Judge Doom killed Bambi's mother, pass it on

In this episdoe we discussed Who Framed Roger Rabbit from 1988 and TerrorVision from 1986.

Our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo 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 cohost is Adamy Whybray, today we’re joined by special guest Ava Foxfort, and we're talking about Who Framed Roger Rabbit from 1988 and Terror Version from 1986. Enjoy!

Ren Hi —

Ava I think that was the opposite of in time — oh shit you're going straight into an intro?

Adam That's fine. Hi, Ava!

Ava Hi!!

Ren Hi Adam, Hi Ren.

Ava Hi Ren!

Adam You are Ren.

Ren I am Ren. Okay, this is setting the scene perfectly for this episode —

Adam No, no, I have made a lot of notes. I have prepared.

Ren No, that's true. Adam has prepared, Adam has prepared. Maybe Ava has prepared?

Ava Define prepared. I haven't made notes, but I've never made notes in my life.

Adam OK, so we're discussing two films —

Ren Who Framed Roger Rabbit from 1988 and Terror Vision from 1986. And we decided to do this episode a long time ago and have now somewhat forgotten our reasoning.

Adam OK, so let me explain. So. I found Terrorvision on a list of supposed children's horror films on Letterboxed, which is a lie, it’s not.

Ava It's so not!

Adam Ok, but, but — my thinking is that Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a Disney film and it's PG rated, it’s a family film that is largely not going to be understandable by a child audience. I watched it as a child and it made me feel weird and troubled. And I probably didn't follow the plot because the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is quite complex. It's like a Chinatown film noir conspiracy with lots of references to old cartoons that most kids watching in the late ‘80s wouldn't have got.

On the other hand, Terrorvision is clearly a film made sbstensibly for an adult audience that I don't think anyone over the age of 12 is going to enjoy.

Ava So we've got definitely an adult film — one of them is definitely a horror film. One of them is horrific if you see it as a child. I imagine both of them would be horrific if you saw them as a child.

Adam Well, that’s the thing, I think both of these films have a really kind of specific squick that is going to really impact you if you see it as a kid.

Ava And like, are we just going for similarly traumatising, is that the theme that we've got here? Yeah, but you didn't see this as a kid. Was anyone traumatised by Terrorvision as a child? Out of us three, we're allowed to answer for ourselves.

Adam Oh, no, I assumed none of you had. I mean, I thought you were talking for the audience.

Ren Yeah, I assume anyone who saw Terrorvison as a child was traumatised by it.

Adam I assume they're now locked up.

Ava The thing that was confusing to me about Terrorvision was there was quite a charming, childish humour to it, woven in between all of the deeply inappropriate humour.

Adam Well, that’s what I mean! I think a really juvenile film!

Ava It's incredibly juvenile, yeah.

Adam And ostensibly the main two characters end up being the child character and the teenagers. And also, we've talked time and time again, here me out, time and time again on this podcast, we've talked about plots in which the child characters are not believed, right? In which there's some kind of monster or some kind of demonic or supernatural presence, and a child insists and insists that it's real and all of the adults don't believe them. And the child's right and bad things happen to the adults. And that is exactly what the plot of this.

Ava Yeah, it does have a really classical children's narrative. Can we explicitly not make an argument for terrorism being child friendly? Like I think on a moral level —

Adam To be fair, on a moral leve that probably would rightfully get me barred from ever teaching again, I think. And that's definitely not the hill I want to die on, I don’t want to pin my teaching career on it, it’s terrible.

Ren Right, I need to introduce Ava.

Ava To who??

Adam She’s been on here before.

Ren She has been on here before, but it’s been a while.

Adam It’s been a while.

Ava It has been a while.

Ren Ava Foxfort, veteran of the Deptford Mice series. Which maybe you should go back and listen to, because it was quite an epic undertaking.

Adam I think they’re the best episodes we’ve ever done.

Ava Yeah, I mean, there's they are like absolutely some of the best children’s horror I’ve ever read. I remember reading it when I was little and genuinely getting horror. So yeah, go and listen to me, listen to more of me, I’m great. I’m Ava Foxfort, I'm a guest today. I'm very confused as to why I'm here and what we're doing.

Ren Thank you for coming back, Ava. I also don't know why we saw these two films and were like, Ava, let's get Ava for this. I don't know why.

Ava Like, I'm offended by the suggestion that Terrorvision —

Adam Yeah, I was going to say that that's probably not going to make you feel great about yourself. I mean, I don't know, maybe I I saw that Medusa character.

Ava I think I've got Medusa vibes. You know, I would really love that kind of rubberized snake outfit that she's got, I think it's a beautiful feast of costumery that I would 100% wear out.

Adam Well, exactly. So maybe that's why, that's the only justifiable reason I could think of.

Ava And Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a beloved film when I was little, so this was absolutely my jam. So half of this makes sense. The other half, I don't know what you think of me.

Adam Just Medusa, really. But Who Framed Roger Rabbit I watched as a kid, I definitely watched it more than once, but I found it was one of those films I was fascinated by but I found quite troubling. I don't think I loved it as a kid, I think. I think it worried me. What about you Ren?

Ren I saw it for the first time two days ago. So.

Ava Oh, that's an interesting perspective I'd like to hear your thoughts are on it, which I guess is what we're here for, so that's good.

Ren Yeah, all I knew coming in was that it combined animation and live action and that there is a sexy lady called Jessica Rabbit. That was the sum total of my knowledge.

Adam That's fair. That's probably the legacy of the film, right? In terms of what someone who hasn't seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit knows about it, I would say yeah, animation and live action and sexy Jessica Rabbit is probably what most people think.

Ava I mean, it's probably the origin of my lifetime affection for Bob Hoskins.

Adam Well, I was gonna say I was thinking this episode might be a meeting of the chapter of the Bob Hoskins Appreciation Society.

Ren Oh, it absolutely is. My appreciation obviously comes from the Terry Gilliam film Brazil, in which he plays one of the Central Services heating engineers. And he utters the classic line, which I'm sure I've already said on the podcast, because it's just absolutely embedded in my head: “Machines don't fix themselves.”

Ava Yeah, connection — because I did actually read the Wikipedia this morning. So that's a level in which I'm prepared. Terry Gilliam was up to direct Who Framed Roger Rabbit for a while. He was one of the first directors to be picked and he said it looked too difficult so he didn't do it.

Ren Yeah, it would absolutely never have got made --

Ava No way, absolutely no way. And it would have been terrible if it had been —

Ren And it would have taken 20 years to not get made.

Adam Well, we know that Robert Zemeckis’ main interest in filmmaking is having increasing amounts of special effects hopefully replace the work of actors and cinematographers until I'm assuming his end point is he just wants AI to do it. But at this point he was still having to do a lot of work because this is way before The Polar Express, right? It's way before Here. This is non-digital filmmaking.

So all of this film was achieved through optical printing. So what that means basically is it's all composite shots and so it was filmed with the live actors using these awful — and I encourage you to look this up — these horrible rubber stand-ins. I would love, you know, my jam would be a direct