Throughout the '80s, Disney was mostly associated with animated features like "The Fox and the Hound" and "The Little Mermaid," or fun live action films like "Tron" and "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." But many people forget that the company was also pretty experimental throughout the era. Some of the best — and creepiest — stuff came out of the '80s.
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00:00The Disney brand has become synonymous with family-friendly films,
00:04seldom crossing the line into anything that may be perceived as scary or upsetting.
00:10Disney Channel Original movies are notorious for their Halloween fare,
00:13but even their spookiest films are rated G for general audiences.
00:18And when Disney Plus was first announced, many fans were thrilled to revisit the weird
00:23and forgotten Disney movies of their youths. Unfortunately, though, there are still some
00:27films that Disney has decided to keep in the vault after all these years.
00:32One of those films is the 1980 anti-fairy tale The Watcher in the Woods.
00:37This fantasy horror movie is the story of an American family who moves into a British
00:42country house plagued by malevolent spirits, namely the ghost of the longtime owner's daughter
00:47who torments the new family's young daughter. Before you get too excited and think the
00:52House of Mouse made a bona fide slasher, know that while the film was definitely creepy,
00:57it was more in the vein of The Changeling or The Lady in White than, say, Friday the 13th.
01:02So how did this movie come about? Well, it's hard to remember a time when Disney wasn't the
01:07most dominant force in entertainment. But until the Disney renaissance during the 90s,
01:11the studio really was riding the struggle bus. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Walt Disney
01:18Productions was doing their best to attract older audiences, as their family-friendly
01:22offerings weren't performing as well as they'd liked. This is the era that produced films such
01:27as Escape to Witch Mountain, The Island at the Top of the World, The Black Hole,
01:31and Down and Out in Beverly Hills. All of these are films that people frequently forget are Disney
01:37made, mostly due to their more mature content. In 1980, Disney tried their hand at horror,
01:43and the result was the film adaptation of Florence Engle Randall's 1976 young adult
01:48gothic sci-fi novel A Watcher in the Woods. Knowing their reputation for kids' movies,
01:53Disney actively insisted that small children not see the film, which only added to the film's allure.
01:59The homeowner in the movie is Mrs. Alewood, played by Betty Davis,
02:04who had, at this point in her career, more than proven herself in hag-sploitation horror films.
02:09The youngest American girl, Ellie, was played by Kyle Richards,
02:13just two years after her role in John Carpenter's Halloween.
02:16What starts out as a pretty standard haunted house movie slowly turns even creepier,
02:21as Ellie's sister Jan discovers the town locals were screwing with dark magic during a solar
02:26eclipse. Thinking she's solved the case, Jan decides to recreate the ceremony during another
02:32eclipse in the hopes it will bring Mrs. Alewood's daughter back. Dancing with the dark arts is a bit
02:37much for Disney, but in 1980, they were hoping the film would be popular enough to help save
02:42their failing company. Sadly, The Watcher in the Woods received terrible reviews,
02:47and only ran for a short time in theaters as a result. That said, critics have often hated
02:53horror movies, so take that reception with a grain of salt. Horror fans may even find a lot
02:58to like here. The film was shot in the same house used by Robert Wise in 1963's The Haunting,
03:04which adds an extra oomph of spookiness to those that know their haunted house movies.
03:09Sure, some of the special effects have aged like a glass of milk in the sun,
03:12but the storytelling and atmosphere are still surprisingly effective.
03:16In one particular moment, Jan slips into a pond and looks as if she's going to drown,
03:21and the scene elicits exactly the same sense of anxiety as that swamp of
03:25sadness scene in The NeverEnding Story.
03:27Let go of me! Let go of me! Let go of me!
03:31Despite the film's negative reviews, The Watcher in the Woods developed a cult following,
03:36and was even given the made-for-TV remake treatment in 2017.
03:40Parents are frequently looking for transitory horror films to help bridge the gap between
03:45certifiable children's films to hard-R horror, and in this sense, The Watcher in the Woods
03:50is a perfect film, if only Disney Plus would release the beast from the vault.