1960s films align with representations of the evil child in adult horror discussed in Chapter 2 in that their uncanniness is presented exclusively in order to unsettle an adult audience of address. In each of these films the children appear on the surface to be perfect manifestations of childhood conformity and innocence – polite, largely well behaved and impossibly and uniformly beautiful – but with abilities of telepathy and precognition that disrupt this façade. Dominic Lennard coins the term ‘looking child’ to underline the fact that it is their piercing stare above all that ‘convey[s] a mysterious and disarming refusal of adult power’ (2014: 51). He goes on to draw from Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975) to point out that child characters are often presented in film as passive objects to be looked at by an adult character/spectator, much in the same way that women are presented for the consumption of a male gaze (Lennard 2014: 59). The active, independent, dangerous gazes of uncanny children in Village of the Damned and similar films are thus frightening because they subvert ‘stable and received understandings of childhood that are maintained by the way children are ordinarily looked at; wrapped up in the spectacle of the malevolently gazing child is an upheaval of the comforting passivity the adult expects’ (Lennard 2014: 52). Norman’s supernatural gaze, and the access that it grants him to knowledge of ‘adult’ topics of death, horror and the afterlife, automatically likens him with these predecessors.

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Despite these similarities, Norman differs from the ‘looking children’ of earlier films due to his presentation as a protagonist who uses his ability to help others. This associates ParaNorman more closely with uncanny children in adult horror films of the late-1990s onwards, like The Sixth Sense’s Cole (Haley Joel Osment), with whom Norman shares the ability to communicate with the dead. Yet Norman is not exactly like these children either; Leslie-McCarthy observes that while uncanny children in contemporary adult horror are generally sympathetic, for a majority of their narratives they are presented with ambiguity and ‘defined by their “otherness,” by what they are not: not normal, not adult, not trustworthy’ (2012: 11). In this regard, Norman differs from his adult horror counterparts because, as a film that prioritizes an address to a horrific child viewer, ParaNorman is presented almost entirely from his perspective. Thus, the film encourages empathetic alignment and identification with Norman, rather than sympathy for him, through a combination of narrative and formal strategies that situate the audience within his interiority. As distinctions between empathy and sympathy are contested, for my purposes I draw from David Howe’s analogy of empathy as being placed within another’s ‘emotional shoes’, thus sharing in an affective experience with a character as they undergo it (2013: 12). We can see this at work through a comparison of the narrative and formal strategies of ParaNorman and The Sixth Sense. There are numerous similarities between Norman and Cole. Aside from their ability to speak to the dead, they both find it easier to interact with the dead than with the living. As a result, their parents are distanced from their children and do not fully understand or believe them. The central theme of both films is, therefore, the importance of communication: the ability of the child protagonist to connect with restless spirits and help them to move on into the afterlife, as well as the need for communication between the child and their family. These two forms of communication are inextricably linked in that ‘the family may be complicit in making their own children feel alienated by a breakdown in family communication, driving them to identify and communicate with “others”’ (Leslie-McCarthy 2012: 11). Simultaneously, it is the child’s ability to speak to these ‘others’ that may result in them being alienated by their family. In the case of The Sixth Sense, it is precisely Cole’s success in hiding his ability from his increasingly puzzled and worried mother, Lynn (Toni Collette), that causes the rift between them. This rift is only closed when Cole confesses his ability to her and convinces her of it by relaying information gained from the ghost of his deceased grandmother that he could not have obtained elsewhere. Conversely, Norman does not hide his ability – from his family or from the audience – and attempts to discuss it openly (albeit reluctantly) with his parents. This openness disturbs his family until, like Cole, Norman has undeniable proof of his talent when he uses his communication ability to resolve the conflict caused by the zombies. Despite these similarities, Cole and Norman differ in their narrative and formal presentation. Cole is not introduced until approximately ten minutes

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into the film, and even then this introduction is a distanced long-shot from the perspective of adult protagonist Malcolm (Bruce Willis), whose profession as a child psychologist implies that something is ‘wrong’ with Cole (Figure 4.1). It is a further ten minutes until the audience is invited into Cole’s perspective, when he has an encounter with a bully. Although this encourages sympathy for Cole, it also continues to perpetuate the idea that he is strange by showing how other children respond negatively to him. It is not until half-way into the film that Cole’s ability is revealed with the famous utterance of the line ‘I see dead people’. This is presented as a shocking reveal, designed to create narrative intrigue and further complicate Cole as a ‘problem’ for Malcolm to investigate. That Cole’s narrative is not the chief concern of the film is underlined by the iconic twist at the film’s conclusion that Malcolm is himself a ghost who only Cole can see, ‘mak[ing] overt the uncanny child’s symbolic role as receptacle for the adult’s repressed trauma’ (Balanzategui 2018b: 73). ParaNorman resists this function of the uncanny child by making Norman the film’s sole protagonist and by positioning the audience in his perspective. This occurs from the very first frame, as the film opens with a sequence from a fictional horror B-movie. This plays out for a few minutes until a reverse-shot reveals that this has been playing out on a television set in Norman’s family living room, where he is watching it, thus establishing that the spectator’s own viewership of the film-withina-film was occurring through Norman’s point of view. Norman watches the film accompanied by his grandmother’s ghost (Elaine Stritch) with whom he converses as it plays. This neatly establishes Norman as a version of the horrific child due to both his uncanny ability and his penchant for horror media, and constructs the spectator as a horrific child viewer who is invited to share his enjoyment. As we discover moments later, the grandmother cannot be seen by other members of Norman’s immediate family. That the viewer is given this privilege provides additional confirmation of their placement in empathetic alignment with Norman’s subjective

Figure 4.1  Formal distancing strategies in The Sixth Sense construct Cole as a mysterious child viewed from Malcolm’s adult perspective.

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Figure 4.2  The framing in ParaNorman aligns the audience with Norman’s empathetic perspective.

experience. This continues as Norman moves into the kitchen where he has an uncomfortable interaction with his parents. This sequence is filmed at the height of Norman’s eye-line, which continues to position the audience within his perspective of the world. This framing also cuts off the heads of his parents, indicating that they literally and figuratively do not see eye to eye with their son. This distance is reinforced when Norman meekly relays a message from his grandmother’s ghost; and this immediately sparks a heated discussion between his parents, in which Norman becomes framed on either side by the two adults while they argue with each other about his well-being. The shot remains level with Norman’s eye-line, resulting in him being stuck between their midriffs as they literally talk over him and about him with complete disregard for his presence (Figure 4.2). If sympathy can be defined as ‘consist[ing] of feelings of sorrow or concern for another’s welfare’, then this shot exemplifies the difference between feeling sympathy for Norman, held by the parents within the film, and empathy with him, held by the horrific child viewer (Eisenberg and Miller 1987: 92 in Howe 2013: 12). This difference is further demonstrated through a comparison of ParaNorman’s kitchen scene with a similar scene in The Sixth Sense, which uses the same formal devices to the opposite effect. Early in The Sixth Sense, a scene occurs in the family kitchen of Cole and his mother; unlike in ParaNorman, it is shot almost entirely from the point of view of the latter character. In one continuous shot the camera follows Lynn as she hurries around the house to prepare for work while Cole eats breakfast at the kitchen table. This instructs the audience to share her shock and unease when she enters the kitchen to find that, in the few seconds she was absent, all of the kitchen cupboards and drawers have been suddenly opened. The implication is that Cole has completed this seemingly impossible task despite being seated at the kitchen table the entire time. This segment is conveyed through camera placement over Lynn’s shoulder when she enters the kitchen, giving a clear view of the open cupboards, before it slowly tracks around Cole – treating him as an object of intrigue and potential danger – until it faces Lynn to show her expression

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of fear and concern. It is later revealed in the film that the disturbance was caused by a ghost, but in this moment the film achieves a level of concern that mimics the way adult characters in the film feel about Cole, rather than with Cole himself. The result is that the audience is left in suspense as to whether Cole is a malevolent child in the vein of those in The Innocents and Village of the Damned. The differences between these sequences are representative of the two films’ overall treatments of their uncanny child characters. Being addressed to a child audience, ParaNorman is aligned firmly with the point of view of its child protagonist and resultantly treats him with empathy, humour and shows him to be unambiguously good. Cole is in a film addressed to an adult audience, leading him to be kept at a distance and used as figure of mystery and suspense that takes advantage of the unease evoked by children’s function as ‘others’ to adults. Yet ParaNorman’s empathetic approach forms just one element of the film’s overall normalization of the horrific child, both as a character and viewer of address. The production background of the film, and that of the studio Laika, is relevant to this process.

Freaks and geeks: ParaNorman’s ‘abnormal’ production and aesthetics That ParaNorman is animated is one of the ways it typifies twenty-first-century children’s horror. It has shifted from predominately live-action in the ‘birth’ of the genre in the 1980s to a variety of live-action and animated offerings. This shift towards feature-length, animated children’s horror can be explained in part by the parallel increase in the number of Hollywood animation studios from the 1990s onwards – including Pixar, Blue Sky Studios, Illumination, DreamWorks Animation, Sony Pictures Animation and, of course, Laika – which fosters competition in the industry and allows for a broad range of animated styles and genres to be offered to audiences, including horror. The dominance of animated children’s horror can also be attributed to two further, interrelated factors: first, the strong cultural perception of animation as ‘a signifier of safety, fun, nostalgia, and childishness’ which may help to offset horror’s associations with adult content (Hawley 2016); second, the distancing function that animation is thought to provide from overly realistic and frightening content, as I have explained in Chapter 1. Megan Troutman expands upon this latter point with regard to the possibilities that animation can afford for the representation of children, specifically, in horror narratives: Animated horror, by virtue of the fact that it is animated, creates a liminal space for child characters in which some of the rules pertaining to what

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actions are within the range of acceptable behavior for child characters are suspended, or at least become somewhat more flexible. Specifically, with respect to violence, animated child characters can be placed in more dangerous situations and can experience more risk compared to live-action horror. (2019: 155) I do not agree entirely with Troutman’s logic; despite the flexibility and distancing offered by animation, we still do not see child characters in animated postmillennial children’s horror films engaging in nearly as violent or risky behaviour as in some of the earlier, live-action films of the genre. Arguably, animation could never make behaviour such as The Monster Squad’s Horace gunning down a monster with a shotgun, or Gremlins’ Stripe attacking Billy with a chainsaw, appear ‘suitable’ for children. However, there is credence to the notion that animation may lessen some of the anxiety that representations of horrific children might evoke (in adult gatekeepers of children’s media) as a result of the fact that the children presented are highly stylized and distanced from the supposed ‘reality’ of live-action. Although in Chapter 5 I will question the extent to which animation functions as a mitigating factor in children’s horror films, it remains the case that animation’s long-held associations with children’s media allow it to serve, in combination with G and PG ratings, as shorthand for parents that a film is ‘safe’ for children, regardless of its genre. What I am more concerned with here, however, is not just that ParaNorman is animated, but specifically that it is stop-motion animated by an indie studio. This mode of production is crucial to the film’s thematic concern with disrupting and redefining the ‘norm’. Throughout its history stop-motion animation has been a marginalized medium, overshadowed by its more financially lucrative and culturally visible siblings, hand-drawn cel animation throughout the twentieth century, and computer generated (CG) animation in the twenty-first. While CG animation is costly, technologically advanced and generally has a ‘slick’ aesthetic, stop-motion has a rougher, home-made quality, and can be seen as cumbersome in production terms due to the need for animators to painstakingly move and photograph models frame by frame. As put by one Laika employee, ‘God knows, . . . there are easier ways to make movies’ (Dan Pascall in Robinson 2016). Stop-motion’s hand-crafted aesthetic and connotations with individual labour rather than mass-production grant the medium a ‘quirky’ sensibility that is particularly associated with independent cinema (MacDowell 2010: 7). Indeed, Laika is an independent studio based in Portland, Oregon, literally situating it outside of Hollywood in a city known for, and which embraces, eccentricity.4 Laika’s mode of production and location construct an image of the studio as being at the margins of the ‘norm’ of Hollywood filmmaking and the cultural mainstream. This is not strictly accurate as the studio is owned by the co-founder and former CEO of the Nike corporation, Phil Knight, and run by his son, Travis.

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That Laika makes use of state-of-the-art technology, such as 3D printing, to streamline the animation process further distances the studio from notions that it is a scrappy underdog. Even so, the studio encourages this image through promotional and paratextual materials, as evidenced by a description of Laika by Chris Butler, ParaNorman’s writer and co-director, as ‘a bubbling crucible of every kind of abnormally talented dork, nerd, freak, and geek you could ever have the good fortune to meet’ (in Alger 2012: 8). This production narrative and studio image is reflected in the thematic and aesthetic elements of Laika’s output. Butler’s description of Laika’s employees could just as easily describe the characters in ParaNorman, particularly the children and teenagers who accompany Norman throughout the film. Although they are not uncanny children they each represent and subvert a stereotype of youth, thus furthering the film’s focus on children who do not align with dominant paradigms. Norman’s classmate Neil (Tucker Albrizzi) is bullied for a number of reasons, but he lists these refreshing cheerfulness and pride: ‘Because I’m fat, and my allergies make my eyes leak, and I sweat when I walk too fast, and I have a lunch box with a kitten on it . . . Oh, and I have irritable bowel syndrome.’ Notably, he is also the only living character in the film who holds unwavering belief in Norman’s ability, and the two boys bond when Norman facilitates communication between Neil and the ghost of his dead dog. Neil’s older brother Mitch (Casey Affleck) and Norman’s older sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick) appear to be teen stereotypes, Mitch being an attractive and athletic alpha male to whom the narcissistic and self-absorbed Courtney is extremely attracted. However, at the end of the film Mitch nonchalantly reveals that he has a boyfriend. This is a rare example of an openly gay character in a film primarily addressed to children, and in other circumstances might have been treated as deviating from the patriarchal, heterosexual ‘norm’. This is especially interesting given the film’s status as a horror film, as Wood identifies those who deviate from ‘ideological sexual norms’ as a type of ‘other’, along with children, that is repressed within society and presented via monstrous metaphors in the horror genre in order to illicit fear and discomfort (2003: 63–5). That ParaNorman makes no further comment on Mitch’s sexuality, aside from Courtney’s disappointment, is reflective of the film’s sensitive treatment of difference. Thanks to the film’s production design, even characters who do not appear to have any sort of clear ‘abnormality’ are marked as such by the deliberately imperfect and asymmetrical design of the film’s sets, props and characters. Mitch and Courtney seem on the surface to be perfect specimens of male and female teenagers: slim, athletic and conventionally attractive. However, closer inspection of their bodies reveals crudeness and over-exaggeration, such as Mitch’s comically large chest and impossibly narrow waist. The over-exaggeration of bodily proportions is common in animation, a part of the medium’s unique ability to disrupt societal norms in relation to representations of the body (Wells

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1998: 187–8). ParaNorman harnesses this to serve the film’s normalization of deviance by suggesting in subtle ways that everybody is equally ‘abnormal’. Nevertheless, Norman is still marked out as being more abnormal than the average person in his community due to his uncanny ability. This sense of his identity as monstrous and deviant manifests through elements of his appearance and behaviour. His hair, for example, is a shock of brown that sticks straight up, completely out of his control; an apt visual metaphor for both his uncanny ability and his status as a child on the cusp of puberty. Worland notes that ‘monsters are frequently social outcasts because of their physical appearance, or the grotesque transformations their bodies may undergo’ (2007: 138). Like the bodies of horror monsters, adolescents experience their own ‘monstrous’ transformations during childhood and puberty (Davis 2011: 8). It is, therefore, common for teen horror films to explore coming-of-age through monstrous metaphors, such as the werewolf in Teen Wolf (Daniel 1985) and Ginger Snaps (Fawcett 2000). ParaNorman follows in this vein by depicting Norman encountering and attempting to come to terms with the various layers of his horrific identity: the inherent monstrosity of his nature as a pre-pubescent child, his uncanny ability and the images of death and decay that this ability brings him into contact with. Through its alignment with Norman’s experience, the film constructs and addresses its horrific child viewer as one who can also benefit from catharsis via exposure to the monstrous and the abject. It is here where the film’s intersection with the zombie subgenre is significant.

Horror and monstrosity as catharsis The contemporary popularity of zombie media cannot be overstated, thanks in large part to the success of horror television series The Walking Dead (2010– present) and its numerous spin-offs. The zombie has, however, been a consistent and culturally resonant horror figure, widely read as a symbol through which sociohistorical anxieties can be played out and exhumed (Luckhurst 2015). In recent years, the zombie has taken on a more cheerful role that can be categorized under Spooner’s label of happy Gothic. Jeffrey Sconce identifies a pleasure in the ‘carnivalesque reversal of power’ offered by the recent proliferation of zombiethemed live-action-role-play events in which adult players temporarily take on the zombie identity (2013: 108–9). He attributes the appeal of this role-reversal to wish-fulfilment, given that zombies ‘do not have jobs, mortgages, bank accounts . . . or any other discernible obligations’ (2013: 106). This more playful and carnivalesque appropriation of the zombie has an obvious link with childishness, yet the appeal of zombie media for child audiences has received scant critical attention despite a plethora of twenty-first-century

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zombie-themed children’s texts including, in addition to, ParaNorman, Darren Shan’s Zom-B book series (2012–16), the picture book A Brain Is for Eating (Jacobs and Jacobs 2013) and toy lines Plants vs. Zombies and Once Upon a Zombie. The subversive and responsibility-free qualities of the zombie identified by Sconce have clear potential to offer similar pleasures to child viewers. Zombies, after all, do not have to put up with typical childhood grievances like going to school, doing chores or being bullied. Buckley reads the abject zombie as offering children a form of ‘grotesque identification’ that subverts dominant conceptualizations of children’s fiction as a pedagogical tool that forms children into compliant members of society (2018: 36). Norman’s engagement with zombie paraphernalia in ParaNorman supports this proposition in the sense that his identification with zombies appears to allow him to come to terms with his uncanny ability and oncoming puberty; however, ParaNorman is not entirely resistant to a reading of horror as a socializing force, either. Through its presentation of Norman’s dual engagement with horror (via zombie media and his ability as a medium) as beneficial to the wider community, the film aligns with scholarly perspectives that see an engagement with horror as part of children’s socialization, rather than standing in opposition to it (Bettelheim 1976; Tatar 1998; Coats 2008). As such, the horrific child becomes normalized as a concept that has the power to heal conflict and form intergenerational bonds between children and adults, rather than stand in resistance to adult dominance as is the case in Gremlins and The Monster Squad. The benefits of horror upon Norman’s well-being are also alluded to in a scene early in the film in which he makes a scary face in his bathroom mirror. His mouth is covered in toothpaste foam which gives him the look of a rabid creature, although the groaning noise he makes to accompany this indicates that he is imitating a zombie. If read through a psychoanalytic lens, this functions similarly to the mirror stage – a crucial moment in child development at which one can recognize themselves in a mirror (Lacan [1949] 1977: 1) – but instead of an infant developing their intelligence, Norman is a pre-pubescent child enacting and (literally and figuratively) reflecting upon the way he is seen by his society. Furthermore, by putting himself in the role of a monster, Norman is exploring, confronting and demystifying taboo themes of death, gore and monstrosity. Norman’s engagement with zombies is also indicated to help him work through the anxiety he feels due to his parents’ refusal to believe that he can see and speak to the dead. Following from the kitchen-set scene discussed earlier, Norman dejectedly goes to his bedroom, which is littered with zombie toys and décor. He then lies on his bed and plays with two zombie figurines in a mock imitation of his parents who can be heard continuing to argue. Echoing Bettelheim’s psychoanalytic argument that fairy tales allow children to work through trauma, ParaNorman indicates that Norman’s use of toys associated with horror helps him to channel the anxiety caused by his parents’ arguing.

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In turn, this addresses a horrific child viewer who is assured that their own consumption of horror (including their viewership of ParaNorman) may allow them to overcome their own anxieties. ParaNorman also references the monstrous capabilities of the child’s body through a scene that takes place in a school toilet cubicle at a crucial point in the film’s narrative and in Norman’s character arc. Alice Mills (2006) observes that toilets (both the rooms and the appliances) are often utilized in children’s fiction as spaces of negativity, for example as a location of bullying. Toilets are, of course, also associated with abject bodily fluids. It is therefore interesting that Norman is visited by the ghost of his uncle Mr Prenderghast (John Goodman) to be informed of his ‘destiny’ in a school toilet cubicle. The cubicle becomes a space of terror when Norman, in a vision, experiences the walls shaking and water erupting from the toilet. Before his death, Mr Prenderghast could also converse with the dead as this is, in the film, a hereditary skill. Mr Prenderghast’s ghost informs Norman’s of a witch’s curse upon the town that can only be curbed by a medium (Norman) reading from a special book at the site of her grave on the anniversary of her death. This will put the witch’s spirit to sleep until the next year, when the ritual must be performed again. The choice of setting for this interaction between Norman and his uncle draws a link between the revulsion towards the abject symbolism of the toilet, Norman’s reluctance to accept his quest and a figurative journey through puberty. In an extension of his making a zombie face in the mirror, Norman must confront what is abject – both the monstrosity of the zombies and of himself – in order to accept his own nature and become accepted by others in turn. Norman is not the only child in the film with ‘horrific’ characteristics, although those of the other children differ vastly from Norman’s productive engagement with horror. To compare Norman with these other children helps to illuminate the film’s normalization of the horrific child. Of most relevance is the school bully, Alvin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Although I have noted earlier that all of the film’s characters are ‘abnormal’ in some way, Alvin is the only child in the film who is presented as physically and characteristically monstrous. He is depicted as an unintelligent delinquent who cannot spell his own name, commits petty crimes and picks his nose in addition to tormenting Norman. His large, ape-like body looms over Norman in intimidation, but it is also used as a comic effect when he is shown trying, and failing, to impress some girls by dancing to a hip-hop song. Alvin is further ridiculed and undermined when he follows Norman to the witch’s grave, where his interruption causes Norman’s performance of the ritual to fail. This reawakens the witch’s spirit and, along with it, resurrects zombies from their graves. Alvin is far more terrified than Norman, as revealed by his high-pitched scream and that he must be guided and helped by Norman in order to escape the zombies. However, as with Norman, Alvin is offered an opportunity to use his ‘horrific’ and delinquent qualities to do some good when the other children turn

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to him for his help breaking into the town hall, where they research information about the witch. The cowardice Alvin displays in front of the zombies contrasts with Norman’s more collected response, which is interesting in relation to each of their levels of interaction with horrific media. Alvin is a stereotype of exactly the kind of child constructed by Wertham’s claims that horror comic books turn children into delinquents (see Chapter 2). However, ParaNorman’s presentation of Alvin and Norman indirectly refutes this idea. This is first indicated in the following exchange between Norman and his parents which occurs after Norman has been watching a horror film: SANDRA: What’ya watching in there? NORMAN: [cheerfully] Sex and violence. SANDRA: [visibly disappointed] Oh, that’s nice. PERRY: Can’t you be like other kids your age and pitch a tent in the yard or have a healthy interest in carpentry? NORMAN: I thought you said kids my age were too busy shoplifting and joyriding? As Norman astutely points out, there are far worse things that he could be doing than watching a horror film; instead, it’s the children who are not watching horror, like Alvin, who are delinquents. Far from being a horror aficionado, Alvin reveals his limited understanding of horror tropes when he suggests killing the zombies with a ‘silver stake or something’, confusing the methods for killing werewolves (a silver bullet) and vampires (a wooden stake). The film alludes to the kinds of media that Alvin does consume when Norman and his accomplices are in the town hall, and Alvin indignantly comments that during a zombie apocalypse he would rather be locked in the ‘adult video store just across the street’ than doing archival research. It could be interpreted that the film is inviting judgement on Alvin’s preferred choice of media, but it is interesting that elsewhere in the film Neil – a sweet boy who does not share Alvin’s delinquency – is also shown to be exploring his sexual urges by watching his mother’s aerobics DVD and pausing it at opportune moments to stare at the female instructor’s behind. Like the children in The Monster Squad, the children in ParaNorman are shown to engage healthily in a variety of ‘inappropriate’ pursuits in addition to horror, thus normalizing them. Still, the film constructs a hierarchy of these forms of media as it is only Norman’s taste for horror which is indicated to have any wider societal benefit. Overall, ParaNorman addresses its horrific child viewer with the message that difference is normal: whether that difference is having a strange ability (Norman’s

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sight, Alvin’s delinquency), being gay (Mitch), being fat or having irritable bowel syndrome (Neil), a taste for ‘adult’ media (Norman, Neil, Alvin), or an unusually shaped body, as is the case with every character. Further, any ‘monstrosity’ displayed by the child characters is offset by the actual monstrosity of the zombies who rise from their graves in conjunction with the waking of the witch’s ghost. The zombies are the resurrected town council that condemned the witch to death 300 years earlier, and were subsequently cursed by her in retribution. They are at first presented as disgusting and terrifying: with sagging, grey skin, yellow teeth and the recognizable lumbering gait and groans of traditional zombies. However, as the film progresses they are rendered pathetic and terrified by twenty-first-century life, from the immodest clothing and raucous behaviour of the townspeople to the commodification of witch-lore that promotes the town as a tourist attraction. In a carnivalesque reversal, the zombies then become persecuted by modern adults, who form a mob and chase them with pitchforks, guns and flaming torches. Meanwhile, Norman discovers that the ‘witch’ the zombies condemned was in fact only a little girl of Norman’s age, Aggie Prenderghast (Jodelle Ferland). An ancestor of Norman’s, Aggie also possessed the power to speak to the dead, but this was mistaken by her Puritan community for witchcraft and she was subsequently executed. In the film’s denouement it is implied that the zombies’ decrepit outer appearances reflect their past sins for which they spend the film attempting to atone – they only chase Norman so they can admit their mistake and persuade him to right their wrongdoing. This is a stark contrast to the behaviour of the humans in Gremlins, who deny responsibility for the horrific child-substitutes that have been produced as a result of improper parenting, and destroy them. When Norman is successful in calming Aggie’s spirit and sending her into the afterlife the zombies shed their skins, revealing their ghostly spirits which then fade away. With the revelation that the witch was an innocent child, the comical treatment of the zombies and the mob mentality of the ‘normal’ townspeople, the film shows that there are far worse types of monstrosity than physical abnormalities, Norman’s harmless gift or monsters from the grave. The film comically highlights this when Alvin screams at the prospect of being chased by zombies, but screams even louder when he realizes that he is being chased by ‘just grown-ups’. Of course, ParaNorman is as much a ghost story as it is a zombie film. To read it as the former is illuminating and leads this discussion to consider the significance of Aggie in relation to Norman. On the symbolism of the ghost in children’s fiction, Judith Armstrong identifies a type of ghost that comes ‘from the remote depths of a person’s own mind’, a convention which she explains ‘is concerned with different aspects of the same person, the person he might have been, or might still become, had he not encountered the ghost of his potential self’ (1978: 60). While not a ghost from within Norman’s mind, Aggie is a ghost with whom only Norman can communicate. She thus serves as a glimpse of

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what might have become of Norman in other socio-historical circumstances where difference was not as readily embraced. Aggie is implied to be monstrous in that she is assumed by other characters to be a wicked witch. When Aggie’s spirit rises she does not use her real appearance, which is revealed later, but that of a crooked-nosed stereotype of a witch that the characters have built up over the course of the film. In being treated like a monstrous witch, Aggie has decided to behave like one. The truth, shown to Norman in a vision, is that that Aggie was not a witch, but just a little girl with the same paranormal ability as Norman. At the witch trial shown in the vision, Aggie tried to defend herself by saying that she was ‘only playing’; again, this draws a link between Aggie and the gremlins who are unjustly attacked and killed while engaging in innocent childlike activities such as eating cookies and watching Snow White. In the context of the puritanical, misogynistic society in which she lived, Aggie is triply ‘othered’, or coded as a horrific, due to her being female in addition to being a child and in possession of a supernatural power. Even when it is revealed that Aggie was only an innocent child she retains the aura of the monstrous due to her unjust murder as sentenced by the council of judges. As a male child living in the twenty-first century, Norman is clearly in much less danger of being treated in the same way as Aggie. There are, however, further reasons as to why Norman avoids her tragic fate. Leslie-McCarthy identifies communication as a tool for healing families and communities in the post-1990s adult ghost films she examines. This is also referenced by Norman’s grandmother as they watch the zombie film on television together: ‘I’m sure if they just bothered to sit down and talk it through it’d be a different story.’ It is through Norman’s ability to communicate with Aggie that ParaNorman further promotes the beneficial outcomes of children’s engagement with horror. While the living child characters in ParaNorman consume a variety of ‘adult’ media, Aggie is the only child in the film who is shown consuming any traditionally ‘child-friendly’ content. The book that Norman is instructed to read to Aggie is a collection of fairy tales, read to her year after year in order to put her spirit to sleep until the next anniversary of her death. When the fourteen-year-old Wigransky criticized children being kept in ‘utter and complete ignorance of anything and everything except the innocuous and sterile world’ that Wertham would have them subjected to, he could easily have been referring to Aggie being fed a simple fairy tale which has repressed her trauma, rather than acknowledged it and allowed her to come to terms with it (1948: 20). It is interesting that the film chooses to criticize fairy tales, given the scholarly consensus that exposure to the macabre via fairy tales can be good for adolescents (Bettelheim 1976; Twitchell 1985: 7). On the other hand, some of this same scholarship derides modern adaptations of fairy tales; for Bettelheim, film and television – especially the works of the Disney studio – have turned fairy tales into ‘empty-minded entertainment’ (1976: 24). Karen Coats agrees that the sanitization of fairy

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tales in twentieth- and twenty-first-century-culture has ‘degraded these once psychically useful tales’ (2008: 79). Although Aggie is an eighteenth-century child who has not had access to such ‘degraded’ fairy tales, ParaNorman suggests that her being read the same book of stories for three centuries has similarly stripped them of their therapeutic potential. Norman, as someone who is inured to more ‘authentic’ horror through both his uncanny sight and consumption of zombie media, resolves to heal Aggie’s spirit by telling her the true story of her death. However, he also tells Aggie the harsh truth that, in her anger towards those who killed her, she has herself become a bully and forgotten who she really is. Before Aggie’s spirit contentedly passes on to the afterlife, she asks Norman whether he ever wants to make people suffer for bullying him. Norman responds, ‘Well, yeah, but . . . what good would that do?’ Norman’s consumption of horror through audiovisual media and toys has, in addition to the benefits outlined earlier, provided an outlet for him to enact the violence that he might otherwise have directed towards his family, Alvin and everyone else who disbelieved or ridiculed him. In turn, this directs the horrific child viewer of address in the appropriate ways to respond to their own hardships, and how the horror genre can help them to do this.

