10 Child-Friendly Movies To Turn Your Kid Into A Horror Fan

In making Frankenweenie, the new stop-motion, black-and-white, feature-length expansion of his 1984 short film, Tim Burton seemingly has several intentions, not the least of which is returning to the good old days when he actually made great movies. Granted, that might be more the desired effect from his onetime fans than the rich and, most likely, content Burton himself, but let's stick with it here. One of the writer-director's hopes for Frankenweenie that's indisputable, however, dates all the way back to his childhood days in Burbank, CA: Inspiring little kids to embrace the classic black-and-white monster movies that he grew up loving, namely the James Whale-directed Frankenstein (1931).

The world of Frankenweenie has more than a few direct references to, and cues taken from, that Boris Karloff genre staple. A young boy named Victor Frankenstein (Wink No.1) grieves after his beloved dog, Sparky, suddenly dies. Using his knack for science, Victor brings Sparky back from the dead in a big, creepy laboratory (Wink No.2), after which the undead, but still lovable, pooch gets chased by townsfolk armed with guns and torches (Wink No.3). Oh, and there's even a friend of Victor's named Elsa van Helsing (Wink No.4).

Will Frankenweenie motivate a new generation of youngsters to beg their parents to buy the epic new Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection Blu-ray box set? Let's hope so. If not, though, there's always these other 10 Child-Friendly Movies to Turn Your Kid Into a Horror Fan. Who knows, you just might be living with the next Tim Burton.

RELATED: 20 Famous Actresses Who Got Their Start In Horror Movies
RELATED: The 15 Best Horror-Comedies Of All Time
RELATED: 10 Independent Horror Filmmakers You Should Know About

Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

Follow @ComplexPopCult

Director: Henry Selick
Stars: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, John Hodgman, Jennifer Saunders, Ian McShane, Keith David, Caroline Crawford, Robert Bailey, Jr.

Since elementary school students aren't quite ready to read Stephen King's horror novels, Neil Gaiman is a brilliant substitute. A prolific author of grown-up fare in his own right, Gaiman is particularly deft when it comes to balancing youthful accessibility with elegant, mature macabre, and his 2002 book Coraline is a prime example. And thankfully, the assignment of adapting Coraline's text for the big screen went to the best man for the job: stop-motion champ Henry Selick, who'd previously directed The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and James and the Giant Peach (1996).

Utilizing 52 stages for the movie's hand-crafted sets, Selick took painstaking measures to ensure that Gaiman's story was handled respectfully, and the result is an exceptional animated film that's still yet to receive the attention it deserves. Coraline centers on the titular young girl (voiced by Dakota Fanning) whose frustrations over neglectful parents and a lack of human friends draws her into the Other World, where people's eyes are replaced by buttons and there's a spider-like witch woman with sewing needles for hands. And, yes, it's as unsettling as it sounds.

Fortunately, though, Selick, who also wrote the script, knows how to sanitize horrifying material without neutering it, making Coraline a dark kids' flick for all ages.

Director: Frank LaLoggia
Stars: Lukas Haas, Len Cariou, Alex Rocco, Katherine Helmond

Like all the best supernatural horror movies, Lady in White generates its modest scares through subtleties, not overt shocks. And for that, it's the kind of fright flick that will linger in kids' thoughts, with its spooky imagery and disturbing ideas. If the little ones were allowed to stay up past midnight, Lady in White would make for perfect post-witching-hour entertainment.

A pint-sized Lukas Haas plays the film's protagonist, a rugrat who unwittingly befriends a mother-and-daughter ghost tandem and helps bring their killer to justice. For a PG flick, Lady in White tackles some pretty heavy subjects, including murder, bloodthirsty deviants working on school grounds, and redemption from beyond the grave. To director Frank LaLoggia's credit, though, it's all handled with just the right amount of dialed-back suppression to never traumatize younger viewers.

