Inside the Guide: Spooky Animation for Kids

Animated movies and TV shows are typically happy, uplifting fare with anthropomorphic animals, songs, juvenile gags, fairy tale aspects, and bundles of energy. But over the years some cartoons have frightened and tickled the fancy of burgeoning horror fans.

In 1949 Disney released one of the earliest spooky stories in their catalog with The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The movie was split into two parts with adaptations of “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving. The Headless Horseman portion is a downright scary story told over haunting music. When the Horseman sans head appears holding a lit Jack-o-lantern, it’s a pretty startling moment for young viewers.

Ghosts and ghouls haven’t stopped viewers from hopping in the Mystery Machine to watch Scooby-Doo. The cartoon about a group of teens and their dog Scooby-Doo solving supernatural mysteries uses lots of horror tropes with old haunted manors, cobwebs, wispy ghosts, and spooky monsters. It began airing in 1969 and has grown with several cartoon shows, plus animated and live-action movies.

Writer-director Tim Burton introduced the wonderfully weird The Nightmare Before Christmas in 1993. The stop-motion animated film is a strange holiday blend when the king of Halloween decides to spread Christmas cheer. Halloween Town is frightening enough with vampires, mad doctors, and a character made of creepy crawlies, but the movie adds Santa being tortured, a kid receiving a severed head as a gift, and the hero is a skeleton.

A modern favorite for kids who enjoy a bit of scariness is 2006’s Monster House. Three preteens learn that the creepy house next door is actually a living monster. Naturally, the kids want to explore the spooky structure and find a way to stop it from terrorizing their neighborhood. This fun haunted house flick is adequately frightening for kids – the house does eat them – but it doesn’t stray beyond its PG rating.

To learn more about scary entertainment for kids, order a copy of The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Horror from gemstonepub.com.