Conclusion: Problematizing the new normal with Hotel Transylvania ParaNorman’s normalization of the horrific child – a character and spectator who possesses characteristics and media preferences that are in some way ‘horrific’ – is confirmed by the film’s closing shot. In a mirror image of the opening sequence, Norman is shown watching a zombie film on television in the presence of his grandmother’s ghost. This time, however, they are joined by the rest of the family, who acknowledge the ghost despite not being able to see her (Figures 4.3 and 4.4). While the earlier shot is of a darkened room lit only by the glare of the television, in the closing shot this is transformed by the soft, warm glow of a lamp, a reflection of the family’s newfound unity and their changed attitude towards Norman and what he represents. This is certainly a pleasant and appropriate note on which to end the film. However, I want to address some of the broader implications that the film represents for the horrific child and the children’s horror genre more broadly, starting with the difference between these images. In the previous chapter I suggested that the commercial failure of The Monster Squad upon its initial cinema release was in part because its PG-13 rating, mode of address and representation of children and adults constructed an ideal manner of viewing within a child-only cinema space where adults are unwelcome. ParaNorman’s

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closing shot could not be any more in opposition to this through its implication that this image – a multigenerational family gathered around the television within a cosy domestic space – is the ideal context for the horrific child viewer. This in itself is not a problem, nor do I think that the film is implying that solitary viewing is ‘bad’. As I also discussed in relation to The Monster Squad, the ability for children to view horror films on television at home, outside of the supervision of adults, fostered an environment that allowed the film to develop a thriving cult fan base after its failure at the box office. Moreover, despite the fact that many children’s horror films feature children who are fans of horror, none of these actually show children engaging with horror in the context of the cinema. One exception to this is the gremlins’ takeover of the cinema to watch Snow White, which leads to their deaths. In a strange act of self-sabotage, then, children’s horror films present the physical space of cinema as at worst an unwelcoming and dangerous place for children, and at best a place of no importance or relevance to them. This message echoes the concerns behind attempts to segregate and control children’s access to cinemas in the early twentieth century, which arose from the desire to protect children from harm as well as to allow adults to enjoy the theatrical experience without the disturbance of unruly children (see Chapter 3). With regard to horror specifically, the anti-cinema sentiment expressed within children’s horror films reinforces exclusionary norms of the horror genre as an adult-only space and contradicts the way that children’s horror films actively promote children’s access to horror, and the benefits they can reap from it. On the other hand, Figures 4.3 and 4.4 are both representative of the ways that real children consume media, perhaps even more so than the act of going to cinema, which for families with children is increasingly expensive and less convenient than home viewing.5 Cinema’s antagonistic relationship with child audience, and that the home might be the ideal space for children’s horror, is also acknowledged by Antunes (2020) and the latter idea is supported by audience research which details the self-censorship and coping strategies children employ while watching horror at home, especially adult horror films that they would normally be banned

Figure 4.3  Norman watching a horror film on television with his grandmother’s ghost in the opening of ParaNorman.

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Figure 4.4  Norman watching a horror film on television at the end of ParaNorman, this time with his whole family.

from seeing in the cinema (Buckingham 1996; Smith 2019). Evidently, the flexibility of this space affords children the freedom to explore – and normalize – their personal tastes and tolerance for fear, whether alone or in the company of peers or adult guardians that might not be as easily managed in the context of the cinema. The implied exclusion of children from the cinema in children’s horror films aligns with views of contemporary cinemas as socialized spaces which ‘uncivilized’ children threaten to disrupt – as we see in exaggerated form in Gremlins (Klinger 1989: 3; Sandars 2017: 618–19). This is interesting in the context of ParaNorman’s representation of children’s consumption of horror as a form of socialization that has a wider benefit to the adult world; this logic can be extended to see children’s home viewing as a form of preparation for the adult space of the cinema (as well as the world beyond that). This alludes to an insidious function of horror as a pedagogical tool wielded by adults against children in order to shape them to adult ideals, as has been suggested by Tatar in relation to cautionary tales, where ‘adults instrumentalize narrative violence in order to discipline and socialize children in the name of guiding and healing them’ (1998: 71–3). Tatar has argued elsewhere that even contemporary authors who attempt to eschew the traditional didacticism of children’s fiction are unable to completely escape the desire to imbue children’s stories with cathartic pleasures that ‘will turn [children] into “well-adjusted” (read: “socialized and productive”) adults’ (1992: xvii). Although well intentioned, ParaNorman’s promotion and normalization of children’s consumption of horror media as something ‘good’ for children means that it is not fully exempt from this function. With that in mind, I want to conclude by acknowledging that not all see the normalization of horror, and especially its modification and address towards child audiences, as a positive development. The most prominent scholarly voice of this perspective is that of Fred Botting, who argues that the commodification of horror and its shift in status from a marginalized alternative to mainstream culture has robbed the genre of its value to shock, disturb and disrupt cultural

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norms (2002 and 2007). Spooner takes issue with this disparaging attitude in her aforementioned work on the happy Gothic, noting that the dismissal of certain texts as not ‘proper’ horror is loaded with value judgements, as this is normally directed towards texts associated with young and/or female audiences (2017: 8). Indeed, Botting targets youth culture in particular, or what he disparagingly terms ‘Disneygothic’ and ‘Girly-girly Gothic’ (2007: 203, 207). This attitude strongly echoes many of the negative press reviews I have cited in the prior chapters, which consider films like The Monster Squad neither scary enough to be horror nor childish enough to be for children. As I have argued in this chapter, I see ParaNorman as resolving this conflict by negotiating a balance between these modes, as represented in the construction of Norman as an ‘ideal’ horrific child. This is reflected in the overwhelmingly positive notices that the film received from critics, many of whom praise the film for being ‘surprisingly scary’ and for deftly balancing horror and humour (Lumenick 2012). Tellingly, Time Out’s Kevin Uhlich (2012) invokes the pedagogical value of fairy tales, the legitimacy of adult horror and the wholesomeness of family viewing all at once in his assurance to parents that ParaNorman is ‘the kind of grim fairy tale, equal parts midnightmovie macabre and family-round-the-hearth compassionate, that scars in all the right ways’. However, a caveat is that ParaNorman is only ‘normalized’ in the sense that it manages to appease both of the dominant criticisms typically levelled at children’s horror: it meets adult conceptions of scariness while also shaping that scariness towards a ‘productive’ outcome for its child audience. In this light, it is instructive to compare ParaNorman with another set of post-millennial childfriendly horror films which arguably fit Botting’s conception of over-normalized Gothic even more than ParaNorman, in so far as their horror is so nullified that they are critically perceived as lacking both the supposedly ‘beneficial’ and frightening outcomes that grant texts like ParaNorman critical value: the Hotel Transylvania trilogy. These films recontextualize monsters including Dracula (Adam Sandler), Frankenstein’s Monster (Kevin James) and the Invisible Man (David Spade) as benevolent beings in contemporary society who are unfairly persecuted by humans. The titular hotel is run by Dracula as a safe haven for these monsters, but in the first film this is disrupted by a human named Johnny (Andy Samberg) who discovers the hotel and falls in love with Dracula’s daughter Mavis (Selena Gomez), much to Dracula’s distaste. In the sequels, Johnny and Mavis are happily married with a human–vampire hybrid son, Dennis (Asher Blinkoff). The Hotel Transylvania films share ParaNorman’s promotion of the acceptance and normalization of difference and monstrosity, but Hotel Transylvania’s dispensing of horror to showcase the slapstick and scatological potential of the monster characters drew the ire of film critics. That the first Hotel Transylvania film was released within one month of ParaNorman prompted critics to draw

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comparisons between the two films, praising the latter in order to highlight the failings of the former. One Hotel Transylvania review cites ParaNorman as a superior film that ‘showed just how to put together a funny, smart, kid-friendly monster movie without completely defanging its ghoulies’ (Buckwalter 2012). Others criticize the series for being ‘saccharine’ (Huddleston 2012), ‘infantile’ (Rothkopf 2015) and a ‘synthetic’ treatment of horror that lacks ‘bite’ (O’Sullivan 2012). The problem with attitudes like this is, as Antunes has put it, their assumption that ‘adult values are the only values on which to judge horror’ (2020: 71). What seems to an adult to be saccharine and toothless may not seem this way to a child – especially a child at the younger end of the age spectrum, who seems to be the core demographic of Hotel Transylvania. Moreover, these criticisms imply that children’s horror texts are only worthy if they are perceived by adults as doing the child audience some form of ‘good’, even if this causes distress as insidiously implied by Uhlich’s assessment that ParaNorman ‘scars in all the right ways’. This view echoes the scholarly perspectives of Bettelheim and Coats that horror can have long-term psychological benefits for children. The idea that a children’s horror text might be valuable simply because it offers pleasures other than fear or didacticism seems not to be a concern within this discourse. Yet the fact that the Hotel Transylvania films are by far the most commercially successful of all the case studies discussed in this book indicates that they are valuable because they provide their audience with pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Taken in this context, Hotel Transylvania’s defiance of normative conceptions of children’s media as having to provide some form of adult-approved benefit allows it to be read as just as subversive as its more ‘horrific’ contemporaries. It is especially interesting that Hotel Transylvania 2 includes an overt criticism of the attitude that the over-normalization of horror should be disparaged because it strips the genre of its supposedly therapeutic qualities. In the film, Dracula is concerned that his grandson Dennis, a toddler, has not yet shown any vampiric tendencies. The narrative follows Dracula’s attempts to ‘bring out [Dennis’s] inner monster’ by putting him into absurdly dangerous situations, like throwing him from the top of a rickety tower in the hopes that the fall will trigger Dennis to transform into a bat and fly away before he hits the ground. In the climax of the film Dracula’s father, Vlad (Mel Brooks), decides to accelerate the process – or ‘scare the fangs out of’ him – at Dennis’s birthday party. In one of the series’ sole moments of overt horror, Vlad possesses the children’s entertainer (a man in a Cookie Monster-esque costume) and forces him to transform into a demonic beast. The sequence is both tonally and aesthetically jarring as the entertainer’s body contorts, twists and cracks in ways that would not seem out of place in an adult body horror film. This unconsensual, unexpected and premature exposure of Dennis to ‘true’ horror fails to have the intended effect and simply traumatizes him. Instead, Dennis’s vampire powers emerge later in the film, without interference and pressure from his overbearing adult relatives.

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In this way, the film constructs Dennis as the series’ horrific child character who is under threat by incompetent and misunderstanding adults. That the Hotel Transylvania series takes this stance reveals it to be far more self-aware and sophisticated than critics give it credit for, and it also complements the other films I have discussed in this book so far. They are united by their shared promotion of children’s access to the horror genre, but with the caveats that this access – and adult critics’ and guardians’ management of it – should be consensual on the part of the child, sensitive to their individual levels of maturity, and respectful of their individual tastes and tolerances. The closing shot of ParaNorman, in which Norman’s relatives are open to engaging with his horrific tastes and abilities, offers a model of what this might look like in practice. Taken as a whole, all of these texts and their differing levels of horror, benefit and childishness form a snapshot of what the ‘normalization’ of children’s horror can provide: that is, a range of pleasures that are as varied as the experience of childhood itself. The remaining chapters of this book take up this notion of variety in relation to the gender disparity of children’s horror cinema.

Chapter 5 A ‘child-friendly’ horror aesthetic Challenging assumptions with Coraline

In his review of Coraline, New York Times critic A. O. Scott (2009) muses that the film is likely to scare many members of its primary audience of children, but quickly clarifies that this is ‘not a warning but rather a recommendation’. The review inspired Neil Gaiman – the author of the 2002 novel from which the film is adapted – to express his disappointment at Scott’s need to defend the idea of horror fiction for children (2009: vii). Scott’s defence is hardly surprising given that the horror genre is typically assumed to be the realm of adults and teenagers, and incompatible with children. This book, as a whole, challenges this assumption. In keeping with this overall aim, this chapter and Chapter 6 shift in focus away from concerns with address and the historical progression of children’s horror cinema that has dominated the previous chapters, while maintaining an interest in representation: that is, the formal and aesthetic representation of horror for a child audience, as well as the representation of the horrific child as a gendered construct. The latter point will be addressed in the conclusion of the chapter, while the main focus is to use Coraline to challenge some specific and interrelated assumptions that are widely held about the representation of horror addressed to children. The first of these assumptions is that animation, as a medium distanced from the supposed ‘reality’ of live-action, can function to alleviate the negative emotional effects of horror and, therefore, make the genre more appropriate for children. However, the prevailing critical view that Coraline is surprisingly scary for a children’s film indicates that animation does not always alleviate horror, and may even enhance a film’s level of scariness. Drawing from the psychoanalytic

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concept of the uncanny, I contend that Coraline’s medium of stop-motion animation contributes to its horror by disturbing ontological boundaries. The second assumption I seek to challenge is that children’s horror is incompatible with certain adult subgenres of horror: namely, the voyeuristic, morally dubious and notoriously violent slasher film. Although Coraline shies away from the bloody connotations of the slasher, it borrows from the subgenre’s structural, aesthetic and formal strategies in order to suggest the lurking threat of violence in offscreen space. Thus, each of these assumptions, and the ways that Coraline challenges them, are united by their generation of a ‘suitable’ but horrific address to children via their exploitation of optic uncertainty and vulnerability. To consider Coraline’s aesthetic representation of horror in this way is appropriate to the film’s thematic and narrative concerns. Coraline’s eponymous protagonist is a girl who discovers a portal into a parallel version of her home where she discovers doppelgangers of her parents, known as Other Mother and Other Father (Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman). These alternate parents are almost identical to her real parents but for their possession of shiny black buttons in the place of eyes. Despite this, Coraline initially finds the other home and parents preferable to reality; she had felt bored and dissatisfied within her real home and ignored by her busy parents. Comparatively, Other Mother and Other Father are more attentive to Coraline’s desires. However, Coraline becomes disillusioned when she learns that in order to remain in the other home she, too, must exchange her own eyes for buttons. This revelation leads her to discover that the other home is a ruse created by the monstrous Other Mother to devour Coraline’s soul. To avoid this fate, Coraline must reject Other Mother’s advances and accept her real home and parents, and their refusal to cater to her every whim, as those that she truly desires. In so doing, she undergoes a process of maturation in which she asserts her autonomy and independence. Coraline is a particularly useful case study with which to challenge dominant assumptions about children’s horror films given the vastly contrasting viewpoints on its ‘suitability’ for children from adult gatekeepers of children’s cinema, which here refers to popular film critics and film classification bodies. Reviews of the film are generally rapturous of the film’s craft, but question whether it is appropriate for its target audience of children. These hesitations focus on the film’s ‘disconcerting creepiness’ (Schwarzbaum 2009), with the Times admonishing the film as ‘creepy hell’ and asserting that ‘[a]nyone under the age of 18 will be terrified of this eerie cartoon’ (Christopher 2009). Another critic ponders that the film is ‘probably too creepy, too scary and too intense for “younger children” . . . it’s wall-to-wall creepy. It practically redefines creepy’ (Roeper 2009). Despite this, Coraline is rated PG by both the North American and British film classification bodies, the MPAA and BBFC, which indicates suitability for most children. While the MPAA does not offer any detailed reasoning (a problem addressed in Chapter 1), the broadly analogous BBFC notes ‘a general air of

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creepiness or spookiness’ to Coraline that this is offset by a number of factors including the medium of animation (BBFC 2020c). How, then, is it possible for Coraline to simultaneously occupy these contrasting viewpoints within adult-sanctioned notions of suitability in children’s entertainment? I argue that the answer lies precisely in the film’s ‘creepiness’ that critics highlight, but do not elaborate upon, as the source of the film’s horror. The reliance on this term to describe Coraline is clarified by Adam Kotzko’s argument that the contemporary use of ‘creepy’ can be understood as a colloquialism for the psychoanalytic concept of the uncanny (2015: 5): a particular form of fear and unease that arises from the meeting of the unheimlich (a German term, literally translated as ‘unhomely’ or ‘unfamiliar’) and its opposite, the heimlich (homely/familiar) (Freud [1919] 2003: 124). That critics consistently refer to Coraline as ‘creepy’ therefore makes complete sense, as it is a film rife with uncanny aesthetics and motifs. The doubled home and parents, for instance, are simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar. The threat of violence towards Coraline’s eyes is also widely read as evoking castration anxiety (despite Coraline being a girl), which Freudian psychoanalysis regards as a repressed childish fear that has risen to the surface of the unconscious mind, thus becoming uncanny (Freud [1919] 2003: 138–40). The other home is also populated with objects that move on their own, including photographs, toys, plants and even food, which evoke the form of uncanniness conceptualized by Ernst Jentsch as intellectual uncertainty regarding the ontological status of a person or thing ([1906] 2008). Atop all of this is a further uncanny layer provided by the film’s stop-motion animation, a process that gives the illusion of life to inanimate objects. Importantly the uncanny, much like fear itself, is highly subjective (Freud [1919] 2003: 124). The uncanny’s evocation of fear through the subtle ‘wrongness’ of ordinary things is, therefore, far less easy to definitively classify as ‘too scary’ for children in the same way as other horrific content. BBFC head of compliance Craig Lapper has admitted as much in asserting that the uncanny ‘is not really a classification matter for the BBFC’ and that the organization do not believe children to be as unsettled by uncanniness in film as adult viewers (in Shoard 2019). Whether this claim has any foundation in evidence, or is shared by the MPAA, is unclear, but the fact that the BBFC holds this view as a basis for classification is revealing. That the uncanny is so subjective as to be ‘unclassifiable’ goes some way to explaining the divergent opinions of adult media regulators and critics with regard to Coraline’s suitability for children. Coraline’s plethora of uncanny motifs and themes has led the film and its novel source material to be widely subjected to psychoanalytic interpretations.1 These read the story as representing the need to overcome the ‘uncanny’ resurgence of childish fears and desires, namely to return to an infantile state of dependence, as represented by Other Mother’s threat to consume Coraline’s soul (Buckley 2018: 43). Given that Coraline has already been investigated

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thoroughly from a psychoanalytic perspective, especially in terms of its narrative themes, I wish to take this analysis of Coraline down a slightly different path while not dispensing with the uncanny altogether. Rather, I employ the uncanny here as a useful starting point to consider how Coraline presents the horrific through what Perkins calls the ‘unique properties’ of film: that is, its formal and aesthetic strategies ([1972] 1993: 13). My analysis of Coraline is therefore situated between the psychoanalytic approach that has thus far dominated critical readings of the text, and a small body of work that focuses on the film’s form, mostly in terms of its expressive use of stereoscopic 3D (Bordwell and Thompson 2009; Higgins 2012).2 Perkins goes on to stress the need to discuss films ‘as they are seen and shown’ ([1972] 1993: 60). This emphasis on spectatorship and presentation neatly encapsulates the overriding interest of this chapter, which is the way in which Coraline generates an address to a horrific child viewer not by displaying graphic violence and gore that is associated with adult horror, or even through the horrific behaviour of its on-screen children, but through the uncanny aesthetics of stop-motion and the voyeuristic methods of adult horror subgenres. Both of these formal strategies generate tension and uncertainty by suggesting the lurking presence of an unseen threat. This makes the uncanny a useful and common framework for interpreting horror cinema’s presentation of ‘things that are unsettling and uncertain, lurking on the edge of our vision, troubling and worrying at us’ (Peirse 2008: 113). By evoking its characteristic creepiness through the careful interplay between showing and not showing, Coraline deftly negotiates censorship so as to remain simultaneously horrific and ‘suitable for children’. This chapter begins by reading Coraline’s stop-motion medium as providing an uncanny aesthetic that suggests the lurking of an unseen danger in the offscreen space and between frames. This aids in communicating the film’s thematic concern with sight, the state of childhood as a liminal period, and speaks to the inherent liminality of the children’s horror genre. The second half of the chapter then moves away from the uncanny but retains an interest in the concept of optic vulnerability to focus on the film’s presentation of horror through the voyeuristic formal strategies of the slasher. Here, I also use Coraline to question distinctions between the slasher and the Female Gothic: two modes of frightening cinema which each draw upon visual strategies of voyeurism and entrapment to present female protagonists endangered within domestic spaces, but which are not typically considered together within studies of genre due to the Female Gothic’s exclusion of violence. I argue that Coraline, by virtue of its relegation of violence to the off-screen space as a necessity of its status as a children’s film, prompts a reconsideration of the scholarly categorization of these subgenres by revealing their common elements. The discussion concludes by considering the gendered implications for the horrific child construct that arise from the film’s presentation of violence through suggestive aesthetics rather than through its protagonist.

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The subversive uncanniness of stop-motion horror for children As discussed in Chapter 1, children’s horror films – whether live-action or animated – must strike a delicate balance between being scary enough to qualify as horror, without being too scary that they cease to be considered suitable for children according to dominant, adult-constructed notions of children’s content. Animation is one of the methods used to mitigate the potentially distressing content of children’s horror films due to the broad assumption that animation makes horrific content less realistic, and thus less frightening. However, this alleviating function of animation is often taken for granted by filmmakers, audiences and film classification bodies. For example, the hand-drawn, cel-animated Watership Down (Rosen 1978) contains numerous instances of gory violence committed by and towards anthropomorphized rabbits. Despite this, it was classified U by the BBFC and PG by the MPAA, indicating its broad suitability for child audiences according to Anglo-American institutions. In their classification notes, the BBFC reasoned that Animation removes the realistic gory horror in the occasional scenes of violence and bloodshed, and we felt that, while the film may move children emotionally during the film’s duration, it could not seriously trouble them once the spell of the story is broken, and that a ‘U’ certificate was therefore quite appropriate. (BBFC 1978) Despite this, Watership Down went on to gain notoriety for being a surprisingly frightening children’s film and continues to spark controversy and media debate (Lester 2016b). Although Watership Down is not stop-motion, like Coraline, it lends credence to the argument that animation does not always provide the mitigating function that it is assumed to in relation to horrific imagery. To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that animation is equally or more horrific than live-action – there is still a world of difference between seeing a rabbit bleeding to death in live-action compared with a drawn one in animation, even in the hyper-realist style of Watership Down – but rather that the reception and impact of violent imagery in animation has a tendency to be underestimated. As such, animation can potentially ‘get away with’ showing more horrific content than would be permissible in live-action films addressed to children. It is in this potential where the inherently subversive nature of animated horror for children lies. In the case of Coraline, the film’s horror comes not just from what it animates, but how it is animated through the form of stop-motion. In an exemplar review of the film, Richard Roeper singles out the stop-motion medium as being particularly ‘creepy’, here read as euphemism for uncanny:

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stop-motion animation practically ensures that everyone, even the cute little girl of the title, will seem kind of chilly and, yes, creepy. . . . If you’re not a fan of this type of animation or you’re not a kid of a certain age looking to be creeped out for the fun of it, you’ll be all right taking a pass on this one. (2009) This provides an ironic contrast to Selick’s claim that the film would have been too frightening for children if it had been filmed in live-action (‘Feature Commentary . . .’ 2009). Roeper’s viewpoint is echoed in scholarship that reads stop-motion as an inherently uncanny medium due to the intellectual uncertainty evoked from its creation of the ‘illusion of life’ in inanimate objects (Telotte 2010: 39). For Jack Halberstam, there is ‘no question’ that stop-motion has a ‘spooky and uncanny’ quality (2011: 178). Stop-motion animation is the process of moving figurines in tiny increments by hand and photographing them each time to achieve the appearance of movement when the images are played sequentially at twenty-four frames per second. As this is a fiddly, painstaking and time-consuming process, it is difficult to ‘recreate an absolutely realistic sense of movement’ (Furniss 1998: 165). Stop-motion characters therefore tend to have characteristically stilted, jerky or otherwise unnatural movement which may be considered disconcerting. This, as well as the medium’s tactile appearance, can draw attention to its status as ‘lifeless’ objects granted qualities of agitation, instability and excessive movement (Ngai 2005: 90; Benson-Allot 2011: 624). Karen Lury has also described stop-motion animation as being marked by the ‘presence of ghosts’ due to the simultaneous presence and absence of the animator in this process (Lury 2006 in Moseley 2016: 19). Although the animator is a constant presence due to their interventions between frames to adjust the figures, in the finished product they are invisible, erased from the on-screen movement. Lury interprets this ‘present–absent touch’ as something comforting and nostalgic rather than fearful, but her use of the terminology of haunting can be appropriated to read the unseen presence of the stop-motion animator as contributing an unsettling quality to the medium. It is, therefore, understandable why scholarly literature repeatedly reads stop-motion as uncanny, and why its use in children’s horror films like Coraline can elicit reactions as strong as Roeper’s. However, the theorization of stop-motion as frightening and uncanny has been challenged by Rachel Moseley in her study of British stop-motion children’s television (2016). Building from Lury’s work, Moseley argues that programmes such as Camberwick Green (1966), The Clangers (1969–74) and Bagpuss (1974) mitigate uncanniness through the reassuring presence of the animator’s touch as well as an ‘aesthetics of child’s play’ that is characterized by the programmes’ address to a child audience, their ‘toytown’ settings and an obvious hand-crafted quality (2016: 14, 99). As such, Moseley reads these stopmotion television programmes as evoking positive feelings of enchantment at the

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idea of toys coming to life, rather than negative feelings of unease and dread that are normally associated with the uncanny (2016: 99–102). Although Moseley puts forth a convincing argument for resisting the reflexive turn to the uncanny in stop-motion scholarship, it is important to also consider generic context. Moseley’s case studies fall into the broad categories of fantasy, science-fiction and animal stories, unlike Coraline and other stop-motion horror films addressed to children including The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman.3 As well as being of the horror genre – which is supposed to elicit feelings of fear and unease – these films differ aesthetically to the programmes of Moseley’s study. The soft, pink, knitted bodies of Bagpuss and the mouse-like Clangers are a world away from the skeletal, spiky and monochrome bodies of The Nightmare Before Christmas’s Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon) or Coraline’s Other Mother. All of these films also have uncanniness embedded within their narratives due to their concern with the animation of lifeless ‘beings’: Corpse Bride, Frankenweenie and ParaNorman are stories of the resurrection (or, aptly, reanimation) of the dead, while The Nightmare Before Christmas is populated with a variety of uncanny bodies including a living skeleton, a Frankensteinian ragdoll and a sentient burlap sack filled with insects. Coraline is not about resurrection, but I interpret it here as a narrative about animation, where Other Mother is positioned as the controlling puppeteer of the other home and the doppelgangers within it. Coraline’s generic status as horror as well as its narrative ‘animatedness’ provides a context in which the stopmotion medium can be read as uncanny, unlike the programmes of Moseley’s study. To read Coraline’s stop-motion aesthetics as uncanny, and therefore frightening, is to challenge dominant assumptions that animation functions as a mitigating factor that inherently makes horrific content more ‘suitable’ for children. To the contrary, animation can become a source of horror. However, it is precisely the prevailing assumptions regarding animation’s mitigating role that work in favour of the medium in the context of children’s horror. This allows animation, and the uncanniness of stop-motion in particular, to function as a powerful and subversive tool with which filmmakers can evoke feelings of fear and unease while conforming to the norms of film censorship and classification. As with the rest of this book, this argument is not based upon empirical research on children’s responses to stop-motion animated horror, and it is worth reiterating that responses to horror from children and adults alike are highly subjective and difficult to quantify. Rather, my argument is informed by close readings of Coraline’s stop-motion aesthetics. Following Carroll’s assertion that the emotions of the model viewer of horror should align closely with those of the positive on-screen characters, the extent to which the on-screen events are coded as frightening is read according to how Coraline the character responds to them (1990: 18). Intersecting with this is Robyn Ferrell’s assertion that the uncanny is ‘an effect of a process of perceiving’ (1991: 132). Whether or not an

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object is uncanny thus depends to a large extent on how it is perceived by the onlooker – in this context, Coraline as horrific child and audience surrogate. As mentioned earlier, Coraline functions as a checklist of uncanny motifs. Of particular relevance here are the objects in the other home that move on their own, including photographs, toys, plants and other household objects which evoke the form of uncanniness that arises from uncertainty about the ontological status of a person or thing, and which is typically associated with stop-motion. However, the use of these motifs and their presentation in stopmotion does not start out as wholly uncanny or frightening. When Coraline first enters the other home it is evident that she initially feels unease and confusion due its resemblance to her real home, but this quickly cedes to positive feelings of awe and wonder when she sees the delights that the other home has to offer. These moments align more closely with Moseley’s characterization of children’s stop-motion texts as evoking enchantment because they imbue otherwise ordinary children’s toys with the magic of movement. When Coraline is shown her new bedroom, for example, she is clearly amazed by the toys, photographs and household objects that move autonomously (Figure 5.1). Her expression is one of wide-eyed delight, a positive emotion that is underscored by her hushed ‘Wow!’, as well as the bright, saturated colours of the other home’s mise en scène (a contrast to the blue-grey cinematography of her real home) and the gently tinkling score that is reminiscent of a children’s music box. A dual-layer of enchantment is achieved as Coraline’s wonder at the animated toys mirrors the intended response of the model child viewer who is invited to marvel at the diegetic movement of the toys in the film, as well as the non-diegetic stopmotion animation that gives life to inanimate objects. Enhancing this effect is the fact that Coraline was filmed and widely distributed in stereoscopic 3D, an

Figure 5.1  The protagonist’s amazement at the magical toys in the other home in Coraline.

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Figure 5.2  The protagonist’s amazement turns to suspicion after learning the sinister truth in Coraline.

optical illusion that gives the appearance of the animated toys emerging out of the screen as if by magic. This 3D emergence can also have the opposite effect, making it uncanny and disturbing. For Caetlin Benson-Allot, stop-motion figures seem ‘always on the verge of escaping, running amok’ (2011: 624). 3D allows the already unnaturally animated toys to break out of the screen and into the audience space in a horrific and uncanny rupture of the diegesis. This duality to the 3D cinematography helps to underscore Coraline’s own shift from delight to distress when she discovers that the spectacle of the other home is part of Other Mother’s ruse to lure Coraline into a trap. Earlier sequences which showcased Coraline’s amazement at the other home’s delights are repeated, but now both she and the viewer of address perceive them as frightening and uncanny due to their new context as agents of Other Mother. With this knowledge Coraline now perceives the toys with suspicion rather than enchantment (Figure 5.2). In the garden, flowers that earlier had playfully tickled her now viscously nip at her heels, and vines wrap around her torso to prevent her from succeeding in her quest to defeat Other Mother. As the movements of the plants and objects in the other home become more violent within the diegesis, so too does the effect of the non-diegetic stopmotion become increasingly unstable and horrifying. This effect is enhanced further by the human characters in the other world, who are automatons created to do the bidding of Other Mother. As ‘things’ forced to act against their own will, they are an eerie reflection of the disturbing possibilities of the medium of stop-motion, and Other Mother their animator. This manifests quite literally in the case of Other Father, who upon meeting Coraline for the first time plays her a song on a piano. However, in order to play he must wear a pair of gloves that are attached to the piano by a mechanical apparatus, so that the implication is that he is being controlled, or ‘played’, by the piano

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rather than the other way around. As with the animated toys, Coraline initially perceives this as charming. In her second encounter with Other Father at the piano he has lost his earlier liveliness, his face sagging and his voice slow and monotonous, as if an automatic toy that is winding down. When he seems on the verge of revealing too much about Other Mother the gloved attachments reappear, clamp themselves over his mouth and wag an admonishing finger at his transgression. With her omnipresent manipulation of the objects and subjects of her realm, Other Mother embodies the ghostly ‘absent-presence’ of the nondiegetic stop-motion animator (Lury 2006). As the animator ‘haunts’ the space between frames, so too is Other Mother a constant but unseen presence in Coraline, always lurking, watching and evoking the uncanny horror of things that are kept just out of sight. Although the objects and automatons in Coraline do not always register as uncanny in specific moments, it is precisely the ease with which they slip between the modes of fantastic and frightening, sometimes embodying both of these oppositional qualities at once, that grants the film its uncanny ‘creepiness’. As this close reading demonstrates, the aesthetics of the stop-motion animation also shift between these modes with a disarming fluidity that enhances the thematic and narrative uncanniness that runs throughout the film. Importantly, this uncanniness cannot be definitively labelled as ‘unsuitable for children’ even while it may undo the mitigating effect that animation is often assumed to have. With this ability to be simultaneously frightening while evading the norms of film censorship, stopmotion animation can be utilized as subversive method for unsettling thrill-seeking child spectators under the guise of an ‘appropriate’ medium. Through the aesthetic uncanniness of stop-motion animation, Coraline plays with destabilizing certainty in the ontological status of objects and generates fear through the interplay between what is shown on the screen, and what (or who) is known but hidden from view. Within the diegesis of the film, this results in a shift in power depending on who is doing the seeing and who is being seen. Through her omnipresence, Other Mother is able to see Coraline’s dissatisfaction with her real parents and living situation, thus allowing Other Mother to manipulate Coraline’s desires. The rest of this chapter remains concerned with Coraline’s use of hierarchies of visual power as a source of horror, with a turn towards the film’s ‘child-friendly’ employment of the formal, aesthetic and structural qualities of the slasher to horrify its audience without spilling a single drop of blood.

