Eli Roth's History of Horror (2018) s02e05 Episode Script
Chilling Children
1
male narrator: Thinking
about having children?
- Aah!
- [screams]
narrator: You might wanna
watch this first
[crowd screaming]
The girls hate Carrie
because she's different.
[dramatic musical sting]
She is the hero
wronged by society.
[scary music]
And, society,
this is what you get.
♪♪
Bring them back here.
Right here to me!
♪♪
You say a child
is a bad seed
Everyone knows what you mean.
Something that's supposed
to be so innocent
becoming so evil.
[screaming]
And now it's something
that can harm you.
You don't know what's going
on inside that kid.
Leave us alone.
Maybe they're just being
a weird kid,
or maybe you're about to die.
"Children of the Corn" is,
like,
the ultimate creepy kid flick.
We want to give you peace.
You're just like,
"Oh, these kids are (bleep)."
[laughs]
What could be
more frightening
than your child gone wrong?
[screams]
People without children don't
realize how lucky they are.
[screams]
[eerie music]
♪♪
[screams]
narrator: The chilling
children of horror
come in many forms.
Help me.
narrator: Some are born with
the seeds of evil
lurking inside them.
[screams]
narrator: A few are good kids
possessed by evil entities.
And I'm the devil.
narrator: And then
there's Carrie,
a good girl who does
some very bad things.
Based on Stephen King's
terrifying debut novel,
"Carrie" begins
with blood and trauma.
Sissy Spacek plays a teenage
girl so sheltered and naive,
that when she has
her first menstruation
in a high school shower,
she thinks she's dying.
Help me!
Help me!
Have a tampon.
narrator: And her classmates
brutally shame her for it.
Hey, Norma,
Carrie's on her period.
I don't even think we're
thinking about what happeed,
or what's wrong with her;
we're just dis
just repelled by her.
It's really about
how mean kids can be,
and if you're different,
we're gonna torture you.
You know?
And you will pay for it.
girls: Put it on, put it on,
put it on, put it on!
narrator: The traumatic
passage into womanhood
awakens Carrie's
latent psychic powers.
[horrific musical sting]
[lightbulb shatters]
Carrie's tormenters are
punished for their cruelty.
Bad girl Chris
is out for revenge,
while good girl Sue
wants to atone for her sin.
She persuades her boyfriend to
ask Carrie to the senior prom.
If you don't have a date
to the prom next Friday,
would you like to go with me?
♪♪
I always saw him
as conflicted,
but always very virtuous,
wanting to do the right thing.
I've been invited
to the prom.
Prom?
narrator: The abuse
Carrie suffers at school
pales next to what she endures
from her hyper-religious
mother.
[screams]
It's extraordinary to me that
people were frightened by me
because it was such a it was
like a vacation for me,
and I hadn't laughed that much
in a long time at myself.
The boys.
Yes, the boys.
[tense music]
After the blood come the boys
like sniffing dogs.
Really, you have in Margaret
White someone who is terrified
that the world is going to
tear her daughter apart,
and almost preemptively,
she starts to tear her apart
before the world
gets a chance to do it.
Mama, I'll get them.
Please sit and talk to me!
[scary music]
[thunder cracks]
I'm going, Mama.
narrator: Carrie's prom shows
director Brian De Palma
at his best,
balancing technical
virtuosity
with strong
emotional storytelling.
The prom scene took
two to three weeks to shoot.
It was the longest sequence
in the film.
It was the big set piece,
of course.
Nobody I've worked with has
done as many takes as Brian.
That prom scene is just
really muscular filmmaking.
Like, just what he's doing
with the camera
is so exciting.
Why am I here with you?
[laughs]
Because I asked you.
You know,
even when they're dancing,
and the camera's
revolving around them,
and it just starts spinning
out of control,
it shouldn't work,
and it's it's really uncanny.
Carrie, we're here.
She's, you know, been
cocooned for her whole life
with this oppressive
religious mother,
and then finally
she gets a chance
to emerge
as this beautiful butterfly.
[laughter]
You really begin to feel
this sense of hope.
[dramatic musical sting]
And then what happens
after that
is just tragic.
Can I have your ballot,
please?
narrator: Carrie's enemies
rig the ballots
so she becomes prom queen,
and so they can spring
a terrible trap.
I think everyone always
responds to that movie,
where, like,
"We just want it to turn out
differently this time."
♪♪
She's happy; you know, she's
just happy for the first time,
and we're so happy to see that
and dreading what
we know is coming,
and then it all explodes.
♪♪
[gasps]
Drenched in blood,
Carrie snaps,
and her psychic powers erupt.
♪♪
Sissy Spacek's eyes
she's covered in blood,
but her eyes
are really big and blue.
[laughter]
I remember the first time
I saw that,
I think I backed up
a little bit and went,
"Oh, no, oh, this is bad.
This is bad.
I've never seen her mad yet.
I haven't seen her mad yet."
♪♪
She splits, and De Palma
splits the screen.
[electrical crackling]
And when
Carrie's personality splits,
and she just looks, it's like
the other side takes over.
It's like in the beginning
she has this little bit of
power with the drop of blood,
but when she's covered
in blood,
that's when it really
comes out,
and she's like,
"I'm going to make you pay."
[screaming]
Somewhere inside every girl,
they can relate to this idea
of feeling like, "My power
has been taken away from me,
"and what would I do
if I got all that power
and then some back?"
[dramatic musical sting]
narrator: After laying waste
to her graduating class,
Carrie goes home
to the less than
comforting arms of her mother,
who's decided her daughter
must die.
[gasps]
Piper Laurie raises
the knife
[gasps]
Aah!
And then they dd
that whole sequence
where the knives "whoos"
they twirl through the air.
[gasps]
You know when I first saw i,
I didn't know how they did it.
I was wearing
this iron vest underneath,
and each place
I was going to be hit
there was a block of wood
underneath
and a hole in the costume
with a wire stretched out
to the prop man.
And this knife
or can opener would travel
until it hit me,
and then I would react.
Aah!
Aah!
That one particular scene
was always my favorite.
[somber music]
♪♪
And I thought
the movie was over,
so I was really
100% completely satisfied,
and then of course the arm
comes out of the ground
at the end.
[screaming]
Carrie has the greatest
jump scare ending ever.
[screaming]
That ending changed movies.
If you were making
a horror movie,
you had to have a jump scare
at the end,
or the audiences were pissed.
narrator:
Decades after its release,
"Carrie" remains
one of the all time
great horror classics,
because while fashions
may change,
the misery adolescence
is timeless.
Everybody sympathizes
with Carrie.
The character of Carrie White
continues to resonate
generation after generation
because she is sort of,
like, this heroic character
for anybody has been
marginalized or bullied
or has had
an oppressive parent.
[crowd screaming]
It is a warning to all of us
to be kind to each other
because you don't know
what monster you're making.
narrator: It's understandable
that a gentle soul could be
pushed to the breaking point,
but some children
defy understanding.
Like the anel-faced tikes
with murder in their hearts.
♪♪
narrator: What is
the nature of evil?
[screams]
narrator:
Is it learned behavior?
Or are some kids
just born bad?
[screams]
narrator: When a child kills,
do we blame the parents?
- Say good-bye.
- No!
narrator: Or faulty brain
chemistry?
[tires screeching]
[terrifying music]
Those difficult questions
are at the heart of two films
made half a century apart
in two very different
Americas.
What are all
these people watching?
People like me.
narrator: "We Need to Tk
About Kevin" from 2011
and "The Bad Seed" from 1956.
