Is there a more fucked-up children's film than Pinocchio?

Take a look at "Coraline"

In the novel, Pinnochio purposely steps on the cricket (no name) and splatters him. That may be even creepier than the movie.

I've seen Coraline, R1. I maintain that Pinocchio is more disturbing.

Well, I personally didn't see a problem with it, but for some reason my daughter never cared for Se7en.

I thought it was a very important moral tale for a child to learn.

I think the scariest children’s movie would be Disney’s Return to Oz.

Wheelers. Mombi and Nome King, o my!

Daddy only let me watch Song of the South.

The last 30 seconds of this video creeped me out so much as a child. It is not a "cheery" Disney movie.

“The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T” is chock full of homoerotic sadomasochism. There’s only one woman in the entire cast.

Here’s a sample of this fine children’s movie:

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

A Serbian Tale

“Pinocchio” has often been regarded as Disney’s best animated film, though I don’t personally agree. The follow-up feature to “Snow White,” it certainly has a more adult appeal. And, though Disney product is now meant for children, in its heyday, his films were really meant for adults. (And “Snow White” certainly has its share of grisly details.)

Interestingly, the National Theatre presented a stage version of “Pinocchio” in 2017, using the Disney score, with Pinocchio played by a young man, and the humans in his life by giant puppets. Sounds fascinating, but it got middling reviews.

OP, that movie scared me more than any other movie when I was a kid. It gave me nightmares for a long time, and the whole story still creeps me the fuck out.

[quote] “Pinocchio” has often been regarded as Disney’s best animated film, though I don’t personally agree.

If I had voiced the fairy, it would have been even better.

R8 - holy shit, WTF was that?! I'll never forget that song now.

R5 - The movie is scary, but so is real life. It's a hugely atmospheric movie. Really terrific. And Dorothy fights back....and wins. Great message for kids.

This is an hilariously accurate review/analysis of The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T - they even call him out as a pedophile!

I guess it has been a long time since I saw Pinocchio - I thought it was about a wooden toy who would lie and the nose would grow? And that he wanted to be a real boy (not made of wood).

Everything else must have been lost on me as I was too young.

I've never seen any cartoon version of it, but the real Hansel and Gretal story is FUCKED up. I read it some college class and it freaked me the hell out.

PINOCCHIO is among the greatest Disney films and certainly the most beautiful. The clock sequence alone is one of the great moments in cinema history.

The story is pure myth: the realization and illumination of the divinity (i.e. Christ image) within us all.

The aforementioned Return to Oz, The Secret of NIHM, and The Dark Crystal were much more disturbing, though obviously YMMV.

OP, the original story was serialized in an Italian magazine and was considered at the time to be far too grisly for children, but they loved it. When the author got sick of the character and wanted to kill him off, kids sent letters begging him to keep 'Pinocchio' alive.

Guillermo del Toro is working on a new, live-action version of the story "for our times":

There was once a pedo magazine called Geppetto.

R20 Buona fortuna!

I was thinking of that film, R22, when I read R20.

It screwed me up, that is for sure,

The Pinocchio paintings by Keith Mayerson bring out the weirdness of the film.

Sleeping Beauty remains my favourite Disney film. Such stunning animation and Maleficent is such a great character.

Pinocchio is beautifully animated but there is something sad about it that has always gotten to me.

[Quote] Such stunning animation and Maleficent is such a great character.

I love “Sleeping Beauty.” Must have seen it 10 times in theaters when it first came out, in 1959. Disney’s only 70mm cartoon feature. Original release was accompanied by a splendid short, “Grand Canyon,” using Grofe’s suite, accompanied by documentary footage of the area. It deservedly won an Oscar.

I adore "Coraline"! it's basically my childhood condensed into a 2-hour film, don't get me started.

But I maintain that "Snow White" is more fucked up than "Pinocchio", because it features a flat-chested little girl of eleven or twelve being kissed and carried off by an adult man at the end.

The Witches and Matilda by Roald Dahl.

[Quote] I adore "Coraline"! it's basically my childhood condensed into a 2-hour film, don't get me started.

Your childhood? 😦

R28, Sleeping Beauty HAS to be on blu-ray on a good tv, trust me. It looks incredible. That kind of art will never be duplicated.

Many fairy tales are farrrr more disturbing and sad than how they have been portrayed today. Little Red Riding Hood is incredibly disturbing. And the ending of the original Little Mermaid is sad, she just dissolves into the ocean because Prince Eric falls in love with someone else.

