Fright-con #43 - Creepy Kids: Can't Work With Em, Can't Scare Without Em

0:01 Three, four, better lock your door.

0:06 Five, six, grab your crucifix. Seven, eight, better stay out late.

0:19 Hello, the internet, and welcome to this spin-off episode of Their Daily Zeitgeist, which we call The Iconograph. Instead of looking at the Zeitgeist through current events on Monday mornings, we're looking at the Zeitgeist through the powerful pop-cultural deities that are our icons, or... In October, we do things a little different around here. Have you ever dined with us?

0:43 We do things omakase style. No, we're talking Fright Cons. It's spooky season. And it is our final boss of October Fright Cons after kicking things off with The man who wants to suck your blood going to someone who wants to wear your face. And then last week we just did a whole episode where we believed in ghosts with Jack Wagner. And to tie it all together, we've got a icon who, if I'm looking at sheer numbers, is the scariest and most indispensable ingredient in horror. And that is children. We're doing creepy children, creepy ass kids, whether they're singing a nursery rhyme about how Freddie's going to get you crab walking out of a TV, taking a piss on the floor in the middle of your party while making unblinking eye contact with an astronaut and

1:36 telling him he's going to die up there. uh children are fucking terrifying and yet i could beat the shit out of each and every one of them oh and that is the mystery at the heart of today's episode um i'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co-host he invited me to come record with him forever and ever and ever it's miles gray.

1:59 Yes straight out of a dirty well with long hair over my face Here to spook you all out.

2:05 It's got to be over your face.

2:07 I'm going to be the resident spooky Japanese kid today.

2:10 Yeah.

2:11 Yeah.

2:11 Although, as we'll learn, the original character from The Ring, not a child at all.

2:18 Not a child.

2:19 Full on adult.

2:20 She's like in her 20s or 30s and in our third seat. one of the co-creators of crack.com, along with me and many other people, one of the best writers and TikTok influencers doing it anywhere, a many times over best-selling novelist with books like John Dies at the End, the Zoe Ash novels. His new novel, There Are No Giant Crabs in This Novel, A Novel of Giant Crabs, drops on November 3rd.

2:48 Is that correct?

2:49 The audio book and the e-book drop November 3rd. I have been told there's a shortage of of physical books in America.

2:59 I didn't even think you were going to print them on physical paper.

3:02 On a physical book?

3:04 Don't get me started on why there's a shortage of, it has to do with tariffs and fuel prices. But we're doing a Halloween episode. We're not going to get into why. Why they have indefinitely, because it's happening to a lot of authors. And when I tried to ask what's going on, It's because the supply chains in America for everything are so fragile that a single disruption.

3:29 I'm sorry.

3:30 Everybody's wiping their ass with that paper.

3:32 It's because Americans are so addicted to reading our hyper-literacy crisis.

3:39 These people just look on top of books.

3:41 That's right.

3:43 You see the cops come into these homes of these tragic people, and they've just got stacks of hard covers everywhere.

3:49 All of the great works of literature, and.

3:50 They're like, sir, sir, sir, you need to stop. um this is the fifth book in the john dies at the end franchise uh he's been marketing the novel by looking in the mirror and saying leave on leave on was a shining reference it's jason parges jason.

4:12 Every single book in this series has a creepy child in it. Did you even know that when you invited me on this episode?

4:18 I didn't. I did know that you are a person who spends a lot of time thinking about what scares people and why things scare people. Actually, I don't know if you spend a lot of time. Knowing you, I would assume you spent a lot of time thinking about why things scare people. I do know that you are good at successfully thinking of ways to scare people, as you've scared the shit out of me multiple times in the novels that you write. And this is one of the ones that I just, I want to know what the fuck's going on. Why am I so scared of children? So, yeah, that's what I had in mind, bringing you on to this one.

4:58 For example.

5:00 One way that we kind of riffed on that whole idea is in the first book, they encounter a Lovecraftian demigod that has the personality of a 14-year-old boy on Xbox Live. He just speaks in slurs and then just a series of homophobic insults. Because to me, that was the scariest thing I could think of. This thing that has tremendous power, that has the undeveloped brain of, if you've ever tried to argue with a teenage boy, about something you.

5:30 Know i've been in a call of duty lobby before yeah yeah you.

5:33 Know what i'm talking about it's not the idea of this thing that you cannot talk to as a human because uh it's like that's terrifying.

5:41 It's like a monster like you can't use your human reasoning with this thing um but just to set the stage because like as as we're kind of putting the doc together for this More and more children were just coming out of the woodwork of my mind to just be like, Jesus Christ, there are so many.

6:00 And frequently they are not the main, like they're not the point of the movie. So I just want to like go through a list. Right.

6:09 They're just like the most memorable things sometimes.

6:11 Like for instance, when I think of, I realized that when I think of Nightmare on Elm Street, the scariest thing to me is the little girl singing, one, two, Freddy's gonna get you. That's not, like, they don't kill anyone. Like, they're not the bad guy. They're just children in a movie where children are, like, victims of abuse. So, like, they should not be the thing that I'm scared of.

6:37 And yet, like, that is the thing, that's, like, the scariest moment in any Nightmare on Elm Street for me.

6:43 Um.

6:44 The Shining is another example where the bad guy is, you know, alcoholism and writer's block. And yet the scariest moments are, you know, the little twin girls who, again, victims. Red Rum, the Red Rum moment. Reagan and the Exorcist, I think, is... you know, a first ballot hall of fame, creepy child, um, the girl from the ring, the girl with vomit running down her face from sixth sense, uh, Malachi from children of the corn was a thing that my sister and I used to just go, I'm Malachi to each other, like freak each other out. Um, the weird, the craziest one gauge from the three-year-old from pet cemetery, the three-year-old.

7:30 Yeah.

7:31 I could punt him 40 yards downfield and have decent hang time on that punt. And he terrifies me. And then more recently, the little kids running into the night in weapons, even though, again, they're not the ultimate... villain necessarily spoiler alert but like that is the scary thing that's the scary image from the movie um the conjuring movies i tried to you know for this october i was like did watched the first conjuring and like they they have creepy kids all over the place um the insidious movies have creepy kids carrie is a very scary um character that's like in my mind um So I don't know. Do you guys have other like moments of bone chilling horror connected to children that come to mind?

8:18 Am I just really scared of children?

8:22 Well, you didn't even touch on, it's not just the children, how often just the iconography of childhood, like that's not part of this episode, but how often like haunted dolls. And like you mentioned the two little girls, what's creepy there is it's the nursery rhyme, but. all of the aesthetics of childhood is also makes everything like 20% creepier.

8:39 Yes.

8:40 Right.

8:40 Like a music box is the soundtrack of like, Oh fuck. Yeah.

8:44 You know, just those little, yeah. Little slow music box off kilter tempo. I think, I mean, obviously, I think the girl from The Sixth Sense was one I always think about a lot. I remember seeing that in the theater and just being terrified. And Gage from Pet Sematary.

9:01 She's a victim! She's just a misunderstood victim!