♪♪
"We Need to Talk About
Kevin" is an evil child film
for the era
of school shootings.
♪♪
Through disjointed flashbacks,
the film traces
the relationship
of a reluctant mother
to her son.
Kevin's an inscrutable
psychopath
who makes her life hell
as a oddler
and ends up a teenage
mass murderer.
[children screaming]
What could be
more frightening
than your child gone wrong?
I mean how organic is that?
How horrendous would that be?
Because you're there
for at least 18 years, man.
[laughs]
However your kids comes out,
you have a responsibility.
♪♪
It's almost just
every parent's nightmare
than anything else.
[crowd screaming]
It's highly relatable,
because I think every parent
experiences
that "what if" moment.
You know, what if my daughter
or son did this or that?
narrator: Kevin's guilt-ridden
mother is haunted
by not knowing if her child
was born bad,
or if her failures as a mother
made him a monster.
[thumps]
There's a very contemporary
kind of engagement
with the discussions of
what's sometimes referred to
as the Mommy Wars.
Just a continual question
of how much time, energy,
and emotional attachment
do mothers need to give
to their children?
And you know, all kinds of
guilt accorded to mothers
who supposedly do not give
enough emotional time
and energy to their children.
[sarcastic] Looks like
someone's having a nice day.
Enjoying yourself?
I'm sorry?
Ooh!
I think culturally,
that's what we do to women
who don't always live up
to the ideal of, like,
"Oh, my God,
I love my beautiful child.
My child is just
the most wonderful thing."
I don't like that.
[yelling]
Mommy was happy befow
wittle Kevin came along.
You know dat?
Basically,
I think it's an expose
on how difficult
parenthood can be.
Now Mommy wakes up
every morning
and wishes
she was in France!
You never know exactly
what you're gonna get, right?
You're a little clammy.
You feeling okay?
Never better.
narrator: Today,
the idea of a seemingly
normal American kid
committing coldblooded mass
murder is a sad fact of life.
In 1956, it ws shocking.
- [crying]
[dramatic musical sting]
narrator:
The pigtailed psycho killer
at the heart
of "The Bad Seed"
is 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark.
She's the original
evil child of horror.
If you say a child
is a bad seed,
everyone knows what you mean.
It's part of the, uh
the Lexicon now.
"The Bad Seed"
is one of the more chilling
child horror stories
because there's not
a supernatural element to it.
She's just an evil kid.
- Good morning, Miss Fern.
- Good morning, Rhoda.
Always smiling, always nice,
always clean-cut,
and then pure evil
behind your back.
You've got them hid,
but you'd better get them
and bring them back here,
right here to me!
[dramatic musical sting]
Patty McCormack
is the bad seed.
It'd had been a play first
on Broadway,
and she having played it
onstage,
really knew that character.
I thought I'd seen some
mean little gals in my time,
but you're the meanest.
And she made it real.
I know what you think.
I know everything you think.
♪♪
Rhoda just thought she
was right about everything
And had no problem,
once she had a goal,
and achieving that goal
no matter what the cost,
and slowly through the film,
the mother realizes
that her daughter
is different.
[laughs]
Is it true that when blood
has been washed off anything,
a policeman can still find
if it's there?
♪♪
narrator: "The Bad Seed"
arrived in the mid 1950s,
one of the most conservative
periods in American history.
The generation that grew up
during the Great Depression
believed in strict discipline
and frowned on selfishness.
Rhoda embodied
their worst fears
about their own children.
I was a child of the '50s,
and, you know, they hit you
you know what I mean
when you were naughty.
[laughs]
No one called Child Services,
you know?
You made up your mind
in one second!
So it was so fun to be free
of the constraints
of the time.
And I told him I'd hit him
with my shoe
if he didn't give me the medal!
I think the film is
definitely at least hinting
at the idea that
sort of capitalistic greed
is at the heart of social decay
and maybe
of Rhoda's pathology.
Could I have both stones?
The garnet too?
- Rhoda!
- [laughs]
You know, that kind
of rugged individualism
in some ways
kind of creates monsters
like Rhoda, you know,
who are willing to do
whatever it takes
to get what they want
and to succeed.
It's just a more
pointed version
of what capitalism
encourages everybody to do.
I wish she were mine.
narrator: What could be
more frightening
than a lone predator stalking
us behind a mask of innocence?
A pack of young wolves
thirsting for your blood.
♪♪
narrator: You can never be
entirely sure
what kids are thinking.
- [screams]
narrator: Or what they might
do next.
Aah!
narrator: When you gather
them together,
that unpredictability
leads to fun, troubling,
and transgressive
horror films.
[scary music]
Kids are a bit of a mystery,
and so in that mystery,
you can tuck
some really dark forces.
Maybe they're just being
a weird kid,
or maybe you're about to die.
[horrific musical sting]
narrator: Few children
in film history
are as mysterious or as deadly
as the ones
in "Village of the Damned."
♪♪
Five months after everyone
in an English village
falls unconscious,
12 strange children are born.
They are emotionless,
hyper intelligent,
and have the power to read
and control people's minds.
They're so malevolent,
and they're so powerful,
and you can't imagine
the human race ever surviving
the war with these kids, the
way they get inside your head.
narrator: We never know
what led to their birth,
but we instantly see
that they are convinced
of their absolute superiority
to their parents.
You have to be taught
to leave us alone.
narrator: And that they have
a hidden agenda.
Leave us alone.
♪♪
It's also the innate fear
that parents have,
that your child is here
to replace you.
What are you going to do
with that power?
Father,
we know what
you're trying to find out.
It'd be better if you
didn't ask these questions.
We want to learn from you.
They're here
because you're leaving
All right,
that'll be all for the day.
And they're gonna take over.
And the anxiety is that
they're not gonna wait.
narrator: It's no coincidence
that the children
bear a strong resemblance
to fanatical Hitler Youth.
Director Wolf Rilla's family
fled Nazi Germany
when he was 14.
He had seen the indoctrination
of minors firsthand.
The Nazis were neither
the first nor the last
to realize
that ideology can be used
to turn children
into pitiless killers.
The 1970s, Cambodia's
Khmer Rouge used teenagers
to carry out
a genocidal campaign
that left nearly
2 million people dead,
including a sizable number
of their parents.
Very loosely adapted from
a short story by Stephen King,
written when the Khmer Rouge
was in power,
"Children of the Corn"
begins with the mass murder
of all the adults
in a small town
by young religious zealots.
- [grunts]
- No!
- Ay!
- [grunts]
- Stop it!
- [grunting]
What "Children of the Corn"
did,
like a lot of, you know,
button-pushing movies
of the '80s,
is that it made kids killers.
[gasps]
Mom!
In the '80s,
it was very taboo
to see kids killing adults,
kids picking up knives,
kids being violent.
Don't do it!
[screaming]
"Welcome to Nebraska."
narrator: Three years
after the massacre,
two travelers find themselves
under attack
by the town's
corn-worshipping kids.
Aah!
- Oh!
- [screaming]
Outlander!
[children shouting]
narrator:
They're deemed outlanders
who must be sacrificed
to an invisible god
called "He Who Walks
Behind the Rows."
children: Kill, kill, kill,
kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!
I kind of love the concept
of taking something
so innocent and pure
and turning it into
something cruel and malicious.
children: Praise God!
Praise the Lord!
As parents,
that's the last thing you want.
You wanna shield your child
from everything wrong
in the world,
and so to see them become a
part of it is like a nightmare,
which makes it scary.
