The Watcher in the Woods
– Disney Does Horror
By
the end of the 1970s and early 80s, Walt Disney Productions struggled as it
attempted to maintain its image of wholesome family entertainment. It still attempted to maintain its present
with the world wide movie going audience.
During this same period films like Star
Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark
were breaking box office records and these were movies that Disney could have made but didn’t because it of its blind
allegiance to making only G-rated fare.
When the new decade of the 1980s arrived, Ron Miller, Walt Disney’s
son-in-law had taken over the leadership reins of the company. He realized that Disney needed to venture in
more mature filmmaking, but it was a fine line that the company was willing to
walk as it developed PG films. In order
to produce big-budget films, the studio did two co-productions with Paramount
Studios, Popeye (1980) and Dragonslayer (1980). Neither of these films was very successful
and Disney once again decided to venture into film production solo. One way that the company saw the possibility
to bring in some box office revenue was to take advantage of the developing
audience for the newest brand of horror films like Friday the 13th and Halloween. Instead of attempting a slasher film,
Disney instead followed the trend of family horror films but with The Watcher in the Woods (1981).
In
focusing on the family in horror, it is appropriate to discuss the contested
nature of “family”. The family is by no means a universal, static, or tangible
grouping; it exists as a complex network of relationships. It is the social
institution entrusted with the reproductive process – reproduction of the
species, along with reproduction of cultural, social and psychic norms. Though
“the family” is frequently conceptualized as a universal, fixed unit (i.e. the
nuclear family), this is an essentially ideological construction, conflicting
with the reality of its diverse and changing nature. It is probably more
correct to talk of “families”, as “the family” in a unitary sense doesn’t
really exist. However, family is a useful concept for the way in which it
informs and provides meaning to discursive and cultural formations. The
inherently Western nature of the family in this sense, and its function within
capitalist superstructures requires us to view developments and themes in the
horror genre with a degree of cultural specificity. (Woods)
This film depicts
an American family moving to England
into an old mansion with Bette Davis as the house caretaker. The somewhat confusing plot revolves around
the fact that Davis ’s
daughter disappeared in the surrounding woods one night and has never been seen
again. Depending on the source, it has
been said that Disney had issues with how much horror and frights could be
depicted in a film produced under their name.
This film deals with the occult and supernatural, all themes that had
never been attempted by the studio before this time. They also struggled with how to produce a
family friendly film about a family dealing with terrifying events befalling
them. With a conclusion that is as
unfair as it is nonsensical, The Watcher in the Woods is its own worst
enemy: far better as a curiosity during a time when Disney was offering the
worst mainstream movies the world has ever known than as a horror film the
whole family can enjoy.
The film reflects
the problem of Disney trying out horror that is still Disney-like. Elements of terror go back as far as their
version of Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs. When the evil stepmother
transforms herself into a hag, audiences were said to have wet their
pants. Two years after The Watcher in the Woods, Disney took a
second stab at the genre with Something
Wicked This Way Comes, based on the Ray Bradbury book. This film also suffered a similar fate in
that it was re-edited and had new material shot for it after the production had
wrapped. The film did poorly box office,
not only in its abbreviated initial release but also the re-cut version that
attempted to clarify the ending.
Internationally, the film did not appear to make much of a profit, if
any.
The Watcher in the Woods was initially
released in the United
States on April 17, 1980. After being pulled from theaters and
re-edited, it was re-released on October 7, 1981 to coincide with the Halloween
season. In the USA the film grossed only $5
million. The film was released
internationally, specifically in France
on April 7, 1982 and in Japan
on September 11, 1982. Other countries
which distributed the film were Poland ,
Italy , Spain , West
Germany and Finland . Reactions internationally were equally poor,
though actual box office figures were not obtainable.
The film was
directed by an English director, John Hough who had worked with Disney on two
prior mystery/sci-fi/whatever films; Escape
from Witch Mountain and its sequel, Return
to Witch Mountain Australia ’s
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) which
was released in the USA
in 1979 just as this film went into production.
Director John Hough, no doubt found some inspiration in Peter Weir’s
film which carries a similar “thriller” theme.
He also brought his real life experiences as an Englishman to conveying
just how frightening the English countryside can be.
Some questions
that stand to be asked are why Disney chose a British director for the film but
ultimately took him off and replaced him with an American studio guy from the
TV department to complete the final version of the film? Did they want the film to appeal to
international audiences or did they want someone that could bring the feeling
of The Haunting of Hill House to the
movie. (Which, incidentally, is the same
house used for this production.) If they
were trying to compete with storylines about haunted houses, then the film
could be considered a rip off of The
Shining or The Amityville Horror. At
the start of the film, it is hinted that the house may be haunted. As the father says what self respecting old
English house would be without [a ghost]. There is no ghost, but there is Bette
Davis, who is quite frightening in her appearance at this late stage in her
film career. The girls then joke about a
witch living somewhere in the woods – another blatant attempt to tell the
audience what to be afraid of.