Watched Sleeping Beauty on my projector in hi-Def and it looked fabulous.

Mitilda is one of my favorite movies.

Even creepier: a version of Pinocchio where Michael Jackson is both Geppetto and Pinocchio!

But MJ was... PETER PAN??!!

He never had a childhood.

R37, I mean, that must be why Shirley Temple molested all those children

Never appreciated perverse nature of this. My ex father in law was dead ringer for Gepetto. After learning of how Shirley Temple was “used” (good ship lollipop — handed from sailor to sailor ) childhood illusions are COMPLETELY shattered

I want to meet a Donkey Boy. Sounds HAWT!

R35 mine too.

This! A kid losing his hair from shock, Ghosts, bullying, kidnapping, etc Can’t believe the trailer called it a heart warming family comedy.

Don't forget the kid who uses the Peanut Butter solution on his pubes and they grow out his pant legs!

My boy has Big Wood Face

That and Alice in Wonderland. Both make me sick.

Though I do love the little fish Cleo in Pinocchio.

R42 Here is the full movie. Why did they subject 80’s kids to such wtf movies??

Return to Oz freaked out my partner so much when he was a kid that I don't think he'd be able to view it even today.

Return to Oz is amazing. Fairuza Balk and Jean Marsh were perfect. It is very imaginative. It is a bit disturbing but I guess that's what I like about it. It definitely sets itself apart from the '39 version.

I agree, R48. I was an adult when I saw it, but the darker tone of the movie really appealed to me.

The novel is hilarious, as wild as "Alice in Wonderland".

R5 Jeezzzzuzzzz, yes! Return to Oz is a fucking nightmare. Electroshock is used on Dorothy, that fucking talking chicken, the witch who beheads the dancing girls so she can reanimate their heads and wear them....fuck me!!! Then I think Dorothy reanimated a moose head and tied it to a sled or a bed, something like that. Too many disturbing things to comprehend going on in that one.

What did Raggedy Ann say while sitting on Pinocchio's face?

Tell a lie! Tell The truth! Tell a lie! Tell the truth!

R52, you have successfully amused us today.

Hansel and Gretel, the Little Mermaid, Alice in Wonderland, and the Bible are all WAAAAY more fucked-up stories for children.

It scared the shit out of me when I was little. I was also traumatized by Bambi and Dumbo.

Pinocchio creeped me the fuck out and still does. You could make a horror movie from that story easily.

This movie is pretty F'ed up. A nice East German morality tale with English narration. It used to play on our local TV stations fairly regularly. It must have come cheap.

Pinocchio is one of my least favorite Disney movies. Depressing and weird.

You think Disney’s version of Pinocchio is messed up? Check this shit out:

[R33], not quite. At first, she feels herself dissolving into sea foam, but then she feels herself rising up and she becomes a "spirit of the air." The deal is that she will go into people's homes and do good deeds and after 300 years, she will get an immortal soul. If she goes into a home where there are good children, that will take a year off. If the children are bad, that will add a day.

Rapunzel has two children by the prince who comes to see her in the tower.

R60, that sounds so preposterous that I wish Ursella/Divine DID marry the prince.

The original Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Stories are all fucked-up and weird in their original forms, like "The Little Match Girl". It's basically the story of a homeless girl freezing to death in an alley, designed to tell good Christian children that death is cool and fun.

But the Andersen stories aren't nearly as fucked up as the Grimm Brothers tales, the Grimm stories were authentic German folk tales, and of course the Germans have a deeply twisted collective imagination (I can say that because I'm German). There's stuff in there like the king who won't marry anyone but the most beautiful woman in the kingdom and settles on his own daughter from his first marriage, and "The Robber Bridegroom", where a woman finds out her fiancée is a cannibal bandit chief, and she unmasks him at the wedding ceremony and has him killed.

Somehow, Disney has never adapted "The Robber Bridegroom" into an animated musical, and the world is poorer for it.

R62, you left out the best part of the Robber Bridegroom. She is hiding behind a cask when the bring in a girl and chop her up. The girls finger flies into her lap and she uses it as evidence of his dastardly deeds.

And the dead woman's finger has a distinctive ring on it! Which is evidence!

Yeah, someone really needs to make a movie out of "The Robber Bridegroom", and not Disney. It's got it all - romance, intrigue, suspense, sadism, naked women at cannibal feasts...

R62, I wonder where the whole "messed up German imagination" comes from.

There actually is a musical (not a movie) called The Robber Bridegroom based on a Eudora Welty story which I think is an Appalachian version of the original tale.

