The Weirdest Sci-Fi Kids Movies

Pretty much the only bad thing I can say about Wall-E is that I’m not 10 years old so I can’t enjoy it as much as I would were that the case. It even asks the question I find most fascinating in SF: how much of the natural world is an innate human need?

But the film is just another example of great science fiction aimed at young people. Generally kids have an appetite for the non-real and are willing to suspend belief rather than leave a theater arguing whether something is fantasy, regular sci-fi, hard sci-fi, or not genre at all. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if City of Ember is just as great. The Jeanne Duprau young adult novel was adapted for the screen by the very talented Caroline Thompson (who wrote Edward Scissorhands.)

Here some other great children’s sci-fi movies (and if this list seems 80s-centric, that is likely because of my age):

Jacob Two-two Meets the Hooded Fang, 1978

It is the darkest children’s story I can think of, outside of Daniel Handler and the Brothers Grimm, and this is its darkest adaptation. Jacob is sent to the “child prison” Slimer’s Island for insulting a candy store clerk. He says “Thank you very much, thank you very much!” The shopkeeeper thinks he’s insincere, but really Jacob has a bizarre stutter where he repeats himself. So for the crime of insincerity, Jacob is sentenced to “Two Years, Two months, two weeks, two minutes and two seconds”

Hooded Fang, a former wrestler, is the prison warden, and with a job like that is it redundant to say he hates kids? Hooded Flang’s two flunkies are Mr.Fish, a fish/human hybrid and Ms. Fowl, a bird-lady — all metallic makeup and theater whisper overacting. But never fear, child superheros Intrepid Shapiro and Fearless O’Toole are on the case.

I spent sometime in 2003 hunting the film down on VHS. Thankfully it’s now all on YouTube. Start from the beginning.

The Peanut Butter Solution, 1985

This is sci-fi mad science at its finest. Michael is spooked by something he finds exploring a haunted house. Soon afterward his hair falls out due to a condition the doctor calls, “Hairrem Scarrem.” No ten year old can wear a wig for long, so relief comes in the form of a ghost offering him peanut butter to rub on his head. Michael mistakenly uses too much and soon the hair growth is out of control. (A lot of you right now are laughing in anticipation of me mentioning that one mildly raunchy scene. Well, I’m not going to talk about it. This is a family website okay? Oh…alright.) Later, Michael’s art teacher gets the wacky idea to use his hair to build paint brushes. Soon they realize using these brushes allows an artist to instantly paint whatever he or she imagines.

The Peanut Butter Solution is the best known in a series of supernatural children’s movies, “Tales for All.”

Konrad, 1985

konrad-1.jpg The most obscure film on the list. I’m tempted to purchase one of the VHS cassettes on Amazon as there is so little information out there on this one. This film is about a boy robot that arrives at their door totally naked inside a metal vat. From the All Movie Guide:

Directed by Nell Cox, Konrad centers around a strange, technology dominated method of placing children in appropriate foster homes. When a computer error sends Konrad (Huckleberry Fox), a seemingly ideal child, to an eccentric woman whose many quirks qualify her as a definite reject by the mysterious “birth factory’s” standards, no one is prepared for the resulting chaos. The film also features Ned Beatty, Polly Holliday, and Max Wright.

The Amazon reviews are all enthusiastic and not in the somewhat apologetic nostalgic way you typically find with someone remarking on a film once loved in childhood.

Small Wonder, 1985 and Out of This World, 1987 (TV)

Two is a trend! OK, this is TV and I already posted about it, but in cased you missed it, here are my two favorite TV shows from childhood.

The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, 1964

This innocuous seeming Disney film starring gay icon and “Scrabbled Egghead” Tommy Kirk (and Annette Funichello) is actually a subversive argument against the covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, MKULTRA. After investigating hypnosis, Merlin discovers the secret to mind reading. The resulting internal dialogue he intercepts is just barely as scandalous as what Mel Gibson hears in What Women Want. In my favorite scene he tells everyone in the college library to “SHUT UP!”

The Flight of the Navigator, 1986

A film about aliens and time travel with one of the coolest looking spacecrafts I’ve ever seen. David is abducted by an alien ship. Because of time dilation he thinks he’s only been gone a few hours, but he actually returns to earth eight years later. Wikipedia has a long plot summary. This is a science fiction classic that’s yet to get its due.

Others I missed:

A lot of great science fiction children’s movies came out of the 80s like The Explorers, Baby, and The Electric Grandmother, (unfortunately I don’t remember these ones very well.) There’s ET of course, and Pinocchio probably counts as sci-fi too. I remember The Boy Who Could Fly, but not too fondly. I also remember being a kid and thinking Honey, I Shrunk the Kids seemed pretty dumb. And don’t forget, two of the best fantasy films of all time — Neverending Story and Return to Oz — also came out of that era. Earlier Fred MacMurray made a career out of weird kids sci-fi, with Flubber and the Absent Minded Professor.

Update: Somehow when I wrote this I blanked out about one of my childhood favorites The Brave Little Toaster, written by the same person responsible for most of my favorite books 20 years later: Thomas M Disch. (Although, I guess it just bridges the fantasy/sci-fi line.)

Posted by Joanne on Jul. 2, 2008 Tagged: , , , ,

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