Still Scared: Talking Children's Horror

In this episode we talked about the 1995 film Casper, directed by Brad Silberling.

Our email address is stillscaredpodcast@gmail.com and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast and twitter @stillscaredpod! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Joe Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Here is a link to the deleted scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit that we talked about!

The music from the film is 'Casper's Lullaby' composed by James Horner

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray and today we’re talking about the film Casper from 1995 directed by Brad Silberling. Enjoy!

Ren Good evening, Adam!

Adam Good evening, Ren! It’s been a few weeks how are you doing?

Ren I’m doing alright, I'm being a bit pummelled by the darkness, in a literal sense, now that the clocks have changed and there isn’t much daylight - it gets me every year but I’m sitting here right now in front of my lightbox, as we podcast.

Adam Presumably emotionally and psychologically not physically pummelled by the darkness?

Ren Yes.

Adam Saying ‘literally’ I was imaging some spook-tacular black-caped embodiment of the darkness was giving you a pinch punch, first of the month.

Ren Not quite that literal! And how are you, Adam?

Adam I’m alright, teaching’s been quite exhausting recently. I’ve got a bit cross with the kids, which I don’t feel great about, but they just laugh. I don’t think they’re particularly traumatised by it, to be honest. But nevertheless I like to be a genial teacher.

Animation club’s been going well though, I showed Moomins the other day. It was the episode of the cartoon where Moomin falls in love with a ship’s figurehead because it’s a beautiful women and Snorkmaiden is really jealous so takes it out to sea with Sniff to drown it, and hobgoblin visits who’s been travelling for two hundred years to retrieve some gem that Thingumy and Bob — is that what they’re called? Thingumy and Bob? The little trickster ones.

Ren Which one’s Hobglobin?

Adam He’s just an interstellar Hobglobin, he looks like he’s flown in from Sailor Moon, to be honest. And he asks to have his gem back but Moomin Mama is like, “Well, no, it’s theirs now,” and he says “I’ve searched for 200 years, that’s very disappointing.” So they so, “Oh, do you want some tea?" and he has tea with the moomins.

Ren A less horrific episode, then.

Adam Oh yes, not a children’s horror episode especially. The kids who weren’t playing games on their phones seemed to enjoy it, so that was nice. And today we’re talking about a film from my childhood, the live action Casper from 1995, which I had wrongly assumed it would have also been a film from your childhood!

Ren I mean that’s a reasonable assumption! It came out in 1995, it’s the right time for me to have watched it, but for some reason I didn’t! Which is quite to its detriment because without the sheen of nostalgia it was uh… not great.

Adam Ah yes, this was quite a cosy watch for me. But I will note that this is not the first film directed by Brad Silberling that we’ve both reviewed! City of Angels, the Nicholas Cage vehicle from 1998, which I hope you remember we reviewed for our old blog Cage Wisdom!

Ren Yes! I don’t know if we’ve ever mentioned that on the podcast, that we used to have this blog reviewing Nicholas Cage films.

Adam If anyone really enjoys our patter and wants more of our stuff, it is still online, if you look up ‘Cage wisdom Nic Cage Wordpress’ where we ambitiously tried to review every Nicholas Cage film but he went into a bit of a slump in the 2010s where he was just making vigilante films and I think we both lost interest.

Ren We did talk about some bad movies!

Adam Well, the one you watched that I never did was that Boy in Blue film, about the invention of the rowing machine.

Ren It was about the invention of the sliding seat!

Adam Oh, so more specific than the rowing machine!

Ren More specific than the rowing machine. It was actual rowing, but it was about the seat that slides back and forth to facilitate your rowing, which as you will agree is an historical moment ripe for commemoration in film.

AdamCage is back on top now though, I don’t know if you’ve been to the cinema to see Dream Scenario?

Ren No, but wasn’t he also in Dracula?

Adam Oh, in Renfield. He played Dracula in Renfield. So he’s out of the straight to DVD grey/turqiouse action films he was stuck in for a while, so that’s nice. So this is a film directed by Brad Silberling and this is the first film, according to Wikipedia to star a CGI character in the lead role! Casper gets more to do than JarJar Binks ever did.