Directors: Sam Fell and Chris Butler
Stars: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tucker Albrizzi, Anna Kendrick, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Leslie Mann, Jeff Garlin, Elaine Stritch, Jodelle Ferland, John Goodman, Tempestt Bledsoe

Sight gags involving kids hiding underneath frozen-stiff corpses? Nightmare fuel, no doubt. But if the underage viewers watching ParaNorman have thick enough skin, they'll find that this summer's stop-motion zombie romp is well worth the occasional frights.

The underappreciated flick presents a hero for all those grade school outcasts who can't seem to connect with their classmates: His name is, that's right, Norman (voiced with strong emotion by Kodi Smit-McPhee), and his ability to chat with dead people hinders his chances of ever feeling normal. Once a gang of lumbering, spastic zombies begins terrifying the townsfolk, though, Norman's otherwise insecure quirks allow him to save the day.

With effective messages about bullying, friendship, and standing up for what you believe in, ParaNorman offers as many life lessons as it does visual and audible nods to classic horror films. Who says scary movies don't have any societal benefits?

Director: Nicolas Roeg
Stars: Anjelica Huston, Jasen Fisher, Mai Zetterling, Rowan Atkinson, Jane Horrocks, Charlie Potter, Brenda Blethyn, Anne Lambton, Bill Paterson

The pedigree for scares in a kids' movie doesn't get much higher than this: Don't Look Now director Nicolas Roeg adapting one of eerie children's story writer Roald Dahl's most outright horrific works. With such a strong creative backbone in place, The Witches fulfills its lofty potential in spades, combining strong performances, sharp wit, and some of the freakiest puppetry and makeup effects in youth-centric cinema.

The plot, lifted directly from Dahl's 1983 book, follows a little boy (Jasen Fisher) who, staying with his loving and feisty grandmother (Mai Zetterling), checks into a massive Victorian hotel where a coven of broom-riders happens to be hosting a convention. A procession of cat-and-mouse chases, kids turning into rats, and effective physical humor leads to a raucous, FX-driven climax that's wonderfully nutty and jolting enough to pleasantly shock adults as well their progeny.

Director: Gil Kenan
Stars: Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Catherine O'Hara, Jason Lee, Jon Heder, Kevin James, Nick Cannon, Kathleen Turner

When the kiddies can enjoy a well told, genuinely thrilling but none-too-threatening story without feeling pandered to, it's always a plus; when those youngsters are also able to see some of the niftiest visual effects that Hollywood has to offer, it's a creative slam dunk. And that's the best way to describe Monster House, the Goonies-esque animated gem about three youths who take it upon themselves to contend against a suburban home that's possessed by an angry, demonic spirit.

Monster House hits every small-town neighborhood's kids close to home: It's an entire movie based around that creepy house at the end of the street. You know the one, with the campfire tales about its murderous history and current supernatural inhabitants. Except in Monster House, the crib literally talks and grows fangs.

Director: Charles Burton
Stars: Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney, Jr., Glenn Strange, Lenore Aubert, Jane Randolph, Frank Ferguson, Charles Bradstreet

For folks raised on black-and-white movies and classic comedy, what could be better than pairing Bud Abbott and Lou Costello with the icons of 1930s/’40s-era, Universal Pictures’ horror? A movie in which the Marx Brothers rescue Los Angeles from Godzilla’s reign of gigantic terror, perhaps?

No worries, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is more than adequate—to be precise, it’s an undisputed classic. Minus the O.G. Frankenstein’s monster, Boris Karloff (Frank is played by Glenn Strange here), Abbott and Costello’s horror-comedy hoot welcomes the venerable Bela Lugosi (star of 1931’s Dracula) and Lon Chaney, Jr. (he of the 1941 classic The Wolf Man) into the Jersey-bred duo’s world of harmless slapstick punchlines and intelligently written situational comedy.

Wisely, Lugosi, Chaney, and Strange never break from their serious-minded character traits, each of them treating Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein as they would any credible frightening monster movie sequel. Think about it: It’s not as if they were going to be able to out-funny Bud Abbott, comedy’s all-time greatest straight man, and Lou Costello, the king of sweet buffoonery.