9:05 Gage from Pet Sematary, more terrified of him when he was in Kindergarten Cop, probably, that actor. Yeah, that is a good one. Gage from Pet Sematary.

9:15 Pet Cemetery is the boys have penises, girls have vaginas kid from Kindergarten Cop. So shout out to some motherfucking range.

9:24 But I think it's some, for me, also just generally, I think they've gotten, kids have become scarier to me since I've become a parent. Because the transition from being a child who's innocent to like someone who's aware of the evils of the world is kind of like a precipice. I keep thinking about like when my child will cross that threshold. And I feel like a lot of times when you see scary kids, like there's something about it just kind of fucks with your mind in that way of like, no, these are supposed to be the young cute angels, not these demons. So when they flip over, I think that's the thing that terrifies me just as a parent now.

10:00 I think Jack touched on it when he talked about how he could easily punt a child across.

10:04 What was the phrasing you used, Jack?

10:06 40 yards downfield and get decent hang time.

10:09 Correct.

10:10 Because the dilemma as an adult is, yes, that's true. But if someone were to catch you doing that and post the video to Instagram, now you have to completely pivot to having right-wing beliefs. You have to befriend Russell Brand, which is one of humanity's deepest and darkest fears.

10:29 Yeah.

10:31 Yeah, so you can't really do it in a societal... If they're coming at you, yeah, even then. Even if he's coming at me with a... If they're coming at you. I mean, I'm just saying Gage. My picture of Gage, he's got a big smile on his face and he's got like a knife and he's coming at me, you know?

10:46 Yeah.

10:46 So we're going to cover many different varieties of creepy movie children and go back through history to kind of where this began in movies because it isn't like a... from the beginning of time thing, like, like ghosts, we, we covered ghosts last week, Jason. And like, there are like Pliny, the elder is writing about haunted houses. And it's like a lot of the same shit. It's like stuff flying off shelves. It's a guy in chains. Like they, they had all the same iconography from the beginning. Creepy children seems somewhat specific to our current moment. Um, I will say that they're, is definitely some part of this that is based in the fact that children are terrifying. Um, my, my, I've, uh, my eldest had night terrors and I specifically thought throughout, like,

11:43 this is where exorcisms come from. Like, this is why exorcisms exist. This, like it, it was other than like, you know, the bed shaking, like the, It was very similar to the behavior of the kid in The Exorcist. Like, straight up. And it lasts for, like, 30 minutes. And you don't... And, like, my other kid, like, has just, like...

12:06 There are these, like, moments where they, like, come into your room and you just roll over and they just say the weirdest shit to you. They draw the strangest shit sometimes that's just, like, weird. Where did that come from?

12:19 But all of the.

12:20 Ones that I listed, other than maybe Weapons and The Conjuring, are horror movie experiences that happened before I had kids. And, like, they're deep in there, you know? So, I don't know. Like, I don't think that whatever I find scary about kids is necessarily... Based in experience or, you know, I think there's another thing that we'll get to the, you know, that we're never more vulnerable than we are like when it comes to our kids. But again, I was scared of those little fuckers before I even had any.

12:55 So... When I was young, I once slept over at my cousin's house. And as we were about to go to bed, I think I would have been about eight years.

13:02 Old at the time. He was talking about the stuffed animals in his room.

13:05 He's like, yeah, the crazy thing about this house is after we turn out the lights, the stuffed animals get.

13:11 Up and they dance around on the wall. Nice.

13:18 Love that preview.

13:20 And because it's a child just said it like straightforward, the way you would explain what time lunch is. Yeah.

13:26 You see what I'm saying? Like that's, what's creepy about children.

13:28 Cause he just said.

13:29 That to me, he wasn't messing with me.

13:31 That's a thing that he believed happened or maybe did happen for all I know. It didn't when I was there, but I can guarantee you as I tried to get to sleep that night, I was anticipating that.

13:43 Just eyes wide, looking at those stuffed animals. Um, The other thing that I think contributes to the mystery of this is like, because like how prevalent children are in horror movies is like something that I don't think I really thought about until working tangentially in the entertainment industry and like paying a lot of attention to how movies are made is like working with children in movies is a tremendous pain in the ass, but huge pain. Like this is why, uh, Like whenever possible, they will cast a 29 year old as a high school student in TV shows like they like working with kids is a pain in the ass. So like for them to go and be like, we're going to use and we're remaking the ring for American cinema. we're going, we're going from

14:37 a woman in her like twenties to an eight year old. They're like ruining their fucking lives by doing that. Like they're making their lives so much harder.

14:47 I think luckily though, the kid doesn't have to have do much more than like tilt their head down with a wig and deliver a couple of loose lines. So I feel like it's probably a little bit easier, but yeah, I get the point too, that like, we also talked about how there's like, there aren't that many freaky or memorable, like toddler characters, because again, Getting the work hours are so restrictive and also like it's just it's just a hard age just generally terrible work ethic.

15:13 Yeah.

15:13 Terrible work ethic on those.

15:15 Yeah.

15:15 You'll get a treat after this take. OK, please. Hereditary.

15:19 Another example of a terrifying child that I forgot to mention up top. But again, not the main villain necessarily, but that is the thing that's stuck in my head. Yeah, just on the point about production and how, like, they... Stanley Kubrick, when he made The Shining, like, constructed the entire production so that the child never saw a creepy... Like, didn't know he was in a horror movie somehow. So, like, which is admirable, like, compared to how he treats other actors.

15:54 That was actually pretty admirable. But, like, the kid... it was like this puzzle that he built so that like the kid could just think he was in a normal movie somehow. Um, I wonder what happened.

16:05 Was there another kid that they hired before? And they're like, all right, we're freaking the shit out of these kids. We're gonna have to figure something else out. All right, let's take a quick break.

16:13 We'll come back. We'll go into the history of creepy children. And we're back.

16:29 We're back.

16:30 So it starts with the, in the post-war era, uh, with a movie called the bad seed is the first, um, kind of horror movie that focuses on terrifying children. This was a period, like a lot of people, when they're talking about this kind of lump it in with like rebel without a cause. And like this panic over wayward youth due to burgeoning youth culture and And mass media and the end of World War II and the Great Depression had disconnected young people from their traditional economic roles.

17:04 I don't know what that they weren't. They weren't working anymore. Working with free time. Again, bad work ethics. And so the bad seed is the story of a murderous little blonde girl with pigtails named Rhoda, who's only eight years old and. it's revealed kills because she carries an evil gene. Her mom, uh, she was adopted and her biological mother, uh, or her biological grandmother was a serial killer is, uh, And.

17:36 So of course the old serial killer gene, the old serial killer gene and the, like she just like murders a bunch of people who they're like kind of upper class, which seems to be a thing.

17:46 Um, like throughout, like you don't want these children to be poor for some reason. It's they're scarier if they're rich. Uh, and they like, they kind of lost their mind on this. So like, uh, after the final seat, so, uh, There was like... The movie ends with Rhoda and her mom... Like, Rhoda's mom poisons her and then shoots herself in the head.