Children’s horror films; or, slashers without the slashing Director Joe Dante says of his 3D children’s horror film The Hole that ‘it’s not a slasher movie’ because ‘it’s supposed to be something you can take your

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kids to’ (‘Joe Dante’ 2010). This assertion that slashers and children’s cinema are incompatible is echoed in the BBFC’s guidance notes for Coraline: ‘While adults might pay for a cinema ticket to endure strong, bloody, gory horror of films such as Saw and Hostel, they aren’t the only audience for horror at the cinema’ (BBFC 2020c). This suggests that while horror for a child audience does exist, it is not expected that these films will subject their audience to the ‘strong, bloody, gory horror’ of adult horror films. Indeed, the reception of such material in Watership Down, as discussed earlier, demonstrates this point. As I have argued in Chapter 1, gore and strong violence is generally avoided in children’s horror cinema because it veers too closely to realism; or rather, it is most often associated with adult horror films in which the villains could exist in reality, such as psychopathic serial killers as opposed to fantasy monsters. In other words, although children’s horror films can come in a range of horror subgenres with fantastical elements including the ghost story, zombie, vampire or haunted house film, there is no such thing as a children’s slasher film – at least, not in the way that the slasher is typically understood as a narrative in which ‘a shadowy, bladewielding killer respond[s] to an event by stalking and murdering the members of a youth group before the threat s/he poses is neutralised’ (Nowell 2011: 20). Continuing with the intention of this chapter to challenge assumptions about children’s horror, this discussion uses Coraline to refute the notion that the slasher and children’s cinema are incompatible. Although it is true that children’s horror films generally steer away from the violent content associated with the slasher, Coraline demonstrates how the slasher’s formal and aesthetic qualities can be deployed in ways that remain both frightening and appropriate for a child audience. This furthers our understanding of how children’s horror can carefully negotiate issues of censorship and create a ‘child-friendly’ horror aesthetic that challenges dominant conceptions of the limitations and possibilities of children’s content, as well as how we define the slasher subgenre of horror. No children’s horror film, including Coraline, meets the criteria of the slasher outlined earlier. However, the children’s horror film and the slasher do share similarities as a result of their shared focus on youth. According to Pat Gill, Slasher films show teenagers in peril, with no hope of help from their parents. . . . Often they are hapless and distracted, unaware of their children’s problems and likely to dismiss or discount their warnings and fears. . . . Teens must deal with the extraordinarily resilient monsters on their own. (2002: 17) Replace the terms ‘teenagers’ and ‘teens’ with ‘children’ and this easily describes most of the children’s horror films discussed in this book. Some children’s horror films also make humorous references to famous slashers. In a recreation of a standout shot from Halloween (Carpenter 1978) the protagonist of ParaNorman looks out of his bedroom window with a jump, for standing on the lawn of his

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home, partially obscured by a washing line, is his friend wearing a white hockey mask – the accessory of choice of a villain from another famous slasher, Jason Vorhees of the Friday the 13th franchise (1980–2009). My interest here, however, is in the ways that some children’s horror films make use of the formal, structural and aesthetic characteristics of the slasher as a way of eliciting tension and unease, while simultaneously eschewing the subgenre’s excessive violence and sexual content that most clearly signifies it as ‘unsuitable for children’. In other words, I seek to explore what Joseph Stannard (2011) succinctly describes as the way children’s horror ‘mimics the tropes of the slasher film (albeit without featuring any actual slashing)’. This raises the question of how such films can be considered ‘slashers’ at all. However, Dika argues that this is but one characteristic, albeit a striking one, of this category of horror film that is just as well defined by its character types, settings, plot structures and formal elements such as the use of pointof-view shots to convey the gaze of the killer (1990: 53–63). Dika goes as far as to assert that the act of looking, not violence, is the defining feature of the subgenre, leading to her rejection of the term ‘slasher’ altogether in favour of ‘stalker’ (1990: 14).4 Dika explains this argument using Halloween, which stages a struggle between protagonist Laurie (Jamie Lee Curtis) and antagonist Michael (Nick Castle/Tony Moran) for ‘control of the film’s visual field’ (1990: 48). The film begins by establishing the villain’s ‘complete control over the image’, and thus his victims, through the use of point-of-view shots that mimic his perspective while keeping him and the threat he poses out of sight. As the film continues, this visual power gradually shifts to Laurie, climaxing when she unmasks Michael and returns his gaze, making him vulnerable in his exposure (1990: 48–9). Clover (1992) similarly emphasizes the slasher’s use of point-of-view shots to enact a complex system of viewer identification that shifts between the stalker/killer and the only surviving victim, the archetypal Final Girl, who gradually becomes the main point of identification as a film progresses. It is important to note that subsequent accounts of the slasher and/or Final Girl have taken issue with these early works and their limitations (see Rockoff 2002; Nowell 2011 and Staiger 2015), and the slasher itself has since developed significantly. Yet Dika and Clover’s arguments nevertheless remain some of the most influential works on the subgenre and, as Wickham Clayton demonstrates in his thorough formal analysis of the slasher via the Friday the 13th franchise, the ocular-centric devices that these earlier scholars identified continue to be ubiquitous in more recent iterations of the slasher and its generic variants (e.g. found-footage horror) (2020: 173). The fundamental importance of looking to the slasher’s identity thus offers a particularly useful framework with which to read its translation to children’s horror cinema. In fact, due to the content restrictions they face, children’s horror films are best placed to lend credence to the idea that it is looking rather than stabbing where

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the real horror of the slasher lies. Coraline makes the power and vulnerability of the gaze central to its thematic, narrative and aesthetic concerns, as I will address in detail later, as does The Watcher in the Woods, to which Stannard’s earlier description of children’s horror films as slasher movies ‘without any actual slashing’ refers. While not a traditional slasher film in plot or theme, Watcher is an excellent example of the slasher’s non-violent formal elements at work in a children’s horror film, to the extent that the importance of the act of looking is evident from the film’s title. In one sequence, the female protagonist Jan walks alone through some woods. The sequence is captured as one continuous shot, following her from behind as she walks. The unsteady, mobile camera implies the voyeuristic gaze of a stalker, in the style of what Clover terms the ‘I-camera’ for which the slasher is known (1992: 24). The I-camera aligns and implicates the audience with the ‘assaultive gaze’ of the stalker while simultaneously positioning the audience in a vulnerable position as the subjective camera ‘calls attention to what it cannot see’ (1992: 221, 187). As a result, Watcher builds tension through a vulnerable young woman being unknowingly watched by an unidentified being; but unlike Halloween and other ‘true’ slashers, this tension does not build to a culmination of graphic violence. Instead, the stalker is the titular ‘Watcher’ who is later revealed to be a benign creature from an alternate dimension who seeks assistance from the protagonist, rather than to wreck violence upon her. The Watcher in the Woods’ borrowing of the slasher’s I-camera therefore achieves unease while complying with the conventions of children’s horror films as avoiding extreme violence or gore, containing a threat that is supernatural in origin, and a resolved ending where this threat is safely dispatched without any major characters coming to harm. However, as with ‘adult’ slashers, the voyeurism of the I-camera has the potential to be more insidious than any physical violence given the extent to which women’s and girls’ bodies are already subjected to constant surveillance and policing by media culture (Gill 2007: 149). This suggests that children’s horror films with non-violent slasher elements can remain ‘unsuitable for children’ with regards to their representational politics, and which I will explore further in relation to Coraline.5 Beyond isolated sequences such as that in The Watcher in the Woods, children’s horror films also engage with the slasher on a formal and structural level that extends across an entire text. This is observed by Owen Weetch in his reading of the 3D implementation of ‘child-friendly’ slasher aesthetics in The Hole (2016: 69–98). In the film, teenaged protagonist Dane (Chris Massoglia) is haunted by a supernatural manifestation of his worst fear, his abusive father. Weetch details how the film adheres to the formal structure of the slasher, where control of the visual field shifts between protagonist and antagonist until eventually ceding entirely to the former. This struggle for dominance is clearly gendered, as Dane’s fear is not so much of his father, but of the possibility that he will inherit his father’s proclivity for domestic violence. In overcoming his fear of his father,

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he also rejects violence as an acceptable masculine trait (which I address in my own analysis of the film in Chapter 6). In enacting this narrative of masculinity, The Hole ‘renegotiates formal techniques popular in horror cinema to articulate a particular attitude towards violence’ – one that subverts expectations of the slasher to display torture and gore as gratuitous spectacle (2016: 72). As will be unpacked in detail later, Coraline follows a similar structural pattern organized around the power of the gaze that allows it to be read as a slasher. Like The Hole, this engagement with the slasher form is also gendered in that Coraline presents a conflict between a daughter and a maternal figure about (un)acceptable forms of feminine identity, especially pertaining to the domestic. Before Coraline becomes aware of the true intentions of Other Mother it is clear that she much prefers the other home’s reversion to traditional gender roles. In Coraline’s reality her harried parents are presented as equals who both work and share household chores, but Other Mother is presented as a veritable domestic goddess while Other Father lounges in his study in a smoking jacket. Coraline therefore makes a link between gender, domesticity and the home that underpins my analysis of the film’s use of the slasher form. Similarities between Coraline and the slasher have been noted already by Lindsay Myers (2012), but not favourably. In her article comparing Coraline to its source novel, Myers criticizes the film for referencing slasher precursor Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) and its use of ‘stock horror tropes’ like ‘unexpected twists, sensational scenes, and dramatic crescendos’ that are commonly associated with slashers (2012: 252–3). While I am in agreement with this observation, I take issue with the representation of the film’s horrific status as a downgrade from the novel, which is characterized by Myers as comparatively understated and subtle. As I will argue, Coraline’s employment of the slasher form underscores the film’s thematic interests in sophisticated ways which are not necessarily mutually exclusive from the pleasure of shock. Myers’s argument is also noteworthy due to its implicit distinction between cinema/horror and literature/subtlety that draws from a problematic critical hierarchy that devalues horror films, and slashers in particular, as ‘low’ art: ‘aesthetically bereft, morally questionable’ and ‘lacking [in] literary cachet’ (Miller 2014: 108). Located at the ‘high’ end of this spectrum is the Gothic. While the Gothic has faced similar value judgements as to its moral worth, compared with horror it bears the prestige of literary associations, artistry and respectability. This connection is implied by the categorization of the novel version of Coraline as Gothic, rather than horror, by a majority of literary scholarship on the text.6 This classification of Coraline as Gothic rather than horror is not surprising. While these generic modes share a significant overlap in their histories, their evocation of fear and the fact that these labels are frequently used interchangeably (including thus far in this book), they are often distinguished by their degrees of violence, and how this violence is presented. Frances A. Kamm and Tamar Jeffers McDonald separate the Gothic’s foregrounding

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of ‘suspicion, suspense and mystery’ from horror’s showcasing of ‘blood, torture and gore’ (2019: 3). These characteristics of horror are among those that must be significantly toned down or excluded altogether in children’s films lest they result in an age classification that excludes the very audience for whom a film is intended. Conversely, the characteristics that Kamm and McDonald align with the Gothic are not as firmly (dis)associated with any particular age demographic or rating. This is aided by the unclear generic status of the Gothic, with Misha Kavka making the claim that ‘[t]here are Gothic images and Gothic plots and Gothic characters and even Gothic styles’, but ‘there is no established genre called Gothic cinema or Gothic film’ (2002: 209; emphasis in original). Similarly to the ‘unclassifiable’ nature of the uncanny, as discussed earlier, the loose definitions of the Gothic make it less easy to definitively categorize as ‘unsuitable for children’. Additionally, the Gothic’s associations with literary ‘quality’ and respectability might make it a more appealing label than horror in reference to children’s media, which carries widespread notions that it should provide its audience with a beneficial or pedagogical outcome. Indeed, Antunes details how The Nightmare Before Christmas, also directed by Henry Selick, was deliberately produced and marketed by Disney as a Gothic fairy tale, and therefore with connotations of literary prestige and artfulness, so as to avoid the less respectable and less family-friendly connotations of the horror label (2020: 102). This strategy is echoed in the marketing for Coraline, the trailer for which explicitly referenced Nightmare and promised ‘extraordinary imagination’, ‘spooky secrets’ and ‘daring discoveries’, thus drawing associations with child-oriented modes of fantasy, adventure and Gothic mystery more than horror (‘Coraline – Official Trailer’ 2008). Coraline’s literary origins, marketing and avoidance of graphic violence align the film with the Gothic more than with the stereotyped idea of horror as comparatively debased, immoral and potentially harmful to children; however, to read Coraline not only as horror but as one of the least ‘child-friendly’ subgenres, the slasher, furthers debates about the differentiation between horror and the Gothic by considering how children’s films are in a unique position to blur these distinctions.7 In order to focus this discussion, Coraline’s use of the slasher form is paired with the subgenre’s closest Gothic antecedent: the Female Gothic. Before turning to Coraline proper, it is necessary to unpack this slasher–Female Gothic relationship and its implications for my discussion of the film’s aesthetics and gender politics.

Dramas of seeing: The slasher and the Female Gothic A form of woman’s film that initially proliferated in 1940s Hollywood, Female Gothic8 films generally follow a narrative modelled after the ‘Bluebeard’ fairy

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tale: a young woman is enclosed within a mansion with a secretive, possibly murderous, husband who has a history of former wives and/or female victims (Hanson 2007: 61–9). Mary Ann Doane argues that Female Gothic films like Rebecca (Hitchcock 1940), Gaslight (Cukor 1944) and Secret Beyond the Door . . . (Lang 1947) ‘organize dramas of seeing around the phenomenon of the closed or locked door’ which, when opened, reveals the husband’s sordid past to the protagonist (1987: 137). As a film about a female protagonist endangered by a familial figure in a domestic space, where deadly temptations and secrets are held behind a mysterious locked door, Coraline follows the ‘Bluebeard’ structure of the Female Gothic narrative. Like slashers, then, Female Gothic films are narratives of threatened women whose survival or sanity is intimately connected to their transgressive employment of the look against their persecutor. Yet while slashers have been discussed as Gothic (Pinkerton 2013; Abbott 2015) and Female Gothic films have been discussed as horror (Jancovich 2007 and 2013; Kamm 2019), the kinship between them has not been explored in detail.9 Admittedly, they are separated by their original production contexts (Classical Hollywood studio system vs. New Hollywood independent cinema), assumed audience (adult women vs. adolescent males) and settings (Gothic mansions in period settings vs. contemporary suburbs or derelict rural locales). Even so, drawing some of these distinctions highlights their similarities: What is a decaying Gothic mansion full of secrets if not a version of the slasher’s primary location, the ‘Terrible Place’? According to Clover this is a place into which ‘unwitting victims wander film after film, and it is the conventional task of the genre to register in close detail the victims’ dawning understanding, as they survey the visible evidence of the human crimes and perversions that have transpired there’ (1992: 30–1). This investigative nature of the slasher is echoed in Ellen Moers’s characterization of the Female Gothic heroine as ‘an explorer who encounters danger and threat . . . always moving, acting, reacting between the threats she encounters, and her survival of them’ (1963: 126 paraphrased by Hanson 2007: 37–8). This account of the Gothic heroine as ‘a young woman who is simultaneously persecuted victim and courageous heroine’ (Moers 1963: 91) translates to the slasher’s ‘victim-hero’ or ‘Final Girl’ (Clover 1992: 4). The key point of differentiation between the Female Gothic and the slasher is that the former traditionally lacks the slasher’s violent and sexually explicit connotations. This aligns with scholarship that draws a distinction between Gothic and horror films by the way they present their antagonists. For Kavka, who compares 1930s Gothic literary adaptations with 1970s and 1980s slashers, these differences are arranged around the dialectic of seeing and not seeing: while the Gothic monster is presented through ‘codes of the liminal’ – shadows and the suggestion of an unseen presence in off-screen space – the slasher villain, and the results of their violent actions, is eventually seen head-on in a

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moment of shock and abject horror, allowing the audience ‘the dubious comfort of screaming at what we actually see’ (2002: 226–7). According to this, Coraline would be categorized as Gothic, with its novel source text, as the film merely alludes to violence in ways that I will detail later. However, to separate the slasher and Female Gothic by whether or not they visually present graphic violence is arguably an oversimplification. In keeping with my reading of the disturbing, slasher-esque voyeurism of The Watcher in the Woods, Doane argues that Female Gothic films’ visual objectification of women is, in itself, an act of violence wherein ‘the cinematic apparatus itself is activated against the woman’ in an act of aggression (1987: 179). Doane observes that this is articulated in the Female Gothic’s mise en scène that entraps protagonists within domestic spaces by presenting them within and behind doorways, windows and the bannisters of staircases (1987: 135–8). These strategies are also utilized in some slashers, demonstrating further overlaps between these subgenres. In landmark slasher Friday the 13th (Cunningham 1980), female victim Brenda (Laurie Bartram) is figured as a Gothic heroine in a stereotypical white, floor-length nightgown that is incongruously modest given the slasher’s famously sexual connotations. Brenda also wields the Gothic heroine’s accessory of choice, a candlestick, that she swaps for its modern equivalent, a torch, when she ventures outside of her cabin to investigate a disturbance. While inside of the cabin, Brenda is shot from the outside, the audience positioned as voyeur spying on her through a window in an example of Clover’s I-camera that replicates the malevolent gaze of the killer. Thus, the voyeuristic methods of the Female Gothic and slasher are united to articulate the vulnerability and entrapment of a female character.10 Coraline makes the similarities between the slasher and Female Gothic all the more apparent precisely because it must avoid excessive violence as a necessity of its audience of address. However, to consider Coraline as belonging to these two subgenres also raises questions about the film’s ‘suitability’ for children in terms of its gender politics, as both the slasher and Female Gothic have been read as misogynistic. With regard to the slasher, Linda Williams contends that female spectators are forced to ‘bear witness to [their] own powerlessness in the face of rape, mutilation and murder’ (1996: 15). More generous readings focus on the Final Girl, and how her climactic battle with the villain may function as a moment of catharsis for female viewers who are offered ‘the pleasure of seeing another female both acting up and stating a sense of discontentment that many might identify with’ (Short 2006: 7). Female Gothic heroines have on the other hand been accused of passivity (Russ 1973: 685). Arguing against this, Helen Hanson traces within such films a negotiation of ‘female selfhood’ in which the heroine actively determines her own fate as different to the women whose tragic histories she uncovers (2007: 61–2). If, as Catriona Miller says of the slasher, the subgenre displays ‘a particularly stark representation of what it feels like to be

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female within a patriarchal society’, this sentiment applies equally to the Female Gothic (2014: 116). Where most slashers or Female Gothic films present women struggling against the oppression of patriarchal forces, the age of Coraline’s protagonist (never made clear, but likely around ten years of age) figures her as being doubly entrapped within the dependent state of childhood. Her position within and between two homes functions as an apt metaphor for the film’s borderline status between slasher/horror and Gothic/Female Gothic, and of the character’s liminal, prepubescent state: caught between childhood and adolescence, and the differing societal expectations of femininity that come with each. Coraline therefore serves as an example of how the shared cinematic language of the slasher and Female Gothic modes can effectively convey the vulnerability, entrapment and coming of age of a female protagonist using a non-violent aesthetic that remains both frightening and ‘suitable for children’ in terms of visual representation of horror, but not necessarily in terms of gender politics.

Coraline: A ‘child-friendly’ Gothic-Final Girl If the slasher and Female Gothic share a concern with the transgressive power of the act of looking, it is appropriate that the struggle between Coraline and her Other Mother is staged as a need for the former to protect her eyes from violent destruction by the latter. In keeping with the film’s emphasis on this motif, the fight for Coraline’s identity and autonomy is articulated through shot framing, mise en scène and a gradual shift in control of the visual field from antagonist to protagonist, in ways that unite the stylistic qualities of both the slasher and Female Gothic. From the very beginning of Coraline the presence of this unknown voyeur is made clear. The opening credits sequence occurs from the perspective of an anonymous figure who is crafting a doll. All that is visible of this figure is their hands which are made from needles, this slasher villain’s ‘child-friendly’ weapon of choice: a Freddy Krueger whose method is to pluck, pick and poke rather than to slash and stab. Although the identity of this needle-fingered figure is at this point unknown, it becomes clear in retrospect that this is the evil Other Mother in her true form. This opening sequence alludes towards the violence that could befall Coraline as the needle-fingers gut the stuffing from the doll and deftly pluck out its button eyes before sewing on new ones. This is made particularly effective through a close-up of a button, through which a needle emerges and points straight at the eyes of the spectator in what Scott Higgins characterizes as a ‘perceptually aggressive’ move that is enhanced further in the 3D format of the film (2012: 201). This attack is complemented by the ontological uncertainty evoked by the uncanny stop-motion aesthetic, discussed earlier. It is also the first instance in which the film utilizes the slasher’s method of shifting the viewer between the subjectivities of villain and victim. It shifts once again

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as the sequence is reclaimed by Other Mother’s perspective as she completes the construction of the doll and sends it floating out of a window. The doll is a miniature replication of Coraline and will function as a spy for Other Mother, establishing the latter’s omnipresent gaze. Thus, the use of subjective shots and the introduction of the doll in the opening sequence establishes the film’s adherence to the slasher framework through Other Mother’s omnipresent gaze and her dominance over the visual field, while simultaneously adhering to the suggestive language of the Gothic that keeps violence out of sight. Other Mother’s ocular upper hand continues with the following sequence that introduces Coraline as she explores the garden of her new home. Despite being outside she is penned in by the perimeter of trees surrounding the garden and the bars of a fence, visually caging her in her environment in a visual strategy akin to the Female Gothic texts of Doane’s study (Figure 5.3). This is also achieved by the conveyance of a gaze that spies on Coraline from within bushes and behind rocks, trees and tall grass, unifying the slasher’s voyeurism with the Female Gothic’s use of claustrophobic mise en scène (Figure 5.4). The frequency of these shots increases as Coraline becomes aware that she is being watched, building to a dramatic crescendo that reveals the voyeur to be a harmless black cat. This sense of safety achieved, Coraline resumes her exploration of the garden. However, we are then granted the mobile perspective of another watcher on a bicycle who approaches the unaware Coraline from higher ground. Once again, an unknown voyeur has the upper hand. They reveal their presence to Coraline when they ride aggressively towards her, their identity masked by a helmet in the tradition of slasher villains. Further subjective shots grant us a view of Coraline’s terrified expression as the biker approaches. However, this tension is punctuated again when the figure removes their helmet to reveal themselves to be another child, Wybie (Robert Bailey Jr.), Coraline’s neighbour. This double false-reveal of

Figure 5.3  Mise en scène entraps Coraline’s protagonist within her environment.

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Figure 5.4  Point-of-view shots from behind objects create a sense of voyeurism in Coraline.

the possessors of the voyeuristic gaze to be benevolent characters (who later become important allies to Coraline) is a standard trope of the slasher subgenre, but one which also provides swift reassurance that bespeaks the film’s child audience of address. This early sequence in the garden therefore utilizes the tendencies of the slasher to create an atmosphere of claustrophobia and accustom the child viewer to the idea of constant surveillance and the shifting power dynamics of the gaze. Just as the subjective shots used in this sequence frame Coraline as the subject of a voyeur’s gaze, the film continues to draw upon the idea of ‘framing’ through mise en scène. The next sequence begins with a medium close-up of Coraline standing behind the kitchen window the following day, looking mournfully at the rainy weather outside. Raindrops on the window-pane and small packets of seeds that Coraline lines up on the sill emphasize the presence of this near-invisible barrier and further highlight her entrapment behind it. Other shots of Coraline behind windows in this early portion of the film similarly cage her within the house and within a watchful gaze as she explores it in an effort to cure her boredom. Doane observes that in the Female Gothic film the window ‘has a special import in terms of the social and symbolic positioning of the woman’; it is ‘the interface between the inside and the outside, the feminine space of the family and reproduction and the masculine space of production’ (1987: 138). The window thus embodies a social and literal boundary which must not be crossed by the films’ entrapped heroines. Similarly, Coraline’s positioning behind windows indicates her dissatisfaction at being enclosed within the domestic space of the home, and specifically within the female-gendered space of the kitchen. Significantly, her mother is in the kitchen with her, busy at work on a laptop, and Coraline becomes increasingly frustrated at her mother’s refusal to indulge her boredom. Here, then, Coraline is constructed as a dependent child

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who is dissatisfied at the idea of becoming an independent adult, especially one who may have to adhere to certain expectations of femininity. This resistance to gendered expectations, her tomboy-esque exploration of the mucky and bare (i.e. infertile) garden and even her androgynous name (similar to, but importantly not quite, Caroline) further codes her as the slasher’s Final Girl, ‘boyish’ and ‘not fully feminine’ (Clover 1992: 40). Of course, unlike her predecessors Coraline is ‘not fully feminine’ because she is a child who is yet to cross the threshold of puberty. This threshold is represented literally through the motif of the door, namely the one that opens into the parallel world. As with windows, Coraline is continually framed within doorways to figure her entrapment within the domestic space. However, doorways are also used in the film to signify Coraline’s liminality between spaces and states of being. Having received no cure for her boredom from her mother she turns to her father instead, who is working in his study. She lingers in the doorway, not fully entering the room, and swings impatiently on the doorknob as she is steadfastly ignored (Figure 5.5). Coraline’s framing within and lingering upon a physical boundary signifies her being stuck on and/or unable to cross a metaphorical boundary between childhood and adolescence, immaturity and maturity, dependence and independence, girlhood and womanhood. Coraline’s reluctance to fully enter the room also reinforces the coding of the father’s study as a masculine space, in contrast to the feminine-coded space of the kitchen, the domain of Coraline’s mother. Returning to the slasher form, these two sequences in the kitchen and the study mark the first significant shift in the film’s visual field to Coraline’s perspective. However, rather than signifying Coraline’s mastery over the film’s visual field and, therefore, Other Mother, this shift serves to highlight the extent to which she is not seen by those she most desires to be seen by – her parents – and therefore illustrates how the slasher’s subjective camera can bespeak vulnerability as well

Figure 5.5  An example of framing within liminal spaces – here a doorway – in Coraline.

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as or instead of dominance. Coraline entering her father’s study is presented as a point-of-view shot, revealing that her father has his back to her. Throughout their interaction he looks at her mostly through her reflection in the computer screen. When he does turn to look directly at her, it is only to implore her to let him work in peace. However, here the film cuts back to Coraline’s perspective not via a point-of-view shot, but an over-the-shoulder shot that only suggests, rather than exactly replicates, her perspective. Similarly, when in the kitchen, another overthe-shoulder shot reveals that Coraline’s mother only looks at Coraline in order to scold her (Figure 5.6). In any other film this use of over-the-shoulder shots would be a perfectly standard way to shoot dialogue between two characters. In this film, however, where point-of-view shots are common, denying the viewer this intimate alignment with Coraline on the rare occasions when her parents make eye contact with her emphasizes that even when they look at Coraline, there is something slightly ‘off’ about it: they are not really seeing her or giving her the attention that she craves. This resonates with Anna Jackson’s claim that in Gothic children’s fiction a ‘sense of identity, or the possession of a sense of self, is shown to depend quite a lot on being noticed by other people’ (2008: 160). These interactions between Coraline and each of her real parents are replicated and distorted when Coraline enters the other home for the first time. This time we are granted true point-of-view shots when the other parents look directly at Coraline, though this is ironically undermined by their lack of ‘real’ eyes (Figure 5.7). Unlike her real parents, the other parents feed Coraline’s desire to be noticed, a fact they point out when Coraline returns to the real home and they bid farewell by saying ‘See you soon’. The point-of-view shots in the other home also serve a similar function to the ‘needle shot’ in the opening sequence, as they highlight the vulnerability of Coraline’s sight, the sense that will come under threat by Other Mother. In these two pairs of sequences, the slasher’s I-camera heightens Coraline’s anxieties and vulnerability, aligns the viewers’ sympathies

Figure 5.6  The mother looking at her daughter with disdain in Coraline.

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Figure 5.7  Other Mother’s uncanny gaze in Coraline.

with her plight and suggests the possibility of the type of violence for which the slasher is known while never actually showing it. It thus uses slasher methods while remaining ‘suitable for children’, as well as aligning the film with the Female Gothic, where ‘violence is precisely what is hidden from sight’ (Doane 1987: 134). Coraline only begins to truly gain power over the film’s visual field after she discovers Other Mother’s plan to replace her eyes with buttons and steal her soul, as she has done to children in the past (a string of victims that figures her as both a Female Gothic Bluebeard as well as a slasher villain). In other words, Coraline gains visual dominance when she finally ‘sees’ the truth. This shift is most evident after Coraline’s real parents are kidnapped by Other Mother. Coraline bargains with Other Mother that if she can locate her kidnapped parents and the souls of the former child victims within a time limit, Other Mother will set them all free. If Coraline fails, her eyes will be replaced with buttons and she will have to remain a prisoner of Other Mother, her identity forever entangled with that of an overbearing parent. In order to save her own sight, and by extension her autonomy, she must utilize the power of her own gaze. This is formally communicated through a notable increase in use of subjective shots as she investigates, such as a series of point-of-view shots that convey Coraline looking through a magic stone, gifted to her earlier in the film by her eccentric elderly neighbours, Miss Spink (Jennifer Saunders) and Miss Forcible (Dawn French), that makes it appear to Coraline as if the ghost children’s souls are glowing and thus easier to identify. Simultaneous to Coraline’s investigation, Other Mother slowly sheds her human disguise until her true, monstrous form is fully visible – a revelation that corresponds with both the discovery of a secret at the heart of the Female Gothic narrative, as well as Dika’s reading of Halloween in which Michael’s power over Laurie, and the film’s visual field, is robbed when she unmasks him and is witness to his true form. In Coraline, Other Mother’s visual dominance is destroyed for good when Coraline throws the black cat at

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Figure 5.8  A point-of-view shot showing that the parents now look directly at their daughter at the end of Coraline.