Ren Yeah, I mean, yep, he’s… there!

Adam I don’t think you’re necessarily appreciating how historic this film is! It’s produced by Universal, and quite unsurprisingly a Steven Spielberg executive produced film.

Ren I guess to put this context of mixed animation and live action, 1995 is quite a long time ago.

Adam It’s not quite Who Framed Roger Rabbit in terms of ‘look at that’ spectacle, I will admit, but it’s pretty well integrated. Our lead performers in terms of the flesh performers, the flesh bags, are Christina Ricci and Bill Pullman and both of them would have done a lot of acting to mannequins or faces drawn on paper plates or whatever, and I think they both do a pretty fine job.

Ren Yeah, they did. Always glad to see Christina Ricci. Obviously, well, obviously to me, I’ve been watching Yellowjackets when that’s been coming out recently, and she’s great in that.

Adam And this wold be just off the back of Adams Family so it makes sense to cast her in this. This film, it’s interesting as to whether it’s a horror film or not, because Casper was already a character from the cartoon, Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Ren And the comics!

Adam Yeah, does he belong to the Archie universe? Because they have an Archie look to them.

Ren I think it’s Harvey comics?

Adam Woody Woodpecker as well…

Ren I think you’re right, that is the same family. Richie Rich, that’s right. Because Casper is the dead version of Richie Rich.

Adam I mean, he’s not really? Or I guess in the film he kind of is! In the comic he was born a ghost, he was always a ghost.

Ren “Born a ghost”

Adam In the comic he is just of the species of ghost and he doesn’t have the melancholia because he was always a ghost, being a ghost is his bread and butter. But in the film he is the ghost of a dead rich child.

Ren And it’s like, Ghost Pinoccio, the plot of this film.

Adam Or maybe closer to Ghost AI with the increased uncanny charge that the film has. So he’s Casper the friendly ghost, and obviously the film gets some mileage out of the fact that he’s ‘Casper the inadvertently terrifying ghost’, so the film starts with these two prepubescent lads exploring this seemingly abandoned mansion. And I will say that the set design and the art direction of this film, it’s got that going for it!

Ren Yeah, I did really enjoy the effort they put into the set design of the haunted mansion, it’s kind of Gaudi-like —

Adam — Tim Burton does Gaudi —

Ren — Curvaceous —

Adam — Lovely stained glass, a freaky-toothed fish creature at the bottom of the bannister.

Ren Oh yeah, I didn’t make very many notes of this film, but one of them is ‘fish bannister.’ It was a good bannister.

Adam Great bannister. Casper spends his time mooning about the mansion I guess and acting as a servant to his three uncles, Stinky, Stretchy and Fatso, I believe. They’re simply defined characters, I think it’s fair to say.

Ren Mm-hmm.

Adam And it starts with these two boys going in and seeing Casper and getting terrified, but Casper of course is the ‘inadvertently terrifying ghost’ and he only wants to be friends. But then we’re introduced to the antagonist of the film?

Ren Yep, that’s Carrigan, played by Cathy Moriarty, which I guess is an appropriate name for an antagonist, and her sidekick Dibs played by Eric Idle, but we can come back to Eric Idle.

AdamOkay, we’ll come back to Eric Idle.

Ren She’s being read her father’s will by a lawyer and being very callous and demanding, I think is the vibe, and it turns out all he’s left her is this manor house.

Adam So she goes to visit it and finds out quite quickly that it is in fact haunted by Casper and his extended family. So we get a very short montage of them trying to use exorcists to get rid of the ghosts.

Ren It was very perfunctory, they have an Exorcist reference, they have a Ghostbusters reference.

Adam Was that Dan Akroyd? I fell like one of the ghostbusters gets his pay check by appearing and donning his costume, then walking off.

Ren I don’t even know if it was!

Adam I mean, I can’t imagine that anyone in Hollywood had a career as a Dan Akroyd impersonator, but I suppose it’s possible!*

But anyway she then - well, Casper, this is a bit of an unneccesary plot device and makes Casper even creepier than he needs to be but not in a good way, and she’s watching TV and she’s watching a news broadcasts —

Ren Local news.