18:10 And the censors wouldn't allow that, not because it was too dark, but because they didn't think that Rhoda had been sufficiently punished. And so the movie ended with Rhoda and her mom surviving the poisoning and shooting. And then in the final few seconds, Rhoda goes for a walk and randomly gets struck by lightning. Just exploded by lightning.

18:31 And then... That still wasn't good enough for the censors. And so after the final scene, the actors of the mom and the little girl appear on screen to take curtain calls. at which point, like it's like a post credit scene. Um, at which point the actress playing the mom calls the actress who played Rhoda over to the couch and start spanking the shit out of her as she wails in pain. So it's like, what the, this is very strange, obviously, but it does like, I think it gets at the weirdness of the dynamic here of like having a child in a horror movie. Like it, It's so weird that they just like kind of lost their mind and they were like, okay, so we can't let this child get away with being evil. So we

19:20 need to have God explode her with lightning. And then we need to have the actress be spanked to make it extra clear that evil children are bad.

19:32 Were they playing themselves for the spanking? Or she's still kind of Rhoda being spanked because the character needed, or they're just trying to be like, and a kid should never act this way.

19:44 I think it was still like the credits, the predator credit scene where all the actors are.

19:48 All the ones who died, they're just like, hey, it's, hey guys.

19:51 It's just a.

19:52 Real, this is all just like the Predators.

19:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she's just been exploded by lightning.

20:00 Right, right.

20:01 Oh, that's right, that's right.

20:02 This isn't after, this isn't like at a time when they were doing non-linear storytelling.

20:06 Yeah.

20:08 Yeah very tarantino-esque yeah but i think of all these tropes this is the one that's actually easiest for me to understand because a child psychopath is a real thing like if you are into true crime most serial killers were.

20:21 Torturing animals when they were very young and it is the scariest thing i can imagine because again as a child or as a parent you can't just punt the child across a field. You can't give them back to the state. You have a duty of care. And so it's like, well, is my child sick? Is there a cure for this?

20:42 And in many cases, it's like, your child is evil.

20:46 Your child doesn't comprehend that suffering is real in other beings. And yeah, they're just always going to be like this.

20:54 Yeah. Yeah, there's a Twilight Zone episode where there's a kid who has like all the, he's basically able to like control the world with his mind. And he's also a psychopath. And he's like, there are people who's like, eyes have been like plucked out and shit. Like they're just like horrible things are happening. I think it ends with him dying. And then, but it's revealed that like his mom is pregnant again. And they're just like, Oh no.

21:20 Because yeah, the, like the psychopathy runs and runs in the family, I guess is a ongoing theme.

21:28 Um, How much do you think the war has to do with this? Obviously, in some of the research, it's saying the war had a tremendous effect, but I'm wondering what dimensions of that trauma of the Second World War was shaping people's subconscious fears around child rearing or if there was a karmic debt or some other thing? Because you always think of how these fears manifest. I'm always curious to think of what World War II specifically was kind of.

21:58 I mean, these characters are... And, like, we're about to talk about 1960s Village of the Damned, which is also blonde-haired, blue-eyed children, you know?

22:07 They're Nazi children.

22:09 Yeah, they're basically Nazi children. So I do think, yes, it's tied in. I think there's... Like, my theory of this, like, the reason that it keeps coming back to, like, the creepy moments are these children who have been victims is that there's, like, some guilt tied up in it. And, like, obviously World War II is a time when we witnessed, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of children being killed in, you know, Nazi death camps and in Japan.

22:38 And I think there's, like, something in there, like, deep in the unconscious, like, with, like, you know, fear of children and like just that connection. And then, yeah, I think there's also like, it's like ingredients deep down there, like kind of get mixed up and come out and it's like, yeah, well, Nazis, Nazis are evil. Um, and children are, uh, unpleasant for us to think about and horrifying in some way. And so it all like kind of gets mixed around. is kind of how I think about it.

23:08 You had Hitler youth.

23:10 You had images in newsreels of small children screaming slurs at the Jews as they were being hauled away. And then you had the talk of like them trying to breed the perfect Aryan super racist.

23:22 Super child, right.

23:23 And so this idea of like, oh, so this children are one more thing that evil people.

23:29 Can tinker with to create a new.

23:32 Kind of evil, I think is something that people, when you get into it, Because eugenics had been around for a generation at that point. The idea of, are we breeding a new type of human that is awful suddenly became.

23:47 A thing to think about. Yeah, right.

23:49 Yeah. Brian Netter points out also a lot of the times they have terrible haircuts for some reason, like bobs and bowl cuts seem to be one of the signs that a child is a psychopath.

23:59 Your kid's gone bad with that bowl cut.

24:01 So Village of the Damned, I didn't realize the premise is that everybody in a single town falls unconscious and two months later, all the women in that town and girls of childbearing age are discovered to be pregnant. And it's just... That which is kind of fucked up.

24:17 Real straightforward story.

24:18 This is around the time when the pill is becoming a thing. And so a lot of people have pointed out that like sex divorced from reproduction or in this case, reproduction divorced from sex is probably mixed in there, you know? Right. But once the kids are born, they are all very pale, extremely blonde hair. And yeah. Kind of a stand-in for Nazi youth, as Jason said.

24:43 Something unnatural. Yeah.

24:44 And then, you know, fast forward to 1984's Children of the Corn, based on a Stephen King short story, which is literally about a bunch of creepy, blonde, blue-eyed children murdering all the adults and taking their places to appease some kind of, like, unseen corn demon. Monsanto. Yeah, I mean, not wrong. Our fear of corn demons was not misplaced. Um, so our researcher, uh, JM put the good son here, um, which is clearly inspired by the bad seed. It came about when Kit Culkin, Macaulay Culkin's, uh, shitty manager dad refused to sign a contract for the sequel to home alone, unless his son was cast in the good son, because he wanted to like widen his show that he had range.

25:33 Whoa, I didn't wait. So him being in Home Alone 2 hinged on getting the role for them.

25:38 Like The Good Son was a script that had been around for a while and nobody wanted to make it because I think, yeah, it's hard to cast and make movies around kids. And so he was like, if you want Home Alone 2, Macaulay is the good son. And also Home Alone and Silence of the Lambs had both been big hits. And so the good son was essentially a mashup of the two. Also, the point about like the kids being well, like the bad seed girl, like kills lower class people. And that has been a trend in some of these movies. And that's also funny. The plot of Home Alone, as we've talked about before, is that he's just harming workaday burglars, you know?

26:20 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

26:21 But anyways, I'm going to say, and you guys can disagree with this, I don't put The Good Son in the category of creepy kid movie so much as the blank from hell movie, like the roommate from hell being single white female or like the nanny from hell with the hand that rocks the cradle. Like they all are the dog from hell being like Cujo. Dogs are actually an interesting, just like thinking about how many dogs hurt people and like how much we love dogs. I had the thought multiple times during this, like it's weird that there aren't more dog horror movies like that, that would seem to be a thing that would be perfectly in line with a lot of the arguments for like, well, they're an innocent thing that we love, but then, you know,

27:04 can actually harm us.

