5 Unintentionally Horrifying Live Action Kid's Movies

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

Remember how great cartoons are?  Especially when you were a kid.  Or when you are high.  Not that I do that.  Just putting it out there.  Regardless of your own preferences regarding illegal substances, these movies are not the kid friendly fun time things you smoke weed to.  So don't.  Whether I'm an undercover cop or not, consider yourself properly warned. 

The brilliant creators behind some of your favorite children's toys, animated series and comic strips of yore, apparently thought to themselves at some point, "...wouldn't it be cheap great if instead of paying having a team of animators create a film version of these characters, we have puppets and people in puffy suits play them in live action features?"

The answer is of course, YES.  This is of course either before the days or budget of CGI rendered characters when filmmakers used shittily made suits and animatronic heads.  Because there's nothing young children are more put to ease by than adults in over-sized smelly suits with robotic mouths and eyes.

Not only will I be letting you in on some of the most bizarre live action cartoon/comic movies ever made you may have possibly never seen or heard of, but I'll even rate them on a WTF scale of 1 being "Weird" to 10 being "TOTALLY FUCKED."  Time to get nostalgic and uncomfortable at the same time Enemaniacs, it's Top Five Unintentionally Horrifying Live Action Kid's Movies! 

5. BABY HUEY'S GREAT EASTER ADVENTURE (1999)

Loveable, Turned Nightmarish Character: Baby Huey

Claim to Kid Fame: Paramount Picture Cartoon 1950's

WTF Rating: 3    

Just in time for Easter you guys!  A gift to both terrify and bore your kids at the same time!  A little boy in a sleepy town comes across a giant egg which then hatches a giant chicken wearing a bib and a really droopy diaper.  The kid decides to name him Baby Huey because he is in fact a baby (or at least that's the vibe the diaper puts out there) and likes to use the phrase, "Hoo - wee!" a lot.  Pretty cut and dry. 

So the kid takes the giant bird home to meet his mom Marsha Brady Maureen McCormick and Dad who are weirded out, but definitely not as much as they should be given the situation.  The kid then decides to have Huey join his little league team because I guess he's tall and can presumably hit balls hard.  This part is unclear.  Also, I stopped watching after this point.  This movie is frightening first and boring mostly.

4. THE ADVENTURES OF TEDDY RUXPIN (1986)

Loveable, Turned Nightmarish Character: Teddy Ruxpin
Claim To Kid Fame: 80's Teddy Bear That Could Talk
WTF Rating: 4

Most children of the 80's are familiar with a few things from that decade.  Transformers, neon, McDonald's songs, neon, Nintendo, neon and neon.  If you were very young in the 1980's you should definitely remember owning or wanting to own the slightly frightening toy, Teddy Ruxpin.

"...I'll swallow your soul Kenny...your soul!"

Remember?  The bear that blinked and talked and told you stories and sat on a chair in the dark in your bedroom and starred at you while you slept?  I might have regularly taped mine to it's chair each night just to be safe.  Anyhow...before the highly popular animated series, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, that was based off the toy started, the Teddy Ruxpin execs had originally planned to launch a live-action weekly show, a la Welcome to Pooh Corner, with people in suits and animatronic heads playing each character.  After shooting the initial pilot episode, the powers that be realized fairly quickly that this shit was going to be way too expensive (especially without Disney blood money to back them up).

AAHHH!

Therefore, the live action show was scrapped and animated episodes were ordered instead.  The original live action pilot was premiered as a "movie of the week" in 1986 and never released on videocassette in the U.S.  Lame.  Thankfully, our bored friends at YouTube have uploaded the movie in it's entirety.  You can watch it in parts here.  Check out Part One below!

3. RAINBOW BRITE: SAN DIEGO ZOO ADVENTURE (1986)

Loveable Turned Nightmarish Character(s): Rainbow Brite and Friends
Claim To Kid Fame: Highly Popular Cartoon of the 1980's
WTF Rating: 6

And rainbow colors will cheer you uuhaup!  Who can forget Rainbow Brite, her sassy talking horse, those fur ball things and her adorable friends the Color Kids (who were all mostly white)?  The little chubby girl with the power to bend light itself went on to inspire both the gay rights movement, slutty Halloween costumes and children everywhere.  Quite a feat for a fat little orphaned 8 year old.  At the time anyway. 

Whether you were a fan or not, there is no denying the popularity of the 1980's cartoon which went on to spawn full length films and other forms of mass marketing such as dolls, hairbrushes, underwear and lunchboxes.  One of the most unusual of these corporate spawns, was the straight to video live-action Rainbow Brite adventure entitled, Rainbow Brite: San Diego Zoo Adventure.  Featuring a mix of actual kids, zoo animals and giant weird-ass costumes, the story surrounds two kids (of different genders and ethnicities, common in kid friending) having a leisurely day at the zoo (completely unsupervised) when they notice that one of the leopards has turned totally black?  What the shit dawg?  What's a bubbly, middle class, Jesus-fearing kid to do?  The only man-thing that could have done this would be none other than Rainbow Brite's arch-evil-nemesis...Murky!  The kids must find Rainbow before every bright colored animal in the zoo loses all of it's skin pigmentation!

"Maria, maybe we should run..."