[laughs]
♪♪
narrator: The death cult is
led by child preacher, Isaac,
whose grammatical
eccentricities
rival Jedi Master Yoda.
Question not my judgment,
Malachi.
I am the giver of His word.
narrator:
Isaac's surly lieutenant
is the scenery chewing
Malachi.
We want to give you peace.
Bring in the blood
of the outlander!
Outlander!
Shut your mouth.
- [grunts]
- Aah!
It's one of those movies
that somehow
just got exploited to death.
Like, the VHS 1980s audience
just loved watching
"Children of the Corn" movies
for some reason.
[otherworldly warbling]
- No!
[screaming]
[explosion]
Well, what all these movies
had in common
was they were about kids
supernaturally punishing
their enemies,
and I think that that
is something
that is extremely attractive
to young people
who feel that they have
no control over their lives.
What is it with this corn?
[scoffs]
You got me.
Look, there's a little girl.
[uneasy music]
♪♪
narrator: But for a truly
terrifying look
at children turning
on adults,
there's a deep-cut horror film
you have to see.
♪♪
Tom!
What's she doing?
♪♪
There's a movie called
"Who Can Kill a Child?"
A Spanish movie which,
um, involves
an entire island
filled with murderous children.
[playful commotion]
[horror music]
♪♪
It's like the protagonists
are surrounded by wild dogs.
They look cute,
but they're gonna bite you.
[eerie psychic tones]
narrator: The children are
infected by a psychic virus
that compels them
to kill every adult.
Adults are powerless
to defend themselves
because who can kill a child?
No!
Tom!
You don't wanna
punch a child.
You don't wanna kick a child.
They're scary, but you're like,
"I can't do anything.
It's an actual child."
♪♪
And so it's
a very unnerving thing
to watch a scary child
or a child with a knife
or anything like that.
[gunshot]
- [gasps]
narrator: The real horror
of these films
is watching children
blinded by ideology,
lacking empathy,
filled with rage,
capable of anything.
[screams]
narrator: In other words,
children behaving like adults.
[gunshot]
Few films have
better expressed
the fear that our children
are twisted reflections
of ourselves than "The Brood."
♪♪
[grunts]
narrator: Mutant children
begin murdering people
a man's bitter ex-wife
doesn't like.
Nola?
[screams]
narrator: He suspects
it's connected
to her psychiatrist's
radical treatment for anger.
[screams]
This is David Cronenbers
1979 masterpiece,
"The Brood."
- Aah!
That was another movie
that I saw as a young person
that just, um, kind of cracks
open your mind, you know?
[unsettling music]
David Cronenberg
is one of the few directors
who's able to take
an exploitation subject
such as a horror film
but make it personal to him
[screaming]
[screams]
And if it is possible,
and I think it is possible,
to make an art/horror
film,
David Cronenberg is one
of the few who can do it.
And the thing
with "The Brood"
is he calls it
his horror version
of "Kramer vs. Kramer,"
because he was going through,
like, a bitter custody dispute
at the time, and "The Brood"
is his way of, um
[laughing]
Dealing with it.
Art Hindle plays the husband
to this woman
played by Samantha Eggar,
who has left him and gone
and joined this, uh,
experimental therapy commune
which is run by a doctor
named Hal Raglan,
played by Oliver Reed.
Right now you're dreaming.
From what Frank tells me, it
was lousy from the very start.
You never had anything
real together.
The husband
has been sending the daughter
to go visit periodically
and then he starts to believe
that the mother
is harming the daughter
because the daughter
keeps coming home with bruises
and marks on her body.
And that's very
unfair of him.
That's very arrogant of him.
You mus'n't be too hard
on him, Nola, sweetheart.
He's just trying to be
a good protective father.
She needs to stay very
far away from her child, uh,
but her body is reacting
to this rage
and manifesting these weird
creature children.
[snarls]
♪♪
They're children, Frank.
Or exactly, they're
the children of her rage.
They're motivated
only by her anger,
whether that anger is conscious
or subconscious.
I mean, when when Nola got
cross with Candy last weekend,
annoyed really,
the brood beat her.
A lot of films have an idea
of one of your, like, fears
or anxieties being made flesh,
and in that movie,
they actually do it.
That's what the movie is about.
People are so angry
that some people can develop
physical welts
through their anger,
and one woman can actually
develop extra beings,
she is so angry.
[brood snarling]
- [cackles]
- Aah!
The look of them, it was
so imaginative, you know?
They have no navel,
and they can't speak,
and they have a cleft palate.
It's just, you know,
they were born of something
that should never
have happened.
There's a really creepy shot
where they kidnap
the main character's kid,
the two parka monsters,
and they're just three kids
walking down a road
in the snow
and a car drives past.
Kids in horror together
is always something
that's unsettling to watch.
Ooh, you do
this margin.
♪♪
A scene, like, where
the school teacher is murdered
by the brood in front
of the kids
is so deeply distressing
- [screams]
- Don't oh!
- [screaming]
- Aah, ow!
[screams]
You know,
the guardian is, like, killed
in front of the kids by these
monsters is, like, terrifying.
One most of the most, like,
terrifying scenes in cinema.
[children whimpering
and crying]
And I'm sure that's a scene
where a lot of critics
wrote that film off
on the basis
of that scene alone.
It was like, "No, you've
crossed a line here."
♪♪
Art Hindle discovers
what's happening
and he has to confront her.
[dramatic music]
♪♪
When he actually sees
what his wife is doing
[laughs]
And you see her manifesting
one of these
these children and licking it
like a like a mother cat
licks a newborn kitten.
It is sensational.
Oh, God, Nola.
No.
I disgust you.
The film is not
especially sympathetic
towards the mother,
the female character,
Samantha Eggar.
You hate me.
But if you talk to
a lot of women
who love that film, you know,
they get very different things
out of it.
30 seconds after you're born,
you have a past,
and 60 seconds after that,
you start to lie to yourself
about it.
The anxiety
around having children,
around loving children,
loving them too much,
um, wanting to destroy them
What if there's a sort
of mutant quality to the
to the children
we bring in to the world?
narrator: The ultimate message
of the film
is that broken marriages
create broken children.
I love the end
of "The Brood"
where it closes in
on the little girl,
and you see the rage blisters
developing on her arm.
She's Mommy's girl.
narrator:
Society expects parents
to love their children
unconditionally,
no matter how awful
they may be,
but everyone has their limits.
[horrific musical sting]
♪♪
Honey?
Frank?
Somebody kicking again?
No, it stopped.
narrator: Some men
have problems adapting
to the increased
responsibilities
and stresses
that come with fatherhood.
We're slowly but surely
poisoning ourselves,
you know that?
Fine world to bring
a kid into, fellas.
narrator: The problem
is particularly acute
when your child
is a monster baby.
[horrific musical sting]
[screaming]
"It's Alive" was made
in the mid '70s
by Larry Cohen.
And it's the story
of an experimental drug
that has the effect
of turning these babies
into little demonic
You know the song "Baby Shark?"
[laughs]
[wailing]
Baby sharks.
You know, they are babies,
but they have giant fangs,
and they're carnivorous.
Rick Baker did this baby
which, you know,
is is fairly inanimate,
and and so you've gotta be
careful how you cut around it
because it's not really
very mobile.
It's more of an idea.
And it's a very clever movie.
narrator: "It's Alive"
was a low-budget movie
that explored big ideas.
It's a human, doctor.
That's what's disgusting
to you, isn't it?
It kills like an animal.
And when we find it,
we're gonna have to destroy it
like one.
narrator: The rampaging baby
isn't evil;
it's a frightened
and confused newborn.