27:06 Uh, but I wonder if it's because like people have legitimate, terrible experiences with dogs. Like I know, I'm sure all of us know people have had had like traumatic experiences with dogs. I wonder if there's like, I mean, it's kind of too real for a movie. We get that dogs are freaky. Yeah. But with The Good Son, for me, it does feel like a horror film, but I think it's purely because of the juxtaposition of the roles that Macaulay Culkin played. So like, I remember when it came out, it was like a movie that was out and my parents even like, I don't know if you should see this Macaulay Culkin movie. And I'm like, but Macaulay Culkin is in it.

27:41 But it's a Macaulay Culkin movie.

27:42 Yeah.

27:42 My favorite genres of movies were just Bruce Willis movies or Macaulay Culkin movies. Yeah.

27:49 But then I saw it like maybe once it came on tape and I was fucking terrified because I was like, this isn't Kevin McAllister. But again, I don't know. I don't know if that's necessary. That's more my own feelings of my perception of Macaulay Culkin than purely like a genre analysis.

28:03 Yeah.

28:03 But that film was from like the protagonist is a, is a young friend of his, right? Like it's not from the point of view of his parents trying to deal with them.

28:11 Yeah. It's from a cousin. It's a Elijah Wood. This is right. Cousin. And I think his, his mom has just died. And so he goes to live with his spoiled.

28:21 That's, So that's tapping into an experience I think almost every, at least every young man has, where you have a young friend who is.

28:30 way more dangerous than you like.

28:34 Yeah they're like hey let's go down to the pond or whatever and screw around like okay and it's like yeah i've got dynamite that i stole my dad's garage we're gonna blow up some fish where they their sense of what they're willing what rules they're willing to break where they're willing to go how much risk they're willing to take is scary because as a young boy as a young male you are under tremendous pressure to never be the one to say Well, now, now, let's not do that.

29:03 We could get hurt.

29:05 And so there you can see where he keeps framing something that's like a prank. Only his prank is, we're going to destroy... all these cars in traffic and cause a mass yeah i moved around a lot as a kid and one of the places where i lived like the the cool uh thing that like the bad kids did was steal.

29:25 Their parents car when they're like 12 and 13 like i just joined right one of the cool kids like just drove his dad's car through like the front of a wind dixie jesus christ man i know a kid who did that.

29:40 Yeah, that was.

29:42 Who also drove a car through a supermarket?

29:45 Yeah, the same store that Jack's talking about.

29:48 Also a Winn-Dixie.

29:50 When he was too young to have a license, would When his parents were gone, he knew where to get their keys and he would drive their car around.

29:57 Yeah.

29:57 I had a friend like that in eighth grade. We would go to Blockbuster and rent video games and drive back.

30:04 That was in my pay grade as a juvenile delinquent. I was going to sneak out and like, what if we like tipped over a potted plant and then run away laughing.

30:16 We didn't even think of it as being mischievous. We're like, dude, we need to get to Blockbuster and we ain't walking. So like your parents aren't home, we'll take their car. That kid sounds like he was pretty cool.

30:26 My friends were not able to handle their shit enough to steal their.

30:30 Parents' car. I mean, that shit manifested into like the version of crashing it through a Winn-Dixie by the time we were of drinking age, for sure. You know, but I think a lot of kids who were doing stuff like that, they were already, the parents weren't probably as involved as they should have been anyway.

30:45 They take it to the strip club and it's like, Yeah. They know, they know be there. They let me on.

30:50 They're good.

30:50 They're good.

30:50 They're good, bro.

30:52 Yeah.

30:52 Yeah. Take your retainer out. It's the, uh, other kid from hell maybe, but all right. So the seventies, uh, though back, back to kind of the timeline of the child horror movies brings us Rosemary's baby, the omen. And of course the exorcist, which like I knew the exorcist was successful. It is, I think the ninth, biggest movie in terms of adjusted box office of all time. It's like the, the list is kind of wild because like, you know, we, without the adjusted box office, uh, RIP box office mojo, this used to be like my favorite page to go to, um, to just be like, oh yeah, I thought avatar was the biggest movie of all time.

31:34 And then you go to the adjusted and it's like, no, in terms of ticket sales, it's like 15th and you know, same with Avengers. Um, the top 10, um, is, like, Gone with the Wind, Star Wars Episode IV, The Sound of Music, E.T., Titanic is number five, The Ten Commandments, Jaws, Dr. Zhivago, The Exorcist, and then Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Like, they're all things that were, like, huge phenomenon. Like, that was the year of Titanic, you know?

32:06 Right.

32:06 Like, they took over.

32:08 And there's only... Like, it's a memorable thing when this... when a movie like this like breaks through and is like beyond anything like, and the exorcist is, is one of those movies. And I think it is like, maybe like Rosemary's baby is, there's a lot of interesting things to say about like it. Rosemary's baby comes along at a time as they're like trying to make abortion legal in America. Uh, in 1967, an abortion law was voted down 15 to three in New York. But like, slowly by slowly things kind of move in a more liberal direction.

32:45 But people point out that like Rosemary's Baby is a horror story about an unwanted pregnancy in New York City at a time when this was like at the forefront of what people were talking about. And the two major justifications for the abortion liberalization were rape and fetal anomaly, which are like also the case in the movie. And so a lot of people like kind of draw a line between those things. And it's not a movie that has that creepy child moment, but it does like kind of work with a lot of the same forces that we're talking about.

33:19 And you can't, if you're going to talk about that phenomenon, you have to mention at least in passing alien.

33:23 Yeah, exactly.

33:25 Of course, the telling men like, okay, here's imagine you get impregnated, but with this thing you don't want, you don't, you know, Uh, and it's like, it taps into all of those anxieties of trying to make, and this is explicit, like the screenwriter says, like, no, I wanted to make men think about what it would be like to be violated and then to have to carry the monster's baby.

33:48 Yeah. And doesn't, doesn't seem great.

33:51 And also like, I think the, with Rosemary's baby, even though it's like, it's not necessarily the fear of the baby, but just this idea of like the family too. And our idea of it, of being like this, you know, idealized goal that people could have that offer us sort of stability and safety and actually being like the, the location for your worst nightmare. Um, and like loss of autonomy.

34:14 So one of the big claims to like creepiness of the exorcist is that it's based on a true story. Um, it's based on, um, a real exorcism of a child that happened in the 1940s. Uh, that child grew up and told his partner he faked the whole thing because he was a bad boy. Um, he was, uh, more scared of being recognized by exorcist fans than he was of demons. Uh, he actually went on to work for NASA.

34:41 So he had like a, on the moon landing, worked on the moon landing, uh, had a very successful career. Um, I do think for our purposes, uh, I do think it's interesting that they, he, so when the original, the events that the exorcism are based on, he's a 14 year old boy. I think it's interesting that they're like, gotta be younger and a girl.

35:04 Right. 14-year-old boy is what you're like, picture an asshole kid. You're like, all right, a 14-year-old boy.

35:12 That's why I mentioned that.

35:13 I'm not going to keep bringing the podcast back to, well, as I wrote about in my hit novel.