Other Mother’s face. The cat scratches out Other Mother’s button eyes so that she loses the ability to see. Importantly, as Other Mother’s eyes are buttons, this attack is entirely bloodless. This combination of bringing Other Mother’s true form into full view and removing her ‘eyes’ marks the film’s most significant shift in visual control to Coraline, upon which she escapes the other home and locks the door behind her. Following the defeat of Other Mother, the film’s final scene includes a long take from Coraline’s point of view, which reveals that her parents now look directly at her in signification of Coraline’s newfound acceptance of her parents, her home and her sense of self (Figure 5.8). In Coraline, therefore, formal, aesthetic and narrative strategies of the slasher and Female Gothic are used in tandem to articulate, to borrow Doane’s term, a ‘drama of seeing’ – one which concerns the transformation of its child protagonist from a liminal, vulnerable object of a malevolent gaze to an empowered and independent adolescent with a full grasp of her own subjectivity and control over the film’s visual domain. In so doing, the film achieves an atmosphere of unease, paranoia and claustrophobia that is common to the Female Gothic and slasher subgenres. Though often differentiated by the fact that one is characterized by excessive violence and aesthetic and moral degradation, this discussion of Coraline and its ‘child-friendly’ employment of the slasher form complicates the distinctions between the slasher and Female Gothic – and indeed, between adult and children’s horror – and reveals that they have more in common than is usually acknowledged. In this light, it is all the more appropriate that Coraline is presented in stop-motion animation, where the disruption and dissolution of ontological and categorical boundaries is embedded within the form. By way of concluding, I want to further explore the issue of female representation in Coraline, especially given that unlike the slasher and Female Gothic it concerns not a woman, or even (as is the case for many slasher

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Final Girls) a teenager on the cusp of womanhood, but a girl on the cusp of puberty. This is particularly important given that Coraline is a rare children’s horror film where both protagonist and antagonist are coded as female.11 By staging a conflict between differing forms of female identity Coraline contributes towards increased representations of women and girls on screen, but by simultaneously implying which forms of femininity are granted societal approval and value.

Conclusion: Gendering the horrific child ‘The heroine survives. . . . But the heroine is not free’ (Dika 1990: 60). These bleak lines form the final two ‘events’ of Dika’s outline of the typical slasher plot structure. Although Dika is referring specifically to the way that Final Girls remain haunted by the memories of their traumatic experiences, this can also be broadly applied to the experience of being female, especially a girl, under patriarchy. Feminist scholarship regarding girls’ media culture has argued that ‘despite gaining access to an unprecedented amount of choice, the adolescent girl remains both trapped within a body and constrained by surveillance and discipline’ (Phillips 2015: 41). Similarly, although Coraline has escaped the surveillance of Other Mother, she remains trapped within the surveillance of a patriarchal system that has certain expectations of her status as female. This is where I find myself in agreement with Myers’s ungenerous reading of the film as ‘a powerful warning of the ease with which discourses of empowerment can become discourses of entrapment’, especially pertaining to representations of girls (2012: 255). Coraline defeats Other Mother by harnessing the power and aggression of the look and turning it against her, but to what end? The dominant visual language of Hollywood cinema is broadly considered to encourage spectatorship through a male gaze that constructs female characters as passive and places them in competition with each other to reinforce patriarchal dominance (Mulvey 1975; Haskell 1987). Although Coraline ends with its protagonist harnessing the power of the gaze, the fact that it is used to destroy another female and the transgressive form of femininity that she represents conforms to these sexist practices of Hollywood (horror) cinema. In her overview of Female Gothic fiction, Joanna Russ notes a distinction within the genre between ‘good’, conventionally feminine women and ‘bad’, sexual and aggressive women (1973: 688). Other Mother exemplifies the ‘bad’ woman who transgresses conventional notions of domesticated and passive femininity in a way that allows her to be read as embodying Creed’s concept of the ‘monstrous feminine’: a construct of the horror film that exemplifies ‘what it is

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about woman that is shocking, terrifying, horrific, abject’ and which threatens the patriarchal social order (1986: 44). Other Mother’s monstrosity is evident in her appearance that becomes increasingly horrific as the film progresses, her appearance as a beautiful housewife morphing slowly into a giant, spider-like creature adorned with phallic limbs that double as castrating implements: not only of eyes, souls and identities but also of male character’s masculinities. Other Father is reduced to a shapeless, flaccid husk who is dragged around by Other Mother like a ragdoll in punishment for trying to warn Coraline about Other Mother, and Other Wybie is rendered unable to speak. As with the monstrous feminine texts of Creed’s study such as Alien (Scott 1979), there is a link made in Coraline between Other Mother’s body, the other home and reproductive imagery, where the tunnel between the real home and other home is representative of a vaginal canal and the other home the Other Mother’s womb (Coats 2008: 80). This imagery extends to the other garden and its beautiful but carnivorous plants that later devour Other Father, a representation of the monstrous feminine’s castrating vagina dentata that swallows and destroys, rather than reproduces and nurtures. If according to Creed the monstrous feminine must be destroyed ‘in order to secure and protect the social order’, Coraline is implicated within this destruction to maintain the patriarchal status quo (1986: 80). The film implies that this is a progressive move; Coraline rejects Other Mother in favour of her real parents who are presented as equals. This is neatly encapsulated by their representation as a double-sided doll that replaces them after Other Mother has kidnapped them. They are also both working parents and share domestic duties. However, as I have noted earlier, this is somewhat undermined by the placement of each parent within gendered spaces of the home: the mother in the kitchen (with Coraline) and the father in his study (which Coraline does not fully enter). When the father goes to deliver an important work presentation, the mother takes Coraline clothes shopping. It is also the mother who bears the brunt of Coraline’s complaints of boredom. Like Coraline, her mother is also frequently framed as ‘trapped’ within doorways. Coraline, therefore, rejects a very overt embodiment of transgressive femininity and matriarchal situation (which is not, in itself, a bad thing) to embrace a potentially more insidious dynamic that seems on the surface to be equal, but which continues to subtly perpetuate gender roles in which women are relegated to female-associated spaces and bear responsibility for emotional labour and childcare. In keeping with this, at film’s end Coraline’s disobedience and ‘Final Girl’ androgyny have been replaced by an ‘acceptable’ form of obedient femininity that, unlike the monstrous feminine, does not threaten to disrupt the patriarchal order. The final sequence is set in the garden, where Coraline takes on a role as a server as she passes drinks from a tray to her parents and neighbours. This behaviour is a significant contrast to her former exploration of the garden and her frustration at being enclosed within the oppressive space of the home. A

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subtle change in the film’s use of depth-of-field also communicates Coraline’s new perspective and continued entrapment. At the beginning of the film the use of deep focus brought the trees ‘entrapping’ her into sharp relief (Figure 5.3), but by the film’s close they are rendered in shallow focus (Figure 5.8). The cagelike function of these trees no longer seems an issue for Coraline, because she is no longer concerned with the world that lies beyond them. The garden, too, has changed: it is not the grey and barren landscape that it was before but full of blood-red flowers, the blooming of Coraline’s menarche and womanhood. Booker reminds us of the possibility that children’s films ‘have a profound impact at the level of promoting certain fundamental attitudes and basic expectations concerning what the world is like and how one should live in it’ (2010: 175). Although with this ending Coraline has asserted her identity and independence from Other Mother, this remains an identity that is inexorably tied to conservative expectations of women concerning domesticity and reproduction, and which has relied on the destruction of an alternative and transgressive portrait of womanhood. This recalls Doane’s suggestion that a Female Gothic heroine’s employment of an ‘active investigating gaze can only be simultaneous with her own victimization’ (1984: 72), a sentiment that Williams finds applies equally to the slasher (1996: 17). As Coraline’s ending demonstrates, it is also true in children’s films that adopt these generic modes. What remains to be addressed is how Coraline’s gender politics and aesthetic mitigation of violence relate to the concept of the horrific child. In the case studies explored so far in this book, the horrific child protagonists are almost exclusively male. This implies that the horrific child is a gendered construct. These boys are horrific because they exhibit at least one or all of the following traits: they are fans of horror; they use violence or otherwise behave in ‘unchildlike’ ways; they have some form of horrific bodily function or ability. None of these categories apply to Coraline, whose most ‘horrific’ acts are throwing a cat at her persecutor and irritating her parents. The closest the film comes to offering a horrific female perspective with which to identify is Other Mother, whose true horror comes through in her monstrous appearance, as well as the extent to which she is presented as an unseen but formidable presence in the two key ways I have outlined in this chapter: her status as diegetic animator lurking between frames and as a slasher-esque voyeur who observes from off-screen space. However, the masculinized connotations of this sense of control and domination of space is presented within the film as something to be rejected and reviled when it is wielded by a female character (as we will also see in the next chapter). With regard to fandom as a characteristic of the horrific child, children’s horror follows in the footsteps of adult-addressed media where horror fans are stereotyped as male – a typical example being Scream’s (Craven 1996) horrorobsessed Randy (Jamie Kennedy) – despite evidence that this is not an accurate

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reflection of the demographics of horror fandom in reality (Cherry 1999; Vosper 2014). While there are positive examples of horrific female characters within child-friendly horror media, it is telling that these are almost exclusively teenagers or adult women, from Goth girl Lydia (Winona Ryder) in Beetlejuice and horror fan Stella (Zoe Colletti) in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Øvredal 2019) to Sally (Catherine O’Hara) in The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride’s titular heroine (Helena Bonham Carter). Notably, these latter two examples are both ‘undead’ women and stop-motion animated, the uncanniness of the medium used for humorous and cathartic purposes to exaggerate the horrific and unruly potential of the female body. When horrific girls do appear in children’s horror, they come with significant caveats. One is Aggie the accused witch in ParaNorman, whose horrific status is framed as something tragic to be overcome with Norman’s help. Another is Dani (Thora Birch) in Hocus Pocus. Dani initially exhibits an obsession with witches and a desire to be one, but – in a dynamic that closely mirrors that between Coraline and her Other Mother – she appears to lose interest when she meets real witches and they try to suck out her soul. As discussed in Chapter 3, The Monster Squad’s Phoebe is repeatedly denied access to the titular horror fan club until her virginal status proves useful to the boys. Perhaps the most instructive horrific girl, however, is Wednesday Addams of The Addams Family franchise, especially as portrayed by Christina Ricci in the 1991 and 1993 films. Although Wednesday’s horrific behaviour ranges from having a strong aversion to saccharine Disneyesque films to attempting to murder her own baby brother, the comedic and inverted context in which she exists situates her as a parodic figure where the humour comes from the idea that to be horrific is so unexpected from female children that it can only be portrayed as exaggerated absurdity. Conversely, the horrific tastes of male children such as The Monster Squad’s Sean is presented as natural, and any violent behaviour as heroic and necessary to defeat evil. It can only be concluded that female children face a double standard when it comes to being presented as equally horrific as their male counterparts. The abundance of teen and adult horrific female characters listed here indicates that within child-friendly horror media, girls are only ‘allowed’ to become horrific from the onset of puberty – that time at which the female body starts to develop the ‘monstrous-feminine’ qualities that dominant patriarchal ideology considers abject and frightening. As I have suggested earlier, the blood-red flowers present in the final shot of Coraline allude to the character’s oncoming menstruation, offering the possibility of a horrific future. However, in keeping with the film’s thematic and aesthetic concerns, this remains an unseen and unrepresented prospect that lies beyond of the film’s field of vision. As I have argued throughout this chapter, Coraline challenges and debunks many prevailing assumptions about children’s cinema and the horror genre: the perceived mitigating function of animation, the incompatibility of children’s

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cinema with the slasher and in turn the unacknowledged overlap between the slasher and Female Gothic subgenres. In spite of these subversive elements, Coraline does not significantly challenge the gendered bias of children’s horror. While it would be unfair to expect one film to bear the burden of correcting an entire genre’s limitations, the very existence of Coraline allows us to highlight this problem and take it to task. The following chapter of this book continues with this aim.

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Chapter 6 Man of the house Gender, space and domestic violence in Monster House and The Hole

The home is a paradigmatic space in cinema, and it holds a particular significance in both the horror genre and narratives concerning childhood. The inherent link between childhood, the home and horror is alluded to in Annette Kuhn’s (2005) analysis of coming-of-age films, in which she likens the function of the home to children’s playground games where ‘home’ is regarded a safe zone, and the space beyond it is risky and insecure. However, much like the pleasures of horror films, this dangerous space must be ventured into because it is precisely the thrill of the game to survive and conquer it (Kuhn 2005: 409–10). As in the archetypal hero’s journey, this functions as a necessary rite of passage for child protagonists who emerge from the experience more mature and independent. However, horror films are just as likely to present the home itself as what Clover dubs a ‘Terrible Place’, a site of danger, violence and dark secrets rather than one of security and comfort (1992: 30). Given the centrality of the home in the lives of children – whose social construction as dependents makes their survival particularly reliant on the home and the traditional implications of family and protection that accompany it – and the horrific potential of this space in cinema, children’s horror films are ideally positioned to exploit the horror of the home as a space in which to address fears and anxieties relating to coming of age. While the previous chapter touched upon connections between violence, gender and the domestic in Coraline, this chapter extends this discussion to representations of male adolescence in the motion-capture, computer-animated Monster House and live-action The Hole. While there are very few children’s horror films with girl protagonists, there are plenty with boy protagonists and

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which privilege the experience of being male (and white and middle class) in contemporary American society.1 Monster House and The Hole are particularly significant due to their employment of the cinematic language and conventions of the horror genre to present the home as a physical and conceptual space in which to work through fears and desires relating to maturity and its connection with normative gendered behaviour. Although my primary focus is the representation of masculinity, we must also consider femininity in relation to this. As Erica Burman explains, maturity is culturally equated with masculinity due to women and children being linked in their function as ‘others’ to adult men (1995: 54). In relation to the home, childishness and femininity are further linked in that the fictional home often functions as a space that imprisons woman and child protagonists (Ellis 1989: x; Wheatley 2012: 389). To examine the ways that Monster House and The Hole present their protagonists’ anxieties about maturity and masculinity, therefore, also necessitates examining the oppositional characteristics of immaturity and femininity from which the characters attempt to distance themselves. This is particularly relevant to Monster House due to the way the film draws upon the visual language of the monstrous feminine in order to present a non-conforming woman as the main obstacle in the male hero’s arc. In Monster House, this figure is the antagonist of the title, also known within the film as Constance (Kathleen Turner). Constance was a woman whose corpse became entombed in the foundations of the house after having died in a tragic accident, and whose vengeful spirit now possesses it. Literally a ‘housewife’ run amok, Constance terrorizes the neighbourhood children, including preteen hero DJ (Mitchel Musso), an insecure pre-pubescent boy who lives in the house opposite with his parents. DJ, his best friend Chowder (Sam Lerner) and a local girl named Jenny (Spencer Locke) take it upon themselves to destroy the monster house on Halloween night before it can harm more children. DJ’s character arc is centred by the film, as he gains confidence and maturity through his confrontation with and eventual destruction of Constance, the ‘other’ to the form of normative masculine identity he wishes to attain. In so doing, DJ makes up for the failings of the elderly Mr Nebbercracker (Steve Buscemi), Constance’s emasculated widower who lives within the house and who fails to keep her under control. Monster House, therefore, upholds a regressive gendered hierarchy that positions control over monstrous femininity and the domestic realm as a marker of masculine success, dominance and superiority. The Hole is a comparatively more progressive counterpoint to Monster House. The Hole centres on the brothers Dane (Chris Massoglia) and Lucas (Nathan Gamble) and their teenaged neighbour Julie (Haley Bennett), but the arc of the teenaged Dane is the film’s chief concern. In a recurring trope in horror and children’s fiction alike, Dane and his younger brother Lucas move with their mother, Susan (Teri Polo), into a new home.2 The brothers discover that the house harbours a mysterious bottomless hole in its basement, from which each of the

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characters’ worst fears emerge: Lucas’s is a sentient clown doll that violently attacks him, Julie’s is a manifestation of her childhood best friend who died in a tragic accident and Dane’s is a manifestation of his abusive father. Crucially, Dane fears not only his father but also that he will become his father and inherit his proclivity for violence. Over the course of the film, each of the child characters successfully confronts and overcomes their fear, with Dane’s confrontation of his ‘father’ forming the film’s climax inside of the hole itself. Importantly, this is achieved by Dane deliberately rejecting the use of violence. The Hole thus offers a critique of domestic violence and its link with hegemonic masculinity, functioning as an antidote to Monster House’s valorizing and rewarding of physical violence as a tool of patriarchal dominance. My stance in this chapter is not to condemn the use of violence in children’s horror films, as to do so would risk feeding into the very societal concerns that I have criticized throughout this book: unevidenced and simplified moral panics that children’s exposure to violence in horror films will cause them to become violent themselves. On the contrary, Troutman suggests that the use of violence by child protagonists can be highly subversive and empowering as it defies the dominant hierarchical model of children as innocent, compliant to and in need of protection by adults (2019: 158). As we have seen in relation to Gremlins (Chapter 2) and The Monster Squad (Chapter 3), violent behaviour is a key pleasure of children’s horror films and a characteristic of the horrific child protagonists within them, especially when directed towards figures of adult authority. However, this does not mean that the use of violence in children’s horror is unproblematic. I suggested in relation to the slasher aesthetics of Coraline in Chapter 5 that the exclusion or subtle implication of violence can be just as insidious as the use of graphic violence, especially in relation to female characters. Continuing with this thread of representational politics, therefore, my concern in this chapter is not with violence itself, but with what Monster House and The Hole have to say about who can wield violence and towards whom this violence is directed. If, as I argue throughout this book, children’s horror films construct and address a horrific child viewer, these final chapters reveal this viewer to be a gendered construct with troubling implications about which children are ‘allowed’ to be horrific.

Gender, domestic space and the horror genre For Barry Keith Grant, ‘an essential truth about the genre of the horror film [is] the extent to which it is preoccupied with issues of sexual difference and gender’ (1996: 1). In relation to horror films concerning gender and the domestic, Vivian

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Sobchack (1996) and Kimberley Jackson (2016) argue that the unifying theme of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century ‘family horror films’ – that is, adult horror films about families, for example The Shining (Kubrick 1980) and Insidious (Wan 2010) – is the violence that results from patriarchal failure. Children’s horror films Monster House and The Hole fit within this framework where, to paraphrase Sobchack, the failures and sins of patriarchal figures (Nebbercracker and Dane’s father) are visited upon the younger generation to bear (1996: 153). Each film offers a different perspective on how to respond to these failures – one of them restoring patriarchal authority, and the other rejecting it. Horror films set within the home are particularly useful for exploring gendered representations and relationships given that the home is a gendered space. The home is traditionally classified within Western patriarchal ideology as a feminine space of reproduction because women are expected to hold responsibility for domestic chores, childbearing and childcare, while men occupy public spaces of work and production (Doane 1987: 138; Rose 1993: 118–19). Yet even this association between the home and femininity is part of a gendered hierarchy in which men are positioned as the breadwinners and heads of households who maintain authority and control over this domain (Garber 2012: 124). This dynamic is neatly illustrated by the ‘Bluebeard’ narratives of Female Gothic texts discussed in Chapter 5, where heroines are entrapped within houses by formidable men whose presence and threat looms large even when they are physically absent. In Monster House and The Hole it is DJ and Dane’s desire/ fear of adopting a masculine position of dominance over a domestic space that drives their coming of age. While this gendered characterization of the home and the space within it is increasingly being challenged and deviated from in twentyfirst-century Western culture, both Monster House and The Hole are set within stereotyped suburban neighbourhoods in the United States – wide, tree-lined streets populated with large, detached houses with well-kept gardens bordered by ubiquitous white picket fences – that evoke mid-century ideals of the nuclear family structure and its organization of gender roles that confine women to the home and position men as the masters of this space. The suburb as a staple setting of adult horror films has been discussed at length (Dika 1990; Bailey 1999; Murphy 2009). For these scholars, the familiarity and supposed safety of the suburb makes it particularly suited to being exploited for its horrific potential by drawing upon the most pressing anxieties of white, middle-class viewers, whether to do with socio-economic status, personal identity or the invasion of the home and suburb by outside forces. For Bernice M. Murphy, the presentation of the suburb in American visual culture as having a ‘dark and terrifying underside’ is ubiquitous enough for this to be classified as its own subgenre, the ‘suburban Gothic’ (2009: 11). Drawing from Murphy’s work, McFadzean considers the significance of the suburb in relation to children’s cinema, proposing the overlapping category of ‘suburban fantastic’ (2017

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and 2019). Associated mainly with US 1980s genre cinema and notions of the ‘Spielbergian’ or ‘Amblinesque’ (after the studio that Spielberg co-founded), the suburban fantastic refers to texts from E.T. to Stranger Things (2016–present) in which child and teen characters are called upon to confront a supernatural force that has disrupted their peaceful community. The topography of the suburb is particularly significant to these narratives given that, much like the stage of adolescence, the suburb is a liminal space ‘always separated from, but adjacent to, the larger adult world’ of work and responsibility (McFadzean 2017: 4). Encompassing a number of fantasy-adjacent genres, the suburban fantastic has an obvious overlap with children’s horror. A key element they share is their alignment with Bettelheim’s (1976) model of the fantasy-horror encounters in fairy tales as providing a therapeutic benefit to child protagonists and readers. Importantly, however, McFadzean notes that while fairy tales contain a variety of male and female protagonists, the suburban fantastic (and children’s horror) almost exclusively represents the trials and tribulations facing boys: It dramatises the moment in which a male character experiences an overwhelming existential anxiety about his impending patriarchal identity, an identity that will solidly align his character with white, middle class and heterosexual conventions. . . . Heroic masculinity is achieved . . . by subduing an all-encompassing, abstract Other that is represented by the fantastic element. The suburban fantastic, then, provides a symbolic resolution of the contradictions of male identity. (2017: 7–8) Following this reading, suburban fantastic narratives have much in common with Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey ([1949] 1993), which dictates that the hero is always male, as male is considered the norm.3 This equation between maleness and normality is traced by Stella Bruzzi in relation to the conventional ‘invisible style’ of Classical Hollywood cinema and the narratives of hegemonic masculinity at the centre of this cinema; she observes that deviations from this stylistic norm, such as obtrusive or excessive mise en scène, tend to be interpreted in scholarship as expressions of female subjectivity or masculinity in crisis (2013: 30–67). Following Bruzzi’s aim to challenge this equation between ‘invisible’ mise en scène and narratives of masculinity, this chapter’s central concern is with how the formal and aesthetic choices of Monster House and The Hole – both ‘invisible’ and ‘obtrusive’ – ‘tell the man’s story’, and how these choices underline each film’s attitude towards hegemonic masculinity (2013: 30–1). In particular, I am interested in how male coming-of-age narratives are articulated through the formal presentation of space: that of the on-screen homes and their suburban surroundings, the space of the film frame, the ways that characters occupy and move between these spaces, and how spatial relationships articulate these films’ attitudes towards the gendered use of violence.

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In the horror genre, even the most mundane spaces can be rendered menacing through mise en scène. Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull and Fran Pheasant-Kelly open the introduction to their collection Spaces of the Cinematic Home by acknowledging this with the example of Psycho, where a low-angle establishing shot goes a long way towards conveying the formidable presence of the Bates home and, by extension, monstrous matriarch Mrs Bates, whose absent-presence as a figment of her son’s multiple personality disorder looms over the film (2016: 1). Similarly, the opening shot of Halloween tracks unsteadily towards a house at a low angle, simultaneous to the non-diegetic chanting of children fading out to leave only the diegetic sound of crickets. For Dika, the overall effect of this synthesis between sound and mise en scène grants a ‘disturbing, unspecified quality’ to an ‘image of normalcy’ that becomes the site of a gruesome murder before the sequence is over (1990: 35). Later, framing and composition articulate the danger of the same killer, Michael Myers, as he stalks and murders female babysitters in gendered acts of violence. However, rather than his threat to these women being conveyed through domination of the film frame, he is mostly shown in fleeting glimpses, in one moment lurking behind a hedge and the next mysteriously vanished. Here, then, Michael is spatially dominant precisely because he could be anywhere, and is therefore everywhere, capable of invading both the film frame and the cosy, feminized domesticity of the film’s neighbourhood setting at any time. Reflecting on this tendency of the horror film to exploit fear from the everyday, Andrew Hock Soon Ng notes that ‘the ease with which the home can slide from comfort zone to a site of anxiety suggests that these oppositional qualities are in fact related to each other’ (2016: 152). This brings us to the psychoanalytic concept of the uncanny, one of the most commonly used frameworks for reading the horror of the cinematic home given that the very essence of the uncanny is ‘the disquieting slippage between what seems homely and what is definitively unhomely’ (Vidler 1992: ix–x). As established in Chapter 5, the uncanny often manifests in the home’s visual presentation through the suggestive use of offscreen space, the motif of doubling and the illusion of life being granted to inanimate objects and the structure of the house itself, which may be ‘prone to metamorphosis and agitation’ (Curtis 2008: 11). The horrific homes in The Hole and Monster House are no exception. Constance the monster house is not only sentient, but her status as a transgressive ‘housewife’ is illustrated through her increasingly anthropomorphized and monstrous appearance, culminating in uprooting herself from her foundations to rampage around the neighbourhood. Just as Constance’s form blurs the boundary between ontological states of being, of key significance to this chapter is the tendency in psychoanalytic horror film criticism to read a link between the home’s architecture and the body or mind. With respect to the latter, horror narratives concerning the home are read by Terry Castle as employing the uncanny to ‘subvert the distinction between the real and

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the phantasmic – plunging us . . . into the hag-ridden realm of the unconscious’ (1995: 5). This psychological ‘plunge’ is often illustrated in spatial terms by a literal descent into the depths of the home, particularly basements and cellars as seen in Psycho and The Babadook, among others. As the ‘sinister underbelly of the house’ where characters encounter horrific secrets or memories, basements are likened to the id, the space of the mind that holds repressed psychological material (Andrews, Hockenhull and Pheasant-Kelly 2016: 14). As we will see later in relation to Monster House and The Hole, the use of this setting, and its spatial representation, stages the psychoanalytic process of the return of the repressed, where the repressed material must be acknowledged in order for it to be overcome. The association between the psyche and the home has also been explored in relation to children’s fiction. Echoing Kuhn, with whom this chapter opened, Jon C. Scott and Christina Doyle Francis refer to the centrality of the home as both a place and a concept in children’s lives in their assertion that all children’s stories, regardless of setting, can be categorized in terms of the protagonist’s relationship to ‘home’ and ‘not home’ (1993: 223). In this configuration, ‘home’ can be a dwelling place, an attitude or both, where the protagonist feels comfort, security and acceptance. ‘Not home’, by opposition, lacks these qualities. Kuhn notes the gendered dimension to the idea of home as safe, drawing from the psychoanalytic notion of the mother’s womb as a child’s original home (2005: 408). This interpretation is central to Creed’s monstrous feminine (1986 and 1993), but in that context the home as womb takes on the opposite meaning as an abject space that stages encounters with monstrous mother figures. What links Kuhn and Creed’s readings in the context of this chapter is the need to leave and/or conquer the womb-home, representative of the feminized world of childhood dependence, and to enter the world of adult men. As a part of this journey, the boundaries and liminal spaces that separate the zones of ‘home’ and ‘not home’ hold ‘considerable emotional and imaginational weight’ (Kuhn 2005: 408). It is particularly appropriate to consider these in-between spaces given the inherently liminal status of children’s horror and of children. In relation to Monster House and The Hole, the protagonists’ liminality in terms of age is reflected in their liminality in terms of location, caught between the states/ spaces of ‘home’ and ‘not home’, and where their movements between these spaces are symbolic of developments in their maturity and, by extension, how they perceive their masculinity. Given this chapter’s focus on the presentation of space, it is significant that Monster House and The Hole were both produced and released in stereoscopic 3D. As scholars of 3D cinema have argued, 3D offers formal opportunities to manipulate filmic space beyond the capabilities of 2D ‘flat’ cinema, as it can give the impression that space extends into the screen (positive parallax) that creates the illusion of depth, or produce a claustrophobic effect by contracting the space,

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pushing objects out of the screen and into the space of the audience (negative parallax) (see Higgins 2012 and Weetch 2016). Through this, 3D can ‘work alongside shot choice, editing and other properties of mise-en-scène to construct expressive spaces’ and provide additional interpretative possibilities of cinematic space and the positioning of characters and objects within it (Weetch 2016: 3). Additionally, Monster House’s status as a computer-animated film means that it was shot with a ‘virtual camera unencumbered with positional constraints’, which allows it further opportunities to present space and movement in ways not possible in live-action filmmaking (Holliday 2018: 87). This is particularly evident in the opening sequence, where Monster House establishes its concerns with movement through liminal spaces, across boundaries and between the oppositional categories of ‘home’ and ‘not home’, safety and danger, male and female, child and adult, boy and man.

Monster House: Becoming male by destroying the female As McFadzean observes, the suburban fantastic – of which Monster House and The Hole are examples – narrates the coming of age of male characters through their encounter with a monstrous ‘other’. Strangely, however, McFadzean is dismissive of both films, concluding that their haunted settings have ‘only a loose relation to the personal dramas of the boys’ (2019: 108–10). By contrast, I argue in this chapter that the gender politics of these films’ domestic settings are of fundamental importance to their protagonists’ personal narratives. More than most of the films of McFadzean’s study, in fact, Monster House makes an explicit link between gender and the suburb through the representation of the titular house as a corrupting female force, and it does so via the formal language and iconographic elements of the horror genre. This injection of the conventions of the horrific can be seen most clearly in the opening of the film, where the disruptive force of the monster house marks a dramatic shift in genre and tone, from suburban fantastic to something altogether more horrific. Further, as described earlier, horror films often depict lurking social or psychological unrest through a literal spatial descent. Monster House begins with such a descent to dramatize ‘the niggling suspicion that something dark lurks below suburbia’s peaceful façade’ and function as a catalyst for DJ’s crisis of masculinity (Murphy 2009: 1). Monster House opens with an extreme close-up of an Autumnal-orange leaf attached to the top of a tree. Visible in the background is an ordinary suburban neighbourhood. When the wind blows the leaf free from the tree, the virtual camera follows in a sweeping long take as it peacefully floats towards the ground.

