Editorials
How ‘Cuphead’ Resurrected the Unsettling Style of Early Cartoons
Before the “House of Mouse” forever associated cartoons as a genre predominantly for kids, animation wasn’t quite so family-friendly. The video game Cuphead resurrected the surreal and terrifying style of Fleischer Animation and Disney Studios early cartoons. Best of all, Cuphead doesn’t market itself as unsettling, the game is rated E after all – its biggest offenses (according to the back of the box) being gambling and tobacco use. Instead of inserting frightening aspects into the game, the developers (Studio MDHR) heightened what was already present in a lot of early cartoons. Gamers who look between the hand-drawn lines of animation will uncover a nightmare of body-horror, black comedy, and terror.
Old cartoons, even more than silent films, feel like they’re from a different planet. Modern viewers usually note several unsettling qualities of retro cartoons. One of the most obvious ones is a bounciness featured in those early films. The “bouncing” was due to the popular animation style of the time nicknamed: rubber hose animation. It was a technique where character’s bodies lacked sharp edges or joints and instead had bendy long black tubes for appendages. Combining this with simple repetitive animation (bouncing) was intended to make the film’s more alive and better animated. What was cost-cutting in theory, turned out terrifying in practice. Other upsetting aspects of those films went beyond the limitations of animation of the time though. These unsettling storytelling choices were very much intentional.
Early animated films often feature a strange set of intense moralistic values (which Cuphead also plays up). The perfect example is “Swing You Sinners” (a 30’s Fleischer Studios cartoon ). In “Swing You Sinners,” a happy-go-lucky dog named Bimbo steals a chicken and is hounded by the forces of hell until a giant skeleton eats him. Being dragged to hell for chicken theft might be a tad excessive of a punishment, regardless, this Puritan “all or nothing” value system was present in many cartoons of the time. There aren’t any concrete theories as to why these cartoons had such harsh morals, though the fact that cartoons at the time weren’t exclusively produced for children certainly had something to do with it. Still, one could argue that the idea behind these intense parables stemmed from an attempt to teach kids about right and wrong (in the scariest possible way apparently). The idea is similar to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which, on the surface, were about princes and princesses but also sneakily featured incest, murder, and torture. Together, the morals and quirky stylistic choices of the era create a bouncing nightmare of cheeriness – which is exactly what Cuphead is.
The biggest antiquated animation motif Cuphead’s creators borrow is of course the ever-present smiles on the game’s mascots. Both Mug Man and Cuphead are fitted with a set of vacant coin-eyes and toothy-grins, previously featured on mascots like Felix the Cat or Bimbo the Dog. The smiles are doubly unsettling since players spend the majority of the game murdering other cartoon characters. Cuphead extends this frightening aesthetic choice into other aspects of the game’s world. Minor opponents are all equipped with resting states, a default animation cycle to return to when they’re not engaged. The resting states for most minions is them simply grinning ear-to-ear along with a Judge Doom-like set of unblinking eyeballs. The result is as if the cast of stuffed animatronics from Splash Mountain gained sentience and went “Westworld” on unsuspecting guests.
Cuphead also adopts the perverse morals of the cartoons it takes inspiration from. The game’s story is presented as a fairytale that follows our heroes as they’re turned into indentured soul collector’s by the Devil as punishment for gambling their own souls away. Again, this is a throwback to early cartoon works like Disney’s Pinocchio, which featured the deceptive Pleasure Island (a local not too dissimilar to the Devil’s Casino in Cuphead). Like poor Pinocchio, our child-like protagonists are sucked in by adult vices and punished for it; although they’re thankfully spared this fate. Then there are the bosses.
One of Cuphead’s biggest achievements is creating horror from its boss fights through the natural extension of rubber-band animation: body horror. Each boss in Cuphead has multiple phases, with each phase distorting and mutilating the bosses original form. Enemies rip off their heads, morph into strange shapes, and much worse. By the end of fights, bosses barely resemble their kid-friendly first appearance. As the bosses slowly stretch and warp, they transform into the full realization of Cuphead‘s thesis: there’s a fine line between creepy and cute.
Cuphead’s guise of being a “kid-friendly” cartoon game was a massive success. The E-rated title was one of the best rated games of 2017 and is still incredibly popular two years after launch. Surprisingly, the game did end-up especially resonating with younger fans, inspiring a line of toys, blankets, and an air-freshener (yes that’s true). Studio MDHR did their job so well that most players don’t pick-up on the latent horror themes in the game’s story and presentation. Much like when audiences were heading to watch Bimbo or Mickey’s latest exploits, few realized that this wide-grinned cartoon had its roots in horror. But, the further gamer’s progress, the more they understand that something deeply twisted is lurking under the surface of each cell of animation.
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.
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