35:17 No, please do, though, because that is what, like, you have more, you've spent more time thinking about this. Like, I do get the sense that, like, all of these Like things that like all these thoughts that I've had while like doing research for this are things like that the maker of weapons was thinking about explicitly. Like all of these were thoughts that like they had in their mind.

35:40 So I do want to hear your thoughts as somebody who's writing horror of like, yeah, what is it about that? Like what's going into that decision to feature creepy children?

35:51 A 14-year-old boy screaming, your mother sucks cock in hell, is just a thing a 14-year-old.

35:57 Boy would say to you.

36:00 That's not a creepy he's possessed.

36:03 That kid would have, because in the real case, he just faked it because he thought it was funny. They did 20 exorcism sessions on this boy. And I guess he just liked the attention, wanted to make fun of the priest because religion is fake.

36:18 We don't know. He did not like to talk about it.

36:20 He wanted to be known as the guy who helped with the moon landing, not as the guy who, you know, because once you're exorcism kid, that's all you are for.

36:29 The rest of your life.

36:29 Or really the first troll comedian ever.

36:32 Well, right.

36:33 Because as a teenage boy, I would also have thought that was very, very funny.

36:38 Right.

36:38 Like, did his classmates know that he was doing this? Like, was he coming to school the next day being like, yo. He's like, yo, about to have another exorcism tonight. I spit pea soup on him and he thought it was actually from Satan.

36:49 He did 20 sessions.

36:52 Yeah.

36:52 Right. So.

36:54 It has to be a little girl because the assumption of innocence that, oh, no. And so it makes it much more effective horror because, again, a few people have not seen The Exorcist. The scary part of this is for the first big chunk of the film, the parents think she's sick. They only go to the priest after the doctors say, your insurance got rejected.

37:20 Sorry, we can't. Yeah.

37:22 And well, and they also are like, now we're going to keep, we were going to do another spinal tap. Like that is a thing. Like the, the way the doctors act is like believable. Like it is some of the most affecting parts of the exorcist is like, Just the feeling of like, fuck, there's no explanation for this.

37:42 And the doctors are not just helpful. They're like, all right, let's get her back under anesthesia so we can put another needle deep into her brain. And like, you know, all these like very brutal things that it shows in detail. So it's just like, yeah, this is like you are so vulnerable if you have a child.

38:02 Yeah.

38:02 Yeah, it's every parent's nightmare.

38:05 Not just the child getting sick, not just the child suffering, but suffering that you can't do anything about.

38:12 You're powerless. Even science, even the doctors are like, well, we can run another test. I don't know. We've never seen this before. It's like, it's the worst possible thing.

38:21 I think that's It resonated for that as much as for the devil possession stuff.

38:28 I think that just hit every parent really, really hard.

38:31 Yeah.

38:31 Yeah, I think so. Some people have argued it's a kind of regressive backlash to the women's lib movement because it's a single mother who, like, can't control her daughter and, like, explicitly... Like it is a very conservative movie when you, like, I just rewatched it last night and like her dad, like doesn't come home for her birthday and like, doesn't like, you never see the dad. And then she has all these like men who are like, you know, failures at like filling the void of a father until you bring in the actual Catholic church where they're actually saying like the prayer of the our father. And it's like, This is the only way to fill the void is like this very traditional, you know, the Catholic Church, some might

39:19 say the ultimate surrogate patriarch.

39:23 Right.

39:23 And yeah, I don't know.

39:25 Just don't worry about your father, honey, because we have our father.

39:29 That's right.

39:30 That we could, that will look after us. A lot of horror is.

39:32 Very conservative in nature. It's something that I contend with a lot.

39:36 Another read on The Exorcist is that it's a, like a lot of the imagery is, you know, the furniture being thrown and stuff. And people are like, it's actually a metaphor for domestic violence. Um, but yeah, I, I would say like, some people are like, well, Reagan is not the, is not meant to be scary. It's the demon that's inside her. But yeah, as you said, like try to imagine Reagan, if she was like played by Dustin Hoffman, like the scariness is greatly diminished if it's not a child. Yeah. Yeah.

40:10 Um, Well, to give an example, the child psychopath movie, it's called, Tess Tildes wasn't in it.

40:17 It's We Need to Talk About Kevin?

40:18 We Need to Talk About Kevin, yeah.

40:20 Okay, there, he's, note the way they made him scary is by making him cold and calculating.

40:26 Right.

40:27 Not by screaming and cursing and throwing things around and puking. It's a totally different, when it's a, like, that's how you make a boy scary.

40:36 Scary. Because, again, that's a real thing. There are teenage boys committing murders right now. Right.

40:42 By the way, just to illustrate how big this movie was, a porno theater was showing a bootleg print of The Exorcist during its release and was, like, getting a lot of people there to see it. And Friedkin, and everything Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist, says should be taken with a grain of salt, but he says that he like talk to some people from the wrong side of the track.

41:06 And they like went and took the roll of film back from the projectionist at gunpoint. Um, which I don't, I don't know whether to believe it, but I do think it's funny. The idea that like porno theaters are like, this is actually doing better than porn.

41:23 Yeah.

41:23 This movie, the exorcist, uh, the omen is just a, another one that like feels like it's, you know, right in, right in the wheelhouse. Um, just, uh, they, they cast Gregory Peck as the dad who's supposed to be like the most beloved movie dad of all time. And he, uh, at adopts the antichrist behind his wife's back. Not, not that cool, but yeah, it's like the child is not doing the evil things. The evil things are just like kind of happening around the child. And that one, there's just like, nothing you can do. This one feels like the one that is the most based in this and the exorcist of like their soul. Like we're so deeply vulnerable to children. If they are evil, if they get hurt, if they go insane, like there's nothing we can do,

42:17 you know, from this standpoint, it makes sense that they are the ultimate uncomfortable, like pressure point for our humanity. We feel like sensitive about horror movies with children in them for the same reason. That were like uncomfortable with being touched in the places on our body where the femoral arteries are. They're like, no, those are the locations where you are the most vulnerable to being killed or going insane or, you know.

42:43 I didn't even think about that.

42:44 Tremendous damage done to you, you know.

42:47 Yeah.

42:48 I don't like a neck massage on my artery.

42:50 Yeah, neck massage, armpit massage, nice little armpit rub no matter how many times I do it to you. No matter how many times we've recorded together, Miles.

42:58 I know, I keep saying it's just I can't cut your nails.

43:02 All right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We're going to talk about the wet Japanese child and then construct a overall theory of why we're so scared of these little fuckers. We'll be right back. And we're back.

43:28 We're back.

43:29 This was one that I thought was, like, nailed on. That there were a lot of Japanese horror movies with wet children coming for you. And the main image I was thinking of was Ringu. Ringu. Which, you know, was remade as The Ring in the US. And it's not a child in the original movie. The Grudge does have a child, but it's not fully children. Like, it's a family, and there is a child in it, and they put a child on the American poster. So, like, the most iconic ones are not as child-based as I thought, but the American remakes are fairly child-based.

44:11 Sure. Now, I thought at the time that all of those creatures were well-known like Japanese folklore.