We ultimately find
out that the house and the woods surrounding it are not the culprit of the
horror but it is instead some other supernatural power terrorizing the family. The original cut of the film was to feature a
climatic moment where the “Watcher” returns and takes the female blonde lead
back to his spaceship where she finds the missing girl and somehow brings her
back home. This ending was never
completed and the ending was dramatically altered to one where the “Watcher” is
never presented on screen.
As we address the idea of Disney’s family horror film, it is worthwhile noting Ann Douglas’s definition of the concept:
As we address the idea of Disney’s family horror film, it is worthwhile noting Ann Douglas’s definition of the concept:
The
genre of “family horror” records the strange forms and transformations into
which the contemporary middle-class family falls: its subject is the splitting
of the atom of the nuclear family. This fictional family is twice nuclear. It
consists of the now-classic small nucleus of parents and one or two children.
It represents the first American families parented by young adults who were
themselves born just before and after the official inauguration of the nuclear
age at Hiroshima Douglas )
Watcher
features the middle class American family leaving the comforts of the United States to live life in jolly ole’ England . The father of the family leaves early on in
the film for a business trip, leaving his wife and two daughters with Ms.
Aylwood. The parents are basically
useless and at a loss for how to manage their situation. It is only via the children that a
breakthrough is made and the lost daughter of Ms. Aylwood is recovered. There is the stereotypical “innocent” little
girl, Ellie and the “pretty” older blonde sister, Jan. Jan’s blonde hair is important because Ms.
Aylwood’s daughter was also a blonde and she both reminds Ms. Aylwood of her
daughter and also helps Jan intercede in finding Karen. The Americans are the
foreigners and are the ones who discover the other foreigner who has been
terrorizing the village.
Wood
describes two types of horror films; reactionary and apocalyptic. Watcher
uses an unseen monster throughout the film.
This ambiguous form of monster falls right into her definition of the
“return of the repressed.” The missing
girl in the film originally disappears while participating in a séance with
other teenagers. Teenagers are
traditionally portrayed as repressing sexual tendencies and are punished for
it. The missing girl, Karen, is dressed
in white was blind folded with a white handkerchief and stood in the middle of
the séance circle when she was taken.
This concept in itself touches on themes of sadomasochism. The monster
kidnapping her can be interpreted through Woods’ definition of the monster as a
punishment for the possibility of sexual expression on Karen’s part, though
this is never something shown or discussed in the film text. Jan also has what appears to be a love
interest, a young man she meets after moving to England . There is not a hint of sexuality between
them. No kissing, hugging or romantic
moments.
Tony
Williams has also written extensively about the American horror film. He describes these films as embodying
"inevitable psychological tensions of an authoritarian family situation,
in which people are molded into certain roles." The adults in this film are portrayed as
particularly inept thus leaving it up to the children to take control of the
situation. The children are not the
cause of the horror such as in films like The
Exorcist or The Omen, but they
are the ones victimized most by the monster such as in a film like Poltergeist.
In making their first horror
film, Disney was able to maintain some of their reputation for a family
film. There is no sex, foul language or
significant acts of violence. Disney was
and remains the studio to produce
films for the family audience. However,
the conventions of the typical American horror film are not compatible with
Disney dominant conventions both in 1980 and even present day. Yes, this film does have a happy ending but
the overall theme of the film is a dark one.
The occult, séances, and extraterrestrial alien creatures are not stock
characters for a Disney film. Disney
finally realized that if they wanted to maintain the integrity of the Disney
brand but still be able to compete at the box office, a differently named
production company would need to be created.
Once Touchstone Pictures came on the scene with the release of Splash (1984), they finally could make a
competitive and financially successful film.
Interestingly, there were no future attempts at horror in the ways that
were attempted with both Watcher in the
Woods and Something Wicked This Way
Comes.
WORKS CITED
Digital Cinema. “The Mystery, Behind the Mystery.” http://www.geocities.com/ditcin4/watchermystery.html.
28 March 28, 2007.
Douglas, Ann, “The
Dream of the Wise Child: Freud's 'Family Romance Revisited in Contemporary
Narratives of Horror,” Prospect, 9 (1984), p. 293.
Hollis, Richard and Brian Sibley. The Disney Studio Story.
Crown, New York .
1988.
Maltin, Leonard. The Disney Films. 3rd Edition. Hyperion, New York . 1995. p. 273,
317.
The Watcher in the Woods Review
Wood, Robin (1979) “An Introduction to the American Horror
Film”. The American Nightmare. Toronto :
Festival of Festivals
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