Family-Friendly Frights

Watching scary movies is a central part of many people’s Halloween festivities but it can be hard for families or those who wouldn’t ordinarily watch scary movies to find something appropriate so today’s episode of Sounds of Cinema looked at family friendly frights.

Monster House (2006)
Dir. Gil Kenan

Produced by Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, Monster House is a haunted house story presented through motion capture animation. Three teenagers discover that the decrepit home in their neighborhood contains a supernatural secret. Monster House was consistent with movies like The Monster Squad and The Goonies but it was also surprisingly smart and emotionally affecting.


Corpse Bride (2005)
Dir. Tim Burton and Mike Johnson

Tim Burton has been involved with several animated features that make for good Halloween viewing. The Nightmare Before Christmas was directed by Henry Selick with Burton producing and writing the story. Burton also adapted his short film “Frankenweenie” into a feature length movie and co-directed Corpse Bride with Mike Johnson. Corpse Bride was a comedy of errors about a living groom who gets involved with an undead bride and it had a fun soundtrack by regular Burton collaborator Danny Elfman.


Hocus Pocus (1993)
Dir. Kenny Ortega

Hocus Pocus was a family friendly Halloween adventure about three seventeenth century witches who are transported to contemporary Salem, Massachusetts where they pursue a group of children. The original story by Mick Garris and David Kirschner was quite dark but the material was lightened when it was acquired by Disney. When the movie was released in 1993, Hocus Pocus was a box office disappointment but the film has since become a very popular title especially among viewers who grew up in the 1990s and 2000s.


The Harry Potter Series (2001 - 2011)

The Harry Potter series is a story of a boy coming of age in a fantastical world of witches and magic. J.K. Rowling’s stories caught the imagination of readers the world over and were adapted into a very successful film series that mostly preserved the book’s sense of wonder. While not horror stories, the Harry Potter films are appropriately frightening with supernatural creatures and magical villains. But what really endures about Harry Potter is the way the character and his friends recognize that there is evil in the world and choose to confront it.


Return to Oz (1985)
Dir. Walter Murch

The idea of making a sequel to 1939’s The Wizard of Oz seems quite natural now with the success of Wicked and Oz the Great and Powerful but in 1985 that wasn’t the case and Walter Murch’s Return to Oz had an uphill battle to find an audience. Adapted from L. Frank Baum’s stories, Return to Oz was much darker than the 1939 film. Its story was bleaker, its production design less cheery, and some of the puppet characters were creepy. Return to Oz failed in its initial release but it has gathered a cult audience since then.


The Universal Monsters

Holidays are a good time to introduce young people to classic movies and Halloween is a good opportunity to revisit the classic Universal Monster films. These pictures were thought to be terrifying at the time of their initial release but now they are quite accessible, often about as scary as Disney films, and with their short running times they fit within the attention spans of young viewers. Of the Universal Monsters, the Frankenstein pictures are generally regarded as superior and children seem to find the Monster, as played by Boris Karloff in the first three movies, very empathetic.


Poltergeist (1982)
Dir. Tobe Hooper

Poltergeist is officially rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America and the film is indeed within the boundaries of that rating. It doesn’t contain any bloody violence nor does it include sexuality or course language beyond what would be expected in a PG film. But Poltergeist’s rating belies the film’s intensity. Directed by Tobe Hooper and produced by Steven Spielberg, Poltergeist is quite frightening with some fantastic set pieces and a nightmarish climax. As a PG rated film made before the advent of PG-13, Poltergeist is an interesting artifact of what was considered family-oriented material a few decades ago.


The Sixth Sense (1999)
Dir. M. Night Shyamalan
The Sixth Sense was the breakout film for M. Night Shyamalan. The movie is well within the framework of its PG-13 rating but what is surprising about this film is the way it deals with the supernatural. A lot of stories about ghosts assume that the spirits are malevolent, reflecting our own fears of death. The Sixth Sense plays on our expectations and actually ends on an optimistic note, making it spooky but also hopeful. (1:30)


The Addams Family (1991 and 2019)
Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld / Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon

The Addams Family has been around since 1938 when the characters first appeared in Charles Addams’ cartoons. Since then the Addams Family has starred in television sitcoms and feature films. The 1991 live action movie has terrific energy and a great cast. A sequel, Addams Family Values, followed in 1993. The family returned to the screen in a 2019 animated film. Both big screen versions of The Addams Family have their own virtues and they are witty and intelligent and ought to appeal to both children and their parents.


The Monster Squad (1987)
Dir. Fred Dekker

The Monster Squad is an unusual piece of 1980s fantasy entertainment. Dracula leads a werewolf, a mummy, a fish-man, and Frankenstein’s monster into a suburban town in pursuit of a magical amulet and it’s up to a group of monster movie obsessed kids to stop them.This film that was almost certainly an inspiration Stranger Things but the retro appeal of the movie is somewhat ironic given that The Monster Squad was itself nostalgic for the classic Universal monster movies of the 1930s and 40s.