44:19 Like, the vengeful spirit was a.

44:21 Like, when they saw the girl with the black hair coming up out of the you know, in the white robe or nightgown to get vengeance, that in Japan, that's not, they know.

44:31 Immediately what they're looking at. Am I wrong about that?

44:34 Yeah, that has, like, when you see long hair like this, that definitely comes from a lot of, like, folkloric depictions of, like, Oni or Onyo or whatever.

44:44 Yeah.

44:44 Some kind of demonic figure. But, yeah, that specifically is, like, a very folkloric visual.

44:50 So you're saying, Jack, that we aged that character down because it's, like, It's scarier if the vengeful ghost, like if a child was wronged and has to come back to get vengeance.

45:02 Okay.

45:02 I think, yeah, like this is one that really kind of cracked it open for me, though. Like, it's just, it's, we're like, we're going to need it to be a child. There are no deal. That kid needs to be like eight at the most.

45:15 Or it feels like an easy way to sort of like, it's like a force multiplier to make a character scary. It's like, I mean, if that was a kid, though, it'd be like way scarier.

45:23 Yeah.

45:23 Yeah.

45:24 In a way, I guess maybe for our audiences here, yes, probably.

45:29 Sadako is the name of the girl in the ring and is also the name of a girl who survived Hiroshima and developed radiation-induced leukemia and then folded... a thousand paper cranes do you guys know this story yeah and like that people think that that was like a vague like an allusion to this historical figure who was famous for folding these thousand paper cranes and was like we have a belief that if you fold over a thousand paper cranes you get one wish and then they ended up dying of leukemia from the atomic bomb and so it was like A horrifying story about a child.

46:06 But that name's pretty common, though. I'll also say, like, my mom's name, my mom's cousin. Yeah, that might be a reach. She's also a sadako. But, like, of that generation, very common. But I can also see how maybe culturally, like, yeah, it can evoke a few different things.

46:20 Yeah. All right. We have Kids with Freaky Powers, The Shining, Danny, Caroline from Poltergeist. um poltergeist people have pointed out as like came out one year after the debut of mtv at a time when people were worried about children being negatively impacted by mass media and like what was on the tv and she like they communicate the spirit world communicates with her through the television which seems like pretty straightforward yeah and then there's like the possessed doll trope Child's Play, the Annabelle movies, that one episode of Twilight Zone where Telly Savalas is terrorized by talky Tina. And then there's... This one might be a stretch, but the full-grown child idiot slasher, like Michael Myers, is childlike in

47:11 his behavior. Jason died as a kid, but is basically... They're both adults with childlike minds. Michael Myers, in particular... Like, seems to have the curiosity.

47:26 Of a child.

47:27 Well, no, we meet him as a child doing murder. That's the famous speech from Dr. Loomis talking about, I looked into the eyes of the six-year-old and saw pure evil and decided that my prescription as his psychiatrist was six. 38 caliber rounds to the chest.

47:47 That I billed the insurance for at $ 300 a piece. That was my. That was my prescription.

47:54 And then we have undead children, pet cemetery, night of the living dead, the shining, let the right one in, um, the sixth sense, uh, which, you know, I feel like, uh, Stephen King talks about how pet cemetery is like, uh, the story of like what he, he barely stopped his son from getting hit by a car. I was like, what if I hadn't? And again, this just like goes back to how vulnerable children make you like when, when a child dies, like, people are like, Oh, it's actually worse than dying yourself, you know, like marriages and you live the rest of your life in a state of like haunted mental illness. Um, and it's almost like the death of a child is like too big for a movie to contain in a single like death scene. So

48:40 like creepy children are a way to exhibit the horror of it. Like it like just out beyond the time space continuum. It's like, we, you don't want to think about that specifically because, So, it's, like, beyond that, you know? It's, like, they are a haunting presence.

48:58 Right.

48:59 That exists kind of beyond that.

49:01 The texture of, like, the grief that you're experiencing or whatever around that as a sort of byproduct.

49:05 Of it all.

49:05 It's, like, the worst thing that can happen.

49:07 Yeah.

49:08 And the idea of what you would.

49:09 Do to try to bring them back and how much denial you would be in.

49:14 For so long. Because the whole thing is, like.

49:16 Even when the kid comes back and is obviously corrupted, you know, like the fathers. doesn't, he's like convinced that there's, we can fix it.

49:24 We can do it right this time. It's, it's so that.

49:27 Went to me as like the least inscrutable because it's clear that it's like, here's this guilt and grief and you trying to make something right, but you're powerless.

49:36 You cannot protect children.

49:37 Like, Finding Nemo is also about this, like this idea that your ability to keep them safe is finite and that you feel like it's all on you and you feel like the universe is conspiring to, I don't know, the guilt that you failed them somehow. So you've got the kid that's obviously has come back evil and corrupted, but you would never admit that to your, to yourself.

49:59 That's right.

50:00 Yeah. Night of the living dead is a very early, great example of what you're talking about where the little girl, Karen, uh, basically is like the inciting. It's like she gets bit and then, you know, her parents are unwilling to admit that she's infected.

50:16 Right.

50:17 And, you know, if she was any other character, if she was a teenager or something, I feel like, you know, the, the movie characters kick her to the curb, but they will literally die for them. Like parents would die for their kids. And like that in this case is a like existential, uh, Right. Which is like that. That is unique to children.

50:41 I'm like wondering too, like I think a lot of it too, I think about what's coming from like a parental side of the equation. And I'm wondering too, like before that, is it just... the sort of expectation of how... Like, if you're... Like, I'm thinking of me as a 20-year-old and be like.

50:55 This fucking creepy kid!

50:57 I'm not sort of tapping into sort of, like, the existential dread of, like, being a parent. But I think maybe it's part of, like, your own understanding of how you're transforming or also just the expectation of, like, well, a child is always something that is, like, if anything, you need to take care of or they need to be kept safe rather than being a source of danger to you.

51:18 I'm just, like, also.

51:19 thinking of like what those exact things are, like, I guess more in a more specific way rather than just like creepy children. It's just like the expectation, like, well, a child should never be a thing that I'm fucking afraid of. Cause I'll punt this fucker 40 yards down the field with great hang time.

51:33 I really think it has to do with guilt. Like I, I think that at a deep level, like we talked in the Dracula episode about how the, the novel Bram Stoker's Dracula was outsold by this other novel and at the time in London, when it was published, there was a novel about like an Egypt based, like scarab beetle that was like terrorizing London. And like, we like, that seems absurd to us that that was like a thing, but like, we, we look back on the British empire at that point in history. And one of the things that we associate them with is like going to other countries and like, you know, plundering their dead and their treasures.

52:15 And like, they didn't consciously acknowledge that that was fucked up. They, it was just like leaking through there, like leaking out of their faces through their monsters, you know? And I think like when we look back on this period of America, people will, Look at, like, it will make more sense that we were scared of children because we were, like, an empirical power that killed children.

52:39 Right.