[Quote] that sounds so preposterous that I wish Ursella/Divine DID marry the prince.

I always thought she was prettier than Ariel.

R67, if this was real life, Ariel would be the cute wife but Ursella would be the hot side piece....who then cuts you when your sleeping.

If you really want a fucked up kids’ story , read this clusterfuck. Sun, Moon, Talia, it’s an Italian version of Sleeping Beauty.

R68 lol yes.

And speaking of the Little Mermaid, the tv show used to creep me out sometimes.

Pinnochio seems like a morality tale, warning of the dangers of going off with strange men.

R71 isn't that Little Red Riding Hood?? Which I'm sure is an equally fucked up tale.

[quote]Rapunzel has two children by the prince who comes to see her in the tower.

So "Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your long hair" is a booty call request?

R72, yes, Little Red Riding Hood is apparently some kind of warning about the dangers of pedophiles. Creepy. Those Germans think of the creepiest shit.

R74, pedophiles is a bit too strong. It could be interpreted as "don't talk to strangers", but it could also be a very simple warning against wolves. Remember, for most of the original audience, before these stories were recorded by the Bros Grimm, wild animals were a very real, every day occurrence. They were necessarily symbolic. Sometime as wolf is just a wolf. Wolves actually play with their prey to get their trust before leading them back to the pack to be attacked. This behavior would be know to the original peasant audience.

Also, in the original story, Rotkäppchen tricks the wolf by saying that she has to go outside to urinate. This is how she escapes the wolf.

R75, good to know! Maybe I should read the originals.

If we are moving on from films to stories. Scary stories to tell in the dark was fucked up. A girl raised by wolves and then having wolf puppies? Yikes!! I was reading that shit at 7 years old.

R77 those stories were terrifying. What was even worse was hearing them all on cassette.

I thought LRRH was a warning to young girls to not go off with a seductive male and losing their virtue.

Beautiful movie.

You need to look at it through the eyes of a child.

R80, I look at it through the eyes of Corey Haim.

What's Corey Haim got to do with Pinocchio?

Was he alive in 1940?

Yes, “A Serbian Film.”

Unless you meant something else ....

The original ending of CINDERELLA has the evil stepmother and stepsisters forced to attend Cinderellas' wedding and to 'dance' with red hot iron slippers clamped to their feel until they fell down dead.

A real pity Disney didn't use that.

r28: Disney should have released SLEEPING BEAUTY in theaters as a limited run after the lame MALIFICENT films ("We need to do something like WICKED").

I watched the Disney Cinderella recently and while I still love it (it's beautifully animated and the supporting characters are terrific) I hate that we get no resolution or comeuppance for the stepmother and sisters.

I"m surprised Disney never even did a short story for Hansel and Gretel.

Now that I think about it, Snow White is actually pretty messed up. The Queen: "I need to look even hotter so please huntsman, cut out her heart and give it to me when you are done". Was she Eva Braun?

OP....the ORIGINAL fairytales...like the ones by The Brothers Grimm, were some pretty fucked up shit. Not all of them had happy endings.

"The original Hans Christian Andersen Fairy Stories are all fucked-up and weird in their original forms, like "The Little Match Girl". It's basically the story of a homeless girl freezing to death in an alley, designed to tell good Christian children that death is cool and fun."

I didn't get the impression the story told children "death is good and fun." It was an incredibly depressing, but moving story, with a lot more depth than that. Hans Christian Anderson's stories were wonderful, but so depressing. But that made them more meaningful. Like "The LIttle Mermaid." The story ends with the little mermaid dying; the Prince marries someone else and she can't perform the act, which would have included murdering the Prince, that would change her back to a mermaid. So she dies, turning to foam on the sea. But then she feels herself being raised to the skies and finds out she's been reincarnated as a creature called a Daughter of the Air, that is, she is given another chance to obtain an immortal soul due to her selflessness and sacrifice. Incidentally, the little mermaid in Anderson's story is nothing like the flame haired one in the Disney movie. One critic called the Disney mermaid "a braying Valley Girl."

The movie version of Scary Stories was fairly disappointing. But this fucker creeps me out.

Here’s the winner:

The Little Mermaid stands in for HCA's unrequited gay love:

"The movie version of Scary Stories was fairly disappointing. But this fucker creeps me out."

I didn't realize Vegas Poo was in another movie besides her masterwork, "Fart: The Movie."

fairy tales were not meant to merely amuse children. they were to teach them about the dangers of the world, proper morality and so on. a crap ton are about the dangers of strange men, abusive husbands, serial killer cannibals and those who wander about seeking fortune instead of staying in (and knowing) their place.

one of my favorite films that illustrates this dichotomy is The Company of Wolves.