The real villains
of "It's Alive"
are the mother's
untrustworthy doctors
who are being paid off
by drug companies
to push
their defective products.
We have an opening
on the board
of our research
and development department.
Now, we wouldn't want people
to lose faith in us, would we?
In the '50s and '60s, there
was a drug called Thalidomide
that was sold
to expectant mothers,
and it created
horrific birth defects.
Mrs. Davis, I don't suppose
you took the pills I gave you?
You really should, you know.
Maybe it's all the pills
I've been taking over the years
that brought this on.
This is a movie
that came out of a real horror.
Where are you?
Look out, Charley!
- [snarling]
- [screams]
[gunshot]
"It's Alive" dramatizes
the idea of, you know,
a monster kind of born,
you know,
and it's because
of environmental factors
so it works in that
whole eco-horror theme,
but it's also just very much
about the idea, you know,
that for men,
childbirth is something
over which they're going
to exercise little control,
and, you know,
what's going to happen,
you know, with this birth?
[baby screaming]
- [screaming]
With his monster child
on the loose,
the father's life
falls apart.
Mr. Davis,
what did it look like,
if you were to describe
it to us?
Leave me alone.
I've got nothing to say.
narrator: When the story
gets out, he loses his job;
he's harassed by the media;
and his family life crumbles.
Get outta my way!
I don't know
what it looks like.
- Where is your baby?
- Never mind my baby!
Leave my wife out of it,
you understand me?
John Ryan in "It's live,"
an absolutely
amazing performance.
He's really powerful,
really compelling.
And why is everybody
looking at me?
Yeah.
Like it's my own flesh
and blood or something.
[tragic music]
Well, it's not,
understand?
♪♪
It's no relation to me.
narrator:
By the film's climax,
the father
is helping the police
chase his killer newborn
through the storm drains
of LA.
There's the innate funny
of, like,
guys with shotguns going out
to hunt babies.
[agonized screaming]
That moment when
he realizes, like, he can't
'cause it's his child
is just that's amazing.
That's an incredible sequence.
Can you hear me, Frank?
It can't be saved!
It's gotta die!
[baby crying]
Do you hear me, Frank?
[suspenseful music]
♪♪
John Ryan's dealing with
those conflicting emotions
of, "My kid's a monster,
but he's my kid.
I must protect him,"
and that's, you know,
a primal urge.
[baby crying]
narrator:
Like many confused patriarchs
who weathered
the social storms
of the '60s and '70s,
the father comes to accept
his problem child.
[sirens blaring]
It can't hurt anybody!
Hey, look, if you fellas shoot,
you're gonna shoot me.
Now, put the weapon down.
Look, it's harmless.
Take it easy.
Take it easy.
[crying]
narrator: Other films
have tried to recapture
the shock of "It's Alive."
- Aah!
- [screaming]
[screams]
narrator: But no one has
even attempted to top
the ultimate evil baby movie:
"Eraserhead."
♪♪
narrator:
Of all the movies ever made
about the terrors
of parenthood,
nothing to compares
to David Lynch's masterpiece,
"Eraserhead."
[terrifying music]
♪♪
"Eraserhead" is not what
people would think of
as horror in the traditional
sense, but, boy,
that's what makes horror
such an interesting genre,
'cause you can fit
so many things in it.
Because as an adult,
I can't think of very many
movies I found that disturbing
and horrifying and scary.
♪♪
Lynch is just one
of those filmmakers
who he opens the medium up
for you, you know?
Like, you watch a Lynch film
and you realize,
"Oh, like, there's so much
that can be done."
[smoke exhausts]
narrator: "Eraserhead's"
plot defies description,
but it begins as the movie's
protagonist, Henry,
arrives for dinner
with his girlfriend, Mary,
at her parents' house.
[moaning]
It's completely surreal
and a completely alien world,
but so sticks
to its own rules,
that it just attains
a reality all its own.
[crying]
She'll be all right
in a minute.
[cries]
Every time I see the film,
I see something different.
I have a different experience.
Scenes that disturbed me
now make me laugh,
things that made me laugh
now disturb me,
often simultaneously.
You're very bad trouble
if you won't cooperate.
[heavy breathing]
Well, I
Mary!
Mother!
[crying]
So much of Lynch is sort of,
like, deliberately wrong.
There's a baby.
It's at the hospital.
- Mom!
- And you're the father.
That's impossible.
It's only been
Mother, they're still
not sure it is a baby!
It's premature,
but there's a baby!
And it's just wrong
in the right way.
The first thing you see
onscreen in "Eraserhead"
is, like is Henry, his head
is just floating in space,
and he's emitting all of these
umbilical weird creatures
out of his mouth.
[organ music]
♪♪
And then when you see
The Lady in the Radiator,
they're falling
from the ceiling,
and she's stepping on them.
[bursting squish]
She's stepping on these
creatures that he has
These, like,
weird, ugly creatures
that he's birthed.
[bursting squish]
And then she's just singing,
"In Heaven Everything is Fine."
In heaven ♪
Everything is fine ♪
In heaven ♪
Everything is fine ♪
It's, like,
she's just assuring him,
like, "No matter what
kind of ugly creature
you give birth to,
everything's gonna be okay."
You got your good things ♪
And I've got mine ♪
So many people told me
how weird it was,
and I didn't I go, "Oh, this
is a movie about a guy
"you know,
afraid of getting married
and having a kid, you know?"
[laughs]
[baby crying]
[wind howling]
And you watch it,
and you go,
"I bet this guy was, you kn,
married and had a kid
and was freaked out."
Shut up!
[baby continues crying]
Shut up!
And then I, you know,
read his book,
and, yeah, he was.
[laughs]
You know, it was just, like,
it was an artistic expression
of his fears.
I can't stand it!
I'm going home.
Getting this girl pregnant
who's a little crazy,
and she doesn't like him,
and, you know,
and they have this really
acrimonious relationship.
You're on vacation now!
You can take care of it
for a night!
And the fear
of having a baby,
and what if that baby
is deformed?
[rain pours]
"Eraserhead," I think,
more than any evil child film
perfectly encapsulates
the anxiety of a parent.
[pained gurgles]
[tense music]
That what you will
give birth to
is this uncontrollable monster.
[laughing]
♪♪
I always remember
when the baby's crying,
and it's in the night
and then he turns on the light
and and the baby has all
the sores over his face.
[pained breathing]
Jack Nance goes
both: "Oh, you are sick."
[laughs] I was like,
"Jesus Christ."
[panting and crying]
[disturbing music]
Of course the ending
where he kills the baby.
♪♪
I mean, every time
I see that film,
I'm shocked at that ending
because it seems
to rush at you.
♪♪
And just knock the wind
out of you.
[blaring industrial humming]
I guess he transcends,
right?
And then he's embraced
by The Lady in the Radiator.
[blaring industrial humming]
You don't know exactly
what it meant literally
to know what it meant
figuratively, subtextually.
[soft piano music]
It's a pretty unique movie
that stands alone, you know,
in that way.
[crying]
It's really unnerving,
but it means something.
It's not just kind of surface
and there for effect.
It's just very honest
and heartbreaking.
♪♪
[scary music]
narrator: The chilling
children and terrible tykes
of the movies
can be frightening,
especially if you're a parent.
[screams]
narrator: But they can also
be oddly comforting.
[screaming]
narrator: Showing us
that no matter how
difficult your son
or daughter may be,
things could be much worse.
♪♪
So if you're thinking
of having a baby,
but having second thoughts,
don't worry.
Your kids will
probably turn out just fine.
