Editorials

Let’s Look at the Scary Side of Disney’s ‘Pinocchio’

Published

7 years ago

May 10, 2017

When I was a young boy (probably two or three), Pinocchio was my favorite movie. I loved it! I would watch it constantly. Recently, as a 34-year-old, avid horror movie fan, I re-watched it. Midway through, I realized why I loved it so much: It’s basically a horror movie!

Disney usually tames their stories from the often darker original source material to make their movies a bit more family-friendly. 1940’s Pinocchio, however, was left full of terrifying situations and dark, frightening visuals.

Hear me out.

Pinocchio is created by Geppetto, who wishes upon a star that his newly created puppet could become a real boy. While Geppetto sleeps, the Blue Fairy grants the wish by bringing Pinocchio to life, but explains that to become a real boy, he must prove himself brave, truthful, and unselfish. She then appoints Jiminy Cricket as Pinocchio’s conscience. AN INSECT! She gave an insect the sole responsibility of guiding a newly self-aware being through his first days of life! Anyway. Rather than taking the time to get to know him and teach him the ways of the world, Geppetto just sends Pinocchio off to figure it out on his own. And so Pinocchio is sent off to school. With an insect conscience as his guide.

Here’s where the horror really begins.

Pinocchio is abducted by two strangers: Honest John the Fox and his companion, Gideon the Cat. They trick Pinocchio into ditching school, and sell him to a giant, abusive, crazy, Italian Puppet Master called Stromboli. After a killer first performance for Stromboli, Jiminy figures Pinocchio doesn’t need him, and just leaves him in the night with the crazy slave master. Pinocchio is locked in a tiny bird cage, trapped in a life of servitude where he must perform lest he be chopped into firewood. We aren’t even halfway through the movie, and we already have child abduction, human trafficking, and a serious threat of dismemberment!

Jiminy comes back, but can’t do anything, so the Blue Fairy bails them out, helping Pinocchio to escape. Pinocchio lies to the Blue Fairy against Jiminy’s advice, and then the two set off only to fall back into the clutches of Pinocchio’s original abductors, Honest John and Gideon. Once again, Jiminy can’t do a damn thing to help. This time, Pinocchio is headed to Pleasure Island – a land of sin and debauchery! Jiminy, being a useless insect, has no effect as a conscience as Pinocchio gets drunk, smokes cigars, gambles, and breaks stuff along with all the other wild kids just running around causing havoc. But their fun, it turns out, comes at a price. You thought those naughty kids at Crystal Lake had it rough when Jason punished them? Well these kids got it much worse: they all turn into donkeys, and are sold to work in the salt mines!

Not only that, but we actually get a pretty frightening transformation sequence on-screen, as one of Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island pals, Lampwick, turns into a donkey right before Pinocchio’s eyes. Yes, there’s a dark, painful, therianthropic transformation scene in a kids’ movie in 1940! That’s a year before The Wolf Man! We also see other donkey-children in crates being whipped and rounded-up by glowing-eyed, black shadow figures. Yeah. Creepy.

Pinocchio escapes yet again, but only after he had been half-transformed into a donkey-boy. He finally returns home, only to find that his father had been swallowed alive by a terrifying giant whale named Monstro. How is this NOT a horror movie?!

Pinocchio and Jiminy set out to rescue Geppetto. They deliberately get swallowed by Monstro, and escape by setting a fire inside the whale’s belly, causing him to sneeze them all out. This leads to our final chase scene: A hungry and pissed-off whale chases after our heroes and nearly slams them all into the jagged rocks that litter the shoreline. Luckily the gang squeezes through a tiny hole in the rocks, just barely threading the needle to safety… except Pinocchio. Pinocchio is dead! Yes, straight-up dead, face-down in a shallow pool of sea water on the beach. The main character died! Dead as a doornail!

Everyone is devastated. They take his lifeless body back to the shop and mourn him. Finally the Blue Fairy shows up (probably feeling guilty for appointing an insect as Pinocchio’s conscience and guide), and not only brings him back to life, but turns Pinocchio into a real boy.

In the end, we DO get a happy ending, but all that stuff in the middle…

• slavery, child abduction and human trafficking
• a concept reminiscent of Saw or Seven where one pays for sins with physical pain and suffering
• a painful transformation sequence followed by a partial transformation sequence
• shadow people
• a giant sea monster
• a super intense final chase scene where the main character dies

… that’s a horror movie if I’ve ever seen one!

Editorials

Finding Faith and Violence in ‘The Book of Eli’ 14 Years Later

Published

1 day ago

April 22, 2024

Luiz H. C.

Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.

To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.

Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.

After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.

SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?

Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.

For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.

Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.

Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?

AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?

Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.

From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.

The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.

Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.

With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…

There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.