The rest of the story is played out with two people in gigantic-headed puffy suits playing the bad guys, Murky and his dick-shape-nosed side kick Lurky as well as two other puffy giant head suits playing main good characters, Rainbow Brite and her fuzzy alien friend Twink (insert gay joke that is ironic and not offensive here).  Unfortunately for most involved, the leopard was a ruse set up by Murky and Lurky so the kids would summon Rainbow and the bad guys could swipe her magical light-bending witch belt!  Song, dance, loud clothing and "Zoo News" follow.  The best and worst part of this one is that the producers could not afford animatronic heads so instead the actors are just wearing giant mascot-like suits with drawn on mouths and eyes and no holes to breath from.  In San Diego.  In the summer.  At least in respect to those money-needing souls lost in the production of this turd, watch the first part below.  Later parts are available on YouTube.    

2. MY PET MONSTER (1986)

Lovable Turned Nightmarish Character: My Pet Monster
Claim To Kid Fame: Popular Stuffed Toy of the 80's
WTF Rating: 8

"Why won't he stop looking at me Zack?! Why?!"

Perfectly suited for that time in your kid life when you love slime, boogers, spiders and/or other things that will gross out or frighten your friends or loved ones, American Greetings introduced us to their plush doll intended for boys and weirdos called "My Pet Monster".  The idea of the doll was just what it says, he was your very own pet ugly thing that you could keep in check if you kept his handcuffs on.  I had one and he was pretty cool.  Except his hard phallic plastic nose was a little rough to cuddle with at night and to be honest, even when you know who you're spooning with going in, I'm pretty sure I woke up to that face a couple times and almost peed a little.  Come on!  I was 8!  While in the midst of merchandising the turds out of their brand new highly successful little lovable fuggenstein, the company behind MPM decided to produce a short straight-to-video live action movie, you know, to get the kids more scared of the scary thing they were selling and I guess to give some kind of bullshit back story to the character.

Click on Max for a Monstrous Surprise!

The movie, which starred no one important, tells the story of a young boy named Max, who while on a field trip to his local museum comes in contact with an ancient statue that bestows it's monster-changing powers onto him.  I'm not sure why, although there seem to be a lot of girls on the field trip so perhaps there's a bros before hos thing happening here, but I can't be sure.  Now every time Max gets hungry, which he does a lot because he's a total chubbo, he turns into the monster!  I tried using this excuse to my mom a couple times as to why I should be allowed an extra fudgesicle.  Somehow, was not able to convince her of my high levels of potential monster danger.  As the monster, nothing too bad happens to Max though.  He's still himself, just creepy as hell looking, roars a lot and able to break chains and leap high.  Sounds like a decent switch to me.  It's not like he's the Hulk who is constantly burdened by the knowledge of all those innocent baby, lady, dude souls he's smashed over the years...right?  Anyway, the weird professor at the museum has apparently been pining for the monster-changing power forevs and is now trying to track down Max along with some ethnic looking goons in order to do experiments on him or something.  Run!  Throw in Max's precocious twin sister Mel, a goofy non-believing older brother and some poodles and you've got yourself a bona fide kiddie romp!

Click on the Ambiguous Ethnic Goons for a Monstrous Surprise!

The reason this one gets the WTF rating of 8, is fairly obvious.  The toy was a little scary in the dark alone when I was a kid, but that was all part of the fun.  I guess the monster suit makers of this movie decided, let's take the scariness of the toy and then just rid of anything that seems harmless and fluffy about it.  For instance, can we possibly make his teeth sharper and his eyes more soulless?  And bravo, they did.  I loved this movie as a kid even though the monster sort of scared me more than I was willing to admit to my sister (she will NEVER defeat me!).  There are only few copies of this tape in existence as legend or Amazon has it, but thankfully, like usual, a bored good friend of ours spent the time to upload this on YouTube.  Check out the trailer below!

 

1. THE HUGGA BUNCH (1985)

Lovable Turned Nightmarish Character(s): The Hugga Bunch
Claim To Kid Fame: Popular Plush Dolls For Young Kids Circa 1980's
WTF Rating: 10!!!!

"Thanks Mom! I've always wanted to know what hugs feel like!"

The Hippie Hugga Bunch were a 1980's plush toy line created by the combination of a toy company Henner and an off-shoot of Hallmark Cards.  The line included soft toys who were meant to be squeezed, choked and hugged hard.  Each toy came with a hug certificate, a little doll attached to their arms called a "huglet" and hug-related name, i.e "Hugsly", "Huggins", "HugMeTillItDoesn'tHurtAnymore"...stuff like that.

WTF??!!?

In 1985, a live action television movie was commissioned for the astronomical price at the time of $1.4 million.  The story surrounded a young girl named Gennie (who for some reason spoke with a southern accent and the rest of her family didn't) who is all bummed because her 'Grams' is being shipped off to a nursing home.  This is awful for Gennie who obviously enjoys being an elderly caretaker free of charge because Grams is the only one in her family that "really knows how to hug" (gross).  She then poorly tries to convince the rest of her family, including her smart-ass 80's stereotype older bro that Grams needs to stay.  The resounding answer is that she is too old and that's gross.  Just when Gennie is about to end it all during tea time with her penguin named Sweet William, a Hugga Bunch doll named Huggins sticks her fucking face through Gennie's mirror.  AAAHHHH!  This is the point you put down the pipe.  It only gets worse from here.

Gennie is whisked away to Huggaland where sparkles, sing-song and affection make everything better.  She also learns about a special tree that grows special fruit that can make you young again.  Score for getting Grams less gross!  Only problem is, the tree is owned and guarded by the evil witch lady of evil that leaves in scary castle on spooky mountain.  Gennie doesn't give a shit.  She rides dirty.  So, with her creepy ass crew of doll puppets in tow, she journeys to the witch's lair and meets more scary puppets on the way.  If you want to spoil it for yourself, check out the clip below of The Hugga Bunch movie summed up in 3 minutes or you can watch it in complete parts on YouTube.