- [screaming]
- [screaming]
male narrator: Thinking
about having children?
- Aah!
- [screams]
narrator: You might wanna
watch this first
[crowd screaming]
The girls hate Carrie
because she's different.
[dramatic musical sting]
She is the hero
wronged by society.
[scary music]
And, society,
this is what you get.
♪♪
Bring them back here.
Right here to me!
♪♪
You say a child
is a bad seed
Everyone knows what you mean.
Something that's supposed
to be so innocent
becoming so evil.
[screaming]
And now it's something
that can harm you.
You don't know what's going
on inside that kid.
Leave us alone.
Maybe they're just being
a weird kid,
or maybe you're about to die.
"Children of the Corn" is,
like,
the ultimate creepy kid flick.
We want to give you peace.
You're just like,
"Oh, these kids are (bleep)."
[laughs]
What could be
more frightening
than your child gone wrong?
[screams]
People without children don't
realize how lucky they are.
[screams]
[eerie music]
♪♪
[screams]
narrator: The chilling
children of horror
come in many forms.
Help me.
narrator: Some are born with
the seeds of evil
lurking inside them.
[screams]
narrator: A few are good kids
possessed by evil entities.
And I'm the devil.
narrator: And then
there's Carrie,
a good girl who does
some very bad things.
Based on Stephen King's
terrifying debut novel,
"Carrie" begins
with blood and trauma.
Sissy Spacek plays a teenage
girl so sheltered and naive,
that when she has
her first menstruation
in a high school shower,
she thinks she's dying.
Help me!
Help me!
Have a tampon.
narrator: And her classmates
brutally shame her for it.
Hey, Norma,
Carrie's on her period.
I don't even think we're
thinking about what happeed,
or what's wrong with her;
we're just dis
just repelled by her.
It's really about
how mean kids can be,
and if you're different,
we're gonna torture you.
You know?
And you will pay for it.
girls: Put it on, put it on,
put it on, put it on!
narrator: The traumatic
passage into womanhood
awakens Carrie's
latent psychic powers.
[horrific musical sting]
[lightbulb shatters]
Carrie's tormenters are
punished for their cruelty.
Bad girl Chris
is out for revenge,
while good girl Sue
wants to atone for her sin.
She persuades her boyfriend to
ask Carrie to the senior prom.
If you don't have a date
to the prom next Friday,
would you like to go with me?
♪♪
I always saw him
as conflicted,
but always very virtuous,
wanting to do the right thing.
I've been invited
to the prom.
Prom?
narrator: The abuse
Carrie suffers at school
pales next to what she endures
from her hyper-religious
mother.
[screams]
It's extraordinary to me that
people were frightened by me
because it was such a it was
like a vacation for me,
and I hadn't laughed that much
in a long time at myself.
The boys.
Yes, the boys.
[tense music]
After the blood come the boys
like sniffing dogs.
Really, you have in Margaret
White someone who is terrified
that the world is going to
tear her daughter apart,
and almost preemptively,
she starts to tear her apart
before the world
gets a chance to do it.
Mama, I'll get them.
Please sit and talk to me!
[scary music]
[thunder cracks]
I'm going, Mama.
narrator: Carrie's prom shows
director Brian De Palma
at his best,
balancing technical
virtuosity
with strong
emotional storytelling.
The prom scene took
two to three weeks to shoot.
It was the longest sequence
in the film.
It was the big set piece,
of course.
Nobody I've worked with has
done as many takes as Brian.
That prom scene is just
really muscular filmmaking.
Like, just what he's doing
with the camera
is so exciting.
Why am I here with you?
[laughs]
Because I asked you.
You know,
even when they're dancing,
and the camera's
revolving around them,
and it just starts spinning
out of control,
it shouldn't work,
and it's it's really uncanny.
Carrie, we're here.
She's, you know, been
cocooned for her whole life
with this oppressive
religious mother,
and then finally
she gets a chance
to emerge
as this beautiful butterfly.
[laughter]
You really begin to feel
this sense of hope.
[dramatic musical sting]
And then what happens
after that
is just tragic.
Can I have your ballot,
please?
narrator: Carrie's enemies
rig the ballots
so she becomes prom queen,
and so they can spring
a terrible trap.
I think everyone always
responds to that movie,
where, like,
"We just want it to turn out
differently this time."
♪♪
She's happy; you know, she's
just happy for the first time,
and we're so happy to see that
and dreading what
we know is coming,
and then it all explodes.
♪♪
[gasps]
Drenched in blood,
Carrie snaps,
and her psychic powers erupt.
♪♪
Sissy Spacek's eyes
she's covered in blood,
but her eyes
are really big and blue.
[laughter]
I remember the first time
I saw that,
I think I backed up
a little bit and went,
"Oh, no, oh, this is bad.
This is bad.
I've never seen her mad yet.
I haven't seen her mad yet."
♪♪
She splits, and De Palma
splits the screen.
[electrical crackling]
And when
Carrie's personality splits,
and she just looks, it's like
the other side takes over.
It's like in the beginning
she has this little bit of
power with the drop of blood,
but when she's covered
in blood,
that's when it really
comes out,
and she's like,
"I'm going to make you pay."
[screaming]
Somewhere inside every girl,
they can relate to this idea
of feeling like, "My power
has been taken away from me,
"and what would I do
if I got all that power
and then some back?"
[dramatic musical sting]
narrator: After laying waste
to her graduating class,
Carrie goes home
to the less than
comforting arms of her mother,
who's decided her daughter
must die.
[gasps]
Piper Laurie raises
the knife
[gasps]
Aah!
And then they dd
that whole sequence
where the knives "whoos"
they twirl through the air.
[gasps]
You know when I first saw i,
I didn't know how they did it.
I was wearing
this iron vest underneath,
and each place
I was going to be hit
there was a block of wood
underneath
and a hole in the costume
with a wire stretched out
to the prop man.
And this knife
or can opener would travel
until it hit me,
and then I would react.
Aah!
Aah!
That one particular scene
was always my favorite.
[somber music]
♪♪
And I thought
the movie was over,
so I was really
100% completely satisfied,
and then of course the arm
comes out of the ground
at the end.
[screaming]
Carrie has the greatest
jump scare ending ever.
[screaming]
That ending changed movies.
If you were making
a horror movie,
you had to have a jump scare
at the end,
or the audiences were pissed.
narrator:
Decades after its release,
"Carrie" remains
one of the all time
great horror classics,
because while fashions
may change,
the misery adolescence
is timeless.
Everybody sympathizes
with Carrie.
The character of Carrie White
continues to resonate
generation after generation
because she is sort of,
like, this heroic character
for anybody has been
marginalized or bullied
or has had
an oppressive parent.
[crowd screaming]
It is a warning to all of us
to be kind to each other
because you don't know
what monster you're making.
narrator: It's understandable
that a gentle soul could be
pushed to the breaking point,
but some children
defy understanding.
Like the anel-faced tikes
with murder in their hearts.
♪♪
narrator: What is
the nature of evil?
[screams]
narrator:
Is it learned behavior?
Or are some kids
just born bad?
[screams]
narrator: When a child kills,
do we blame the parents?
- Say good-bye.
- No!
narrator: Or faulty brain
chemistry?
[tires screeching]
[terrifying music]
Those difficult questions
are at the heart of two films
made half a century apart
in two very different
Americas.
What are all
these people watching?
People like me.
narrator: "We Need to Tk
About Kevin" from 2011
and "The Bad Seed" from 1956.
♪♪
"We Need to Talk About
Kevin" is an evil child film
for the era
of school shootings.
