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Movie-A-Day: The Dark Crystal – Or, the most terrifying movie ever made (if you’re five)

12th April 2010 By Tim Isaac

Starring: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Kathryn Mullen, Dave Goelz
Director: Jim Henson, Frank Oz,
Year Of Release: 1982
Plot: A 1,000 years ago the mysterious Dark Crystal cracked, splitting the race that rules the fantasy planet in two – becoming the peaceful, good Mystics and the evil Skeksis. If the crystal isn’t healed before the conjunctions of the three suns, the Skeksis will rule forever. Orphan Jen, who believes he is the last of a race called the Gelflings, sets out on a quest to find the missing shard of the crystal and restore order to the planet.

I was five years old the first time I watched The Dark Crystal and it convinced me that Father Christmas was a sadist. The video of the film was in my stocking, and as I remember I’d never heard of the film before. However it was from Father Christmas, so I presumed it must be good and that he wouldn’t have given it to me if it weren’t suitable for me.

However when I put it in the video recorder (we were such a cool family we had a top-loading VCR with a remote control attached to it by a wire – we were space age man) I sat there for the next 93 minutes absolutely terrified and becoming ever more convinced that Santa Claus was a strange man with an odd sadistic streak. He obviously never wanted me to sleep again.

From the disrobing of one of the Skeksis and the raid on the Gelfling village to the destruction of Aughra’s laboratory and most particularly the podlings having their essence sucked out of them, it was like an endless series of children’s nightmares turned into scary looking puppet form.

I should probably have switched it off, but I didn’t and watched it through to the end, wide-eyed in horror and uncertain whether I’d ever be able to look at the world in the same way again. I literally cannot remember being so scared as a child. It’s for this reason the movie probably wasn’t a big success on its initial release (well, not that it specifically scared me, but it was too intense for a lot of other kids as well).

Many of the earliest reviews assumed that as it was from the makers of the Muppets, it must be for kids, and young kids at that. As a result it got rather mixed reviews, with many seeming annoyed that it wasn’t an innocent magical tale to make tiny kids happy, and criticising its intensity dark themes. It only made $40 million in the US on its initial release, which was seen as a disappointment. Many said the relative failure was because it was released around the same time as ET (another movie that traumatised a lot of very young kids), and also because a lot of parents thought it was too scary to take their little ones to see. Of course older children, who would probably have appreciated it, didn’t want to see it because it was a movie made totally with puppets and they therefore assumed it was too juvenile for them.

The proof of this is that it’s probably more popular now than it was when it was first released, not because kids have suddenly become little hardnuts who can take anything, but because the children who were terrified by it when it was first released have since grown up and now absolutely love the movie (incidentally, if you do like the film, get hold of the Blu-ray or Collector’s Edition DVD, as they include some fascinating behind-the-scenes documentaries, which take a close look at what is thought to be the first totally live action movie with no humans in it at all).

Now those who were scared in the early 80s are terrifying their own kids with it. Its cult status has also been confirmed by the immense interest in the sequel that’s been in pre-production for several years now. It’s still unclear whether the movie, The Power Of The Dark Crystal, will ever actually get made, as it’s been in development since at least 2008 and there’s still no sign of it going into production, however every snippet of info on the movie is lapped up by an eager band of devotees keen to hear what’s happening. However The Henson Company wouldn’t have even had started developing the sequel if the original hadn’t become such a huge success on DVD, despite the middling response to its 1982 release.

Whether a sequel does materialise (and whether it’s as scary as the first one) is yet to be seen, but The Dark Crystal undoubtedly remains the scariest filmic experience of my childhood and proof positive that Santa Claus is a sadist.

TIM ISAAC

PREVIOUS: Dark City – Or, why there’s no way to prove your life ever really happened
NEXT: The Dark Knight – Or, the strange and shocking world of dying in Lalaland

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