What is it about automatons that some people find so disturbing? Perhaps it’s hard for us to understand when a thing that looks so much like us has…nothing behind the eyes.
Yet they’re amazingly clever, and here are a few to prove this.
This mortuary scene was created by John Dennison. Follow the link to read more about him:
This Japanese lady shoots arrows while a tiny man turns cogs beneath her. I like that tiny man, I’d like him to be my friend:
This was an advert to go outside a butcher’s shop and is now on display at The Museum of Automatons in La Rochelle, France:
Marvin’s Marvelous Museum in Michigan (say it quick, I dare you) is home to this lovely Hell monster:
This modern creation is based on an 18th century occult magician:
Well, there we are! Sleep tight, don’t let the soulless monsters bite.
La Belle Epoch (or golden era, roughly 1871 to 1914) of Paris certainly enjoyed life on the dark side. Not only were gory horror plays performed for those looking for late night thrills, a person could chat about philosophy and the meaning of death over a coffin table.
The Grand Guignol was a style of theatre steeped in gore and fear that continued right up until 1962. Rich and poor alike would go to a performance and prepare to be terrified. Read more here.
The Heaven and Hell nightclubs were fantastically intricate drinking spots. The Cabaret of the Inferno was described thusly:
“Enter and be damned, the Evil One awaits you!” growled a chorus of rough voices as we hesitated before the scene confronting us. Near us was suspended a caldron over a fire, and hopping within it were half a dozen devil musicians, male and female, playing a selection from “Faust” on stringed instruments, while red imps stood by, prodding with red-hot irons those who lagged in their performance.”
After this spectacle patrons would visit the Cabaret of the Sky, a much more divine affair.
The club I find most intriguing, however, is the Cabaret of Nothingness:
“Large, heavy, wooden coffins, resting on biers, were ranged about the room in an order suggesting the recent happening of a frightful catastrophe. The walls were decorated with skulls and bones, skeletons in grotesque attitudes, battle-pictures, and guillotines in action. Death, carnage, assassination were the dominant note, set in black hangings and illuminated with mottoes on death.”
There are plenty of boundary nudging children’s films which may not be included here, but the ones added have had a particular impact on my life. Mostly they opened my eyes to an exciting new way of storytelling that didn’t include sappy bears sitting on clouds, but very occasionally they went a little too far (in my mind anyway).
Please add your own films and experiences in the comments.
For years this French animation lay dormant in my mind. All I could remember were talking statues, a lonely robot and a vague sense of unease. I somehow found it again a few years later and enjoyed it much more than I did back then.
A cross-eyed tyrant king is taken on Revolution style by an angry bird and a chimney sweep. A giant robot assists leading to mass destruction.
It’s very French and very beautiful, just please make sure you don’t find the cut version or you might beat me up.
While not especially disturbing overall, specific scenes stand out as exciting my tiny child’s mind and probably stored for later creative use. Examples include Dorothy being taken to an institute pioneering electro-shock therapy, the apparent destruction of Oz in her absence and the heads kept behind glass cases by Oz witch Mombi:
The follow up from the company which gave us Watership Down. Despite its PG rating this is not a children’s film in any way, shape or form.
I used to love Watership Down and oddly had no issue with watching fluffy bunnies being torn apart by each other and a dog. I did, however, have a problem with watching two dogs escape from a testing lab, almost starve to death and eventually drown.
In this claymation film three stowaway children travel with Mark Twain in a weird, air-balloon type ship. They encounter animated versions of Twain’s stories which are mostly harmless fluff, but the most notable in my memory is The Mysterious Stranger segment.
Bear in mind I used to watch this again and again. For some reason the pointlessness of man and the destruction it warrants didn’t seem to concern me:
Included just because I love it, this stop-motion film is from a novella by Neil Gaiman. It has circus mice, a scary lady who wants to sew buttons into Coraline’s eyes and a disturbing burlesque performance from two elderly ladies. What’s not to love?
Madeleine Swann 