♪♪
Through disjointed flashbacks,
the film traces
the relationship
of a reluctant mother
to her son.
Kevin's an inscrutable
psychopath
who makes her life hell
as a oddler
and ends up a teenage
mass murderer.
[children screaming]
What could be
more frightening
than your child gone wrong?
I mean how organic is that?
How horrendous would that be?
Because you're there
for at least 18 years, man.
[laughs]
However your kids comes out,
you have a responsibility.
♪♪
It's almost just
every parent's nightmare
than anything else.
[crowd screaming]
It's highly relatable,
because I think every parent
experiences
that "what if" moment.
You know, what if my daughter
or son did this or that?
narrator: Kevin's guilt-ridden
mother is haunted
by not knowing if her child
was born bad,
or if her failures as a mother
made him a monster.
[thumps]
There's a very contemporary
kind of engagement
with the discussions of
what's sometimes referred to
as the Mommy Wars.
Just a continual question
of how much time, energy,
and emotional attachment
do mothers need to give
to their children?
And you know, all kinds of
guilt accorded to mothers
who supposedly do not give
enough emotional time
and energy to their children.
[sarcastic] Looks like
someone's having a nice day.
Enjoying yourself?
I'm sorry?
Ooh!
I think culturally,
that's what we do to women
who don't always live up
to the ideal of, like,
"Oh, my God,
I love my beautiful child.
My child is just
the most wonderful thing."
I don't like that.
[yelling]
Mommy was happy befow
wittle Kevin came along.
You know dat?
Basically,
I think it's an expose
on how difficult
parenthood can be.
Now Mommy wakes up
every morning
and wishes
she was in France!
You never know exactly
what you're gonna get, right?
You're a little clammy.
You feeling okay?
Never better.
narrator: Today,
the idea of a seemingly
normal American kid
committing coldblooded mass
murder is a sad fact of life.
In 1956, it ws shocking.
- [crying]
[dramatic musical sting]
narrator:
The pigtailed psycho killer
at the heart
of "The Bad Seed"
is 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark.
She's the original
evil child of horror.
If you say a child
is a bad seed,
everyone knows what you mean.
It's part of the, uh
the Lexicon now.
"The Bad Seed"
is one of the more chilling
child horror stories
because there's not
a supernatural element to it.
She's just an evil kid.
- Good morning, Miss Fern.
- Good morning, Rhoda.
Always smiling, always nice,
always clean-cut,
and then pure evil
behind your back.
You've got them hid,
but you'd better get them
and bring them back here,
right here to me!
[dramatic musical sting]
Patty McCormack
is the bad seed.
It'd had been a play first
on Broadway,
and she having played it
onstage,
really knew that character.
I thought I'd seen some
mean little gals in my time,
but you're the meanest.
And she made it real.
I know what you think.
I know everything you think.
♪♪
Rhoda just thought she
was right about everything
And had no problem,
once she had a goal,
and achieving that goal
no matter what the cost,
and slowly through the film,
the mother realizes
that her daughter
is different.
[laughs]
Is it true that when blood
has been washed off anything,
a policeman can still find
if it's there?
♪♪
narrator: "The Bad Seed"
arrived in the mid 1950s,
one of the most conservative
periods in American history.
The generation that grew up
during the Great Depression
believed in strict discipline
and frowned on selfishness.
Rhoda embodied
their worst fears
about their own children.
I was a child of the '50s,
and, you know, they hit you
you know what I mean
when you were naughty.
[laughs]
No one called Child Services,
you know?
You made up your mind
in one second!
So it was so fun to be free
of the constraints
of the time.
And I told him I'd hit him
with my shoe
if he didn't give me the medal!
I think the film is
definitely at least hinting
at the idea that
sort of capitalistic greed
is at the heart of social decay
and maybe
of Rhoda's pathology.
Could I have both stones?
The garnet too?
- Rhoda!
- [laughs]
You know, that kind
of rugged individualism
in some ways
kind of creates monsters
like Rhoda, you know,
who are willing to do
whatever it takes
to get what they want
and to succeed.
It's just a more
pointed version
of what capitalism
encourages everybody to do.
I wish she were mine.
narrator: What could be
more frightening
than a lone predator stalking
us behind a mask of innocence?
A pack of young wolves
thirsting for your blood.
♪♪
narrator: You can never be
entirely sure
what kids are thinking.
- [screams]
narrator: Or what they might
do next.
Aah!
narrator: When you gather
them together,
that unpredictability
leads to fun, troubling,
and transgressive
horror films.
[scary music]
Kids are a bit of a mystery,
and so in that mystery,
you can tuck
some really dark forces.
Maybe they're just being
a weird kid,
or maybe you're about to die.
[horrific musical sting]
narrator: Few children
in film history
are as mysterious or as deadly
as the ones
in "Village of the Damned."
♪♪
Five months after everyone
in an English village
falls unconscious,
12 strange children are born.
They are emotionless,
hyper intelligent,
and have the power to read
and control people's minds.
They're so malevolent,
and they're so powerful,
and you can't imagine
the human race ever surviving
the war with these kids, the
way they get inside your head.
narrator: We never know
what led to their birth,
but we instantly see
that they are convinced
of their absolute superiority
to their parents.
You have to be taught
to leave us alone.
narrator: And that they have
a hidden agenda.
Leave us alone.
♪♪
It's also the innate fear
that parents have,
that your child is here
to replace you.
What are you going to do
with that power?
Father,
we know what
you're trying to find out.
It'd be better if you
didn't ask these questions.
We want to learn from you.
They're here
because you're leaving
All right,
that'll be all for the day.
And they're gonna take over.
And the anxiety is that
they're not gonna wait.
narrator: It's no coincidence
that the children
bear a strong resemblance
to fanatical Hitler Youth.
Director Wolf Rilla's family
fled Nazi Germany
when he was 14.
He had seen the indoctrination
of minors firsthand.
The Nazis were neither
the first nor the last
to realize
that ideology can be used
to turn children
into pitiless killers.
The 1970s, Cambodia's
Khmer Rouge used teenagers
to carry out
a genocidal campaign
that left nearly
2 million people dead,
including a sizable number
of their parents.
Very loosely adapted from
a short story by Stephen King,
written when the Khmer Rouge
was in power,
"Children of the Corn"
begins with the mass murder
of all the adults
in a small town
by young religious zealots.
- [grunts]
- No!
- Ay!
- [grunts]
- Stop it!
- [grunting]
What "Children of the Corn"
did,
like a lot of, you know,
button-pushing movies
of the '80s,
is that it made kids killers.
[gasps]
Mom!
In the '80s,
it was very taboo
to see kids killing adults,
kids picking up knives,
kids being violent.
Don't do it!
[screaming]
"Welcome to Nebraska."
narrator: Three years
after the massacre,
two travelers find themselves
under attack
by the town's
corn-worshipping kids.
Aah!
- Oh!
- [screaming]
Outlander!
[children shouting]
narrator:
They're deemed outlanders
who must be sacrificed
to an invisible god
called "He Who Walks
Behind the Rows."
children: Kill, kill, kill,
kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!
I kind of love the concept
of taking something
so innocent and pure
and turning it into
something cruel and malicious.
children: Praise God!
Praise the Lord!
As parents,
that's the last thing you want.
You wanna shield your child
from everything wrong
in the world,
and so to see them become a
part of it is like a nightmare,
which makes it scary.
[laughs]
♪♪
narrator: The death cult is
led by child preacher, Isaac,
whose grammatical
eccentricities
rival Jedi Master Yoda.