52:40 Like, you know, like, the thing that was happening in the 60s was, like, the Vietnam War and, like, pictures coming back of, like, little girls being, like, burned alive and shit. Right. And, you know, The Exorcist is, like, a movie about, like, you know, child, you know, that is, like, a metaphor for child abuse in the context of the Catholic Church. Which, like, you know, wasn't a widely known thing at the time. But, like, weapons in many ways is, like, I think working through some of the things of, like, the guilt around, like, school shootings. And I just feel like there's going to be, like, that's how it makes sense to me, the fact that this... like these horror movies have all these moments of these child characters who

53:28 are like super creepy and they're all like victims. Like the, you know, nightmare on Elm street, the creepiest thing is like a little girl singing like a nursery rhyme. And like, that's a, but like the bad guy in that is a child molester, you know? And so it's like the thing that is haunting and creepy is, child victims. And so it does seem like it, it all kind of comes back to there being like something at a deeply unconscious level that has to do with like how we feel about how children are treated by like us. And that, that being a thing that we can't really come to terms with, both in terms of like broad things like the Vietnam war, but also just like, it's a Like, being a parent is hard and people fuck up all

54:14 the time and children are innocent. And so, you know, I think there's personal guilt about it mixed with, like, broad guilt about it. And then it, like, mixes to be this haunting thing that we, like, can't come to terms with at a conscious level. And so it just becomes fucking... horrifying, just like a source of horror deep down.

54:38 I think that you've mentioned very briefly, let the right one in, which is about a child vampire and the child vampires turn up in interview with the vampire and many other franchises. That's very similar because there you have something that where they are bloodsuckers, they are evil, but also that was imposed on them.

54:54 Yeah.

54:54 Like they are simultaneously victim and predator because they didn't choose to become a vampire. They couldn't consent to it, but they are now forever children and, and forever doomed to this. And it's like, so it's bound up in one package, something that is very dangerous to you. And also it was clearly not their fault that they are dangerous.

55:12 And I think that's pretty much it in a nutshell.

55:15 Or even maybe just the fear that they're actually reflecting our own experiences back to us. It's not necessarily like, I'm afraid of this child. You're like, oh, I'm, I can see how some of my own trauma mirrors like a character like this. It's not necessarily like an external thing, but maybe we also see something in that too, where you're like, to your point of, certain things we didn't ask for, but are imposed on us and just having to grapple with that. Or maybe the perception of that is also something that we were thinking about at the same time.

55:41 And it's also probably true that like the, like my most haunting man, like childhood is where like ghosts live, you know, like that's, that's where the creepiest, like most haunting things kind of memories happen and stuff. So there's probably also some of that in there too.

55:58 Sure.

55:59 Any other creepy children that you guys want to shout out? Any other theories on why we're scared of children, even though I could beat them up?

56:10 Only to recommend the Korean horror film, The Wailing, which is on streaming. Not wailing like whale, like W-A-I-L-I-N-G. It's a fantastic horror film from 2016. It has subtitles, but it won't matter. It is beautiful, has a creepy child in it. It actually has all of the stuff bound up in it. I'm just using it as an opportunity to plug that film. I have no financial stake in that film. I just want you to enjoy Korean horror.

56:40 Is that your favorite Korean horror movie?

56:43 Probably, yeah. I Saw the Devil is probably scarier.

56:49 I don't recommend it to people because it is a film that will just make you a little bit of a worse person. It's got a scene where the hero, who's a federal agent whose wife has been killed by a serial killer, and he's on the trail of this guy. And at one point, he ties down a guy who's like a sex criminal, because he's just researching his local sex criminals to try to figure out who it is.

57:13 And he ties the guy down, just starts smashing him in the groin with a pipe wrench over and over again. And does it so many times that you as the audience are kind of like.

57:22 Okay, that's all right. All right.

57:25 Yeah.

57:25 This guy's like a rapist.

57:27 It's like, yeah, that's the filmmaker saying, yeah, this is what you wanted to see, right? This guy just smashing this dude in the balls with a pipe wrench over and over. And you find yourself like, Oh, I don't, I don't like it anymore. Too many times to smash a guy in the balls with a pipe wrench. I think, uh, and no, and the whole thing, it just keeps getting worse from there.

57:46 Yeah.

57:46 I mean, I think the one thing that just from doing all these episodes over the last month, that just kind of reveals, I think like the one thing I, that I appreciate more and more about horror is like really trying. I would all, I would just, Previously be like, these are scary movies. Obviously there's some kind of subtext there, but like beginning to appreciate now being a little more critical about sort of like the, the, the subconscious. I feel like they're like the reflection of guilt through horror, I think is one of the more interesting aspects when I, like when I think about all these characters, um, And sort of what they're saying. And yeah, I think when they look back, they're like, yeah, this was the era

58:20 where they were not concerned with the safety of children whatsoever. So it makes sense that the media that they were consuming was sort of like, we are not protecting our young.

58:32 Yeah. When the filmmaker is adding like a child whispering in the hallway, that's like our subconscious being like, hey, what.

58:41 About gun control?

58:42 You're fucking failing us.

58:43 Yeah.

58:46 Jason, such a pleasure having you. Where can people read you, see you, get the new book?

58:52 Yeah, the book we're talking about is book five in the John Dies at the End series. If you're listening to this in the month of October, the previous four books in that series are three books in e-book form.

59:05 And I don't know what else to say other than they're $ 3.

59:08 Let's be frank. If you go into Starbucks and say, what can I get for $ 3? They're going to say this conversation costs.

59:15 You $ 6.

59:16 You already are $ 3 in the hole. Give it a shot.

59:19 The first one's called John dies at the end. This book, the book five in the series is called. There are no giant crabs in this novel. A novel of giant crabs out in most formats, depending on when you.

59:32 Listen to this.

59:33 It's going to be a collector's item, the hardcover. And I know, based on you being a TikTok influencer, I know that the artificial scarcity of You know, not having hard copies is just a marketing technique and very impressed with your marketing as always.

59:52 In a world where it is a struggle to get one person to buy one book, we've said, no, no, no.

59:57 We're going to make you work a little bit for it.

1:00:00 So now we've delayed until after the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 when everyone's entertainment budget is going somewhere else.

1:00:09 Yeah.

1:00:10 Anyway, but don't get me started on that.

1:00:13 It's fine.

1:00:14 Everything is fine.

1:00:16 I am not the one who is suffering the most from the tariffs and the fuel shortages caused by the 16 different wars being fought simultaneously.

1:00:23 Well, eight of them have been ended already from what I just read on Truth Social. So I think we're maybe on our way.

1:00:28 Oh, a bunch of them are ended?

1:00:29 Oh, good.

1:00:29 Yeah.

1:00:30 Yeah, yeah.

1:00:31 All right. Well, I will be back in a moment with the No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

1:00:42 All right.