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The leaf is then swept up by a little girl (Ryan Newman) on a tricycle, singing a tuneless melody as she rides. Still in its fluid long take, the camera takes up the girl as its new subject of interest, revealing more details of this neighbourhood as she cycles through it. It is emblematic of the suburban fantastic, a place of middle-class affluence with tree-lined streets, detached, neatly presented houses and white picket fences that the girl draws attention to with a chipper ‘Hello, fence!’ as she passes them. The ‘nomadic sauntering’ of the leaf through three-dimensional space, captured by a free-flowing virtual camera (Holliday 2018: 87), couples with the lullaby-esque singing of the girl to construct its idyllic location as ‘a space in which children experience a degree of freedom and security’ (McFadzean 2017: 3). However, the fact that this particular child is a blonde, white girl – a potent cultural signifier of innocence and vulnerability (Warner 1995: 362–6) – simultaneously attests to the supposed safety of this space while also indicating the particular socio-economic group of children to whom the suburban fantastic is available. Central to the fictional representation of suburbia, however, is the sense that the perfect façade is unstable and capable of being disrupted at any moment, much in the same way that DJ’s childhood is disrupted by his oncoming puberty. As I suggest in Chapter 5 in relation to Coraline, the ease with which the film moves between the modes of fantasy and horror gives it an uncanny quality. Similarly, a shift between extreme binaries is at the heart of depictions of the suburb, with both Dale Bailey (1999) and Murphy (2009: 3) articulating this through the rhetoric of the American Dream and its opposite, the ‘American Nightmare’. The duality is suggested in Monster House through horror genre motifs. The girl’s singing is reminiscent of the use of childlike singing in horror soundtracks – particularly those with domestic settings, such as Halloween, Rosemary’s Baby and The Amityville Horror (Rosenberg 1979) – where this generates unease through its juxtaposition with horror. Similarly, the white picket fence motif can signify unrest as much as tranquillity due to its frequent use in films that intend to satirize suburban tranquillity (e.g. Blue Velvet [Lynch 1986] and Gremlins). The lurking of hidden danger becomes more apparent as the sequence continues, marked by the ever-descending movement of the camera. The girl halts abruptly when her tricycle’s front wheel becomes stuck on the lawn of a property – the monster house of the title – in the first instance of several transgressive boundary crossings that will occur throughout the film. However, the camera, still in its fluid long take, continues to track along the pavement, tracing the path the little girl is expected to be following until it ‘realizes’ it has left the girl behind, halts and retraces its route. Simultaneously, the lilting soundtrack peters out, leaving only the eerie sound of the wind. The camera returns to the girl and, for the first time in the sequence, the film cuts just as the once freeflowing leaf becomes trapped between the spokes of the tricycle, punctuating the abrupt shift in tone from tranquillity to threat. It continues in this vein as the

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leaf comes free and blows towards the house. This first clear shot of the house is accompanied by the sound of the blowing wind and creaking noises emitting from the house. The camera, following the leaf, slowly tracks forward at a low angle (echoing the opening shot of Halloween), allowing the formidable presence of the house to dominate the frame (Figure 6.1). The shabby appearance of the monster house marks it an example of both the slasher’s ‘Terrible Place’ and aligns it with haunted house film, where cursed abodes are ‘marked by neglect, strange habits and failed rituals of order and maintenance’ (Curtis 2008: 31). In contrast with the blue- and cream-coloured neighbouring houses and the warm, rich orange hues of the autumn leaves, the monster house is a dull greybrown with missing roof tiles, peeling paint and a perimeter of bare trees. In keeping with this chapter’s concern with the relationship between ‘home’ and ‘not home’, the monster house’s dilapidated appearance definitively marks it as the latter. If, as Murphy and Bailey claim, representations of suburbia often draw upon the mythical ideal of the American Dream, the monster house is this dream ‘gone wrong’: stagnated, rotten and failed. I return to this later in relation to the gendering of the house as an emblem of failed femininity due to its possession by Constance’s spirit. The fact that the house is possessed by Constance will not be revealed until much later in the film, and instead Mr Nebbercracker is presented as a red herring. The tension reaches a climax when the front door rattles ominously and swings open to reveal deep blackness inside, except for two eyes staring out. The suspense is finally broken when Nebbercracker emerges and screams the immortal line, ‘Get off my lawn!’, before chasing the girl off the property. The troublesome force is merely revealed, for now, to be a familiar trope of a curmudgeonly old man: someone whose age makes them abject and ‘other’, but who is nevertheless a symbol of white patriarchy and a staple figure, rather than a disrupter, of the suburban imaginary. The film employs horror conventions again as it is revealed that this entire interaction has been observed by an unknown voyeur, conveyed through a point-

Figure 6.1  A low-angle tracking shot establishes the formidable presence of the titular Monster House.

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of-view shot that watches Nebbercracker take the girl’s tricycle and retreat back into the house. The watcher is not a slasher villain, however, but the protagonist DJ who has been spying on the house through a telescope from his bedroom window in the house directly opposite, taking detailed notes of Nebbercracker’s activities. With this the film neatly establishes DJ’s obsession with the house, the geographical arrangement of these two homes and the liminal, open space between ‘home’ and ‘not home’ that will be traversed multiple times by DJ as the film unfolds, symbolic of the fluctuation in his levels of maturity and masculinity. The shift to DJ’s point of view thus also marks a shift in movement from the unsettling vertical descent that characterized the opening sequence, which will be ‘corrected’ by DJ at the end of the film, to the articulation of spatial relationships along a horizontal plane. Wheatley discusses the link between the family home and adolescence in children’s Gothic television, explaining that ‘the adolescent is figured as uncanny, existing between the categories of child and adult and trapped in the interstices of the family home, literally in-between its structures’ (2012: 389). DJ is likewise situated ‘in-between’ two houses: often this is literal, as much of the film’s action occurs in the liminal space between his home and the monster house, but in this moment of the film he is physically inside of one home while mentally fixated on another, and with unravelling its mysteries. Wheatley also suggests that childhood is figured as a ‘prison-like’ state to be escaped from (2012: 389). In this context, DJ’s obsession with the monster house and his positioning between the two homes is representative of a desire to break out of the ‘prison’ of his family home that is simultaneously safe and stifling, and from the authority of his parents (Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard) who reinforce his social status as a dependent child. This is evident from a sequence in which DJ, after witnessing the disturbing interaction between Nebbercracker and the girl, rushes outside where his parents are preparing to go away on a business trip. As adults in children’s (horror) films are wont to do, DJ’s parents dismiss his concerns about the monster house as the result of an overactive imagination. In response, DJ insists ‘I’m serious!’, but is undermined by the high-pitch of his breaking voice. He corrects himself by repeating ‘I’m serious’ in as deep and masculine a tone he can muster, revealing that his aspirations to break away from his home, his family and out of childhood are intimately connected with a desire for particularly masculine conceptions of adulthood and independence that he has not yet reached. Exacerbating DJ’s anxiety, his parents embarrass him by discussing his oncoming puberty. DJ’s anxiety about being perceived as feminine is shared by his father, who displays discomfort when DJ’s mother suggests he tell his son that he loves him and to blow him a kiss – both of which he staunchly refuses to do. With this short sequence the film therefore adheres to regressive social norms that equate nurturing and affection with femininity and motherhood, and emotional distance with masculinity and fatherhood.4 This provides an important

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sense of what the film considers ‘normal’ within a heterosexual relationship so as to highlight the failings of the coupling between Nebbercracker and Constance that led her to become the monster house. Returning to DJ, it is particularly significant that this entire interaction takes place on the driveway in front of his home, but the scene’s blocking and camera placement ‘trap’ DJ against the walls of his home, figuring him as stuck within this space despite being outside. If the home is characterized within cultural discourse as a feminized and motherly space, DJ’s frustration at being enclosed within it aligns with his desire to be perceived as masculine. Key to this is that the monster house is also characterized as female, but as a transgressive and failed form of femininity. DJ’s anxiety concerning his levels of masculinity is realized through his fascination with this house and with ‘solving’ its monstrosity, thus assuming a position of dominance over this feminized space. This is particularly concerning for what the film implies about ‘acceptable’ forms of feminine identity, and the policing of that identity by patriarchal forces. As described earlier, the homes of horror are often read as representations of the female body. The production background of Monster House supports this reading, as actress Kathleen Turner not only provided the voice of Constance but also a motion-capture performance for the movements of the house when, in the climax of the film, it uproots itself and rampages around the neighbourhood. The external appearance of the house clearly functions as a face: the windows as eyes, the door as a mouth and the rug which ejects out of the door as a tongue. The trees around the perimeter of the house also stand in for limbs with which the house grabs victims and ‘walks’ around. However, the mise en scène of the house invites a dual reading as a horrific representation of the female reproductive system in line with Creed’s conception of the monstrous feminine. As explained by Maria Takolander in her essay on the film, the lawn serves as a pubic mound, and the front door provides the entrance to the red-carpeted hallway, which represents the vaginal canal. This narrow space . . . gives way to a terrifying tooth-filled gateway – clearly representative of the vagina dentata or toothed vagina. (2011: 84) Takolander goes on to provide a convincing analysis of Constance the monster house as representing a misogynistic fear of the female body out of control, the destruction of which by predominantly male figures results in a ‘symbolic restoration of patriarchy’ (2011: 90). As such, Takolander argues that while the film is technologically innovative, its ‘thematic interests and politics, particularly with regard to gender, are decidedly old’ (2011: 80). Building from this, I want to consider how the presentation of Constance as an abject female figure relates to DJ’s coming of age and, by extension, what it suggests to its child audience of address about the link between gender, violence and fear. Following Kuhn, it

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is useful to centre on the significance of thresholds, boundaries and the liminal spaces between them to DJ’s narrative of masculinity. Starting with the opening sequence analysed earlier, there are numerous instances of DJ observing the house from his window. Like Coraline, as discussed in the previous chapter, DJ’s framing within the window – the boundary between inside and outside, safety and danger, reality and desire – reflects his inability to move beyond a state of liminality in terms of both his physical location and his pre-pubescent state. From the very beginning of the film, then, DJ’s proximity to boundaries and thresholds is vital, but none more so than the boundary of the monster house. As indicated by the opening sequence, stepping onto the property triggers the wrath of Nebbercracker. After DJ’s parents have left, he and Chowder play basketball in the driveway of DJ’s home, but Chowder drops the ball and it rolls onto Nebbercracker’s front lawn. They run over, but halt at the very edge of the property, afraid to go further. A wide shot of DJ and Chowder hovering on the boundary on one side, and the house at the other, emphasizes the vast space they would need to traverse in order to retrieve the ball (Figure 6.2). Although upset that he has lost his ball, Chowder is unwilling to step onto the property. It is significant that, while they had been playing basketball, Chowder had been trying to persuade DJ to come trick-or-treating with him, but DJ denied the invitation by claiming that he is ‘too grown-up’. Chowder turns this statement back on DJ as they mournfully gaze at the ball – ‘You’re a grown-up now, you go get it’ – in one of many references throughout the film to DJ’s desires to appear more mature than he actually is. In order to prove that his maturity and courage are not merely an act, DJ steps onto the lawn to retrieve the ball, but is stopped from going any further by Nebbercracker who, so angered by DJ’s insolence, has a heart attack and appears to die. Put off by this horrific turn of events, the boys retreat into DJ’s home empty-handed, to the safety of childish dependency that it represents, as reinforced by the arrival of the babysitter. That DJ fails in this first attempt to conquer the monster house is significant in the context of Chowder’s

Figure 6.2  An example of the formal emphasis on boundaries and liminal spaces in Monster House.

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peer pressure and DJ’s unconvincing attempt to appear mature and masculine in front of his parents; his pretence only reveals his lack of these qualities.5 That DJ is only playing at being grown-up is also indicated through the motif of toys and games (also a feature of The Hole).6 This motif comes to the fore through the children’s second attempt to gain access to the house, which is again unsuccessful, and again concerns the premature crossings of boundaries. Joined this time by Jenny, the three children hatch an elaborate plot to infiltrate the house with a dummy, which they construct from a vacuum cleaner adorned with a Halloween mask to make it look like a trick-or-treating child. The children look on from inside dustbins, safely stationed beyond the boundary of the property, and armed with childish weapons of water pistols and slingshots. The plan is interrupted by the arrival of two male police officers (Kevin James and Nick Cannon), who themselves have an air of pretence and posturing at being tough, capable figures of masculine authority. For example, they are deliberately intimidating towards the children and make to arrest them despite their obvious lack of threat. As a result of their own incompetence, the officers are ‘eaten’ by the house. The children look on in horror before also being grabbed by one of the monster house’s tree-hands and forced through the gnashing teeth of the door/mouth. As this is the most significant boundary-crossing of the film it is useful to compare it with that of the protagonist in Coraline. Coraline voluntarily crosses the boundary to the parallel version of her home, an act that is read by Coats as a retreat into the mother’s womb, and away from mature independence (2008: 88). Coraline’s positive perception of this movement is communicated through the mise en scène of the tunnel which is coloured neon blue, pink and purple, and stereoscopic 3D gives a pleasant impression of the space expanding outwards. DJ, on the other hand, is forcibly dragged into the monster-house-as-symbolicwomb, such is his inability to untangle his wish to be a masculine ‘grown-up’ from his paradoxical fear and desire to leave the feminized world of childhood. Later, in what resembles a dual vomiting/birthing scene, the children are ejected onto the lawn through the mouth/vagina in a wave of liquid, a stand-in for saliva, vomit and/or amniotic fluid. As pointed out by Takolander, this symbolic birth is underscored when Jenny says to the bickering DJ and Chowder, ‘You’re acting like babies’ (2011: 84). DJ replies in a defeatist tone, ‘We are babies’, in reference to their childish attempt to put the house to sleep with cough syrup. Seemingly disappointed with his own childlike ways, he announces that he is going home, but before he can step back over the safe boundary of the property he is almost run over by the ambulance returning Nebbercracker from the hospital. Although the film’s primary conflict is staged between the children and the monster house, Nebbercracker is integral to the film’s narrative and to DJ’s arc. When inside of the monster house the children had discovered its morbid origin, which Nebbercracker clarifies for them: Nebbercracker met and fell in love with

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Constance while she was forced to perform in a freak show under the moniker ‘The Giantess’ on account of her weight. He rescued her, they married and Nebbercracker started to build them a home. Her death resulted from her being so angered by some children mocking her size that she fell into the cement in the foundations of the unfinished house, becoming entombed within it. When this is revealed to the children, Nebbercracker admits that he is not actually a curmudgeonly child-hater, but used this identity as a front to scare children away and thus protect them from the monster house. Nebbercracker’s function in the film is therefore to present a certain form of male identity: the type of man not to be. Specifically, Nebbercracker’s inability to assert a dominant masculine identity and appropriately control his transgressive and monstrous ‘housewife’ can be interpreted as a failure of the American Dream – a particularly masculinized construct of it. If the house is likened to the body of Constance, then we must also read Constance herself, and her marriage to Nebbercracker, as signifying this failure. Nebbercracker’s explanation of Constance’s history is conveyed via a sepiatinted flashback set in the post-war 1940s and 1950s, the period with which this particular stereotype of the Dream is the most heavily associated. In The Feminine Mystique, a scathing critique of the expectations of women during this period, Betty Friedan details how women were taught to ‘devote their lives from earliest girlhood to finding a husband and bearing children’, to be adept in every aspect of domesticity and motherhood and to ‘glory in their own femininity’ ([1963] 1992: 13–14). Nebbercracker’s flashback shows that Constance does not meet these expectations, lacking a normatively thin body and motherly instinct. This latter element is particularly villainized as she threatens to ‘rip’ the neighbourhood children who torment her ‘to bits’. The house that her spirit later embodies is completely absent of any plant-life, other than the grass and the leafless trees. In line with the reading of the house as a womb, these markers signify it as a barren, inhospitable environment for producing children. If the house’s exterior is read as a face, this too references her monstrous failure to fulfil her expected role. Nebbercracker, upon returning from the hospital, notes that her shingles are ruffled and her windows cracked, but that it is nothing some ‘paint and varnish can’t handle’, thus implying that her monstrous appearance can be fixed with ‘make-up’. These details paint Constance as a portrait of failed womanhood and motherhood in the eyes of patriarchal ideology. Similarly, Nebbercracker does not meet hegemonic expectations of masculine dominance. He continues to love Constance even after her death and spiritual embodiment of the house, and he takes a tender, non-violent approach to keeping her status a secret. However, the film paints this approach as ineffective, and is just one of many ways in which the film codes Nebbercracker as an emasculated figure dominated by a monstrous matriarch. Takolander notes that Nebbercracker has a feminized appearance as his frail body is covered only by

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a dress-like hospital gown for the last third of the film (2011: 89). Constance’s human appearance, in contrast, is stocky and large, mirrored by the house’s huge, overbearing shape. When Constance in house form and Nebbercracker appear within the same shot, the contrast in size dwarfs Nebbercracker, emphasizing her domination over him (Figure 6.3). This is further enhanced in 3D, where Nebbercracker emerges from the screen into negative parallax. Scott Higgins observes that this three-dimensional emergence of objects can make them appear ‘as models because they come within the viewer’s grasp’ (2012: 200). Applying this to some helicopters in a wide shot in Avatar (Cameron 2009), Higgins argues that their closer proximity to the audience thanks to emergent 3D has the undesirable effect of making them seem ‘small and near’ rather than large and far away (2012: 200). However, that this effect causes Nebbercracker’s size to be diminished even further is precisely to the benefit of the way Monster House’s mise en scène spatially defines character relationships and gender politics. This inversion of the traditional male–female power dynamic in Monster House is established as being in place from the very beginning of Constance and Nebbercracker’s relationship, as a flashback reveals that Constance carried him over the threshold of the land where their home will be built, in an inversion of the stereotype. His emasculation is also illustrated by his inability to keep Constanceas-monster-house under control and that he lives inside of her, literally within the structure of the house that functions as a symbolic female reproductive system. Crucially, Nebbercracker’s redemption is only made possible through the violent actions of DJ, which align the latter with a virile and ‘traditional’ form of masculinity – one that depends upon the destruction of transgressive femininity. After the children’s ‘rebirth’ out of the house, DJ dejectedly attempts to go home, to the comfortable world of childhood and femininity. Crucially, he does not reach his home and does not return to it at any point during the remainder of the film. Having crossed the boundary of the monster house and encountered the abject feminine inside of it, as well as Nebbercracker’s unappealing lack of

Figure 6.3  The emasculated Nebbercracker is dwarfed in size by his ‘housewife’ in Monster House.

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masculinity – both of them ‘others’ to the male identity that DJ desires – his rebirth is not a regression to infancy, as he considers it to be. It is a chance for him to begin afresh, to assert a masculine identity of bravery and dominance without pretence. Indeed, when Nebbercracker is unable to destroy the house on his own he hands DJ some dynamite – a potent phallic symbol – in so doing handing DJ the responsibility to destroy the monstrous female and atoning for his own lack of the ‘proper’ masculinity needed. This occurs after Constance uproots herself from her foundations and chases Nebbercracker and the children to a building site, where a climactic battle occurs. Where before the children attempted to sedate the house using toys, now they use ‘grown-up’ tools: dynamite and a digger. Though Chowder and Jenny assist with the destruction of the house, their roles in the battle only reinforce DJ’s masculinity and maturity. Howarth reads Chowder as an exaggerated mirror image of DJ’s own immaturity that serves as an example of how not to behave maturely (2014b: 199). Indeed, Chowder’s attempts to appear mature are always less convincing than DJ’s, but he also clearly enjoys revelling in childishness, whether trick-or-treating, making fart noises or wearing a cape draped around his shoulders in imitation of a superhero. It is therefore unsurprising that when Chowder makes an attempt to destroy the house with the digger, the house survives and becomes even more threatening. The digger is positioned in the foreground with the monster house’s formidable presence in the background, dominating the frame. As with Nebbercracker’s body in Figure 6.3, 3D brings the digger out into negative parallax, further emphasizing its smallness. Jenny, on the other hand, shows significantly more maturity, ingenuity and bravery throughout the film than both Chowder and DJ, yet she is reduced in the battle to the role of love interest and cheerleader. This culminates in her kissing DJ to give him the courage to deliver the final blow to the house. In this way, Jenny represents a much more ‘acceptable’ feminine identity than Constance in that she supports the male figures around her, rather than threatening and undermining them. DJ single-handedly destroys the house once and for all by swinging over it from a hook that is attached to a crane and throwing dynamite down the chimney. Throughout the film height is equated with dominance, as expressed through the numerous low-angle shots of the house itself as it towers over its victims. Here, the spatial dynamics are reversed to signal DJ’s dominance over Constance and by extension his attainment of the mature masculine identity he desires, quite literally having ‘grown up’ through an upward trajectory in physical space. He swings over the monster house, presented as a virtual tracking shot that follows him in close range from behind and slightly above, placing him in the foreground and dominating the frame, with the house in the background and below him (Figure 6.4). Notably, such ‘vertiginous images’ of a hero faced with a dizzying drop are a staple feature of action cinema, a genre particularly associated with narratives of heroic masculinity (Bruzzi 2013: 1–2). DJ’s movement aligns with

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Figure 6.4  DJ swings over Constance on a crane, marking his achievement of heroic masculinity in Monster House.

Sara Ross’s reading of how flying sequences ‘lend themselves easily to favoured Hollywood character arcs . . . from fearfulness to confidence’, and that the use of stereoscopic 3D complements this arc by emphasizing a protagonists’ heroic mastery of space (2012: 210). Indeed, 3D produces the illusion of DJ’s body swinging out of the screen, literally taking up more of the virtual screen space. Finally in prime position directly above the house, he throws the dynamite down the chimney and the house is demolished in a huge explosion. Mirroring the floating of the leaf that represented the apparently normalcy of the suburb in the opening shot of the film, DJ’s own spectacular flight through the air marks the return to the status quo, the transgressive female that threatened it having been vanquished by an appropriate male force. DJ’s act of violence is in stark contrast to Nebbercracker’s method of simply trying to show love and care towards Constance, which the film clearly implies was well-meaning but ultimately ineffective. By admitting his faults and letting DJ take violent action, Nebbercracker is redeemed and, like DJ, is ‘reborn’ as a new man. At the film’s denouement Chowder remarks that the newly homeless and single Nebbercracker might go on vacation and meet someone new, ‘this time maybe a nice beach house’, which all too clearly implies that, now free of his grotesque wife, he will find a younger, more beautiful and more exotic woman who conforms to normative conceptions of non-threatening femininity. This troubling attitude towards transgressive and non-conforming women is replicated in several other children’s horror films, including Coraline and The Monster Squad, as addressed in previous chapters, as well as Hocus Pocus and both versions of The Witches.7 As I argue throughout this book, children’s horror films construct and address a ‘horrific child’ model viewer who is invited to identify with the on-screen children. It is therefore a concern that, with few exceptions, children’s horror films predominantly construct this viewer as male and depict their mastery of fear and path to manhood as dependent on the rejection, control and/or destruction of the female. Although The Hole follows the patterns of these films by centralizing a male protagonist’s coming of age,

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the film’s attitude towards physical violence, gender and maturity is a refreshing departure that offers the horrific child viewer a far more progressive image of masculinity after which to model themselves.

The Hole: Being the bigger man Weetch characterizes The Hole as a ‘mature narrative about the very nature of maturity’ precisely because, in opposition to Monster House, it negatively equates physical violence with immaturity and toxic masculinity, and presents the solution to overcoming fear as a process of understanding (2016: 96). In the climax of the film, protagonist Dane journeys into a representation of his subconscious, located inside the hole of the title, to acknowledge and confront his fear of his abusive father. Importantly, this confrontation plays out via the explicit rejection of violence. As such, The Hole presents a sensitive and complex, but ultimately more ‘child-friendly’ conception of masculinity than Monster House – one that does not rely on the violent destruction of others/‘others’ who threaten male dominance. As with Monster House, The Hole’s narrative of understanding is articulated through the expressive presentation of space. The opening of The Hole echoes that of Monster House by employing suggestive suburban iconography to establish lurking unrest beneath a surface of tranquillity, and by extension the psyche of its protagonist, Dane. In keeping with the film’s critical attitude to violence, however, the opening of the film reverses Monster House’s tonal and spatial trajectory. Monster House begins in the treetops with a fluid long take that communicates a care-free community, but which moves lower until it concludes with the reveal of the aberrant monster house (and the feminine identity conflated with it) that represents a disruption of the peaceful suburb and the normative gender roles with which it is associated. The Hole, however, begins by situating the audience within a space of unease before transitioning to the surface above, in an upward trajectory that is reflective of Dane’s character arc from fear and repression to understanding and optimism. This arrangement of spatial movement along a vertical axis continues throughout the film in order to articulate Dane’s path towards maturity and rejection of toxic masculinity. The Hole opens from below with a digitally rendered, unbroken tracking shot that seems to be travelling backwards through the titular hole from which, later in the film, the characters’ worst fears will emerge. Unlike Monster House’s blissful opening shot of the leaf, this shot does not convey the freedom and safety of its setting; the mise en scène of the space is gloomy and claustrophobic, the weaving of the camera disorienting (enhanced further in the 3D format of the film) and the only sounds are unintelligible whispers and ambient groaning noises emitting from this ominous place. The camera then emerges out of the

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‘hole’ to reveal that it was in fact the inside of the exhaust pipe of a car that is driving down a pleasant residential street, yet another example of McFadzean’s suburban fantastic. Even though the apparent hole is a mere exhaust pipe, this opening shot suggests the omnipresence of dank, dark spaces that lurk beneath the surface of normality. It also follows the pseudo-psychoanalytic convention of the horror genre where an association is drawn between a protagonist’s psyche and physical space, where hidden, low, dark places are representative of the id, the mind’s house for repressed memories, fears and desires. To open within such a location spatially situates the audience within Dane’s psyche and suggests the perpetual lurking of this hidden space, and the unacknowledged psychological material (his fear of his father) that resides there. After the camera emerges from the exhaust pipe, a graceful crane shot follows the car as it pulls into the driveway of a detached house; and Dane, Lucas and their mother Susan emerge. A soundtrack of softly sweeping strings underscores that this home represents for the family a haven of comfort, security and hope. As revealed later in the film, they have moved several times in order to avoid the abusive family patriarch. This house therefore holds for the family yet another promise of a fresh start, a place that they might finally call their true and permanent home. For Dane, however, the new house does not hold this promise. The idealistic establishing shots of the house are undercut by the film’s first line of dialogue, ‘This stinks’, uttered by Dane. Following Scott and Doyle Francis’s argument that children’s fiction traces a protagonist’s relationship to the literal and symbolic states of ‘home’ and ‘not home’ (1993), Dane’s arc of maturation and eventual mastering of fear can be understood as a psychological journey towards feeling ‘at home’ with himself, which in turn facilitates his attitudinal shift towards embracing the physical space of the new house as his permanent home. Like DJ in Monster House, Dane is situated as a liminal figure caught between multiple states: ‘home’ and ‘not home’, adolescent and adult, boy and man. With regards to the latter two pairs, Dane takes on a performative role at key moments in the film by parodying childishness and femininity as a way of performing maturity and masculinity. When his mother expresses delight at having received a gift basket welcoming the family into their new home, Dane cruelly mocks her by responding with a high-pitched sarcasm to indicate that he considers himself above such ‘frivolous’ and feminized acts of kindness. He also displays mock-childish behaviour later in the film when he becomes defensive and jealous towards his mother’s male colleague, Dr Newman (Mark Pawson), suggesting that Dane’s fear of becoming his father overlaps with an Oedipal desire to replace him as the head of the household. As with DJ, Dane’s deliberate impertinence only signals his lack of maturity and masculinity. This is exacerbated by the fact that when he meets Dr Newman, Dane is wearing a bicycle helmet and wielding a paintball gun – preventative measures that he had employed as a means of

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defence against the hole but which in this moment are reduced to toys, and he a mere child. Elsewhere in the film Dane’s liminality is reinforced through spatial shifts in his framing as an adult or child. In the absence of Susan, the trio of Dane, Julie and Lucas are framed as a family unit where Dane and Julie function as parental figures to the younger, smaller Lucas. This occurs just prior to Dane’s encounter with Dr Newman, when he, Lucas and Julie stand guard at the mouth of the hole armed with their paintball guns and eating takeaway pizza, a sign of their self-sufficiency in the absence of adult supervision. When Susan returns home to find them asleep in a heap, a low-angle shot shows her towering above them on the stairs, refiguring them as children playing a game in the presence of a proper adult. Notably, Susan is constructed here as a matriarchal figure. The film will end similarly with Susan restored as a figure of authority, this time with Dane happily accepting his status as her child rather than pushing back against it. Taking up Patricia Brett Erens’s feminist analysis of adult horror film The Stepfather (Ruben 1987), The Hole thus ‘[posits] the maternal order in opposition to the destructive elements of patriarchy’ (1996: 354). These sequences neatly demonstrate how the film uses spatial representation, particularly as expressed through high- and low-angle shots, to visually articulate Dane’s liminal status and crisis of masculinity.8 As with DJ in Monster House, Dane’s liminal status is also conveyed through his being framed within or near the edges of doors and windows. This is most notably the trap door covering the hole itself, from which Julie’s, Lucas’s and his worst fears emerge. Referring to Female Gothic texts, Doane reads the motif of the locked door as a metaphorical mirror on the other side of which the protagonist confronts an aspect of themselves (1987: 137), an interpretation that also recalls Bettelheim’s argument that fairy-tale villains are projections of the protagonists’ own worst impulses (1976: 127–8). This is particularly applicable to Dane’s confrontation of his repressed fear of his father which is, at its core, a fear of himself.9 Although he represses this paternal dread right up until he crosses the threshold of the hole, Dane’s fear is signalled by the film long before this through his visual representation and his spatial positioning within the film frame. Dane’s real father – who is established as serving a jail sentence for domestic violence – never appears in the film, but Dane shares visual similarities with the version of the father that emerges from the hole (henceforth referred to as the ‘father’ in order to differentiate it from references to the real father). They each have a stocky build and mid-shoulder-length dark brown hair, while his mother and brother are both blonde, linked in their status as those under threat should Dane give in to his fear and replicate his father’s domestic abuse. Dane is also linked with his father when Julie mistakes a discarded belt – one that Dane and Lucas’s father used to beat them with – as belonging to Dane, and he is repeatedly rough with Lucas, pushing, chasing or verbally threatening him several times throughout the film. This link with his father is reinforced through formal

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and aesthetic choices that figure Dane as a threat. He is frequently shot from a low angle or in straight-on compositions that emphasize his height, especially compared with Lucas (Figure 6.5). This framing echoes the film’s opening tracking shot, in that it situates the viewer in the low space that is representative of Dane’s psyche and the unacknowledged fear that resides there. Read another way, this formal choice is interesting in light of the tragic irony that the person Dane is most afraid of hurting is his brother. In the climax of the film it is revealed that this fear stems from an incident years before when the father deliberately broke Lucas’s arm. Ever since, Dane has carried (unnecessary) guilt that he witnessed this abuse and did nothing to intervene. In this context, the use of low camera angles to shoot Dane read as if from the vantage point of an imaginary small child – Lucas, or perhaps Dane’s younger self – to whom Dane believes he poses the greatest threat. This visual strategy is literalized in a sequence towards the end of the film that begins with Dane finding a note from his ‘father’ on the kitchen table that reads ‘HELLO BOY’. The film subsequently cuts from a close-up of this note to a shot of the hole, then to a low-angle view of the upstairs hallway into which a large pair of male feet enter. The ominous soundtrack, low-key lighting and the preceding shots of the note and the open hole imply that the feet belong to the ‘father’. The film cuts again to show Lucas asleep in bed, shot from the perspective of an unknown figure moving slowly forward and accompanied by the sound of footsteps. Lucas wakes suddenly and looks fearfully at the figure/ camera, but a sudden cut to a low-angle reverse-shot reveals that the holder of the gaze is Dane, thus conflating Dane with his ‘father’ and the physical threat that he represents. The film’s formal strategy of constructing Dane as a liminal figure who alternates between dependent child and threatening patriarch comes to the fore in the climax of the film, in which he ventures inside the hole to rescue Lucas, who has been taken there by the ‘father’, and to finally acknowledge his fear. In

Figure 6.5  Low-angle shots in The Hole frame Dane as a physical threat towards his younger brother.

