I've been reading about this movie and looking at the plot and I honestly don't know how it could've been ripped off the air like it was. "too scary" is what it said, "too scary for kids". It couldn't have been that bad. It was 2000, kid horror films were soft, still are, especially when it comes to Nick and/or Disney Channel. But, hey, I've never seen this movie, so who am I to judge, right?
shareOk, to clear this up once again...this movie is not that scary. I remember being an eight year old kid and being scared out of my mind...but the key words there are 'eight years old.'
Apparently others shared my experience, because online there were numerous posts by people who claimed to be scared by it, and they were probably like me, very young.
As the years passed and all the old Nick shows and TV movies were rerun constantly, and eventually found their way online, Cry Baby Lane's continued no-show led to rumors that it must have been too scary for kids and was banned. But it was all hype, urban legend, and hyperbole.
The reputation it now had as 'the Nickelodeon movie that went too far and was never to be seen again' led many to try to seek out a copy...and for 11 years all attempts failed.
Then the film's unique history was published in an intentionally sensational wikipedia entry (none had existed until then) by EmperorMarcus to try to garner further interest in the movie and the search to find a copy. The wiki article was incredibly successful and was linked to Reddit, where firesaladpeach saw it, uploaded a copy online...and now it will never be lost again.
Alas, it didn't live up to the hype. Not scary or disturbing at all. But the chase was fun. This is truly a case where the story behind the movie is more interesting than the movie itself.
Nick replayed it for Halloween that year as a shallow attempt at riding the wave caused by the film's discovery. They promoted it as being banned from TV to draw ratings. The only weird thing about all this is that before the film was found, they continually denied its existence. There is proof of this; emails where they tried to play the film off as a creepypasta and nothing more.
I'm sure there's more to this part of the story. If it wasn't that scary to begin with...why was it never reaired? This is Nickelodeon we're talking about. The unabashed king of reruns. And way deny its existence for over a decade until the internet forced their hand? We don't know, and probably never will.
The only thing that's remotely scary is the opening scene with Langella's narration over the black and white story. Besides from that it's less scary than Are You Afraid of the Dark.
shareIt's up on Youtube unless it got pulled. It really isn't scary, especially not for adults, but the narration discussing dead kids getting sawed in half and the part where the kid is underground in a grave with all the worms and a corpse talking to him would probably freak out little kids. I think they were contractually obliged to play it once and then they wanted to wash their hands of it.
shareIt's not really that good or scary.
I think Nickelodeon really did just forget about it, instead of banning it for being 'too scary'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z55W6ihUY-c
Moderators are terrorists.
The only reason this was banned was because idiots were letting their small kids watch it.
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