Rejoice ye goblins and ghouls, the spooky season is upon us again! If you’re a parent, you’re probably on the hunt for festively creepy (but not scary!) family-friendly content the whole gang can enjoy. Well, we at the Hard Times are here to say fuck that!
You think Halloween is for children? Guess again pal. Halloween is for childless adults. It’s our Christmas, and you’re oh-so-precious little trick-or-treaters are just part of the decor, deal with it.
There’s a plethora of four-quadrant “spooky” entertainment available today, and frankly, we consider it all to be a massive appropriation of horror culture. It’s a war on Halloween, and this year we are striking back! We’ve rounded up the top ghoulish-but-cute traitors to Samhain and pitched an over-the-top gore fest project for each one. You hear that 30-something goths with disposable income? We’re taking it back!
27. The Great Pumpkin
All his life Linus has been mocked for his worship of The Great Pumpkin, an arcane God that he believes will reveal itself to its followers in a pumpkin patch on Halloween night. This year, Linus’s devotion will finally pay off. The Great Pumpkin has returned, and he is most displeased with our lack of faith. His first words to his humble servant Linus—”Bring me the blood of the non-believers.”
26. Spooky Buddies
Ours is going to be a little less cutesy talking puppies have misadventures and a little more Air Bud meets Cujo. The puppies will still talk, but as rabies cooks their minds the words slowly meld into brutalistic gibberish as they terrorize a small town on Halloween night.
25. Dr. Finkelstein
In “Dr. Finkelstein: Origins” the doctor is a strait up WWII Nazi scientist, performing the most gruesome and immoral experiments on his subjects in the name of creating the one true Superman. Let’s see Danny Elfman write a song about that!
24. Falcor
When was the last time you watched “The Never Ending Story?” It’s a lot different through grown-up eyes. Falcor has… a vibe. A pretty unsettling one. Let’s explore that.
23. The Iron Giant
“The Iron Giant” is a heartwarming story about the bond between a young boy and a giant alien robot that completely leaves exploration of the horrors of AI on the table. Our sequel will make a meal out of those scraps. The giant, now fully repaired and praised as a hero for selflessly saving a town from a nuclear explosion in the first movie, decides to part more “gifts” to humanity. The Earth of 1957 suddenly finds itself in possession of the Internet, smartphones, Alexa, the whole works. At first, people embrace this technology with open arms, but soon things take a turn. People are acting strange, becoming paranoid, and turning on one another. Things escalate into full-blown civil war, and eventually bloodthirsty anarchy, and as the giant watches the thin veneer of society crumble to dust from on high we realize this was his plan all along.
22. The Count
If Sesame Street were a REAL place, everyone would be a vampire by now having been bitten by the count. Let’s stop lying to our children.
21. Casper
Honestly, the first Casper movie is fairly unsettling in its own right. It raises some pretty heavy questions about the nature of the soul and the afterlife, plus Casper is super creepy towards Christina Ricci, like borderline incel. Our remake will simply build on that skeleton, with Casper adapting a more nefarious “Baby Reindeer” approach to his romantic pursuits, all the while lamenting upon the fact that his parents are in heaven while he is doomed to roam the earth forever. The real horror is Casper’s refusal to acknowledge the flaws that corrupt his soul, even as they become painfully and gorily clear to us the viewers. That’s how ya do Casper!
20. The Headless Horseman
Creepy, but we never actually see him cut off Ichabod Crane’s head. How about a movie that just deals with the head-cutting part? Takes a lot of work to get a whole human head off of a body, kids need to know!
19. The Addams Family
Pretty simple, we just show The Addams Family doing all the macabre shit they reference doing in jokes all the time. Oh really Gomez, you had a blast vacationing in Europe during the bubonic plague? Let’s see that shit!
18. Jack Skellington
Our origin story cements what the original “Nightmare Before Christmas” only hints at—that in his human life, Jack Skellington was none other than Jack the Ripper, satanist, and murderer of London sex workers. There’s an empty place in his bones, and he’s going to fill it with bloodshed.
17. The Monster Squad
The kids faired pretty well against super-campy versions of Dracula, The Wolfman, and all the like, but there comes a time to put away childish things. Now in high school, The Monster Squad is up against a team of real-life Monsters. Let’s see how the team’s nard-kicking antics hold up against an alliance between David Berkowitz, Maina Ramulu, Charles Cullen, and Dennis Rader, aka The BTK Killer.
16. Hotel Transylvania Dracula
We can’t be the only ones to think Adam Sandler is severely underused here. We all saw what he could do in “Uncut Gems.” We know Dracula is supposed to be “nice” in these movies, fine, but what about a Dracula who’s so addicted to gambling that he’s constantly putting himself and loved ones in harm’s way? Now that’s haunting.
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