Adam A kooky local news story about a ghost psychiatrist, and Casper takes a shine, I guess, to the guy’s teenage daughter and hatches very quickly a plan to lure her to his house?

Ren Yep, he does, yep.

Adam By means of transporting himself through an electricity pylon, so he’s not housebound, he can travel the globe through electricity and transport himself! So I don’t know why he’s spending all the time with his horrible uncles moping around the house when he could travel anywhere at the speed of electricity!

RenThat does seem like an unnecessary plot hole to introduce into your film, but sure.

Adam It seems like quite an incredible power that Casper doesn’t utilise very much, except to lure a thirteen year old girl to his house, but okay! So basically Casper engineers it so Carrigan sees the television broadcast of the psychiatrist and his daughter and thus gets hold of him to go and perform this exorcism of the ghosts, so Casper then gets this girl moving into his bedroom, as it happens!

I imagine that you weren't particularly a Casper stan watching this film? You didn’t find him charming? Bulbous head?

Ren Very bulbous. I didn't really like how he looked, sorry.

Adam What didn’t you like about how he looked? Something fetal, marshmallowy?

Ren He does look quite fetal, you’re right, maybe that’s it. A very squishy, translucent boy, but he’s not very person-like —

Adam Is he a boy, is he a pet, is he an infant? Is he a 100 and something year old being?

Ren Well yes, I think the film is trying to situate Casper as an adolescent with appropriate adolescent feelings, and I just wasn’t getting that from the creature that was presented to me on the screen, right?

Adam Yeah.

Ren I didn’t feel like ‘Yes, this, I can recognise as a romantic prospect.’ He’s too weird looking, I’m sorry, and also quite baby-looking and those two things make it quite eurgh for me.

Adam I think that’s fair, and it also does feel a bit like a weird anime come to life, “On no, this girl’s moved into my room and she doesn’t know I’m there cause I’m a ghost - Oh no she’s accidentally using me as her pillow!”

Ren Yeah, that was a bit mmmhmm.

Adam That could be the Texture of the Week, the idea of using Casper as a pillow, because what would he be like as a pillow? Is he gelatinous? Is he soft inside or is he squirmy?

Ren Speaking of this, I had a really good dessert recently the other day at a Malaysian cafe. It was like a bowl of textures, right. It had this squishy taro that was like mochi, and two types of tapioca, the small sago tapioca and the larger pearls you get in bubble tea, and it had grass jelly and it was all swimming in coconut milk.

Adam And you think Casper was made of that?

Ren I can imagine him having a mochi-like consistency, I think.

Adam Yeah! Litle mochi boy. I can totally imagine him having a mochi-like consistency. Well, I don’t even need to sing Texture of the Week, I got AI to sing my song for me!

Ren What??

Adam I sent you a song! We’re living in the future, computers can just sing about textures, you can make them do that now! It’s like a folk song: ’Textures here, textures everywhere’. I’ll just play that.

(Texture song plays: ‘Well I woke up this morning with a skip in my step, birds were singing and the sun was shining so bright, I took a stroll down the road so free, little did I know what was waiting for me — Oh, textures are wild they’re all over the place, Texture of the Week let’s embrace the craze
Texture of the Week,
Oh what a treat, (what a treat)
Texture of the Week
Oh the textures are wild, they’re all over the place, Texture of the Week let’s embrace the craze, oh yeah.)

So when you listen to the episode in full you will have just heard it!

Ren Oh amazing, wow, great.

Adam Great. It’s almost like Simon and Garfunkel are back together. So is your texture Casper, or is it something else?

Ren Maybe my texture is Casper and maybe it’s when he’s trying to describe what he’s made of and he says: “You know that tingly feeling when your foot falls asleep? I think I’m made of that.”

Adam That’s quite whimsical.

Ren That is quite whimsical. I thought that was quite appropriate. My runner-up is fish bannister.

