MovieChat Forums > Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) Discussion > TOO DARK FOR KIDS

TOO DARK FOR KIDS

posted 9 years ago by Legendary_Badass
10 replies | jump to latest

I just saw this for the first time as it's being pulled from Netflix, and I was very impressed 8/10.

I had only heard about the movie in accounts on CGI usage in film, but here's an '80s movie with Spielberg behind it that actually bombed and that seems to be the big mystery.

Simply put this movie is too dark in subject matter for the kids who would have been the target audience. You have a young girl getting boiled to death, several suicides, and the shooting of the lead's love interest. This isn't the kind if happy movie memory making stuff parents look for. Goodness, it's straight jarring for this kind of damage to happen at this presentation. At least in an R rated horror you expect gruesome.

THE ONLY CRITIC WHO CAN REVIEW WHILE JOGGING:
http://bit.ly/1pPzoBc

[–] smerd_70 9 years ago

That's why it's rated PG-13.

I collect dead pigeons then I press them between the pages of a book.

[–] rebschucks 9 years ago

I first saw this movie in the 4th grade and I loved it. It was a little scary (generally I fast-forwarded whenever the stained glass man showed up) but overall not too horrible. We had it taped off HBO but I had a teacher show it in class that same year, too.

When a cold momma gets hot, boy how she sizzles!

[–] uv3030 9 years ago

Too dark for kids today, maybe, but this movie was made in 85. I don't think people cared as much about damaging their children 30 years ago. At least not my parents!

[–] estcst-3 9 years ago

Damaging? If anything kids today are over protected.

I don't want to see anyone's kid get killed or hurt but the lengths that parents go to shelter their kids in modern times (and the price we pay as a collective society for it) is overbearing.

Damaging is certainly a heavy handed word for it. If your young teen (this was rated PG 13) has problems with the fictional matters and their delivery in this film then I'm guessing their going to have a bit of a hard time in open society.

[–] StrontiumAE 9 years ago

Saw this as a child in the cinema with my dad, and I was pretty freaked out with all of the horror elements this film had. The cooked duck coming to life on that mans plate, and it trying to kill him... The love interest nearly being sacrificed to a pagan god, only to hallucinate her death/burial (which turns out to be a premonition), and of course that priest being attacked by a stain glass window painting. The special effects, even by todays standards were very impressive in that scene but the whole sequences was just really twisted and macabre.

http://www.1971-reviewae.com

[–] petekrug17 9 years ago

The nightmare hallucination scenes scared the s*** out of me as a child. People talk about a movie like "Return To Oz" as being a creepy kids film, but in my opinion, this movie is a hundred times scarier. (And yes, I have seen "Return To Oz".)

[–] IceboxMovies 9 years ago

It's not more violent than the other adventures Spielberg produced in the mid-80's -- Temple of Doom, Gremlins, The Goonies, etc.

[–] Picnic10 9 years ago

It's a very special movie in how it displays upper class society as mysterious, energetic, erudite. The stuff that John Major pretended wasn't useful. Well it fed my imagination.

[–] AdmiralTugBenson 8 years ago

As has been stated, it wasn't intended for small children (though I was 6 when I saw it on cable), more like what we'd now call YA audiences. I've never seen any of the Hunger Games movies, but it's my understanding they have quite a bit of violence and death. I mean those movies are about children being selected to take part in games where they fight to the death.

"Dan Marino should die of gonorrhea and rot in hell. Would you like a cookie son?"

[–] HarlemEagle42 (16250) a year ago

Eh they'll be fine.