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the staple convention of the horror genre, the film illustrates a figurative descent into the psyche of a character through a literal descent in physical space: here, the plunge into the hole (the entrance of which is located in the already low space of the basement) literalizes Dane’s journey into his unconscious to confront the repressed material that lurks there. In so doing, Dane joins DJ in crossing a boundary that is symbolic of his newfound maturity. However, Dane’s crossing of this threshold is also subject to a contradiction in that his increase in maturity requires a return to earlier in his childhood, as the space inside of the hole takes on the appearance of the former home where he, his brother and his mother were abused by the father. This place itself occupies a paradoxical position in the configuration between the binaries of ‘home’ and ‘not home’; it is a structure in which Dane lived, but due to its history of abuse it does not fulfil the physical and emotional needs provided by a true home. Rather, this place holds for Dane the status of ‘not home’, conceptualized by Kuhn as a dangerous space that must be ‘conquered with skill and daring’ (2005: 410). The mise en scène of this setting reflects its status as an ‘unhomely’, or uncanny, representation of Dane’s subconscious fears which stem from childhood trauma. The monochromatic colour palette and warped set design emulates the German Expressionist aesthetic of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (Wiene 1920), the main narrative of which is revealed at the film’s end to be the ravings of a madman. This intertextual reference reinforces the space of the hole as the outward projection of a tortured mind (Weetch 2016: 86).10 Additionally, where Caligari’s aesthetic constructs its characters as powerless victims of a formidable dictator, this translates in The Hole to the depiction of childhood fear, where the angular walls, doorways and oversized furniture force perspective to make Dane appear as a small and vulnerable child who is endangered by a much larger and physically violent adult (Figure 6.6). The distortion inside of the hole extends to the monstrously exaggerated version of the father, who is presented as a giant with pale greygreen skin, straggly black hair and whose facial features are obscured through backlighting. The low angle that is used elsewhere in the film to present Dane as a threat is replicated here to emphasize the ‘father’s’ already unnatural height and the threat he poses. Weetch performs an illuminating reading of how 3D contributes to the spatial dynamics of the sequence and serves Dane’s confrontation and eventual rejection of his ‘father’ and the use of patriarchal violence (2016: 85–96). The shift of power from the ‘father’ to Dane is illustrated through the positioning of the characters in three-dimensional space, but unaddressed by Weetch is the way that the sequence also illustrates shifting power dynamics along a vertical axis. This is just as important to consider as a continuation and logical conclusion to the way that the film uses shot angles and framing to liken Dane to the towering physical threat of his ‘father’, and in relation to the film’s representation of Dane’s

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Figure 6.6  The warped, oversized set of The Hole figures Dane as a vulnerable child.

journey as a physical and psychological descent followed by a triumphant upward return.11 Dane and the ‘father’ engage in a confrontation in which Dane is initially overpowered. Low-shot angles combined with the oversized furniture reinforce his vulnerability against the paternal monster, whose figure dominates the frame. However, Dane’s comparatively small size proves advantageous as it enables him to dodge the physical attacks directed at him without responding with violence in turn. With each dodged blow the ‘father’ becomes more frustrated and destroys a piece of the distorted setting, which goes tumbling into the abyss below until nothing is left but a section of the floor and a ceiling fan hovering, impossibly, above them. This fan and its connotations with height are crucial to Dane’s overpowering of his ‘father’. The ‘father’ swings his belt at Dane, who grabs it and pulls it out of the grip of the other before swinging it around his head like a lasso. The ‘father’ taunts ‘Like father like son’, believing that Dane will strike him with the belt, thus resorting to violence and fulfilling his worst fear. However, Dane uses the belt to swing himself up onto the ceiling fan, in so doing dodging the ‘father’ who lunges towards him and almost falls into the abyss below. The completion of the shift in power is reinforced by a series of high- and low-angle shots that display Dane towering above the ‘father’, where Dane’s dominance is emphasized through his three-dimensional emergence out of the screen (Figure 6.7). Here we are also able to see that the monstrous appearance of the ‘father’ has morphed into the father’s true form of an ordinary, unthreatening human. Finally, Dane drops the belt, a symbol of the abuse that he suffered, which shatters the floor below upon landing, sending his ‘father’ and the remains of the setting to fall into oblivion. Having now acknowledged and defeated his fear, Dane makes the vertical climb up and out of the hole. It is somewhat ironic that with this narrative and formal move The Hole aligns with Scott Martin’s reading of the function of basements in comedy films, where this location stages ‘the characters’ affirmative transformation of their long-held

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Figure 6.7  Dane’s defeat of his ‘father’, now appearing as an ordinary human, is emphasized through his high positioning in The Hole.

desires’ (2016: 46). Similarly, The Hole transforms the meaning of the basement and the hole itself, and with it the meaning of upward movement and spatial domination. Like Monster House, until this point The Hole has equated height, ascent and power over the frame with physical threat. However, the conclusion of Dane’s experience progressively reframes this as a triumph over fear and over the self rather than over another (or an ‘other’) and where the association between physical violence and ‘being a man’ is unambiguously rejected.

Conclusion: Against ‘happily ever after’ Troutman argues that children’s horror films including Monster House do not show children growing ‘up’, but rather that they demonstrate Kathryn Bond Stockton’s (2009) concept of ‘growing sideways’: a queer resistance to a linear trajectory towards adulthood that foregrounds the importance of ‘extending and enriching . . . the possibilities of childhood’ rather than framing childhood as something to be ‘grown out of’ on the way to maturity (Troutman 2019: 159). In support of this, Monster House and The Hole both end with their protagonists engaging in play that resists a straightforward reading of upward growth. DJ decides that he is not too old for trick-or-treating after all and the film ends with him and Chowder skipping gleefully down the street, the symbolic liminal space of adolescence. Dane, similarly, emerges from his ordeal in the hole and agrees to play basketball with Julie, Lucas and his mother, a direct contrast to his earlier refusal to play basketball with Lucas. Even so, there is undeniably a sense of progression to their narratives which is supported by each film’s expressive presentation of space, particularly the way that relationships and

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power dynamics are spatially defined through verticality. Although at the ends of their narratives DJ and Dane each appear content to remain children (while they still can), this in itself bespeaks a newfound maturity that results from their having overcome their anxieties about their impending adulthoods. Arguably, any potential queerness is also undermined by the pairing of DJ and Dane with their respective female companions, Jenny and Julie, which suggests an upward trajectory towards heteronormative manhood. This aligns these films less with Bond Stockton’s concept of sideways growth than with McFadzean’s model of the suburban fantastic, wherein the removal of the supernatural invasion equips the protagonist with ‘the mentality that allows him to be a successful man’ (2017: 7). Despite this apparent kinship between the ways these films end, there is a remarkable difference in what they consider a ‘successful man’ to be, particularly as this relates to the intersections between fear, violence, gender and the home. While Monster House valorizes the use of physical violence as a response to fear and a requirement of manhood – especially when this violence is directed at women who distort associations between normative femininity and the domestic realm – The Hole offers a criticism of this link between violence and patriarchy. These differences are reflected in the conclusions of each film and the extent to which they appear to offer closure. Endings are intrinsically associated with happiness and a protagonist’s return home, whether this is a physical space, a state of mind or both. However, the ubiquity, homogeneity and ‘happiness’ of happy endings has been challenged by James MacDowell (2013) and Elisabeth Bronfen (2004). Bronfen makes a psychoanalytic argument that even films that appear to present a sense of being ‘at home’ cannot fully erase a ‘traumatic core of dislocation’ inherent to the human experience (2004: 21). If this is the case, what are the implications of this for children’s horror films, where the provision of a happy ending is considered a necessary characteristic to comfort its supposedly vulnerable audience that the frightening element has been vanquished, and that their experience of fear has been rewarded? It might be troubling to suggest that the happy ending is only a false promise that presents, in Bronfen’s words, an ‘ambivalent cure’ for fear and anxiety that recognizes a lingering trauma (2004: 78). However, this is precisely what the ending of The Hole does, and why it is noteworthy. After Dane emerges triumphant from the hole, he looks back at it to see that it is now a shallow and ordinary pit, confirming his success in overcoming his fear. However, as the three child characters and Susan leave the basement to play basketball, Lucas asks his mother what she is scared of. As she replies, the camera pans over to the trapdoor covering the pit, which briefly rattles ominously before swinging open to reveal the return of the bottomless hole. In one fell swoop the camera dives into its inky blackness and the credits begin. With this, the film not only suggests that the horrors that haunted Dane, Lucas and Julie

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may not have been permanently defeated (and that Susan’s fear will join the fray), but it also returns to where the film opened, within the literally and figuratively low, dark space that is representative of the psyche’s repository of repressed fears. However, I do not see this as a regressive or negative move, but one of realism and optimism that aligns with Babbitt’s assertion that not all children’s stories need to end happily, as long as they end with a sense of ‘hope rather than resignation’ ([1970] 2008: 7). It is instructive to compare The Hole with adult horror film The Babadook, of which The Hole is a children’s precursor.12 In a reversal of The Hole, The Babadook’s titular monster is a supernatural manifestation of protagonist Amelia’s (Essie Davis) grief, post-natal depression and repressed resentment of her son (Noah Wiseman). At the conclusion of the film, the monster is not completely vanquished but remains living in the basement of Amelia’s home, where she tames and nurtures it by feeding it worms. This acknowledgement of and continued tending to one’s trauma is indicated by the film to be positive, as it allows Amelia to function normally and have a healthy relationship with her son. Similarly, the open-ended conclusion of The Hole suggests that Dane’s fear of (becoming) his abusive father is not necessarily gone forever, but something to be continually worked at in order to keep it at bay. Crucially, Dane is now equipped with the knowledge of how to dispel his fear should it rear its head again. While neither providing definitive closure nor being traditionally ‘happy’, neither is it ‘unhappy’. Rather, the ending of The Hole holds the promise of what MacDowell refers to, in relation to the bittersweet ending of Casablanca (Curtiz 1942), as a ‘sense of promised continuation . . . The suggestion of the characters’ lives going somewhere particular after the movie ends’ (MacDowell 2013: 35; emphasis in original). Importantly, we are left in the knowledge that ‘somewhere’ is, for Dane, a future that does not involve violence. Monster House, by contrast, ends with the unambiguous confirmation that Constance has been destroyed. After the house explodes, Constance’s spirit briefly appears in human form and dances with Nebbercracker before fading away, implying that she is now at peace. Although presented as a ‘happy ending’, it is undermined by Constance’s tragic backstory. As Sara Ahmed discusses at length in The Promise of Happiness (2010), the happiness of one social group almost always comes at the expense of the happiness of another in ways that reinforce societal inequalities. In Monster House, Constance’s unhappiness only serves to deliver the happiness of the male and conventionally feminine characters around her. The film is entirely unconcerned with what caused her unhappiness in the first place, or the moral implications of this. As shown in Nebbercracker’s flashback, Constance’s lack of maternal instinct and death were the result of being taunted by trick-or-treating children for nothing other than being fat; a woman who dares to take up too much space. This misogynistic and fatphobic treatment subjects her to the very same trauma that she experienced

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when forced to perform at the freak show, and her subsequent imprisonment within the house merely transfers her from one cage to another. Although DJ, Chowder and Jenny were not implicated in the bullying that killed Constance, nowhere in the film is it suggested that the offending children were in the wrong. ‘They’re just children’, says Nebbercracker in their defence, becoming complicit in the abuse. As addressed earlier, violence towards adults – namely, agents of patriarchal authority – by child characters is often a source of subversive pleasure in children’s horror films. But Constance, as a victim of abuse whose only crime is that she does not conform to hegemonic ideals of femininity, in no way belongs in this category.13 It is pertinent to close this discussion by highlighting that one of the prevailing themes that underpins this book is that of empathy: of characters and spectators having empathy for the horrific child, especially when they seem to have been misunderstood and mistreated by adult society, as is the case with the titular creatures of Gremlins. It is also key for the horrific child to themselves be empathetic, as we see in ParaNorman, where the capacity for empathy with monstrous others functions as a social, familial and personal benefit. Throughout this book I have also called for critics and scholars to be empathetic to the fact that children are a marginalized audience who may have varying expectations, tastes, desires, tolerances and ideas of quality to adults when it comes to horror; and it is this empathetic understanding that I have attempted to maintain in my own approach to this topic. In this context, I find it a point of great concern that empathy is a quality that Monster House lacks and has no interest in extending towards Constance, its most marginalized and unfairly treated subject, or with encouraging its horrific child viewer of address to do the same. Although Monster House’s lack of empathy for those who do not fit within a societal ‘norm’ is very overt, it is just one of many children’s horror films that imply that those deserving of empathy, happiness and representation are almost exclusively white, middle class and implicitly non-disabled and heterosexual boys. Thus, while this chapter has focussed on the gendering of space within Monster House and The Hole, this must be extended to consider who is being excluded from the space of the children’s horror genre as a whole.

Conclusion Expansions and absences of children’s horror

This book set out to establish children’s horror as a small and overlooked but important part of the horror genre, children’s cinema and Hollywood cinema. It has challenged the perceived incompatibility between the generic mode and audience of address of children’s horror by demonstrating that the genre is capable of negotiating issues of classification by adopting the generic conventions, aesthetic strategies and emotional effects of horror and modulating them to meet dominant, adult-constructed expectations of entertainment that is ‘suitable’ for children. As outlined in Chapter 1, children’s horror is a specific category of horror that meets typical conventions of the genre, including the presence of monsters, the evocation of disgust and narrative structures that hinge upon if and how the monstrous presence will be defeated. Crucially, this is presented through the perspectives of independent and resourceful child protagonists. The films simultaneously meet the criteria of ‘child-friendly’ film ratings (G, PG or PG-13) through the exclusion or strategic alleviation of horrific elements that are commonly assumed to distress child viewers, through strategies such as humour or stylized animation. Not all of these supposed alleviating strategies are read as such by certain groups of adult culture, as demonstrated by the critical reception of Coraline’s stop-motion-animated aesthetics as too ‘creepy’ for it to be considered a children’s film. However, as I argued in Chapter 5, this merely evidences the inherently liminal, subversive and overlooked status of children’s horror films that allows them to take advantage of prevailing assumptions about children and the media designed for them to horrific effect. Further to adopting the broad conventions of the horror genre as a whole, children’s horror films also share narrative, thematic and formal similarities with a number of specific horror subgenres, whether the reconfiguration of monstrous and/or uncanny children in Gremlins (Chapter 2) and ParaNorman

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(Chapter 4), the zombie film in the latter, the iconography of classic monster movies in Frankenweenie (Chapter 1) and The Monster Squad (Chapter 3), the slasher and Female Gothic in Coraline (Chapter 5), or the haunted house in Monster House and The Hole (Chapter 6). Together these demonstrate the myriad of ways that children’s horror is able to nimbly reshape pre-existing conventions to fit within accepted conceptions of what children’s cinema looks and sounds like. Regardless of whether actual child viewers are aware of these generic influences and references, the importance is that, as Buckingham (1996: 136) and Buckley (2018: 157) suggest, children’s horror provides a valuable training ground in which children can be introduced to the emotional responses and iconography of horror within a safe context. Moreover, by ‘catching them while they are young’, children’s fandom and genre literacy can be fostered as they age into intrepid, inquisitive and financially independent adults who are important to the continuation of horror and film culture more broadly; a process that is evident from the cult afterlife of The Monster Squad, as discussed in Chapter 3. Children’s horror films therefore stretch and complicate the definitions and boundaries of both children’s cinema and the typically ‘adult’ horror genre and the subgenres within it, while also revealing them to be mutable and codependent in ways not usually acknowledged. This interplay between children’s cinema and the horror genre is also evident in the ways that the historical development of the children’s horror film intersects with, and has played a crucial role in, watershed industrial moments relating to horror and children’s cinema. Ironically, although these shifts were brought about in attempts to shield children from so-called adult culture, they only prompted the children’s horror genre to adapt and develop in ways that took advantage of such changes: first, with the implementation of the MPAA ratings system in 1968, which enabled an industrial and generic split between adult horror and children’s horror, and then with the implementation of a new film rating, PG-13, which was partially brought about by Gremlins and which paved the way for an unruly but short-lived ‘Crazyspace’ of children’s horror cinema, as exemplified by The Monster Squad. As these examples demonstrate, the history of children’s horror has been anything but smooth, beset by backlash and/or critical and commercial failure in its first decade, the 1980s, while even the less troublesome post-millennial entries into the genre, such as ParaNorman and Hotel Transylvania, face debate and anxiety as to their cultural and pedagogic value, quality and legitimacy. As rocky as the history of children’s horror films has been, they are nothing if not resilient; a pack of misunderstood gremlins who challenge authority, break rules and refuse to be permanently defeated. This metaphor gets at the heart of the argument of this book, which is that the best way to understand the children’s horror film as a genre, regardless of variations in form, content and reception, is via the consistent, defining characteristic

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of the horrific child. This concept has until now been associated almost exclusively with the demonic, monstrous, uncanny and victimized children of adult horror films, or the real and imagined children who have been at the centre of moral panics relating to children’s access to horrific media. Here, however, I have claimed this term as something more nuanced, celebratory, and which redirects attention from the fears and desires of adult society to a neglected audience and the films that serve them. I have defined the horrific child as a dual concept that refers to, first, the on-screen construction of child protagonists who encounter the horrific – through interactions with monsters, the monstrosity of their own bodies, and/or engagement with horror media – that in turn addresses an off-screen model viewer who is invited to inhabit a childlike perspective and receive the diverse range of pleasures and emotional responses made available, including fear, disgust, laughter, identification, catharsis and everything in-between. Importantly, these pleasures cannot be definitively identified as either beneficial or harmful, subversive or didactic, or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for children. Rather, much like the construct of the horrific child itself, these pleasures refute the simplistic, binary categorization that is so often applied to children and the media they consume. If there is only one thing I hope has been made clear and unambiguous throughout this book, it is that children’s horror films, and the horrific children who they represent and address, deserve to be granted as much complexity, empathy, celebration, value and rigorous scrutiny as their adult counterparts. Apropos of this final point, there are also several problems and limitations with children’s horror cinema and the horrific children it constructs.

The horrific child at home While this book has focussed on children’s horror films that have been designed for theatrical exhibition, a recurring theme has been that of the home as a location of horror. Within the films themselves, the home is the primary setting, just as likely to be a space capable of and vulnerable to horrific forces as much as a space of sanctuary in which child protagonists engage with horror media. Extra-diegetically, the home is where child audiences engage with children’s horror films in their post-cinematic lives on home media, which is beneficial for films that initially failed to find their audience at the box office. The home is also where non-filmic forms of children’s horror, including television and transmedia franchises like Monster High, have thrived. That the home is a particularly suitable space for the representation, exhibition and viewing of horror for adults is an argument that has been explored at length by television scholars (e.g. Wheatley 2006; Jowett and Abbott 2013), but this may especially be true for child spectators due to the additional freedoms that

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the home affords. By this I mean not simply the freedoms I have addressed in Chapters 3 and 4, such as the ability for children and their guardians to enact more control over their viewing and tailor the experience to a child’s specific tolerances, the allowance for intergenerational spectatorship, or for children to view alone or with peers in private ‘Crazyspaces’ free from adult intervention. What I also mean is the freedom that the domestic viewing context can allow in terms of broadening the definition of children’s horror, and by extension the possibilities this opens up for further applications and interpretations of the horrific child. One of these ways is the expansion of the parameters of children’s horror to include ‘films children see regardless of whether or not they are children’s films’ (Wojcik-Andrews 2000: 19). This includes horror films children would be restricted from seeing in the cinema due to their rating, but which can be accessed on home media where such restrictions are more easily evaded. This evasion has been framed as negative within moral panic discourse surrounding children and horror; but it is also possible for this to be a positive experience. A Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven 1984), The Exorcist, Alien, Child’s Play, Hellraiser (Barker 1987) and The Silence of the Lambs (Demme 1991) are horror films originally conceived for adult audiences that child respondents in empirical and audience studies claim to have viewed within a domestic viewing context (Buckingham 1996; Lemish and Alon-Tirosh 2014; Barker et al. 2016; Smith 2019). Teen horror films like The Lost Boys, which was originally conceived as a children’s horror film (Antunes 2020: 70), also have an obvious potential to resonate with a child audience, not to mention the recent proliferation of nostalgic horror texts, namely It (Muschietti 2017), and Stranger Things, that are primarily geared towards adults but take inspiration from 1980s children’s horror. The potential for these texts to resonate with actual children is alluded to within children’s horror films, where the types of horror media that the child protagonists are shown engaging with in their homes are those that are typically considered for older viewers. While I do not wish to ignore the possibility that some children could be distressed by watching such films, I want to emphasize the pleasures that they might provide (within the right viewing contexts) and which overlap with the experiences offered by children’s horror films. In the context of this study, this raises the question of whether horror films intended for adults – but which are accessed, watched and enjoyed by children – can also be read as offering a horrific child viewing perspective, and thus to what extent they expand and complicate the boundaries and definition of children’s horror cinema. I will leave this question open for the time being, apart from suggesting that these films’ status as forbidden objects allows room for a form of horrific child spectatorship that is even more transgressive, unruly and pleasurable than is possible within traditional conceptions of children’s (horror) cinema.

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The absent children of children’s horror Broadening the parameters of children’s horror to better reflect the viewing practices and contexts of child audiences also allows the genre to better reflect the demographic make-up of that audience in terms of gender, sexuality, disability, class and race. Elsewhere in this book I have described the horrific children discussed as implicitly cis-heterosexual and non-disabled by virtue of the fact that their sexuality or (dis)ability is rarely disclosed, though it is important to acknowledge that this assumption plays into the problematic notion of what Robert McRuer (2006) calls ‘compulsory’ or ‘invisible’ heterosexuality and ablebodiedness as the assumed default unless explicitly stated otherwise. Aside from the fact that many of the horrific children discussed in this book could be queer or disabled simply by virtue of the fact that it is never made clear either way, it is also possible to read some characters as such through supernatural metaphor. Norman’s sixth sense in ParaNorman, for example, can easily be read as a form of neurodiversity. The film’s overall resistance to normative ideology also opens it up to queer readings of characters beyond the openly gay Mitch.1 The representation – overt or otherwise – of non-normative identities in children’s horror and how these intersect with the horrific child concept is an area requiring further scholarly attention, especially given the generic context of horror cinema in which representations of disability and queerness have a complex history of being villainized and pathologized. In relation to race, however, the absences of representation are less ambiguous on account of the overwhelming whiteness of children’s horror films. On the rare occasions that children of colour do appear, they are supporting characters to a white protagonist such as Coraline’s Wybie or ParaNorman’s Salma (Hannah Noyes). This is where broadening the scope of what we call ‘children’s horror’ to include horror films that are addressed to adults, but may be viewed by children clandestinely in the home, is especially useful. In adult horror there are examples of films that centre the perspectives of children of colour, such as The People Under the Stairs (Craven 1991) and The Girl with All the Gifts (McCarthy 2016). However, these examples remain few and far between (and one of them British), and their existence does not negate or excuse the fact that officially sanctioned horror films for children in US cinema present a very narrow conception of the ‘horrific child’ experience. Children’s horror films are already a marginalized category of film for a marginalized audience, yet they fail to represent children in society who are most in need of the representation, empathy and catharsis that the genre can provide. The racial blindspot of children’s horror is especially glaring if we examine it in relation to one specific trope of the genre: the ineffectual police officer. Time and

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time again children’s horror films present the police as a prime example of why children cannot rely on adult authority figures. The two police officers in Monster House stand out as the most egregious representation of this trope as arrogant buffoons whose incompetence and posturing aggravates the house and gets them eaten. This representation is effective at achieving a narrative and thematic goal to empower the children and subvert audience expectations of what police are ‘supposed’ to do: protect. But this presents a narrow conception of law enforcement through a privileged, white gaze. For Black audiences, who suffer from police brutality and systemic racism at a disproportionate rate, the inability to trust the police poses a deeper resonance. The idea of police officers who barge in where they are not needed and escalate a situation may come across not as comic relief that empowers, but as yet another source of horror that is all too close to lived experience. How would these interactions with police play out differently if any of the child characters were not white, if they did not occur in affluent, white-populated suburbs, or if children’s horror films were made by and about anyone outside of the exclusive boys’ club to whom they currently belong? A stark example of what this could look like is Attack the Block (Cornish 2011), a British science-fiction-horror film about a group of working-class, majority Black teenagers who must defend their urban council estate from an alien invasion. In this film the police function similarly to those in US children’s horror – to assert the agency and responsibility of the youth characters – but they are presented as a faceless, homogenous group with no characterization, presented not as comic relief but as an enemy on par with the aliens. The film ends with the Black hero, Moses (John Boyega), killing the aliens, but his success is undermined when he is arrested and blamed for the destruction left in their wake. Compare this with the white, suburban horrific children of The Monster Squad boasting about their similar achievement to the US Army, who look on with befuddlement. Moses, however, is seen by the authorities as automatically ‘horrific’ due to his race and class alone, and is punished for it rather than rewarded or celebrated. ‘Black history is Black horror’ (emphasis in original), argues Tananarive Due in the documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Burgin 2019). It is possible that to represent the discrepancy in the treatment of Black children might be considered too real, too horrific, for representation in mainstream children’s films. We live in a reality where Black children are routinely criminalized or killed for infractions that in white children would be shrugged off as ordinary childish behaviour – a tantrum at school, selling home-made lemonade or playing with a toy gun, the latter for which twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by police in 2014. Yet Due’s statement attests to the need, desire and potential catharsis of representing Black experiences through the horror genre. Indeed, despite Attack the Block’s representation of the injustices facing Black, working-class youth, the film’s ending feels more triumphant than any children’s horror film due to the final shot’s acknowledgement of how rare and special its representation of Moses is.

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Within the police van, a medium-close-up shows Moses looking demoralized until he realizes he can hear his peers outside chanting his name, protesting his arrest and recognizing his heroism. He breaks into a genuine smile for the first time in the film – perhaps the first time he has really felt seen and appreciated in his whole life, mirroring an under-represented audience – and on this powerful image the film cuts to black. Attack the Block, although written and directed by a white man, is an example of how horror can allow Black viewers a cathartic outlet in which to process anxiety and provide opportunities to ‘empathize and bear witness to something other than whiteness’ (Dianca London Potts in Blackwell 2020). It is high time that horror films made specifically for children expanded their capacity for empathy, representation and address of the horrific child in the same way. It is in this regard that the 2020 adaptation of The Witches, released just in time for inclusion here, is very welcome. Although also directed by a white man, it is co-written by Kenya Barris, casts the child protagonist and his grandmother (Octavia Spencer) as African Americans, and shifts the setting from 1980s England to civil-rights-era 1960s Alabama. The racial implications of this setting are alluded to in the way the witches target ‘the poor, the overlooked, the kids they think nobody’s gonna make a fuss about if they go missing’, as explained by the grandmother, leading to her decision to flee to a luxury hotel full of rich, white people where she – somewhat ironically – believes her grandson will be safe. As in the novel and 1990 film, however, it is at the hotel where they encounter the witches, who have gathered there for a conference. The 2020 film’s changes to the story’s setting and the racial identity of its protagonists makes this space doubly threatening to the unnamed child hero, who in addition to being hunted by the witches – a racially diverse group, but led by a white woman of ambiguous European origin – is also the target of suspicion and patronizing microaggressions from the white hotel manager (Stanley Tucci). For some Black American film critics The Witches was a disappointment, finding the film’s engagement with the racial implications of its setting to be shallow at best.2 The film’s ending – in which the boy remains stuck in mouse form, faithful to the original novel – also raises the troubling implication that it is preferable to have a short-lived existence as a mouse than a full life as a Black child in America. While The Witches, therefore, falls short of being a radical ‘Get Out for children’, which more overtly and successfully addresses the racial politics of body-snatching, the very fact of The Witches’ existence makes it an overdue addition to the canon of children’s horror films that challenges the genre’s privileging of whiteness.3 A further absence within children’s horror is the off-screen exclusion of children from the production and critical reception of these films. This problem extends to mainstream children’s media of all genres and forms, given that children are one of the few remaining socially marginalized groups for whom it remains broadly acceptable that the media made for and about them is written, directed and

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judged by a more powerful group – adults – including the scholars who write about them. Echoing Rose’s famous proclamation that children’s fiction is ‘impossible’ (1984), Ewan Kirkland explains that, consequently, ‘the childhood reflected in the texts [adults] produce, irrespective of their success with child audiences, originates from an adult’s perspective’, albeit a perspective of someone who was once a child (2017: 15). This is evident from an instance of adult-constructed child authorship in the diegesis of Frankenweenie, in which Victor produces his own amateur monster movies starring his dog Sparky. These films-within-afilm are inscribed with markers meant to identify them as the works of a child, such as the use of toys and household objects as props, clumsily constructed cardboard sets and handwritten title cards. But they are nevertheless adultimagined depictions of what child-authored horror films might look like, based upon Burton’s own childhood memories and where any authenticity is refracted and distorted through multiple layers of nostalgia: that of Victor for the deceased Sparky, of Burton for his childhood, past horror films and obsolete technology (small-gauge film), and the fact that Frankenweenie is a remake of a short film Burton made as a fledging director, mirroring Victor’s resurrection of Sparky in the film (Wąsik 2017). Thus while the semi-autobiographical Frankenweenie tells us a great deal about Burton, it tells us little about what children’s horror and its horrific children look like when they are involved in its authorship and production. However, there are real examples of horror films produced by children. To find these we must once again expand the parameters of children’s horror that I have drawn in this book to look beyond mainstream US cinema, and to encompass contexts where child authorship has been actively encouraged and enabled: noncommercial, independent and amateur filmmaking. In her work on media made by teenaged girls, Mary Celeste Kearney notes that these spaces have generally been more welcoming to aspiring female directors than the commercial film industry (2006: 196). This sentiment can be extended to children of any gender, another marginalized audience for whom developments in technology and non-commercial funding initiatives have helped increase access to filmmaking outside of adult-authored commercial children’s cinema. This has resulted in some notable examples of horror films made by, for and about children: those of the Children’s Film Unit (CFU), a British charitable organization, and Pathogen (2006), the ultra-low-budget debut feature of US-based writer–director Emily Hagins, which began production when she was twelve and released when she was fourteen. These films both challenge and confirm some of the findings of this book, while also highlighting the complexities and contradictions of child authorship. The now-defunct CFU was founded in 1981 by schoolteacher Colin Finbow to offer children between the ages of ten and sixteen the opportunity to take part in the production of feature-length films beyond children’s typical roles as on-screen performers. According to Brown, the CFU films were screened theatrically in art-

