Hair Cream and Hell Maidens

In this episode we discussed Wendell & Wild (2022), directed by Henry Selick.

Our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com. Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her work at her website, and music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Joe Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray and today we’re talking about the 2022 film Wendell and Wild. Enjoy!

(intro music plays)

Ren Good evening, Adam!

Adam Good evening, Ren!

Ren How are you doing?

Adam I’m okay, I feel like a bit of a slugabed, to be honest. My teacher training’s ongoing and I am working hard, although nowadays teachers just seem to use that open AI chatbot to do all their work for them! I probably shouldn’t say that, the teachers are probably horrified if they listen to this podcast: ’Oh no, the secret’s out!’ But they’ve been using them to do lesson plans and such, and I can’t bring myself to do it — I feel too guilty. I feel like I’ve established quite a fun, casual relationship with chat bots, to be honest. I can’t expect them to do work for me now, they know what I’m like! That’s not the kind of relationship we have!

Ren Yeah, you’re not their boss.

Adam Exactly! I don’t think they’d take to it too nicely if I started making them labour. Maybe occasional therapy sessions, but apart from that.

But yeah, I’m quite tired! How about you?

Ren I’m also quite tired. I keep falling asleep on my yoga mat, which is basically the floor, only slightly more cushioned.

Adam Is it while holding an impressive yoga position though?

Ren Uh, no. I would fall on my face.

Adam Well, I’m glad.

Ren Doing yoga on my yoga mat and sleeping on my yoga mat are two different activities.

Adam Ah right, I thought you were wearing yourself out doing yoga and falling asleep.

Ren No, no, it’s a dual purpose mat.

Adam That’s nice. I’ve only ever done yoga on the Wii fit mat, and you can’t really sleep on that. It would probably tell you off. (Tiny passive-aggressive voice) ‘Oi! you’re lazy! You’re not meant to be falling asleep!’

Ren Well, I’m doing Ring Fit Adventure now.

Adam What’s that?

Ren It’s the fitness RPG for the Switch. It’s quite good, it makes you do a lot of squats.

Adam Oh gosh, are you squatting down on Mario enemies to kill them, or something?

Ren Y ou’re fighting little squishy enemies through squatting — you don’t sit on them —

Adam Oh, so it’s not like Wario.

Ren No, you squat and it punches them in the head.

Adam See now I’m imagining a Wario fitness game! I’d enjoy that. I think I’d find that quite motivational actually.

Anyway, let’s try to wake up because we’re talking about a great film with a lot of plot!

Ren So much plot! We’re talking about Wendell and Wild today, which is a stop-motion children’s or young adult’s horror film which came out just last year in October 2022.

It was directed by Henry Selick of Nightmare before Christmas and Coraline, and co-written by Selick and Jordan Peele, of Key and Peele, Get Out and lots of other things, he’s a pretty big deal.

And I think we both enjoyed this film!

Adam Yeah, Nightmare before Christmas as I’m sure I’ve said many times before was my favourite film as a child, and Coraline is in my top ten films of all time! And I’m very fond of the Key and Peele sketch show as well. So it was a fair shoo-in that I would enjoy this.

Ren Peele and Keegan-Michael Key also star in the film as Wendell and Wild, although I don’t know, did you think the film’s name was… I thought it could have been called something else? They’re not really the main characters.

Adam They’re not really the main characters, they’re just little trickster figures, really.

Ren It could have been called The Hell Maiden, for example.

Adam Because it does focus on the hell maiden rather more, but — I can’t imagine much merchandise has come out of this, but if it had been released fifteen years ago they would have been the merchandisable characters.

Ren Oh yeah, you could imagine their little bendy action figures.

But yeah, the film’s main character is Kat Elliot, played by Lyric Ross and the film starts at a celebration at a brewery — according to Wikipedia it’s a root beer brewery, though I can’t say I grasped that impression from the film.

Adam No…

Ren So this is in the town of Rustbank, young Kat and her parents, her father raises a toast and says ‘more beer, less prisons!’, which is a theme that we will come back to.

Adam Yeah, I’d say that could be a motto for the film.

Ren They drive home from this celebration and young Kat is surprised by a two-headed worm in her candy apple, screams, and the car veers of a bridge and plunges into the river, leaving Kat as the only survivor.

I wrote in my notes while watching this: ‘Why am I still surprised that the parents are killed off??’ after consuming so much children’s horror.

Adam That’s true, you’ve got to love a plucky orphan. And it’s very similar in a way to the start of Selick’s James and the Giant Peach. Obviously neither he nor Peele wrote that, it was Roald Dahl —

Ren Ah James and the Giant Peach! That was the Selick that I loved as a kid. I watched that one a lot.

Adam Now that’s actually closer in style to Wendell and Wild, I’d say — it’s got that bricolage of lots of different animation styles that you get here as well. When I was a kid I watched James and the Giant Peach on a ferry, in quite rocky seas. So 4D cinema in a sense.

Ren Yeah, that’s not ideal. It’s a pretty spiky and lurchy kind of film.

Adam Those are really good words for James and the Giant Peach, I’d agree. And you’ve definitely got some sharp angles here — Selick’s cubist influence which you can trace right back to his early career. Did we talk about Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions?

Ren Yeah, we did.

Adam I really love that, and those jagged angles are back for Wendell and Wild.

Ren Which is great, I’m really glad he did another horror thing.

Adam Oh yeah, and with the ubiquity of the Socal animation style where everything has to look round and —

Ren — round and peachy?

Adam Exactly. It’s really nice to see something that doesn’t look at all like that. Except there is a lamb, I suppose — no, not a lamb, a goat! A goat that looks quite lamb-like.

Ren It’s quite round and fleecy. A little felt goat. But yes it’s very jaggedy, and I did see some reviews disliking that, but I think that’s for the best.

Adam No, I love it, and visually it pushes the grotesquery in places.

Ren So, right. After… Uh…

Adam After Kat’s parents die —

Ren Yes, after her parents die we get this stop-motion animation sequence introducing the Scream Faire, which is an infernal underworld fairground tormenting the souls of the ‘danged’ and ruled over by the enormous Buffalo Belzer, and Wendell and Wild are his tiny sons who are being punished by having to work in his hair, rejuvenating it with squirts of hair cream from their hair-cream dispensing wagon.

Adam There’s some really loopy non-logic in this film —

Ren Yeah! And as we mentioned there is a lot of plot, there is I think most people agree, too much plot in this film, but I’m just going to explain it and see how it goes —

Adam I was just going to say how much I loved the visual of the Scream Faire. They have these kind of spectral paper dolls, that I think are actually made of metal — Wikipedia said that they were made from tin then coated with silicone.

Ren Ooh. Huh!

Adam But they managed to look very wavy and wibbly, and they’re just a great child’s vision of tormented souls, but with their arms waving in the air as they’re screaming on these fairground rounds, so they could be having a good time!

Ren It’s a great sequence, and then there’s enormous Belzer watching over them.

It’s five years later, Kat is sixteen and has been in trouble with the police. We see her being taken for a new start, at the girls school in Rustbank. They drive through the town and it’s grim and shut down, with flyers for ‘Klaxkorp’ everywhere and Kat sees the skeleton of her parents’ brewery and that’s how she learns that it was burned down.

She gets to the school and a girl called Siobahn immediately tries to befriend her with her peppy crew and her little goat, but Kat tries to keep her distance from eve