Adam Oh I knew you’d like the fish bannister! In terms of Casper textures, my favourite bit is later in the film he’s got some kind of telepod machine — imagine the teleporter that Jeff Brundel uses in the fly, but more Steampunk — to try and bring him back to life, and it gets interrupted halfway and he becomes a big Casper egg.

Ren Ah yeah! He does!

Adam A big, drippy Casper egg.

Ren That thing is quite like the fly, isn’t it?

Adam The other thing was Eric Idle’s laugh lines.

Ren On his face?

Adam Yeah, on his face. From all his smiling over the years he’s got these wonderful crow’s feet. I know that Graham Chapman was your favourite python, but I imagine you had a lot of fondness for Eric Idle when you were young because you liked The Rutles a lot.

Ren I did like the Rutles a lot and when I was younger, before my Python era, I really loved the Wind in the Willows, which was probably one of the things that had the most full cast of Pythons post-Python: Eric Idle was ratty, Terry Jones was toad, Michael Palin had a cameo as the sun, and John Cleese was in there somewhere.

Adam Badger?

Ren No, I think he was a lawyer or something. But I really loved that film as a kid.

Adam Which would have been in production about the same time, maybe a year afterwards?

Ren I mean, I was going to be rather meaner about Eric Idle because he did have a quite prolific stage in the ‘90s of being a massive sellout and being in literally anything. He’s in so many bad movies at this time just being a kooky English man, kind of thing.

Adam He’s kind of doing his glad-handling obsequious type character here, that he does quite a lot in Python.

Ren You’re right, he did have quite a line in oily characters.

Adam A Uriah Heap type character. Which I think works. I do remember as a kid being quite disturbed by the amount of abuse he gets in the film and feeling quite sorry for him, not really understanding his relationship with Carrigan. I think he’s her solicitor, maybe, but there’s also possibly a romantic subplot going on, it’s quite undefined. I basically remember feeling that she treated him quite badly, and feeling sorry for him.

Ren He does get on the wrong end of the slapstick quite a lot.

Adam Yeah. And I also remember finding the ghostly trio pretty scary actually. Because as an adult they’re just used for gross-out humour really, these ghosts. But I remember feeling quite intimidated by them: they’re pretty chaotic and it’s hard to tell how evil they are. To what degree they’re just jokers, to what degree they’re murderers and to what degree they’re genuinely dangerous. It’s quite unclear.

Ren I struggled with those characters, they’re very obnoxious.

Adam They’re basically Casper’s three uncles and they’re not too pleased with Bill Pullman and Christina Ricci moving into their abode.

Ren Yeah, so that’s the conflict of the rest of the film, them versus Bill Pullman for rule of the house. There’s various attempts to strike a bargain with them, like Bill Pullman’s characters says he’ll leave them alone and call off Carrigan if they let him speak to his dead wife, for example.

Adam There’s a fair amount of sentimentality in this film, I do remember finding the music quite evocative as a kid. The music-box style melody that plays as Casper recalls who he died was very sad, and that came back to me as I watched this film. (Casper music plays in the background)

But it’s maybe a little too bashful about the theme of death, particularly as it’s being released in the wake of Beetlejuice.

Ren Beetlejuice which we subtitled ‘the ghosts who were nice’

Adam Yeah yeah! So Beetlejuice, while possibly less suitable for kids in parts of it, is certainly a much more successful film, partly because it’s just a lot more dynamic, and the character Beetlejuice introduces another element of conflict beyond just getting the ghosts out of the house. But also it's more sober and clear-eyed about the topic of death and approaches it in a more interesting way, whereas I think Casper is more cliched and sentimental about death and doesn’t really explore it particularly.

RenAnd also like with Casper, none of the ghosts really feel… they feel like they are of the species ghost, they were born a ghost. I don’t really feel any connection to them as having been former living human beings.

Adam Although you say that, but obviously what happens in this plot, weirdly, is that Carrigan is partly interested in the mansion because she believes there’s some treasure buried there, she’s very money-driven.