Question not my judgment,
Malachi.
I am the giver of His word.
narrator:
Isaac's surly lieutenant
is the scenery chewing
Malachi.
We want to give you peace.
Bring in the blood
of the outlander!
Outlander!
Shut your mouth.
- [grunts]
- Aah!
It's one of those movies
that somehow
just got exploited to death.
Like, the VHS 1980s audience
just loved watching
"Children of the Corn" movies
for some reason.
[otherworldly warbling]
- No!
[screaming]
[explosion]
Well, what all these movies
had in common
was they were about kids
supernaturally punishing
their enemies,
and I think that that
is something
that is extremely attractive
to young people
who feel that they have
no control over their lives.
What is it with this corn?
[scoffs]
You got me.
Look, there's a little girl.
[uneasy music]
♪♪
narrator: But for a truly
terrifying look
at children turning
on adults,
there's a deep-cut horror film
you have to see.
♪♪
Tom!
What's she doing?
♪♪
There's a movie called
"Who Can Kill a Child?"
A Spanish movie which,
um, involves
an entire island
filled with murderous children.
[playful commotion]
[horror music]
♪♪
It's like the protagonists
are surrounded by wild dogs.
They look cute,
but they're gonna bite you.
[eerie psychic tones]
narrator: The children are
infected by a psychic virus
that compels them
to kill every adult.
Adults are powerless
to defend themselves
because who can kill a child?
No!
Tom!
You don't wanna
punch a child.
You don't wanna kick a child.
They're scary, but you're like,
"I can't do anything.
It's an actual child."
♪♪
And so it's
a very unnerving thing
to watch a scary child
or a child with a knife
or anything like that.
[gunshot]
- [gasps]
narrator: The real horror
of these films
is watching children
blinded by ideology,
lacking empathy,
filled with rage,
capable of anything.
[screams]
narrator: In other words,
children behaving like adults.
[gunshot]
Few films have
better expressed
the fear that our children
are twisted reflections
of ourselves than "The Brood."
♪♪
[grunts]
narrator: Mutant children
begin murdering people
a man's bitter ex-wife
doesn't like.
Nola?
[screams]
narrator: He suspects
it's connected
to her psychiatrist's
radical treatment for anger.
[screams]
This is David Cronenbers
1979 masterpiece,
"The Brood."
- Aah!
That was another movie
that I saw as a young person
that just, um, kind of cracks
open your mind, you know?
[unsettling music]
David Cronenberg
is one of the few directors
who's able to take
an exploitation subject
such as a horror film
but make it personal to him
[screaming]
[screams]
And if it is possible,
and I think it is possible,
to make an art/horror
film,
David Cronenberg is one
of the few who can do it.
And the thing
with "The Brood"
is he calls it
his horror version
of "Kramer vs. Kramer,"
because he was going through,
like, a bitter custody dispute
at the time, and "The Brood"
is his way of, um
[laughing]
Dealing with it.
Art Hindle plays the husband
to this woman
played by Samantha Eggar,
who has left him and gone
and joined this, uh,
experimental therapy commune
which is run by a doctor
named Hal Raglan,
played by Oliver Reed.
Right now you're dreaming.
From what Frank tells me, it
was lousy from the very start.
You never had anything
real together.
The husband
has been sending the daughter
to go visit periodically
and then he starts to believe
that the mother
is harming the daughter
because the daughter
keeps coming home with bruises
and marks on her body.
And that's very
unfair of him.
That's very arrogant of him.
You mus'n't be too hard
on him, Nola, sweetheart.
He's just trying to be
a good protective father.
She needs to stay very
far away from her child, uh,
but her body is reacting
to this rage
and manifesting these weird
creature children.
[snarls]
♪♪
They're children, Frank.
Or exactly, they're
the children of her rage.
They're motivated
only by her anger,
whether that anger is conscious
or subconscious.
I mean, when when Nola got
cross with Candy last weekend,
annoyed really,
the brood beat her.
A lot of films have an idea
of one of your, like, fears
or anxieties being made flesh,
and in that movie,
they actually do it.
That's what the movie is about.
People are so angry
that some people can develop
physical welts
through their anger,
and one woman can actually
develop extra beings,
she is so angry.
[brood snarling]
- [cackles]
- Aah!
The look of them, it was
so imaginative, you know?
They have no navel,
and they can't speak,
and they have a cleft palate.
It's just, you know,
they were born of something
that should never
have happened.
There's a really creepy shot
where they kidnap
the main character's kid,
the two parka monsters,
and they're just three kids
walking down a road
in the snow
and a car drives past.
Kids in horror together
is always something
that's unsettling to watch.
Ooh, you do
this margin.
♪♪
A scene, like, where
the school teacher is murdered
by the brood in front
of the kids
is so deeply distressing
- [screams]
- Don't oh!
- [screaming]
- Aah, ow!
[screams]
You know,
the guardian is, like, killed
in front of the kids by these
monsters is, like, terrifying.
One most of the most, like,
terrifying scenes in cinema.
[children whimpering
and crying]
And I'm sure that's a scene
where a lot of critics
wrote that film off
on the basis
of that scene alone.
It was like, "No, you've
crossed a line here."
♪♪
Art Hindle discovers
what's happening
and he has to confront her.
[dramatic music]
♪♪
When he actually sees
what his wife is doing
[laughs]
And you see her manifesting
one of these
these children and licking it
like a like a mother cat
licks a newborn kitten.
It is sensational.
Oh, God, Nola.
No.
I disgust you.
The film is not
especially sympathetic
towards the mother,
the female character,
Samantha Eggar.
You hate me.
But if you talk to
a lot of women
who love that film, you know,
they get very different things
out of it.
30 seconds after you're born,
you have a past,
and 60 seconds after that,
you start to lie to yourself
about it.
The anxiety
around having children,
around loving children,
loving them too much,
um, wanting to destroy them
What if there's a sort
of mutant quality to the
to the children
we bring in to the world?
narrator: The ultimate message
of the film
is that broken marriages
create broken children.
I love the end
of "The Brood"
where it closes in
on the little girl,
and you see the rage blisters
developing on her arm.
She's Mommy's girl.
narrator:
Society expects parents
to love their children
unconditionally,
no matter how awful
they may be,
but everyone has their limits.
[horrific musical sting]
♪♪
Honey?
Frank?
Somebody kicking again?
No, it stopped.
narrator: Some men
have problems adapting
to the increased
responsibilities
and stresses
that come with fatherhood.
We're slowly but surely
poisoning ourselves,
you know that?
Fine world to bring
a kid into, fellas.
narrator: The problem
is particularly acute
when your child
is a monster baby.
[horrific musical sting]
[screaming]
"It's Alive" was made
in the mid '70s
by Larry Cohen.
And it's the story
of an experimental drug
that has the effect
of turning these babies
into little demonic
You know the song "Baby Shark?"
[laughs]
[wailing]
Baby sharks.
You know, they are babies,
but they have giant fangs,
and they're carnivorous.
Rick Baker did this baby
which, you know,
is is fairly inanimate,
and and so you've gotta be
careful how you cut around it
because it's not really
very mobile.
It's more of an idea.
And it's a very clever movie.
narrator: "It's Alive"
was a low-budget movie
that explored big ideas.
It's a human, doctor.
That's what's disgusting
to you, isn't it?
It kills like an animal.
And when we find it,
we're gonna have to destroy it
like one.
narrator: The rampaging baby
isn't evil;
it's a frightened
and confused newborn.