Company of Wolves is also about emerging sexuality. It's underrated, imo.

R94, fairy tales were NOT for children. They were folktales intended for adults. The keepers of the tales (oral historians) were invariably women. This was one of the responsibilities of women in late 18th-early 19th century peasant societies. The original German edition of Grimm's fairy tales reflects this. It wasn't until the book was published in England that people considered them stories for children-highly inappropriate stories for children. The Grimm brothers revised the stories after that to make them more child-friendly. The early version with Rapunzel clearly having sex with the prince and bearing two children, etc. were intended for adults, granted uneducated, illiterate adults.

[quote] Now that I think about it, Snow White is actually pretty messed up. The Queen: "I need to look even hotter so please huntsman, cut out her heart and give it to me when you are done". Was she Eva Braun?

The pre-war Disney films (with the exception of Dumbo) feature some rather dark scenes. Snow White: see above. Pinocchio: enough said. Fantasia has Chernabog. The death of Bambi's mother is much more brutal than Mufasa's - Mufasa's ghost appears before Simba, whereas Bambi's mother is just... dead. In the fifties, Disney substantially cut down on the nightmare fuel.

r97, the big exception to that is Cinderella. That scene where her stepsisters rip her dress to shreds is genuinely disturbing.

For memory....

Yeah, I watched that scene from Cinderella recently and it was like a rape scene.

WILLY WONKA is more jacked-up than Pinocchio.

Hansel and Gretel weren't the only kiddies burned alive!

In the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka film, doesn't Wonka just say the kids will be fine in the end?

In Willie Wonka NONE of the children get killed. They get humiliated and put through uncomfortable circumstances but none of them actually get killed. The point is that they were getting their comeuppance for their bad behavior. I thought it was very amusing, watching them get what they deserved.

[quote] Yeah, I watched that scene from Cinderella recently and it was like a rape scene.

Literal VIOLENCE that there was not even ONE trans character in that diversity-annihilating fascist cartoon.

Not at first, r103! Watch the links.

"The Blue Bird" with Shirley Temple was a pretty fucked up children's movie. It was her first flop as a child star. She plays a bratty, ungrateful little girl; nobody wanted to see Shirley Temple in a role like that. Anyway she and her brother are sent on a magical adventure to find "The Blue Bird". Here's what one viewer had to say about it:

"When I was little I came across the 1940 SHIRLEY TEMPLE movie THE BLUE BIRD several times on television. It’s sort of the poor man’s THE WIZARD OF OZ with SHIRLEY playing the part of a girl named Mytyl who along with her brother Tytyl embarks on a journey through the past and future searching for happiness in the form of the title bird. The children are aided by their dog Tylo and their cat Tylette, who thanks to some fairy magic, have taken human form.

Based on a 1908 play by MAURICE MAETERLINCK, there’s plenty to find alarming about THE BLUE BIRD. The children’s journey begins in a vast graveyard, their dead grandparents show up to pelt them with guilt, trees transform into vigilantes and finally they end up in some weird limbo place where unborn children in togas howl and cry about how short their time on Earth will be. Personally I was unmoved by any and all of the insanity on display except the unfortunate and fiery death of my favorite character, the cat lady Tylette.

As I watched THE BLUE BIRD again recently as an adult I can see that much of it flew over my head as a kid, most notably the fact that Tylette the cat is clearly drawn as a sinister, mischievous presence and that her demise is meant to be somewhat deserved. Was there something wrong with me as a kid that I would automatically gravitate toward this malevolent malcontent?"

Although the original "The Blue Bird" flopped it was remade in 1976. A big budget extravaganza, it was directed by George Cukor and featured stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Cicely Tyson and Ava Gardner. It was a major flop and is generally considered one of the biggest movie fiascos of all time. Time Out New York called the film "a desperately pedestrian, hideously glitzy version of Maeterlinck's delicate fantasy" and added, "You'd never believe in a month of Sundays that Cukor directed it."

Mame.

Y’all are babies.

Chitty chitty Bang Bang was always terrifying, especially the Roses of Success scene, the child catcher, and the residents of Vulgaria.

R107, I think Malevolent Malcontent is my new drag name!

A hunter kills Bambi’s mother... so Bambi. Probably Christina Crawford enjoyed it.

Pretty Baby.

"Pretty Baby" was a children's film? R113 is either joking (feebly) or nuts.