Director: Tim Burton
Stars: Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones, Glenn Shadix, Sylvia Sidney

One of the coolest things about Frankenweenie is that it reminds us just how playfully imaginative Tim Burton can be when he's not coasting through obvious reboot material like Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows. Burton was creating at his highest threshold back in 1988, and Beetlejuice, loaded with bizarre imagery and gallows humor, ranks as one of his all-time great movies.

Hugely responsible for that acclaim is star Michael Keaton, whose turn as the afterlife's merriest jokester is a thing of spot-on, manic beauty. The script, written by Warren Skaaren (not Burton, it's worth noting), treats the hereafter like it's a carnival of screw-ups, not souls, ghosts of all shapes, sizes, and personality disorders. Honestly, it's a place that doesn't seem all that bad, save for those humongous sandworms that devour the worst of deceased troublemakers.

Director: Ivan Reitman
Stars: Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts, Ernie Hudson, William Atherton

It’s never a bad thing when a horror movie works just as well for grown-ass men as it does for pre-teen boys—there’s very little in life that’s more heartwarming than a father sitting on a couch next to his son while monsters and evil are infecting the TV screen before them. Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman’s supernatural matching of the 1980s’ best comedic talents (Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis), is just that kind of ageless amusement.

The aforementioned funnymen are all in rare form as paranormal investigators getting paid to eradicate Manhattan’s nastiest ghosts, many of which provide Ghostbusters with its craziest moments of laughter. Slimer, for instance, munches down on hot dogs while scaring the piss out of Murray; the absurdly funny-looking Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, for its part, terrorizes New York City streets with the destructive qualities of Godzilla. And who can forget the cartoonish panther-on-steroids that chases Rick Moranis around a hotel and into the Big Apple’s busiest blocks?

Director: Joe Dante
Stars: Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Dick Miller, Corey Feldman, Frances Lee McCain, Kete Luke, John Louie, Jackie Joseph, Judge Reinhold, Glynn Turman, Jonathan Banks

Enough with Ralphie, that Red Ryder BB gun, and the joyful yet overplayed A Christmas Story already. From here on out, we’re starting a new holiday tradition: a 24-hour marathon of Joe Dante’s Yuletide horror classic, Gremlins. It’s fun for the whole family, especially if your parents and siblings are the types who find the sights of hideous little creatures joyriding in snowmobiles and terrorizing sporting goods stores to be hilarious, like we do.

So what if Gremlins is never actually all that scary for anyone older than the age of 9? At its core, Dante’s energetic romp is a monster picture, one in which the villains, in the tradition of Freddy Krueger, are the coolest motherfuckers in the room.

Director: Fred Dekker
Stars: Andre Gower, Stephen Macht, Leonardo Cimino, Robby Kiger, Brent Chalem, Ryan Lambert, Duncan Regehr, Tom Noonan, Jonathan Gries, Michael Faustino

If you were born after, say, 1975, Richard Donner’s 1985 youth classic The Goonies is basically a rite of passage; tell someone that you’ve never seen Chunk and his friends’ treasure-guided misadventures and you’re likely to see a screw-face. The downside to The Goonies, however, at least to those of us who live and breathe horror, is that its longstanding ubiquity has always overshadowed its greatest imitator: Fred Dekker’s 1987 Universal-monster-inspired blast The Monster Squad.

Many people know The Monster Squad as the flick that gave the world the witty piece of dialogue, “Wolfman’s got nards!” And that’s a great reputation to have, no doubt, but Dekker’s film is so much more than that. Aside from the kids themselves, who never veer into obnoxious or unbearable terrain, The Monster Squad’s best attribute is its stone-faced horror; whenever Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy, or Gil-Man (an obvious ripoff of The Creature from the Black Lagoon) enter the frame, the film plays its scariness totally straight, and it’s often legitimately disturbing for it.

Again, though, you’ve also got kids calling a mummy “bandy breath,” and a good-guy Frankenstein saying, “Bogus!” You don’t need to be in junior high school to get the jokes here.