So, right, there’s a machine that Casper’s father was working on to bring Casper back that can bring ghosts back to life, and basically Carrigan discovers this and has the plot that she will kill Eric Idle’s character and then as a ghost he will be able to float his way into the vault, bring out whatever the treasure is and then be brought back to life. Which is about as complicated as a 90s adventure game puzzle.

Ren “Right, you have to kill the lackey—“

Adam But actually she tries to run him over, there’s a series of Eric Idle is almost murderously killed episodes, but then she tries to run him down in her car and ends up dangling over the edge of the cliff, opening the door and plummeting to her death.

Ren So she comes back as a ghost —

Adam As a giant ghost, no less! Very large. She has so much ambitious evil energy that she’s really big, I guess!

Ren She floats through the safe door to get the treasure — I should have written this down because I watched this two days ago and I’ve already forgotten what happened!

Adam Ah okay, the treasure turns out to be just some stupid baseball glove that Casper liked!

Ren Oh, it’s just a sentimental treasure.

Adam Eurggghh (squeaky plucky orphan voice) “that’s the real treasure, it’s a baseball glove, I’m an All-American boy!”

Ren Yeah okay. The thing I did like was using the little hoover, the little dust-buster as a weapon against the ghosts.

Adam Yeah that’s pretty neat.

Ren Maki does that with flies.

Adam In a business-like way or does she make a game of it?

Ren Very business-like.

Adam Okay good, that has a certain decorum, I think.

Ren So Casper is the one who gets turned back into a human boy —

Adam No he doesn’t! No he doesn’t! That’s a completely different ending, that doesn’t happen!

Ren What??

Adam No, because Bill Pullman accidentally dies by stepping into an open drain or something at a construction site, and he becomes a ghost — it’s like you didn’t even pay attention to this film at all Ren! — and then Casper’s going to be turned back but he lets Bill Pullman instead and because of this sacrifice, the good witch, or the good ghost of Christina Ricci’s dead mother grants Casper the magical wish of being a boy until, not midnight but ten o’ clock because midnight would be too late for a twelve year old.

Ren Urgh yeah okay, thank you Adam. I wasn’t really into this film, I’m sorry!

Adam And then nice-guy Casper gets to have a dance with Christian Ricci’s character.

Ren Oh yeah, and he has this weird little catch phrase where he’s like: “Can I keep you?”

Adam Oh yeah and he says it as she’s falling asleep, it’s clever ghost tricks. He’s like (horrible creepy ghost voice) “Can I keep you?” and she’s like, “Yeah, yeah Casper I’m just falling asleep” and he’s like: “Ahaha the contract is sealed! Mine forever human!” He’s a bit of a little creep, isn’t he?

Ren Stretching the bounds of imagination he does turn back into a normal-looking human boy, rather than a mochi creature.

Adam You say a normal-looking human boy but now that you’ve mentioned it he does look quite a lot like Richie Rich! So I think this theory is canon.

Ren Is this a Simpsons bit or something? Casper and Richie Rich being the same person.*

Adam Oh maybe it is! But there’s another little creepy bit, where they have a little kiss at the end of the dance and before she knows it he’s transformed and her face is inside his face. That freaked me, I didn’t like that. Thought it was horrid.

Ren I’m sorry for my lacklustre approach to this episode!

Adam It’s okay, because upoi’ve got two opportunities to redeem yourself, Ren. Because we can next talk about ‘Casper: A Spirited Beginning’, the 1997 direct-to-video fantasy comedy that followed. Don’t worry, look, I’ll read the production notes from Wikepedia to get your enthusiasm up.

"While Universal Studios planned their own sequel to 1995 film Casper for a tentative 1999 release, Harvey Entertainment who owned the rights to the IP shopped the property around looking for other studios interested in producing projects based on the character. Harvey eventually set up production of a direct-to-video prequel film with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. After finishing work on 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain, director Sean McNamara approached producer Mike Elliott about the directing job and after showing Elliott 3 Ninjas, McNamara was hired… Based on 5 reviews on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 0% of critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 2.2/10.”

