The Horror of America
- Fred
- Mar 5
- 2 min read
Not sure what exactly my problem has been, but for some reason I've been on a classic Hanna-Barbera binge. I have specifically been watching a lot of Yogi Bear lately.
And not Yogi's Gang, the cartoon that fought cultural and ecological enemies in the 70's, but the original 60's Yogi Bear, which captured the zeitgeist of its era to perfection.
Over at the Daily Star, there's a story promoting the new movie Pinocchio. Pinocchio is not a nice young puppet who dreams of being a human boy, the new Pinocchio is re-imagined as a homicidal puppet that steals human limbs.
<sigh>
Sadly this has been done before. As nearly every entertainment copyright expires, instead of creative people trying to recapture the spirit of the original, everyone asks the same question:
What if (insert beloved character here) was a murderous maniac?
(2024) Mickey's Mouse Trap
(2025) Screamboat (Based off of Steamboat Willie)
(2025) Popeye the Slayer Man
(2025) Popeye's Revenge
(2025) Bambi: The Reckoning
Listen, I understand once the copyright is done, characters are fair game, but c'mon.
If you want to make a great horror movie, make one. Create your own characters and own it. One of my favorite recent horror movies is Deadstream. It is a low-budget gem. it is original, clever, and quirky. Now it didn't redefine the found footage genre, but it will go down as a cult-classic in the years to come.
Using 100 year old characters for a horror movie just seems lazy.
Or, if you loved Mickey Mouse and wished to bring back that youthful charm in a cartoon comedy, that's fine too. There's a lot of people at Disney that SHOULD be trying to re-capture the ol' Mickey Mouse Spirit.
Again, I'm not saying you can't make horror films based on beloved Disney characters, I'm saying you shouldn't do it.
At some point, turning beloved family fare into formulaic horror seems to be an analogy about America itself.
I was going to talk about the 1964 full length feature: Hey There, It's Yogi Bear
But then I lost my train of thought.
And I didn't care enough to get it back.
Then I thought to myself "nothing matters. None of this matters."
Maybe that's the moral of the story.
<shrug>
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