1:00:43 That was Creepy Kids. Thanks to Jason Pargin for joining. Can't think of anyone I'd rather have on to talk about the hydraulics and physics of fear in our unconscious minds. As you heard, I was pretty worked up over the theory that it's like guilt over how we treat children historically. And there's just so many examples of America being particularly brutal to children from the photo of the Vietnamese child whose clothes have been burned off by napalm up through the elementary school of little girls in Iran this year to the ongoing school shootings. You know, if you don't want to be haunted to the depths of your soul by children, then maybe don't be part of a society that can't stop killing innocent children. I will say, though,

1:01:30 I don't think it's any one thing, like any one explanation that causes any one fear. I don't think it's Newtonian physics and one plus one equaling two down there in the tar pit of our shared unconscious, which is probably why it's so fun to talk about. So yeah, I love, I'd love to hear you guys' theories on why you think it's, why you think we're so damn scared of the children. I do have to apologize for bragging so much about how I can beat up kids.

1:02:06 My argument that it's weird that we find children creepy relied pretty heavily on me making the point that they are somewhere around birds on the threat matrix. Uh, but maybe I didn't need to go into so much detail about how I, uh, beat them up. Psychiatrists might claim it has to do with the fact that I've gotten my ass kicked by so many children, uh, that the, that, you know, the older kids at my kids' school keep beating the shit out of me and pulling my underwear up over my head. But again, It's not like this equals that. And that's why I did that. You know, it's complex. I rewatched The Exorcist for this episode and noticed a couple of things. One, I think we need to bring back the adjective cunting. The demon Pazuzu, the Pazuz,

1:02:58 as his friends call him. The Pazuz uses the phrase cunting a couple of times, not as a verb, but as an adjective. like how people would call someone sporting back in the day, but I guess the exact opposite of that. Um, but yeah, I don't know. That's, that's a fun word. I'd love to be described as cunting. Uh, second thing I noticed about the exorcist, the starter pistol for the demonic possession that happens in the movie. Uh, when things really take a step up is, uh, Reagan coming into the middle of the party and saying, uh, you're all going to die up there to an astronaut. Um, It's a weird party. First of all, her mom is a movie star and the people at this party are the movie director, which is what I would have expected.

1:03:42 But then there's an astronaut, as mentioned, a piano playing priest, a bunch of kind of weirdly old people. But yeah, she says you're all going to die up there to an astronaut before famously taking a piss in the middle of the rug. Which, first of all, what a way to enter a party. But secondly, sleepwalking and wetting your pants.

1:04:04 Not uncommon child behavior, but it does exist in a weird, why do they do that? It's weird that they do that realm that strikes you when you're a parent. And it's... It's never not a little bit creepy when they do something like that, especially the sleepwalking. So for them to be like, yeah, I don't know, could be normal developmental stuff.

1:04:29 But have you considered that maybe it's the actual devil is diabolical work by the movie The Exorcist. Very similar to how they use creepy children's drawings in a bunch of movies. Children of the Corn has some. The Ring has some. Insidious has some very creepy children's drawings. But again, not uncommon childhood behavior. You walk through an elementary school hallway on back to school night and there are some self portraits that will keep you up at night. I promise you. But again, in horror movies, they're like, have you considered that your child? didn't draw that self-portrait, that it was my boy Pazooz. And then kind of the real estate equivalent of this dynamic in The Conjuring from last week's ghost episode, doors opening and closing seemingly on

1:05:21 their own, weird sounds in the basement or attic. Everyone has lived in a house that makes spooky, inexplicable noises, has had the wind slam a door shut, and horror movies and ghost stories are just there to be like, You know, that voice telling you that it's just the wind is going to sound pretty stupid when you find the hidden passageway full of haunted dolls. Anyways, very, very clever work by horror movies. You know, These are movies where very smart people who spend a lot of time thinking about this go out of their way to find the most strategically creepy thing to scare the shit out of us. And I do just think it's interesting that they come back time and time again to children. I think I mentioned Nightmare on Elm Street was a real

1:06:08 breakthrough in thinking about the creepiness of kids for me, a movie about The ghost of a child molester and the creepiest moment for me is the children themselves singing one, two, Freddy's going to get you. It also just made me think about what a weird character Freddy Krueger is. It's like, what if the ghost of a child molester had an insult comic repertoire that seems like it might have been written by the same people who wrote ALF? Also similar to Hannibal Lecter. One of the first things I noticed about Hannibal Lecter when rewatching Silence of the Lambs, total bitch.

1:06:42 Freddie and Hannibal Lecter are such bitches. Are we secretly terrified of catty bitches?

1:06:50 Possibly.

1:06:51 I would describe them as cunting. By the way, the idea that we fear what we're guilty of is not a new idea. There's a long history of Southern gothics and writing about Southern Gothic in relation to, you know, fear and national trauma over slavery and the Civil War and the rot and decay at the center of American culture that is, you know, has spoken very eloquently and at depth on that subject. Deliverance is a real Venn diagram of this guilt transference into fear and It's also a great example of the child thing, I was realizing.

1:07:32 Just like, you know, the little girls being the scariest thing in A Nightmare on Elm Street to me, even though they are the ostensible victims. The little girls and red rum being the scariest part of The Shining, even though they are, again, victims. Deliverance is a movie based on these guys being hunted by, like, grown-up hillbillies in the South. But the creepiest thing that happens on screen is a little kid absolutely shredding on the banjo. Um, that kid's not going to be able to necessarily hurt me.

1:08:03 Doesn't seem like he's going to get up from that chair anytime soon, but he is the thing that shows up in my brain when I worry about my car breaking down on a country road. Um, weapons, I think is the movie that is the most interesting in kind of like has really interesting thoughts on the subject of why we're scared of children and like works, um, with the raw material of our fear of kids in the most interesting ways. Because again, like the movie's creepiness, like scariness engine is the creepiness of the kids. But then like a lot of these movies, it switches the villain to be an adult. And I feel like we'd feel cheated if that was it. And the kids were just fine in the end. And there wasn't, The way the

1:08:51 movie ends, spoiler alert, which is that the kids all come out and tear a human being to pieces like a pinata of... raw taco meat. And then it ends with the kid kind of remaining catatonic. And we hear that they never fully came back to normal, which, you know, it doesn't let us off the hook for all the shit, the school shootings and adult failures of kids that, you know, damages kids in reality that we feel guilty about in reality. Anyways, that is going to do it for this episode and for Spooky Season. Thanks again to Jason Pargin for joining, to Miles, as always, to J.M. McNabb for the help researching this one, to Brian, the editor, for putting it all together. And I also want to thank the listeners

1:09:37 for going along with us on this journey, to those who shared their stories of hauntings in the Discord. You know, someone was like, I'm a skeptic. But I also experienced some very strange things at a very clearly haunted house that gave me goosebumps. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. But keep them coming. We are back on Monday with a non-spooky icon.

1:10:01 Finally.

1:10:02 Jesus, I can relax. That I've been having a blast researching with JM and vastly underrated by me prior to this episode. Anyways, it's a good app with the great Francesca Fiorentini. Until then, more Daily Zeitgeist, and we will talk to you all then.

1:10:20 Bye.

1:10:21 The Daily Zeitgeist is executive produced by Catherine Law. Co-produced by Victor Wright.

1:10:26 Co-written by J.M.

1:10:28 McNabb.

1:10:29 And edited and engineered by Brian Jeffries.