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house cinemas and children’s film festivals, though it seems likely that most child viewers would have encountered the films at home via their televised broadcast on Channel 4, which also provided funding (2017: 214). Once again, this alludes to the importance of the home as a space for children’s engagement with horror. CFU films represent a diverse array of genres, but several of them fall within the camp of horror: Daemon (Finbow 1985), Under the Bed (Finbow 1988) and Emily’s Ghost (Finbow 1992). Daemon is notable for its handling of subject matter that is rarely seen in children’s media. It is a demonic possession film, a subgenre not explored in other children’s horror films, and it uses this theme to provide a frank examination of child depression and mental health. In other ways, however, the CFU horror films conform to the generic attributes of mainstream, adult-made children’s horror films and their representation of horrific children. These films privilege the perspectives of children, sideline adult characters and depict them as evil, misguided or ignorant, and present horror that arises chiefly from supernatural origins and is safely dispatched by the children by the end of the film. Brown notes that Daemon deviates from other CFU films due to its acknowledgement that children’s culture goes far beyond texts made specifically for children, with children in the film nonchalantly referencing adult horror films and pornography (or what they call ‘sex videos’) (2017: 215–16). This may make Daemon unusual as a CFU film, but it fits right in with children’s horror films like ParaNorman where the child characters have similarly diverse and ‘adult’ tastes. CFU films thus provide some insight to the extent to which the address of horror to child viewers differs when children take a key role in its production. However, due to the nature of CFU being an adult-led initiative and credit for the films’ writing and direction going to adults (mostly Finbow), it is impossible to gauge the extent to which these can be considered child-authored horror films (Brown 2017: 217). A perhaps more instructive – but no less complicated – example of child authorship is provided by the case of Emily Hagins and her self-funded zombie film Pathogen, for which Hagins is credited as director, writer, editor, cinematographer and producer. While she did receive significant assistance from her mother Megan, neither Emily nor Megan had pre-existing filmmaking skills or contacts – both of which Finbow provided the CFU – and this difference in experience and resources is evident on-screen, where the CFU films conform to expected standards of film language, continuity and quality where Pathogen does not. Like the CFU’s Daemon, however, Pathogen challenges the norms of adult-produced children’s horror films, most notably in its inclusion of gore, body horror and violence such as child characters stabbing and beheading zombies, or being disembowelled and feasted upon by zombies, most of whom are other children. The effect of this content is arguably mitigated by the film’s mode of production, amateur aesthetic and shoestring budget, but it is doubtful that such child-on-child bloody violence would ever be considered acceptable in a commercially produced children’s film. The film also bucks the trend for

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happy or resolved endings in children’s horror films by concluding with its last surviving character, Dannie (Rose Kent-McGlew), disappearing into a hoard of zombies with her imminent death heavily implied. In this way Pathogen has more in common with Night of the Living Dead than ParaNorman, which indicates that when authoring their own texts, children express desires and tastes that are not met by adult-created forms of children’s horror culture. The case of Pathogen is also instructive in relation to the concept of the horrific child, in terms of both its on-screen and off-screen representation. Hagins is the only female director of children’s horror represented in this book, and this perspective comes through on-screen where the horrific child protagonist is a girl, the most competent adult character is a female scientist and even the supporting child roles collectively show far greater gender parity than any other children’s horror film. But it is Hagins herself who is Pathogen’s most interesting horrific child. She sits alongside the predominantly male horrific children discussed in this book in that she is a child who actively engages in horrific pursuits, not just through her filmmaking but also in her viewing habits. As revealed in Zombie Girl: The Movie (Johnson, Marshall and Mauck 2009), which documented the production of Pathogen, Hagins is an ardent fan of horror and cites adult films like The Shining as influences, which she watched under the supervision of her parents. Interestingly, she does not cite any children’s culture as an influence, which may suggest that children’s horror films are failing to reach or satisfy their audience and further evidences the need to broaden the definition of children’s horror to encompass adult texts viewed in the home. In the documentary Hagins also shows a wry self-awareness of how reactionary adult culture may see her, clarifying ‘I’m not a psycho-killer teenager because I made a zombie movie . . . I don’t wanna kill anybody’. Hagins thus joins horrific children like Victor, Norman and Sean as a horrific child who actively engages with the horrific within a safe and informed context that destabilizes the regressive binary categorization of children and their place within horror culture. However, the fact of Zombie Girl’s existence is a complicating factor that frames Hagins through an adult gaze. Directed by three adult men, the documentary positions her as an object of fascination for adult consumption on account of her intersectional status as a child and a girl who likes horror. This is an identity the film knowingly capitalizes on through its title and poster, the latter of which shows an illustration of Hagins with blood dripping from her mouth that aligns with the representation of children as threats in adult horror more than it does their empathetic portrayal in children’s horror. This ‘othered’ presentation extends to the film itself, which often privileges the perspective of Megan as she struggles to source the finances, energy and patience to satisfy her daughter’s creative vision, framing Megan as a sympathetic victim of a demanding child. On the other hand, Zombie Girl amplifies Hagins’s voice and visibility, allowing intimate insight into her thought processes and perspective as a horrific child

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filmmaker. It also provides a platform to make her work more widely known (and indeed, it is precisely the reason I became aware of Hagins).4 While Zombie Girl screened at numerous film festivals, Pathogen did not, and while Zombie Girl has been released online and on physical media, the only way to legally view Pathogen is as an extra feature on the Zombie Girl DVD. This positions Pathogen as a curio, a secondary paratext of a more ‘legitimate’ adult-produced work, rather than an object of art in its own right. Since this book first went to press, Pathogen has been released as a limited edition Blu-ray by cult label Vinegar Syndrome. In an inversion of the prior DVD release, Zombie Girl: The Movie is included as an extra feature. Nevertheless, Zombie Girl is just as valuable an object of study as Pathogen for the insight it provides into the creative visions and desires of children when it comes to the horrific, as a rare representation and promotion of the work of a young female horror director, and further evidence of the tensions, difficulties and complications facing the relationship between horror and children, whether as characters, spectators or filmmakers. Regardless of any ‘impossibilities’ these films reveal with regards to the issue of child authorship, both Pathogen and Zombie Girl testify to the usefulness of the horrific child concept as a method for understanding this relationship as it continues to develop in the cinema, at home and beyond.

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Introduction 1 ‘Video Nasty’ generally refers to the UK context where these concerns were most prominent. In the US context the term ‘VCR horrors’ was employed by a 1987 episode of investigative journalism programme 20/20 (ABC 1978–present). For scholarly analysis of the Video Nasties scandal, see Martin Barker (1984), Julian Petley (1984) and Kate Egan (2007). The documentary Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (West 2010) also provides an informative overview of the British context. 2 See the work of Sarah Cleary (2016) for a detailed analysis of these and other key historical moments relating to the regulation and restriction of horror in the interest of protecting children. 3 For example, Wertham is proven to have falsified or misrepresented much of the data that he used to form his argument (Tilley 2012). 4 Similar self-censorship strategies by children are identified in Martin I. Smith’s audience study of The Exorcist (2019: 141–4.) 5 Allegations of Bettelheim’s abusive treatment of children are detailed in his biography by Richard Pollak (1998). For criticisms of Bettelheim’s arguments, see James W. Heisig (1977), Jack Zipes ([1979] 2002) and Kay F. Stone (1985). 6 For further scholarship that draws links between fairy tales and the horror genre, see Walter Rankin (2007), Mikel Koven (2008), Sue Short (2006) and Finn Ballard (2008). 7 This list includes only scholarship that address children’s horror as a generic category, but there are also valuable works that address specific films for reasons tangential to their genre or audience, such as aesthetics (Higgins 2012; Newton 2015; Weetch 2016) or representational politics (Bird 1998; Mallan 2000; Takolander 2011). This overview does not include works relating mainly to children’s horror literature. 8 This work continues with emerging scholars who are currently carrying out doctoral research on children’s horror media. Those of whom I am aware include Victoria Mullins at the University of Cambridge and Jay Bamber at the University of Roehampton. 9 Perry Nodelman, for example, proposes the notion of a ‘hidden adult’ within all children’s fiction (2008). 10 This aligns with the method of R. C. Neighbors and Sandy Rankin, who identify what they call ‘media intended for child consumption’ through their form, content,

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age classifications and marketing (2011: 8). Similarly, Brown lists five ‘non-textual’ identifiers of a film’s intended audience: marketing and distribution strategies, age rating, critical response, merchandising and television broadcast strategies (2012: 6–7). 11 See, for example, Cary Bazalgette and Terry Staples (1995), Robert C. Allen (1999) and Brown (2012). 12 By excluding ‘adult’ horror films about children and ‘child-friendly’ horror films about adult characters I work from a narrower definition of children’s horror than those offered by Bentley (2002), Davis (2011) and Antunes (2020). 13 For example, the Internet Movie Database generically categorizes Coraline as animation, drama, fantasy, thriller and family (no such label as ‘children’s’ exists on the website) (IMDb 2020).

Chapter 1 1 Other children’s media that rework the Frankenstein story include the television series Frankenstein’s Cat (2008), Igor (Leondis 2008) and the Hotel Transylvania films. 2 The MPAA ratings began as G (General audiences), M (Mature audiences; parental discretion advised), R (Restricted to those over seventeen years of age only, unless accompanied by an adult) and X (restricted only to those over seventeen years of age). M later changed to PG (Parental Guidance) and X changed to NC-17, as the ‘X’ label had gained connotations with pornography. PG-13 was introduced in 1984, which is situated between PG and R. 3 See Antunes (2020: 25–43) for a more detailed account and examination of the production background of The Watcher in the Woods. 4 Russell’s ‘objectivist’ approach is similar to Rick Altman’s (1984) semantic/syntactic approach to genre, where ‘semantic’ identifiers are certain motifs, character types or iconography, which generate meaning through their ‘syntactic’ relations to each other. While this is a useful method for identifying genre, I find Russell’s approach more useful in relation to horror because of its consideration of emotion. 5 The equivalent BBFC ratings are U in place of the MPAA’s G, PG remaining the same and 12A in the place of PG-13. While a child of any age may see a PG-13rated film unaccompanied, the 12A indicates that a child under the age of twelve may see a film only if accompanied by an adult. 6 The relative lack of transparency behind the MPAA’s decisions is a highly controversial topic that has been widely criticized in the press (e.g. Buckwalter 2013) and by many filmmakers. The criticisms of some of these filmmakers, as well as further details of the issue, are represented in the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Dick 2006). 7 Susanne Ylönen (2018) has also noted that the frightening potential of zombies is mitigated through emphasis on their clumsiness in her work on children’s horror picture books. 8 The unreliability, ignorance and/or unavailability of adult characters in children’s horror is also pointed out by Christina Mitchel Bentley (2002: 22–4), Davis (2011: 5) and Hawley (2016).

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9 In a move that is perhaps a direct response to the negative feedback to the 1990 film, the 2020 adaptation of The Witches more faithfully recreates the book’s ending in which the boy remains a mouse. 10 For an alternate perspective on The Nightmare Before Christmas’ impact on children’s horror, see Antunes’s detailed account of the film’s production and reception history (2020: 99–106). Antunes sees the film not as evidence of a broader cultural acceptance of children’s horror or a shift in Disney’s view of horror, but rather that Nightmare could only be accepted due to the careful distancing of the film from horror through marketing and branding.

Chapter 2 1 See Renner (2013), Lennard (2014), Bohlmann and Moreland (2015), Scahill (2015), Bacon and Ruickbie (2016) and Kord (2016). 2 I have been unable to confirm when, exactly, these advertisements aired on US television, and therefore how much they would have influenced the public’s perception of the film. However, it can be gleaned from contemporaneous news coverage that the Hardee’s advertising campaign began in June of 1984, coinciding with the film’s release (Dougherty 1984), and that there was public awareness of the Gremlins cereal as early as May (Smith 1984). 3 See Antunes (2020: 59–60) for an overview of more critical responses to Gremlins. 4 Should there be any doubt about the popular perception of the gremlins as the film’s antagonists, an excellent illustration of this is provided by The LEGO Batman Movie (McKay 2017). In the film, a range of iconic popular culture villains (represented in LEGO form) are banished to a realm called the Phantom Zone. The gremlins are shown in the Phantom Zone along with other famous antagonists such as Count Dracula, Lord Voldemort and the Wicked Witch of the West. 5 To name but a few, the gremlins have been read as representing derogatory stereotypes of the homeless (Rosenbaum 1988: 37), indigenous Americans (Rosenbaum 1988: 37), African Americans (Rosenbaum 1988: 37; Turner 1994: 150–2; Dear White People [Simien 2014]) and both Jews and Nazis (Olivier 2020: 40). This is not to mention the problematic Orientalist portrayal of Gizmo as a mysterious, dangerous creature from unknown Eastern origin, and who Randall purchases from a character who is a derogatory Chinese stereotype. 6 This theme continues in the sequel, in which Gizmo models himself after Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) to defend himself against a new batch of gremlins after having seen part of Rambo: First Blood Part II (Cosmatos 1985) on television earlier in the film.

Chapter 3 1 ‘Stranger danger’ also intersected with the emergent ‘Satanic Panic’ during this decade, which is more narrowly defined as societal anxiety about children being abducted and abused as part of an occult ritual. Concurrent with this were also

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concerns about ‘Halloween Sadism’, which was feared to involve children’s Halloween candy being poisoned or otherwise tampered with by strangers in order to bring trick-or-treating children to harm. As with stranger danger, however, fears of these phenomena were mostly overreactions to sensationalized incidents or unsubstantiated rumours. For more, see Joel Best (1990), Phillip Jenkins (1998) and Nicholas Rogers (2002). 2 This can be seen in a range of children’s films, horror films and children’s horror films from this era, including Something Wicked This Way Comes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Labyrinth (Henson 1986), The Witches, Hook (Spielberg 1991), Hocus Pocus and the two-part television film Stephen King’s It (1990). 3 This is a motif shared with contemporaneous slashers that feature fathers who are also police officers and fail to adequately protect their teenaged daughters from serial killers: Sheriff Brackett (Charles Cyphers) in Halloween and Lieutenant Thompson (John Saxon) in A Nightmare on Elm Street. The overlaps between teen slashers and children’s horror films are further elucidated in Chapter 5. Ineffectual police officers also feature elsewhere in children’s horror, notably Monster House and Gremlins. 4 Other sympathetic elderly characters in children’s horror films include the grandmother in The Witches, the ghost of Norman’s grandmother in ParaNorman, Mrs Aylwood (Bette Davis) in The Watcher in the Woods, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible in Coraline, Mr Nebbercracker in Monster House and Creepy Carl (Bruce Dern) in The Hole. 5 This is indeed what happened in the case of The Monster Squad, as many now-adult fans credit the film for having introduced them to the horror genre as children (Lussier 2012). 6 Buckley develops the ‘sophisticated naïve’ viewer from Dan Harries’s work on film parody (2000: 110).

Chapter 4 1 See Lee Edelman (2004) for discussion and criticism of this symbolic role of the child. 2 Neither Balanzategui, Leslie-McCarthy nor Spooner centralize 9/11, the War on Terror or any other significant traumatic events of the new millennium in their arguments, nor do I wish to do so here. However, I acknowledge these as a part of the environment of anxiety and fear that is often read as characterizing the early 2000s. Aside from uncanny child films, these events can be read as impacting the emergence of new horror subgenres, such as torture porn. Kevin J. Wetmore describes post-9/11 horror as imbued with ‘nihilism, despair, random violence and death’ (2012: 3), thus making this generic shift relevant to my discussion only insofar as it is as distanced from associations with childhood and ‘child-friendliness’ as possible, similar to the split between children’s and adult horror after 1968 (see Chapter 1). 3 It should be acknowledged that ParaNorman displays a self-reflexive nostalgia through its numerous intertextual references and allusions to older, adult horror films, especially slasher and zombie films of the 1970s and 1980s. I concede that this could result in a mode of double address that splits child and adult viewers given the likelihood that children may not understand these references. However, I defer

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to Buckley’s excellent reading of ParaNorman as constructing one intergenerational mode of address known as the ‘sophisticated naïve’ viewer, which is explained in Chapter 3 (2018: 165). 4 ‘Keep Portland Weird’ is a popular slogan used on merchandise such as bumper stickers and keyrings (see www​.keepportlandweird​.com); and this reputation is lovingly lampooned in the sketch comedy series Portlandia (2011–18). 5 At the time of writing, cinema trips are also either impossible or extremely risky due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which has necessitated that cinemas close outright or adopt strict safety measures to reduce the risk of transmission. This adds an entirely new dimension to the idea of the cinema as an unsafe space for children.

Chapter 5 1 For such analyses of the novel, see Coats (2008), Richard Gooding (2008), Nick Midgely (2008) and David Rudd (2008). A useful overview and critical analysis of these works is provided by Buckley (2018). For psychoanalytic readings of the film, see Peter Gutierrez (2009), Benson-Allot (2011) and Renee J. Cox (2014). 2 The film was widely released in both 2D and 3D formats in cinemas and on DVD/ Blu-ray. My analysis refers to the 2D format of the film unless specified otherwise, where referring to its 3D aesthetics is particularly illuminating to the argument. 3 These, of course, follow in the footsteps of earlier uses of stop-motion to present the horrific but which are outside of the parameters of this book, namely the liveaction-animated hybrids of Ray Harryhausen and Jan Švankmajer. 4 While Dika’s label ‘stalker’ is arguably the more appropriate term to use in reference to children’s horror films given their exclusion of violence, I continue to employ ‘slasher’ as the more commonly used term within scholarly and popular discourse. 5 Bentley (2002) briefly analyses The Watcher in the Woods with regards to its gendered use of the gaze, though she is concerned only with the thematic significance of female looking rather than with the gender politics of the film’s employment of the slasher’s aesthetic strategies and the extent to which this calls into question the film’s status as a children’s film. 6 See, for example, Coats (2008), Michael Howarth (2014a) and Buckley (2018), all of which discuss Coraline in monographs or collections about Gothic children’s literature. 7 These debates originate with attempts to differentiate between the fearful emotions of ‘terror’ and ‘horror’ within Gothic literature (Radcliffe 1826). These debates are ongoing, and have been recently explored at the second Gothic Feminism conference, ‘Women-in-Peril or Final Girls: Representing Women in Gothic and Horror Cinema’, at the University of Kent in 2017 and the fifteenth conference of the International Gothic Association, ‘Gothic Terror, Gothic Horror’, at Lewis University, Illinois, in 2019. 8 My use of the label ‘Female Gothic’ should be understood as referring to a group of 1940s Hollywood films that have been known by a variety of labels including but not limited to the Gothic romance (Waldman 1984), the paranoid woman’s film (Doane 1987) and the quality woman’s horror film (Jancovich 2007: 10).

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9 Clover’s ‘Final Girl’ has also been expanded, redefined and applied to a number of other genres (see Paszkiewicz and Rusnak, eds 2020), but its overlap with the Female Gothic heroine remains unaddressed. 10 These overlaps can also be seen in more recent films such as Crimson Peak (del Toro 2015) and The Invisible Man (Whannell 2020). 11 Where female child characters feature prominently in children’s horror films, they tend to be part of an ensemble, often vastly outnumbered by male characters whose narratives are foregrounded, for example The Hole, Monster House, The Monster Squad, Hocus Pocus, all three Hotel Transylvania films and Goosebumps. Along with Coraline, an exception to this is The Watcher in the Woods.

Chapter 6 1 In addition to the case studies of this chapter, a non-exhaustive list of children’s horror films which privilege the narratives of male children includes Something Wicked This Way Comes, Gremlins, The Gate, The Monster Squad, Little Monsters, The Witches, Hocus Pocus, The Little Vampire, ParaNorman, Frankenweenie, Goosebumps and The House with a Clock in Its Walls. 2 Other examples of this trope in children’s horror include The Watcher in the Woods, Little Monsters, Hocus Pocus, The Little Vampire, Coraline, Goosebumps and The House with a Clock in Its Walls. 3 The sexism of Campbell’s model has been well documented and criticized. See, for example, Margery Hourihan (1997). 4 This equation of masculinity and fatherhood with emotional distance is also made in The Hole, but as I discuss in the next section of this chapter The Hole articulates a very clear critique of this element of toxic masculinity. 5 It is illuminating to recall C. S. Lewis’s suggestion that ‘[t]o be concerned about being grown up . . . to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood. . . . When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness’ ([1966] 1994: 25). 6 See Michael Howarth (2014b) for an analysis of the thematic importance of toys in Monster House. 7 See Anne-Marie Bird (1998) and Catherine Lester (2016c) for detailed readings of the misogynistic presentation of witch characters in The Witches (1990) and Hocus Pocus and how this relates to the maturity and masculinity of the male child protagonists. 8 The strategy of framing child characters as a family unit, where the two more mature children stand in as parents to a younger or less mature character, occurs in a number of other children’s horror films as a way of reinforcing a male protagonist’s newfound manhood. At the end of the climactic battle in Monster House, for example, DJ and Jenny are framed as a couple and Chowder, who has not experienced DJ’s arc of maturity, as their child. Other children’s horror films in which this dynamic is occurs include Gremlins, Hocus Pocus and Goosebumps. 9 That Dane’s rejection of his father mirrors the feminine narratives of fairy tales and the Female Gothic is particularly apt to the film’s criticism of toxic masculinity.

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10 Earlier in the film Dane is shown drawing pictures of the nightmarish space inside of the hole, further indicating its status as an image from within his own mind. 11 Weetch does acknowledge in a footnote that the sequences in which the secondary characters Lucas and Julie defeat their fears are ‘visually associated with mise-enscène that connotes an upward trajectory’, but does not apply this same pattern of meaning to Dane (2016: 96; emphasis in original). 12 It is also worth acknowledging the fantasy films A Monster Calls (Bayona 2016) and I Kill Giants (Walter 2017), with which The Hole and The Babadook share thematic concerns. In these films, child protagonists encounter monstrous creatures that function as metaphors for the child’s feelings of grief and anger about the impending death of their terminally ill parent. 13 Steven Allen interprets Constance’s narrative as revealing ‘the potential terrors of marriage’, as it subverts ‘a nostalgic view of gender roles, whereby there is a safety in returning the liberated woman to the home’ (2010: 99). Although it is tempting to accept this more forgiving reading of the film, I do not believe Monster House justifies this precisely because its sympathies clearly lie less with Constance than with Nebbercracker and the child protagonists who violently destroy her.

Conclusion 1 See Derritt Mason (forthcoming) for such a reading. 2 See, for example, Hopson (2020) and DoubleToasted​.c​om’s ‘THE WITCHES (2020) – Audio Review’ (2020). 3 The Covid-19 pandemic necessitated The Witches to be released directly to videoon-demand rather than cinemas as originally planned. Concurrent to this, Netflix released two direct-to-streaming children’s horror films about Black protagonists: Vampires vs. the Bronx (Rodriguez 2020) and A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting (Talalay 2020). This group of Black-centric children’s horror films that premiered on home-viewing platforms further suggests that the home may be the more appropriate and, perhaps, progressive space for children’s horror. Needless to say, the continual blurring of the line between film and television – further exacerbated by Covid-19 – and what this means for children’s horror is an issue warranting further attention that I do not have the space to do justice to here. 4 With thanks to the students on the 2018 cohort of the Horror and the Gothic module at the University of Warwick for introducing me to Zombie Girl in the first place. On the subject of visibility, I am aware that there are likely numerous examples of amateur child-made horror films in the world that are less easily accessible to adult scholars on account of their status as marginal texts and lack of distribution, beyond video-sharing platforms like YouTube and social media. Employing Messenger Davies’s term once more, we might characterize these as existing within digital ‘Crazyspaces’ at the fringes of the adult world.

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Films The Addams Family (1991), Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld, USA: Orion Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Scott Rudin Productions. The Addams Family (2019), Dir. Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon, Canada/USA: MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. The Addams Family Values (1993), Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld, USA: Orion Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Scott Rudin Productions. Alice in Wonderland (2010), Dir. Tim Burton, USA/UK: Walt Disney Pictures. Alien (1979), Dir. Ridley Scott, USA/UK: Brandywine Productions and Twentieth CenturyFox. Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein (1999), Dir. Kathi Castillo, USA: Universal Cartoon Studios. The Amityville Horror (1979), Dir. Stuart Rosenberg, USA: American International Pictures. Attack the Block (2011), Dir. Joe Cornish, UK: StudioCanal. Avatar (2009), Dir. James Cameron, UK/USA: Twentieth Century Fox. The Babadook (2014), Dir. Jennifer Kent, Australia/Canada: Causeway Films. A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting (2020), Dir. Rachel Talalay, USA: Netflix. Beetlejuice (1988), Dir. Tim Burton, USA: The Geffen Company. The Black Hole (1979), Dir. Gary Nelson, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Blue Velvet (1986), Dir. David Lynch, USA: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group. Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Dir. James Whale, USA: Universal Pictures. Carrie (1976), Dir. Brian De Palma, USA: Red Bank Films. Casablanca (1942), Dir. Michael Curtiz, USA: Warner Bros. Casper (1995), Dir. Brad Silberling, USA: Amblin Entertainment. Child’s Play (1988), Dir. Tom Holland, USA: United Artists. Child’s Play 3 (1991), Dir. Jack Bender, UK/USA: Universal Pictures. Coraline (2009), Dir. Henry Selick, USA: Focus Features and Laika Entertainment. Corpse Bride (2005), Dir. Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, UK/USA: Warner Bros. Crimson Peak (2015), Dir. Guillermo del Toro, Canada/UK/Mexico: Double Dare You. Critters (1986), Dir. Stephen Herek, USA: New Line Cinema. Daemon (1985), Dir. Colin Finbow, UK: Children’s Film Unit. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (1920), Dir. Robert Wiene, Germany: Decla Film-Gesellschaft – Berlin. Dawn of the Dead (1978), Dir. George A. Romero, USA/Italy: Dawn Associates and Laurel Group.

208

Works Cited

Dear White People (2014), Dir. Justin Simien, USA: Code Red. Don’t Breathe (2016), Dir. Fede Alvarez, USA/Hungary: Screen Gems. Dracula (1931), Dir. Tod Browning, USA: Universal Pictures. Dragonslayer (1981), Dir. Matthew Robins, USA/UK: Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions. Edward Scissorhands (1990), Dir. Tim Burton, USA: Twentieth Century Fox. El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (1973), Dir. Víctor Erice, Spain: Elías Querejeta Producciones Cinematográficas S.L. Emily’s Ghost (1992), Dir. Colin Finbow, UK: Children’s Film Unit. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Universal Pictures. The Exorcist (1973), Dir. William Friedkin, USA: Warner Bros. Explorers (1985), Dir. Joe Dante, USA: Paramount Pictures. Frankenstein (1931), Dir. James Whale, USA: Universal Pictures Corp. Frankenweenie (1984), Dir. Tim Burton, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Frankenweenie (2012), Dir. Tim Burton, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Friday the 13th (1980), Dir. Sean S. Cunningham, USA: Paramount Pictures. Fright Night (1985), Dir. Tom Holland, USA: Columbia Pictures. The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987), Dir. Rod Amateau, USA: Atlantic Entertainment Group and Topps Chewing Gum. Gaslight (1944), Dir. George Cukor, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Gate (1987), Dir. Tibor Takács, USA/Canada: New Century Entertainment Corporation. The Gate II: Trespassers (1990), Dir. Tibor Takács, USA/Canada: Alliance Entertainment. Get Out (2017), Dir. Jordan Peele, USA: Blumhouse Productions. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), Dir. Alan Rafkin, USA: Universal Pictures. Ghostbusters (1984), Dir. Ivan Reitman, USA: Columbia Pictures Corporation. Ginger Snaps (2000), Dir. John Fawcett, Canada/USA: Motion International. The Girl with All the Gifts (2016), Dir. Colm McCarthy, UK: Altitude Film Entertainment. The Goonies (1985), Dir. Richard Donner, USA: Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment. Goosebumps (2015), Dir. Rob Letterman, USA/Australia: Columbia Pictures. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (2018), Dir. Ari Sandel, USA/UK: Columbia Pictures. Gremlins (1984), Dir. Joe Dante, USA: Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Dir. Joe Dante, USA: Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment. Halloween (1978), Dir. John Carpenter, USA: Compass International Pictures. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Dir. Mike Newell, UK/USA: Warner Bros. and Heyday Films. The Haunted House (1929), Dir. Walt Disney, USA: Walt Disney Productions. The Haunted Mansion (2003), Dir. Rob Minkoff, USA: Walt Disney Pictures. Hellraiser (1987), Dir. Cliver Barker, UK: Cinemarque Entertainment BV. Hocus Pocus (1993), Dir. Kenny Ortega, USA: Walt Disney Studios. The Hole (2009), Dir. Joe Dante, USA: Bold Films. Hook (1991), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Amblin Entertainment. Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019), Dir. Xavier Burgin, USA: Stage 3 Productions. Hotel Transylvania (2012), Dir. Genndy Tartakovsky, USA: Sony Pictures Animation. Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015), Dir. Genndy Tartakovsky, USA: Sony Pictures Animation. Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation (2018), Dir. Genndy Tartakovsky, USA: Sony Pictures Animation. The House with a Clock in Its Walls (2018), Dir. Eli Roth, USA/Canada/India: Amblin Entertainment.

Works Cited

209

Igor (2008), Dir. Anthony Leondis, USA/France: Exodus Productions. I Kill Giants (2017), Dir. Anders Walter, USA/Belgium/Denmark/UK/Sweden/China: 1492 Pictures. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Lucasfilm. The Innocents (1961), Dir. Jack Clayton, USA/UK: Achilles and Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Insidious (2010), Dir. James Wan, USA/Canada/UK: Haunted Movies. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Dir. Don Siegel, USA: Walter Wanger Productions. The Invisible Man (2020), Dir. Leigh Whannell, USA: Blumhouse Productions. It (2017), Dir. Andy Muschietti, Canada/USA: New Line Cinema. It’s Alive (1974), Dir. Larry Cohen, USA: Warner Bros. and Larco Productions. It’s A Wonderful Life (1946), Dir. Frank Capra, USA: Liberty Films. Jaws (1975), Dir. Steven Spielberg, USA: Universal Pictures. King Kong (1933), Dir. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, USA: RKO Radio Pictures. Labyrinth (1986), Dir. Jim Henson, UK/USA: The Jim Henson Company. The Legend of Hell House (1973), Dir. John Hough, UK: Academy Pictures Corporation. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1949), Dir. Clyde Geronimi and Jack Kinney, USA: Walt Disney Productions. The LEGO Batman Movie (2017), Dir. Chris McKay, Denmark/USA: Warner Bros. Little Monsters (1989), Dir. Richard Alan Greenberg, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The Little Vampire (2000), Dir. Uli Edel, Germany/Netherlands/USA: Propaganda Films and Cometstone Productions. The Lost Boys (1987), Dir. Joel Schumacher, USA: Warner Bros. Mad Monster Party (1967), Dir. Jules Bass, USA: Rankin/Bass Productions. A Monster Calls (2016), Dir. J.A. Bayona, USA/Spain/UK: River Road Entertainment. Monster House (2006), Dir. Gil Kenan, USA: Columbia Pictures. Monsters Inc. (2001), Dir. Pete Docter, USA: Pixar Animation Studios. The Monster Squad (1987), Dir. Fred Dekker, USA: TAFT Entertainment Pictures. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Dir. Henry Selick, USA: Touchstone Pictures. Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dir. George A. Romero, USA: Image Ten. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Dir. Wes Craven, USA: New Line Cinema. The Omen (1976), Dir. Richard Donner, UK/USA: Twentieth Century-Fox and Mace Neufeld Productions. The Others (2001), Dir. Alejandro Amenábar, Spain/USA/France/Italy: Cruise/Wagner Productions. ParaNorman (2012), Dir. Chris Butler and Sam Fell, USA: Laika Entertainment. Pathogen (2006), Dir. Emily Hagins, USA: Cheesy Nuggets Productions. Peeping Tom (1960), Dir. Michael Powell, UK: Michael Powell (Theatre). The People Under the Stairs (1991), Dir. Wes Craven, USA: Universal Pictures. Pinocchio (1940), Dir. Hamilton Luske and Ben Sharpsteen, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Poltergeist (1982), Dir. Tobe Hooper, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Porky’s (1981), Dir. Bob Clark, Canada/USA: Melvin Simon Productions and Astral Bellevue Pathe Inc. Psycho (1960), Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA: Shamley Productions. Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Dir. George P. Cosmatos, USA/Mexico: Estudios Churubusco Azteca S.A. and Anabasis N.V. Rebecca (1940), Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, USA: Selznick International Pictures. Return of the Jedi (1983), Dir. Richard Marquand, USA: Lucasfilm.

