The Watcher in the Woods

The section labeled “Disney Horror films” isn’t too substantial. The idea of staff welcoming John Hough’s 1980 film “The Watcher in the Woods” as ‘this could be our Exorcist’ suggests that the company were actually looking in surprising directions in the early 1980s. Eddie Harrison said in his review, “The Watcher in the Woods came out just before The Shining, and has a number of similar tropes, notably children discovering backwards writing on the windows of a crumbling mansion. But Watcher was pulled by the company bosses, re-edited and given a new opening and closing sequence.” The original version, and Hough’s preferred version, are even harder to find than the 1982 re-release.

Harrison noted, “Safe pair of hands Vincent McEveety was drafted in for the reshoots, but the regular reader of this blog will know that John Hough is the draw here; from Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry to Biggles, his directorial skills are first rate.” Here, he brings a real magic to accounts as David McCallum and his family (Carroll Baker, Lynn-Holly Johnson, and Kyle Richards) movie into an old house, where Bette Davis has a secret about a missing child (Katharine Levy) and a haunted presence.

Since the 1980s, PG horror was something of a principal, but in 1980, the whole concept of a children’s horror movie looked like a contradiction. Hough’s movie has plenty of jump scares, like a child putting on a witch’s mask, that doesn’t really connect to the main story.

Harrison said, “Safe pair of hands Vincent McEveety was drafted in for the reshoots, but the regular reader of this blog will know that John Hough is the draw here; from Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry to Biggles, his directorial skills are first rate.” This has the atmosphere, even if the story defies logic for children and adults alike.

In all honesty, I don’t really see anything special in this film. If you want to check it out, I don’t think it will hurt, but I don’t know if this will be remembered by everyone who watched this. Sure, this is a legitimately scary film that Disney made and it does give that look, which it succeeds at. It won’t hurt to check it out, so if you can find it, then see it and see if you get scared or if this is something you can just simply watch once and never again. I guess it will depend on the person but maybe a majority to find this scary and will love it.

Tomorrow I will be looking at a film that is on a character that a late actor was famous portraying in “Disney Month 2024.”