The real villains
of "It's Alive"
are the mother's
untrustworthy doctors
who are being paid off
by drug companies
to push
their defective products.
We have an opening
on the board
of our research
and development department.
Now, we wouldn't want people
to lose faith in us, would we?
In the '50s and '60s, there
was a drug called Thalidomide
that was sold
to expectant mothers,
and it created
horrific birth defects.
Mrs. Davis, I don't suppose
you took the pills I gave you?
You really should, you know.
Maybe it's all the pills
I've been taking over the years
that brought this on.
This is a movie
that came out of a real horror.
Where are you?
Look out, Charley!
- [snarling]
- [screams]
[gunshot]
"It's Alive" dramatizes
the idea of, you know,
a monster kind of born,
you know,
and it's because
of environmental factors
so it works in that
whole eco-horror theme,
but it's also just very much
about the idea, you know,
that for men,
childbirth is something
over which they're going
to exercise little control,
and, you know,
what's going to happen,
you know, with this birth?
[baby screaming]
- [screaming]
With his monster child
on the loose,
the father's life
falls apart.
Mr. Davis,
what did it look like,
if you were to describe
it to us?
Leave me alone.
I've got nothing to say.
narrator: When the story
gets out, he loses his job;
he's harassed by the media;
and his family life crumbles.
Get outta my way!
I don't know
what it looks like.
- Where is your baby?
- Never mind my baby!
Leave my wife out of it,
you understand me?
John Ryan in "It's live,"
an absolutely
amazing performance.
He's really powerful,
really compelling.
And why is everybody
looking at me?
Yeah.
Like it's my own flesh
and blood or something.
[tragic music]
Well, it's not,
understand?
♪♪
It's no relation to me.
narrator:
By the film's climax,
the father
is helping the police
chase his killer newborn
through the storm drains
of LA.
There's the innate funny
of, like,
guys with shotguns going out
to hunt babies.
[agonized screaming]
That moment when
he realizes, like, he can't
'cause it's his child
is just that's amazing.
That's an incredible sequence.
Can you hear me, Frank?
It can't be saved!
It's gotta die!
[baby crying]
Do you hear me, Frank?
[suspenseful music]
♪♪
John Ryan's dealing with
those conflicting emotions
of, "My kid's a monster,
but he's my kid.
I must protect him,"
and that's, you know,
a primal urge.
[baby crying]
narrator:
Like many confused patriarchs
who weathered
the social storms
of the '60s and '70s,
the father comes to accept
his problem child.
[sirens blaring]
It can't hurt anybody!
Hey, look, if you fellas shoot,
you're gonna shoot me.
Now, put the weapon down.
Look, it's harmless.
Take it easy.
Take it easy.
[crying]
narrator: Other films
have tried to recapture
the shock of "It's Alive."
- Aah!
- [screaming]
[screams]
narrator: But no one has
even attempted to top
the ultimate evil baby movie:
"Eraserhead."
♪♪
narrator:
Of all the movies ever made
about the terrors
of parenthood,
nothing to compares
to David Lynch's masterpiece,
"Eraserhead."
[terrifying music]
♪♪
"Eraserhead" is not what
people would think of
as horror in the traditional
sense, but, boy,
that's what makes horror
such an interesting genre,
'cause you can fit
so many things in it.
Because as an adult,
I can't think of very many
movies I found that disturbing
and horrifying and scary.
♪♪
Lynch is just one
of those filmmakers
who he opens the medium up
for you, you know?
Like, you watch a Lynch film
and you realize,
"Oh, like, there's so much
that can be done."
[smoke exhausts]
narrator: "Eraserhead's"
plot defies description,
but it begins as the movie's
protagonist, Henry,
arrives for dinner
with his girlfriend, Mary,
at her parents' house.
[moaning]
It's completely surreal
and a completely alien world,
but so sticks
to its own rules,
that it just attains
a reality all its own.
[crying]
She'll be all right
in a minute.
[cries]
Every time I see the film,
I see something different.
I have a different experience.
Scenes that disturbed me
now make me laugh,
things that made me laugh
now disturb me,
often simultaneously.
You're very bad trouble
if you won't cooperate.
[heavy breathing]
Well, I
Mary!
Mother!
[crying]
So much of Lynch is sort of,
like, deliberately wrong.
There's a baby.
It's at the hospital.
- Mom!
- And you're the father.
That's impossible.
It's only been
Mother, they're still
not sure it is a baby!
It's premature,
but there's a baby!
And it's just wrong
in the right way.
The first thing you see
onscreen in "Eraserhead"
is, like is Henry, his head
is just floating in space,
and he's emitting all of these
umbilical weird creatures
out of his mouth.
[organ music]
♪♪
And then when you see
The Lady in the Radiator,
they're falling
from the ceiling,
and she's stepping on them.
[bursting squish]
She's stepping on these
creatures that he has
These, like,
weird, ugly creatures
that he's birthed.
[bursting squish]
And then she's just singing,
"In Heaven Everything is Fine."
In heaven ♪
Everything is fine ♪
In heaven ♪
Everything is fine ♪
It's, like,
she's just assuring him,
like, "No matter what
kind of ugly creature
you give birth to,
everything's gonna be okay."
You got your good things ♪
And I've got mine ♪
So many people told me
how weird it was,
and I didn't I go, "Oh, this
is a movie about a guy
"you know,
afraid of getting married
and having a kid, you know?"
[laughs]
[baby crying]
[wind howling]
And you watch it,
and you go,
"I bet this guy was, you kn,
married and had a kid
and was freaked out."
Shut up!
[baby continues crying]
Shut up!
And then I, you know,
read his book,
and, yeah, he was.
[laughs]
You know, it was just, like,
it was an artistic expression
of his fears.
I can't stand it!
I'm going home.
Getting this girl pregnant
who's a little crazy,
and she doesn't like him,
and, you know,
and they have this really
acrimonious relationship.
You're on vacation now!
You can take care of it
for a night!
And the fear
of having a baby,
and what if that baby
is deformed?
[rain pours]
"Eraserhead," I think,
more than any evil child film
perfectly encapsulates
the anxiety of a parent.
[pained gurgles]
[tense music]
That what you will
give birth to
is this uncontrollable monster.
[laughing]
♪♪
I always remember
when the baby's crying,
and it's in the night
and then he turns on the light
and and the baby has all
the sores over his face.
[pained breathing]
Jack Nance goes
both: "Oh, you are sick."
[laughs] I was like,
"Jesus Christ."
[panting and crying]
[disturbing music]
Of course the ending
where he kills the baby.
♪♪
I mean, every time
I see that film,
I'm shocked at that ending
because it seems
to rush at you.
♪♪
And just knock the wind
out of you.
[blaring industrial humming]
I guess he transcends,
right?
And then he's embraced
by The Lady in the Radiator.
[blaring industrial humming]
You don't know exactly
what it meant literally
to know what it meant
figuratively, subtextually.
[soft piano music]
It's a pretty unique movie
that stands alone, you know,
in that way.
[crying]
It's really unnerving,
but it means something.
It's not just kind of surface
and there for effect.
It's just very honest
and heartbreaking.
♪♪
[scary music]
narrator: The chilling
children and terrible tykes
of the movies
can be frightening,
especially if you're a parent.
[screams]
narrator: But they can also
be oddly comforting.
[screaming]
narrator: Showing us
that no matter how
difficult your son
or daughter may be,
things could be much worse.
♪♪
So if you're thinking
of having a baby,
but having second thoughts,
don't worry.
Your kids will
probably turn out just fine.
- [screaming]
- [screaming]