210

Works Cited

Return to Oz (1985), Dir. Walter Murch, UK/USA: Walt Disney Pictures. Rosemary’s Baby (1968), Dir. Roman Polanski, USA: William Castle Productions. Saw (2004), Dir. James Wan, USA: Twisted Pictures. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019), Dir. André Øvredal, USA: CBS Films. Scream (1996), Dir. Wes Craven, USA: Dimension Films. Secret Beyond the Door . . . (1947), Dir. Fritz Lang, USA: Walter Wanger Productions. The Shining (1980), Dir. Stanley Kubrick, UK/USA: Warner Bros. The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Dir. Jonathan Demme, USA: Orion Pictures. The Sixth Sense (1999), Dir. M. Night Shyamalan, USA: The Kennedy/Marshall Company. The Skeleton Dance (1929), Dir. Walt Disney, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Dir. David Hand, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), Dir. Jack Clayton, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Star Wars (1977), Dir. George Lucas, USA: Lucasfilm and Twentieth Century Fox. The Stepfather (1987), Dir. Joseph Ruben, UK/Canada/USA: Incorporated Television Company. Stir of Echoes (1999), Dir. David Koepp, USA: Artisan Entertainment. Teen Wolf (1985), Dir. Rod Daniel, USA: Wolfkill. This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006), Dir. Kirby Dick, UK/USA: IFC. The Tingler (1959), Dir. William Castle, USA: William Castle Productions. To Please a Lady (1950), Dir. Clarence Brown, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Toy Story (1995), Dir. John Lasseter, USA: Pixar Animation Studios. Transylvania 6-5000 (1963). Dir. Chuck Jones. USA: Warner Bros. Tron (1982), Dir. Steven Lisberger, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Under the Bed (1988), Dir. Colin Finbow, UK: Children’s Film Unit. Vampires vs. the Bronx (2020), Dir. Oz Rodriguez, USA: Netflix. Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (2010), Dir. Jake West, UK: Nucleus Films. Village of the Damned (1960), Dir. Wolf Rilla, UK: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios. The Visit (2015), Dir. M. Night Shyamalan, USA: Blinding Edge Pictures and Blumhouse Productions. The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Dir. John Hough, USA: Walt Disney Productions. Watership Down (1978), Dir. Martin Rosen, UK: Nepenthe Productions. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), Dir. Robert Aldrich, USA: Warner Bros. The Witches (1990), Dir. Nicolas Roeg, UK/USA: The Jim Henson Company. The Witches (2020), Dir. Robert Zemeckis, USA/Mexico/UK: Warner Bros. The Wizard of Oz (1939), Dir. Victor Fleming, USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Wolfman’s Got Nards (2018), Dir. André Gower, USA: Pilgrim Media Group. Zombie Girl: The Movie (2009), Dir. Justin Johnson, Aaron Marshall and Erik Mauck, USA: Bob B. Bob Productions, Part Olson Pictures and Vacdoomed Productions.

Television 20/20 (1978-), Created by Roone Arledge, first broadcast on ABC, USA: ABC News Productions. The Addams Family (1964–66), Created by David Levy, first broadcast on ABC, USA: Filmways Television.

Works Cited

211

Adventure Time (2010–18), Created by Pendleton Ward, first broadcast on Cartoon Network, USA: Frederator Studios and Cartoon Network Studios. Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990–2000) Created by D. J. MacHale and Ned Kandel, first broadcast on YTV, Canada: Cinar and WildBrain. Bagpuss (1974), Created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, first broadcast on BBC1, UK: Smallfilms. Camberwick Green (1966), Created by Gordon Murray, first broadcast on BBC1, UK: Gordon Murray Puppets. The Clangers (1969–74), Created by Oliver Postgate, first broadcast on BBC1, UK: Smallfilms. The Demon Headmaster (1996–98), Created by Gillian Cross, first broadcast on BBC1, UK: BBC. Eerie, Indiana (1991), Created by Jose Rivera and Karl Schaefer, first broadcast on NBC, USA: Unreality Inc. Frankenstein’s Cat (2008), Created by Curtis Jobling, first broadcast on France 3, UK/ France: Mackinnon & Saunders and Kayenta Production. Goosebumps (YTV 1995–98), Created by R. L. Stine, first broadcast on YTV, Canada: Protocol Entertainment. Groovie Goolies (1970–71), Dir. Hal Sutherland, first broadcast on CBS, USA: Filmation. Moomin (1990–91), Dir. Hiroshi Saitô and Masayuki Kojima, first broadcast on TV Tokyo, Japan/Finland/Netherlands: Telecable Benelux B.V. The Munsters (1964–66), Created by Ed Haas and Norm Liebmann, first broadcast on CBS, USA: Kayro-Vue Productions and Universal Television. Portlandia (2011–18), Created by Fred Armisen, Carrie Brownstein and Jonathan Krisel, first broadcast on IFC, USA: Broadway Video Entertainment. Saturday Night Live (1975–present), Created by Lorne Michaels, first broadcast on NBC, USA: NBC and Broadway Video. Scooby Doo, Where Are You! (1969–70), Created by Joe Ruby and Ken Spears, first broadcast on CBS, USA: Hanna-Barbera Productions. Sesame Street (1969–present), Created by Joan Ganz Cooney, Lloyd Morrisett and Jim Henson, first broadcast on NET, USA: Children’s Television Workshop. Stephen King’s It (1990), Dir. Tommy Lee Wallace, first broadcast on ABC, USA/Canada: Green/Epstein Productions, Konigsberg/Sanitsky Company, Lorimar Television and Warner Bros. Television. Stranger Things (2016–present), Created by The Duffer Brothers, first broadcast on Netflix, USA: 21 Laps Entertainment. Tower of Terror (1997), Dir. D. J. MacHale, first broadcast on ABC, USA: Walt Disney Television. The Twilight Zone (1959–64), Created by Rod Serling, first broadcast on CBS, USA: Cayuga Productions. The Walking Dead (2010–present), Created by Frank Darabont and Angela Kang, first broadcast on AMC, USA: AMC Studios.

Other Audiovisual Works ‘1984 Gizmo (the Mogwai from Gremlins) plush toy commercial’ ([1984] 2012), YouTube [television advertisement] 10 June. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​ atch?​​v​=HAh​​​YWQTP​​tuE (accessed 7 July 2020).

212

Works Cited

‘Coraline – Official Trailer’ (2008), YouTube [film trailer], 25 November. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=XyU​​​wEO7x​​elY (accessed 18 February 2020). ‘Feature Commentary with Director Henry Selick and Composer Bruno Coulais’ (2009), Coraline [DVD] 2-Disc Collector’s Edition, USA: Focus Features and Laika Entertainment. ‘Gremlins: Behind-the-scenes featurette’ ([1983] 2014), Gremlins [Blu-ray DVD] USA: Warner Bros. ‘Gremlins cereal commercial (Ralston, 1984)’ ([1984] 2017), YouTube [television advertisement] 20 November. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​ =iUI​​​891ej​​eYc (accessed 7 July 2020). ‘GREMLINS public service announcement’ ([1984] 2014) YouTube [television advertisement] 16 June. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=bX-​​​ 7BbX7​​E3c (accessed 7 September 2016). ‘Hardee’s (Gremlins offer)’ ([1984] 2011), YouTube [television advertisement] 10 November. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.you​​tube.​​com​/w​​atch?​​v​=pC7​​​OjYMA​​I44 (accessed 8 June 2016). ‘Joe Dante’ (2010), Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review [podcast] BBC Radio 5 Live, 10 September. Available online: https​:/​/ww​​w​.bbc​​.co​.u​​k​/pro​​gramm​​es​​/b0​​0tml7​1 (accessed 7 September 2018). ‘Neil Gaiman on comics and scaring children, with Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman’ (2014), Vimeo [video interview] 22 October. Available online: http://vimeo​.com​ /109769310 (accessed 29 October 2014). ‘THE WITCHES (2020) – Audio Review’ (2020), DoubleToasted [podcast] 30 October. Available online: https​:/​/do​​ublet​​oaste​​d​.com​​/show​​s​/the​​-witc​​hes​-2​​020​-a​​​udio-​​revie​​w/ (accessed 4 February 2021). ‘Theatrical Trailer’ ([1984] 2014), Gremlins [Blu-ray DVD] USA: Warner Bros. ‘Trailer #1’ ([1980] 2002), The Watcher in the Woods [DVD] USA: Anchor Bay Entertainment.

Index

20/20  185 3D  118, 122–3, 127, 151–2, 160, 161–2, 163, 167, 168

Attack the Block (Cornish, 2011)  178–9 Avatar (Cameron, 2009)  160

Addams Family, The (television)  26 Addams Family, The films (Sonnenfeld, 1991, 1993)  19, 26, 89, 142 adult horror  8–9, 16–17, 20, 29, 31, 85 children in  29, 45–6, 70, 78, 93–4, 96–100, 177, 182 children’s viewership of  176 horrific child in  45–7 paedophilia in  85 Adventure Time  85 Ahmed, Sara  171 Alice in Wonderland (Burton, 2010)  42 Alien (Scott, 1979)  140 Allen, Steven  191 n.13 Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein (Castillo, 1999)  79 American International Pictures (AIP)  26 Amityville Horror, The (Rosenberg, 1979)  153 Andrews, Eleanor  150 animation computer generated (CG) animation  101, 152 Hollywood animation studios  100 horror, alleviation of  25–6, 35, 36, 41, 100–1 stop-motion animation  101, 117–24 Antunes, Filipa  9–10, 15, 21, 32, 71–2, 89–90, 94 Are You Afraid of the Dark?  39

Babadook, The (Kent, 2014)  33, 171, 191 n.12 Babbitt, Natalie  39 Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting, A (Talalay, 2020)  191 n.3 Bacon, Simon  64 Bagpuss  120 Bakhtin, Mikhail  54 Balanzategui, Jessica  93, 188 n.2 Barris, Kenya  179 Beetlejuice (Burton, 1988)  41, 142 Bentley, Christina Mitchell  10, 54 Bettelheim, Bruno  5–6, 35, 47, 54, 104, 108, 113, 149, 165 Black Hole, The (Nelson, 1979)  30 Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)  153 Booker, M. Keith  23 Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935)  77–8 British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) ratings system  3, 35, 186 n.5 Bronfen, Elisabeth  170 Bronk, Katarzyna  64 Brown, Noel  8, 180–1 Browning, Tod  85 Bruzzi, Stella  149 Buckingham, David  5, 9, 36, 47–8, 174 Buckley, Chloé Germaine  7, 81 Bulger, James  12 Bunge, Marcia J.  46–7 Burman, Erica  146 Burton, Tim  7, 41–2, 94

214

Index

Butler, Chris  102 Cabbage Patch Kids toys  64 Camberwick Green  120 Campbell, Joseph  149 carnivalesque  53–60 Carrie (De Palma, 1976)  12 Carroll, Noël  34–9 Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)  171 Case of Peter Pan, The (Rose)  14 Casper (Silberling, 1995)  89 Castle, Terry  150–1 cautionary tales  4, 52, 71, 111 children autonomy  76–7, 82–4, 96 definition  18–21 empowerment  73–7 and horror  23–44, 171 horror fiction for  26, 115 sexual innocence  71 societal concerns for/about  45–65 as societal construct  63–4, 70–1, 79–84 as spectators of horror  2–7, 45, 73–92, 115–43 television for  26, 39, 67, 89–90 tween/pre-teen  67–92 Children, Cinema and Censorship: From Dracula to the Dead End Kids (Smith)  5 Children Beware! Childhood, Horror and the PG-13 Rating (Antunes)  10, 15 Children’s Film Unit (CFU)  180–1 children’s horror film  2–21 absence within scholarship  7–11 absent children of  177–83 vs. adult horror  29, 45–6, 70, 78, 93–4, 96–100, 177, 182 aesthetic features of  17, 21, 34–6, 42, 94, 100–3, 115–43 approach and structure of this book  11–18 benefits of  6, 47–50, 104 vs. comedy  33–5 Crazyspace of  67–92 definition  18–21, 23–44 vs. fantasy  33–5, 124

in Hollywood cinema  2, 7–8, 10–11, 16, 19, 21, 23–44 identification  33–40 impossibility of  7–11 made by children  179–83 male bias of  18, 145–6 narrative structures of  23–44 pleasures of  17, 63, 88, 145 post-millennial period  17, 94–5 scholarship  7–11, 93–114 suburb significance in  148–9 violence in  4, 30, 51, 68, 111, 116, 127–8, 147 children’s horror television  26, 39, 89–90 Children without Childhood (Winn)  70 Child’s Play (Mancini, 1988)  46 Child’s Play 3 (Bender, 1991)  12 child welfare  3; see also stranger danger Clangers, The  120 Clasen, Mathias  6 Clayton, Jack  30 Clayton, Wickham  126 Clover, Carol J.  12, 126 Coleman, Robin R. Means  8 comic books  4, 47, 106 Coraline (Selick, 2009)  7–8, 17–18, 39, 115–43 aesthetics  116–18 assumptions about children’s horror films  115–16 child-friendly gothic-final girl  132–9 classification  116–17 as creepy  117–18 female gothic and  129–32 gender, domesticity and home, link between  128–32 as Gothic  128–32 horrific child, gendering of  139–43 horror/slasher movie  124–9 objects and automatons in  124 reviews of  116 slashers and  129–32 stop-motion animation  117–24 uncanny  117–24 violence in  116–19, 125 Corliss, Richard  61

Index

Corpse Bride (Burton and Johnson, 2005)  19, 121, 142 Covid-19 pandemic  191 n.3 Crazyspaces  67–92 Creation of Adam, The (Michelangelo)  49 Creed, Barbara  12, 139–40; see also monstrous feminine creepiness; see uncanny Critters (Herek, 1986)  63 cult films  7, 90–1 Daemon (Finbow, 1985)  181 Dahl, Roald  1 Dante, Joe  124–5 Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) (Wiene, 1920)  167 Davies, Máire Messenger  17, 59, 67, 71–3, 90–1 Davis, Amy M.  10, 29–30 Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)  10 Dear White People (Simien, 2014)  187 n.5 Dekker, Fred  74 Demon Headmaster, The  67, 86 demonic child; see horrific child de Rijke, Victoria  37 Dika, Vera  37, 126, 139 Disappearance of Childhood, The (Postman)  70 Disney, Walt  30 Disney studio  25, 29–31, 41–2 Doane, Mary Ann  130–1, 134 domestic violence  147–52 Don’t Breathe (Álvarez, 2016)  78 Dracula (Browning, 1931)  3, 23, 33, 85–8 Dragonslayer (Robbins, 1981)  30 Dyer, Richard  85 Ebert, Roger  28–9, 51 Eco, Umberto  14 Edward Scissorhands (Burton, 1990)  41 Eerie, Indiana  89 El espíritu de la colmena (The Spirit of the Beehive) (Erice, 1973)  79 Emily’s Ghost (Finbow, 1992)  181

215

empathy  97, 172 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982)  49–50 evil children; see horrific child Exorcist, The (Friedkin, 1973)  46, 71 Explorers (Dante, 1985)  68 fairy tales  5–6, 34, 54, 71, 129–30 family film  8, 19, 89 Fanning, Dakota  37 fantasy films Harry Potter series  34 Wizard of Oz, The  34 Female Gothic films  118, 129–39, 189 n.8 child-friendly  132–9 heroines  131–2 vs. slasher film  130–2 and visual objectification of women  131 female selfhood  131 Ferrell, Robyn  121–2 Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies (Perkins)  16 Finbow, Colin  180 Fiske, John  54, 91 Francis, Christina Doyle  151 Frankenstein (Whale, 1931)  3, 7, 23–5, 27, 40–4, 82–3 Frankenstein’s Cat  186 n.1 Frankenweenie (Burton, 1984 and 2012)  7, 9, 16, 23, 40–4, 121 Friday the 13th series  126, 131 Fright Night (Holland, 1985)  68 Furedi, Frank  96 Gaiman, Neil  6, 115 Games of Terror (Dika)  37 Garbage Pail Kids Movie, The (Amateau, 1987)  64–5 Gaslight (Cukor, 1944)  130 Gate, The (Takács, 1987)  32, 39, 65, 68, 72 gender  18, 139–43, 145–6 Geraghty, Lincoln  24 Get Out (Peele, 2017)  179 Ghost and Mr. Chicken, The (Rafkin, 1966)  25–6

216

Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)  19, 31–2 Gill, Pat  125 Ginger Snaps (Fawcett, 2000)  103 Girl with All the Gifts, The (McCarth, 2016)  177 Goonies, The (Donner, 1985)  68 Goosebumps (Letterman, 2015)  8, 39, 47 Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween (Sandel, 2018)  8, 39 Goosebumps novels (Stine)  47, 89 Goosebumps television series  39, 89 Gothic Television  8 Grant, Barry Keith  147–8 Gray, Jonathan  49 Gremlins (Dante, 1984)  7, 13, 16–17, 23, 31, 53–65, 95–6, 101, 104, 107, 111, 147, 172–4 as carnivalesque pleasure  53–60 classification of  48–9, 51 horrific child in  45–65 misleading paratexts  48–53 as ratings allegory  60–2 Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Dante, 1990)  63, 187 n.6 Groovie Goolies, The  26 Hagins, Emily  180, 181–3 Halberstam, Jack  120 Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)  125–7, 150, 153–4 Halloween Sadism  187–8 n.1 Hanson, Helen  131 happy ending  23–4, 39, 43, 54, 170–1 happy Gothic  94, 112 Harris, Marilyn  24 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Newell, 2005)  21 Harry Potter series  34 Haunted House, The (Disney, 1929)  25–6 Haunted Mansion, The (Minkoff, 2003)  19 Hawley, Erin  9 ‘H’ certificate  3 Heffernan, Kevin  27–9 heimlich  117

Index

Hellraiser (Barker, 1987)  176 Higgins, Scott  132 Hockenhull, Stella  150 Hocus Pocus (Ortega, 1993)  7, 38–9, 142, 162 Hole, The (Dante, 2009)  18, 39, 124–5, 127–8, 145–52, 163–71, 191 n.12 domestic space and  147–52 domestic violence, critique of  147 gender  147–52 horror genre  147–52 mature narrative  163–9 suburban fantastic  163–9 Hollywood cinema  2, 7–8, 10–11, 16, 19, 21, 23–44 child-friendly horror in  25–8 New Hollywood, children’s horror in  28–32 home  145 childishness and  146 domestic space of  134–5 family  155 femininity and  146 as setting  148–53 as viewing space  90, 109–10, 175–6 horrific child  11–18, 26, 45–8, 91, 93–4, 96–104, 109, 117–24, 129, 132 in adult horror  45–6 fandom  141–2 as gendered construct  139–43 in Gremlins 45–65 historical progression of  17 at home  175–6 normalization of  93–114 as racial construct  177–9 styles  16 ‘Horrific’ label  3 horrific media  4 horror absence and  7–11 adult  8–9, 16–17, 20, 29, 31, 85, 93–4, 96–100, 177, 182 aesthetics  94, 100–3, 115–43 animated films  100–1 by children  180–3 children and  2–7, 45–8

Index

fiction for children  26, 115 films  9–21 (see also specific film) film scholarship  7–8 genre  1–3, 6, 8, 10–11, 14, 16, 20–3, 27, 29, 32–3, 37, 44, 49, 51, 64–75 identification  33–40 identity and  18 impossibility and  7–11 psychoanalytic approach to  6 twenty-first-century  94–114 Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (Burgin, 2019)  178 Hotel Transylvania trilogy (Tartakovsky, 2012, 2015, and 2018)  8, 17, 26, 40, 109–14 House with a Clock in Its Walls, The (Roth, 2018)  39 Howe, David  97 Hurried Child, The (Elkind)  70 I-camera  127 ideal children  53 I Kill Giants (Walter, 2017)  191 n.12 impossibility  7–11 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Spielberg, 1984)  50–1 Innocents, The (Clayton, 1961)  31, 96, 100 Insidious (Wan, 2010)  148 intertextuality  80–2 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956)  38–9, 61 Invisible Man, The (Whannell, 2020)  190 n.10 It (Muschietti, 2017)  176 It’s Alive (Cohen, 1974)  56–7 It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946)  55 Jackson, Kimberley  147–8 Jancovich, Mark  24 Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)  49 Jentsch, Ernst  117 Kael, Pauline  53 Kamm, Frances A.  128–9 Karloff, Boris  24 Kearney, Mary Celeste  180 ‘Keep Portland Weird’ slogan  189 n.4

217

kiddie horror  9 kiddie matinees  27–8, 69 King, Stephen  37, 91 King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack, 1933)  23 Kirkland, Ewan  180 Klein, Amanda Ann  15–16 Klinger, Barbara  90 Kotzko, Adam  117 Krämer, Peter  8 Kristeva, Julia  36 Kuhn, Annette  145, 151 Laika  101–2 Lapper, Craig  117 latchkey kids  70–1 Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy  37 Legend of Hell House, The (Hough, 1973)  31 Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The (Geronimi and Kinney, 1949)  25–6 LEGO Batman Movie, The (McKay, 2017)  187 n.4 Lennard, Dominic  96 Leslie-McCarthy, Sage  93, 97, 108, 188 n.2 Little Monsters (Greenberg, 1989)  32, 63 Little Vampire, The (Edel, 2000)  8, 40 looking children  96–7 Lost Boys, The (Schumacher, 1987)  19, 176 Lucas, George  55 Luckhurst, Roger  8 Lury, Karen  120 McDonald, Tamar Jeffers  128–9 MacDowell, James  170 McFadzean, Angus  13, 15, 148–9, 152–3, 164, 170 McRuer, Robert  177 Mad Monster Party (Bass, 1967)  25 masculinity  77, 145–72 maturity  146 Meyer, Stephenie  94 Meyers, Lindsay  128

218

Miller, Catriona  131–2 Moers, Ellen  130 molestation  71 Monster Calls, A (Bayona, 2016)  191 n.12 Monster House (Kenan, 2006)  8, 18, 34, 39, 145–63, 169–72 as computer-animated film  152 domestic space and  147–52 gender  147–52 horror genre  147–52 male characters, age of  152–63 Monster’s Inc. (Doctor, 2001)  21 Monster Squad, The (Dekker, 1987)  7, 17, 20, 32, 39, 65, 67–92, 95–6, 101, 104, 106, 109–10, 112, 142, 147, 162, 174, 178 child audience  73–92 children empowerment in  73–7 children’s vs. adult content  75 Crazyspace on screen  73–92 Dekker’s description of  74 de-sexing Dracula  85–8 Frankenstein, re-enactment of  83–4 ignorance in  77–80 intertextuality  80–2 marketing materials  73–4 monstrous allies  82–5 promotional paratexts  73 violent behaviour in  147 monstrous child; see horrific child monstrous feminine  139–40, 146, 156–7 Moomin  33 moral panic  3–4, 47, 51, 75–6, 81–2, 85, 147, 175–6 Moseley, Rachel  120–2 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system  15, 17, 28–9, 35–6, 69–73, 186 n.2 Motion Picture Production Code  3, 25, 46 Moving Images: Understanding Children’s Emotional Responses to Television (Buckingham)  5 Mulvey, Laura  96 Munsters, The  26

Index

Murphy, Bernice M.  148 Neale, Steve  33–4 New Hollywood, children’s horror in  28–32 Newman, Kim  9–10, 21 Ng, Andrew Hock Soon  150 Nightmare Before Christmas, The (Selick, 1993)  19, 42, 121, 129, 142, 187 n.10 Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s (Newman, 2011)  9, 10 Nightmare on Elm Street (Craven, 1984)  176, 188 n.3 Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)  28–9, 51 Nike corporation  101 Omen, The (Donner, 1976)  11, 46 Others, The (Amenábar, 2001)  93 Our Gang (1922–44)  74 paedophilia  73, 85 ParaNorman (Butler and Fell, 2012)  7, 9, 17, 34–6, 40, 93–114, 121, 188 n.3 abnormal production  100–3 aesthetics  100–3 horror and monstrosity as catharsis  103–9 Hotel Transylvania, new normal with  109–14 PG classification  95 uncanny child in  96–100 paratexts  48–53, 73 Pathogen (Hagins, 2006)  180–3 Paul, William  4, 47 Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)  27 Peirse, Alison  3 People Under the Stairs, The (Craven, 1991)  177 Perkins, V. F.  16, 118 PG ratings  16, 32, 35–6, 61–2, 68–73 PG-13 rating  16, 32, 35, 51, 62, 68–73, 95 Pheasant-Kelly, Fran  150 Phillips, Kendall R.  3

Index

Philosophy of Horror, The (Carroll)  34 Pinocchio (Luske and Sharpsteen, 1940)  25–6, 41 Pirie, David  85 Poltergeist (Hooper, 1982)  11, 49 Porky’s (Clark, 1981)  74 Portlandia  189 n.4 Postman, Neil  70–1 Promise of Happiness, The (Ahmed)  171 Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)  128, 150–1 rabbits  119 Rambo: First Blood Part II (Cosmatos, 1985)  187 n.6 Reading in the Dark: Horror in Children’s Literature and Culture (McCort)  21 Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940)  130 replay culture  90 Return of the Jedi (Marquand, 1983)  55 Return to Oz (Murch, 1985)  68 revolting child  12 Revolting Child in Horror Cinema: Youth Rebellion and Queer Spectatorship, The (Scahill)  12 Rockwell, Norman  55 Roeg, Nicolas  2, 40 Roeper, Richard  119–20 Rose, Jacqueline  14 Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968)  29, 46, 78 Ross, Sara  162 R rating  32, 51, 68, 71 Russ, Joanna  139–40 Russell, David J.  33 Saturday Night Live  32 Saw (Wan, 2004)  33, 125 Scahill, Andrew  12–13 Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Øvredal, 2019)  142 Scooby Doo, Where Are You!  26 Scott, A. O.  115 Scott, Jon C.  151 Scream (Craven, 1996)  141 Secret Beyond the Door . . . (Lang, 1947)  130

219

Selick, Henry  36 Sesame Street  26, 85 Shining, The (Kubrick, 1980)  148, 182 Shyamalan, M. Night  20 Silence of the Lambs, The (Demme, 1991)  176 Sixth Sense, The (Shyamalan, 1999)  20, 93, 97–9 Skeleton Dance, The (Disney, 1929)  25, 35 slasher film  124–32 Smith, Sarah J.  3, 5 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Hand, 1937)  25–6, 60 Sobchack, Vivian  147–8 Something Wicked This Way Comes, The (Clayton, 1983)  7, 30–1, 35, 76, 119 Spielberg, Steven  49–51, 55 Spooner, Catherine  41, 94 Stannard, Joseph  126–7 Star Wars (Lucas, 1977)  30, 55 Stepfather, The (Ruben, 1987)  165 Stephen King’s It  188 n.2 Stir of Echoes, The (Koepp, 1999)  93 Stockton, Kathryn Bond  169 stranger danger  70–3, 76, 79, 187 n.1 Stranger Things  149, 176 suburb  148–9 suburban fantastic cinema  15, 148–9, 152–69 Takolander, Maria  156–7 Tatar, Maria  4, 24, 111 teenagers  20, 26, 63, 68, 102, 115, 125, 142, 178 Teen Wolf (Daniel, 1985)  103 television; see children’s horror television as space for viewing horror  5, 27, 70–1, 90, 109–10, 175–6 This Film Is Not Yet Rated (Dick, 2006)  186 n.6 Tingler, The (Castle, 1959)  26 To Please a Lady (Brown, 1950)  61 Tower of Terror  90 Toy Story (Lasseter, 1995)  21

220

Index

Transylvania 6-5000 (Jones, 1963)  26 Tron (Lisberger, 1982)  30 Troutman, Megan  100–1, 147, 169 Tudor, Andrew  6, 37–8 Twilight novels (Meyer)  94 Twilight Zone, The  27 Twitchell, James B.  6 uncanny  17, 26, 91, 93–4, 96–100, 116–18, 124, 153, 155 uncanny children; see horrific child Under the Bed (Finbow, 1988)  181 unheimlich  117 Universal horror films  27, 74 Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, The (Bettelheim)  5 vampires in adult horror  85 in children’s horror  64, 85–8, 112–13 Vampires vs. the Bronx (Rodriguez, 2020)  191 n.3 vampire syndrome  85 VCR horrors  185 n.1 Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (West, 2010)  185 n.1 Video Nasty media scandal (1980s)  4, 185 n.1 Village of the Damned (Rilla, 1960)  27–8, 96 violence  116–19, 125, 147 in children’s horror films  4, 30, 51, 68, 111, 116, 127–8, 147 domestic  147–52 gendered acts of  150 Visit, The (Shyamalan, 2015)  20 ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (Mulvey)  96 Vorhees, Jason  126

Walking Dead, The  103 Wall, Barbara  52 Watcher in the Woods (Hough, 1980)  7, 30–1, 41, 127, 131, 189 n.5 Watership Down (Rosen, 1978)  119 Weetch, Owen  127, 163, 167 Weinstock, Jeffrey Andrew  41 Wertham, Fredric  4, 47, 53–4 Wetmore, Kevin J.  188 n.2 Whale, James  82 What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Aldrich, 1962)  78 Wheatley, Helen  8–9, 91, 155 Wigransky, David Pace  47–8, 52, 108 Williams, Linda  131 Witches, The (Roeg, 1990)  2, 7, 32, 39–40, 63–4, 162 Witches, The (Zemeckis, 2020)  1–2, 4, 179 Wizard of Oz, The (Fleming, 1939)  7, 34 Wojcik-Andrews, Ian  18–19 Wolfman’s Got Nards (Gower, 2018)  90–1 woman’s films  19, 118, 129–39 Wood, Robin  6, 11–12, 29, 34, 46, 55–6 Worland, Rick  8, 103 Ylönen, Susanne  186 n.7 Zemeckis, Robert  1 Zombie Girl: The Movie (Johnson, Marshall and Mauck, 2009)  182–3 zombies in adult horror  28, 103 in children’s horror  35–6, 103–4, 181–2 Zombies: A Cultural History (Luckhurst)  8

221

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