Ren Wow, okay. To tell the listeners this was a bit of a last-minute one because we were going to do Terrovision, which we will still do, but we decided we needed a guest in the mix —

Adam I think I needed longer to emotionally and psychologically process Terrorvision, was my feeling. Which was one of those remarkable ‘80s films that literally seems to have been intended for no audience, at all ever.

Ren Appropriate for no-one.

Adam Literally appropriate for no-one. But don’t worry, Ren, because after ‘Casper: A Spirited Beginning’ we have ‘Casper meets Wendy’ from 1998, a sequel.

Ren Like Wendy from…

Adam Peter Pan? No, no. The good little witch named Wendy, who is another comic book character from Harvey comics. There’s also Hot Stuff the little devil.

Ren Ooh it does have Shelly Duvall in it though!

Adam Oh no, suddenly you are actually interested!

Ren That would probably test my devotion to Shelly Duvall to be honest.

Adam Anyway after this I went on Youtube and tried to watch some of the original cartoon but I found it pretty charmless. I think, as you said, the original cellular Casper is a bit cuter than CGI casper.

Ren Yeah, I think it's got a bit more of a charm to it.

Adam There’s now like a new Casper cartoon for kids in some kind of ghost school or something.

Ren Shall we finish by talking about that Who Framed Roger Rabbit thing you sent me?

Adam I’m never sure if we should do ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ because again It’s not really a kid’s film, though I watched it as a kid and found it very scary.

Ren I’ve never seen it.

Adam Oh maybe we should then. Well, I sent Ren a deleted clip from it, do you want to describe what happened to Bob Hoskins in it?

Ren What happened to Bob Hoskins in it is that he was going to have his head transformed into a pig head, and it shows this clip of him running out of a tunnel but they haven’t done the full animation so the first horror of this clip is that he has this horrendous wire mother contraption on his head that’s going to be the scaffold for the animation.

And that’s frightening enough but then he ends up going into the shower and the idea was that the pig head runs off him in the shower and melts and floods down the plughole, eyeballs and all. And there’s a talking head being like: “This was the first scene we animated for the film, so we were quite disappointed it got cut.”

Adam It was great. Really satisfying.

Ren I did enjoy that.

Adam So even if you didn't enjoy the textures of Casper, you did get to see the texture of a dissolving pigs head going down the drain.

Ren I was wondering, is there any non-children’s horror you’ve been enjoying lately?

Adam I’m so busy, Ren. I've played some video games, I’ve played Orwell, finally got round to that which is a visual novel with heavy handed but decent 1984 style themes. Only Murders in the Building with my mum, which is very light but Steve Martin is always a gem, especially when he’s written something himself. He’s also good friends with Joyce Carol Oates, which is partly why i like him these days. Have you then, Ren?

Ren I’ve got very into the Boulet Brothers Dragula recently, which is a horror drag competition that is streaming on Shudder. The fifth season is currently airing but I’m still catching up on back seasons. It’s great, not for kids, but it’s great if you enjoy the creepy and spooky and the nasty - costumes and performances and everything, it’s very good.

Adam I enjoyed the new Nicholas Cage film Dream Scenario, in which Nicholas Cage plays a man who appears in everyone’s dreams. Just like in real life!

Ren Just like real life! I think that’ll probably do it for Casper.

Adam Let’s do the credits.

Ren And we’ll return with something where I’ve paid a bit more attention to the source material.

Adam We probably also should have mentioned how Casper died. He was petulant about wanting to play on his sled, and he was like: (squeaky brat voice) “I want to play on my sled, I don’t want to come inside, I love sledging!” and then he just died, from too much sledging.

Ren From the cold?

Adam No, I think he out-sledged himself. It was the exertion, to be honest.

Ren Well, there’s a lesson then, to the film. Do you have a sign-off for us?

Adam Don’t be like Casper, creepy kids, there are better in ghost role models out there.

Ren Be creepy in the good way, not the Casper way.

Adam Yes, be creepy in the good way, not the Casper way. Bye!

Ren Bye creepy kids!

• It was in fact Dan Akroyd, he just doesn’t appear in the IMDB credits, for some reason!


• It is a Simpsons bit, yes.