I watched this on Channel 4 recently, was anyone else surprised at all the deaths in it??? Lol the wee boy drowned, Rupert was crushed to death and Brisket and the evil nanny Slighcarp were eaten by wolves!! But the thing that surprised me was that no one really seemed to care that these people were rather brutally killed!! I'm not shocked or anything, I actually found it quite amusing, just it was a kids film, seemed a bit wierd!!!
shareI agree, I used to watch and love this film a great deal as a child but watching it now (aged 18) I found it far more shocking and emotional than I used to when I was little! I think that today people are much more bothered by lots of death and brutality in childrens' films, but in the 80's it didn't matter so much - the BBFC are much stricter now. I think the filmmakers were also trying to evoke an era where there was lots of death and it was just a fact of life. Still a great film though - love it!
shareYeah, blimey, just look at Grimms' Fairy Tales! They were kids stories and the baddy always dies horribly as a psort of lesson to the children hearing/reading the tale not to be bad. for example in HANS THE HEDGEHOG, Hans Skewers a princess to death with his quills for not keeping a promise!
Grim! (No pun intended)
i agree that this film does have some pretty gruesome deaths for a kids film! i used to watch it alot as a kid- it's a good film but it was quite scary when the wolves took over the house/the boy got crushed!
shareOhh yeah I hated Ruperts death, it's really shocking and actually effected me more, when I rewatched it the other day (at 23), than it did when I was a kid.
Requiem for a dream has the same effect, I can normally only watch it once a year for that reason alone.
Still no idea why Film4 left it unedited at such an early time.
It is incredibly violent for a children's film. Slighcarp used to be scare me half to death as a kid. She's actually quite attractive, I noticed.
shareWhat I was surprised by was the slapstick manner that leads Slighcarp into the woods with the wolves at the end. I haven't read the book. Is the book & the film the same that she is pushed onto the stove & runs away with her rear end burning? I expected this from the 3 Stooges.
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I was shocked that they turned Mrs. Brisket's daughter, Diana, into a boy.
shareRupert's death to me was horrifying. I was already traumatized by the Roger Rabbit movie, where the main villain was crushed under the steam roller and after I saw Rupert's death I really developed a slight phobia of steam rollers, as funny as that may sound now.
Looking back, I remember never finishing that movie. After that scene I switched of the TV and never watched it again.
I like that a lot of family films in the 1980s weren't afraid of showing more adult themes. A lot of kids films today tend to be dumbed down.
ROCK STARS HAVE KIDNAPPED MY SON