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Defanged Horrors: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}{{Needs Image}}
{{quote|''"It's not too scary, I think it's just scary enough."''|'''[[Roger Ebert]]''' on ''[[Harry Potter (
A good scare in a controlled environment can be a lot of fun. [[Horror]] movies and roller coasters make their money based on this truth. Well, kids like to be scared as well, and books and movies are produced to do just that.
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Defanged Horror is a genre of horror created with kids in mind. However, it has to tread a fine line: being genuinely frightening to children without causing their parents any undue concern. So the [[Adult Fear|standard scares of adult horror]] are not an option here.
Instead Defanged Horror will rely on turning the children's imaginations against them. The monster will be [[Take Our Word for It|vaguely described]]. The consequences of venturing into a forbidden area will only be hinted at. Victims of the threat [[Never Say "Die"|will simply disappear]] rather than having a [[Kid Hero]] stumble across their mutilated corpses.
[[Tropes Are Tools|This is by no means a put-down of the genre]]. Hardcore stuff like ''[[Se7en]]'' or [[Silent Hill]] is not really suitable for giving ten-year-olds a good Halloween scare. This is simply the media version of the campfire or sleepover ghost story.
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Pokémon (
* [[Mon Colle Knights]] has one episode where the Count Collection gets possessed by a vampire before seizing Professor Hiragi hostage. The Knights must fight their way through a castle filled with zombies, suits of armor, Frankenstein monsters, and more. Saban switched this episode around with a much earlier one, which is understandable (i.e. to tie in with Halloween, which isn't celebrated in Japan).
* [[Keroro Gunsou]]. A yukata-clad ghost lives in the Hinata family's basement, Fuyuki is a big fan of the occult, and episodes of the manga and anime center around spooky story contests among the main characters and their friends.
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* The ''[[Tower of Terror]]'' film, based on theme park ride.
* The ''Watcher in the Woods'' film. No real gore, the fear is in what we don't see.
* ''[[The Haunted Mansion (
* ''[[The Haunted Mansion]]'' at [[Disney Theme Parks]].
== Literature ==
* ''[[Coraline (
** [[Word of God|According to Gaiman]], at least, adults find it much scarier than children do, because children tend not to pick up on the implied [[Adult Fear
* ''[[Goosebumps]]''.
** Taken quite literally with the story ''Vampire Breath'': one of the elder vampires wore fanged dentures because he had no teeth.
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** The slow despair of [[Crapsack World|living under a tyrant for seventeen years with no hope of salvation whatsoever]], and the bitterness that comes with it.
*** The very real danger of choosing a side in a war of tyrant vs. [[La Résistance]].
** [[Body Horror]] galore - the Shadowland prisoners, Fardeep and his "pets", multiple counts of dismemberment at the hands of the Granuous, public branding and execution, not to mention the [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|Ols']] true form...
** And, of course, the many psychological horrors - Discovering that everything you've ever been told about your world and your life has been a lie to keep you complacent. [[And I Must Scream|Being paralyzed and forced to wait for a horrific monster to eat you]]. Knowing your loved ones are being tortured for information on your whereabouts and being unable to help them, hiding enemy spies that [[Properly Paranoid|could literally be anything from your best friend, to the squirrel that just ran past, to the chair you're sitting on]]. Living every waking moment in fear that someone else is going to die. Honestly, as the series goes on, it's difficult to remember that it was written for kids... particularly if you have a vivid imagination.
* The "De Griezelbus" series by the Dutch author Paul van loon are a perfect example of this. Almost every installment deals with a group of kids whom are forced to listen to the stories of the {{spoiler|werewolf, and later vampire/undead}} writer P. Onnoval, with a climax at the end of each book. The stories are a combination of horror clichés like vampires, werewolves, etc. and a great deal of suspense, and most stories leave the end open, leaving you to wonder what happened.
== Live Action TV ==
* The ''[[Goosebumps]]'' TV adaptation.
* ''[[Are You Afraid of the Dark?]]''
* Another literal example, but also a parody: the ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' episode "You're No Fun Anymore" features various uses of the title phrase. One of these is a parody of [[Hammer Horror]] films, with Count Dracula (played by Graham Chapman) looming menacingly over a sleeping woman. He goes in for a bite...and his fangs fall out. The woman wakes up, looks at him, and says, "You're no fun anymore."
* Space (the Canadian equivalent of the Sci-fi channel) used to have short segments they'd play between shows to fill up their Canadian content requirements. One of the segments was a ''Blair Witch'' style 'recovered footage' short story, where we'd watch regular home movies that invariably took a turn for the strange. These where all done without explicitly showing anything evil, for instance the family who are driving along only to be knocked out and awaken in a vast, empty, rock-strewn wasteland. The second was far more scary, and was the tale of a crypt in the middle of a lost-graveyard containing something. We aren't shown what it is, as our camera man refuses to go down. But needless to say, whatever it is, it starts haunting him, and that book of Eldritch lore his friend recovered before 'disappearing' isn't helping matters.
* ''[[
** ''The Empty Child'' and ''The Doctor Dances'' two-parter takes a fairly traditional zombie movie plot and alters it so there's no blood and no deaths. And it's possibly the creepiest bit of programming ever to be aired on television.
** ''Blink'' gives it a run for the money; it's ''terrifying'', considering there are almost no special effects and only two character deaths, both of which are peaceful, non-violent, and off-screen.
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== Video Games ==
* ''[[Banjo
* [[Snowboard Kids|Snowboard Kids 2]] features a course called [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[Super Mario]]'': The entire series has places with ghosts (especially spherical ones called Boos). Most of these are in haunted houses, but there are also places such as [[Paper Mario (
** According to [[Chuggaaconroy]], this is the reason a hunter ghost was cut from [[
* In ''[[
* ''[[Pokémon]]'': Certain Pokedex entries in the series (especially about Ghost Pokemon) are this trope. For example, Gengar likes to imitate people's shadows under a full moon, and then laugh at their fright, Shuppet was a doll who seeks revenge on the child who disowned it, Dusclops traps anyone who looks into its eye into a void, and so on. Of course, none of this actually happens in-game.
* ''[[
== Web original ==
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== Western Animation ==
* ''[[
** The poster boy for
** The keeper of the library in the desert is just a very large owl, that's actually very polite and friendly. But it's clearly not a mere mortal creature and it's made very clear that one should not abuse its trust. And when it eventually gets angry, things turn really scary.
** The [[Weird Moon|Blood Red Moon]] during the season 1 finale.
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* ''[[Aaahh Real Monsters|AAAHH!!! Real Monsters]]'' is a series about, well, monsters that scare humans. All of their "scare scenes" are very effective in showing how the monsters scare humans without scaring the audience in the process, mostly through giving said monsters individual personalities and motives (they're only doing it to complete school).
** And stay alive.
* ''[[Teen Titans (
** The episode "Haunted" also ranks up there as one of the creepiest pieces of [[Western Animation]] targeted towards kids. They took Slade, a villain who's already creepy in his own right, and left the audience constantly unsure whether he was [[Back
* While not borderline scary (at least for the older folks), Danny entering the [[Phantom Zone|Ghost Zone]] for the first time in ''[[
** On the other hand, [[Vain Sorceress|Spectra]] and [[Psycho for Hire|Dark Danny]] aren't "defanged" in the least.
* This trope is pretty much the whole point of ''[[Scooby Doo]]''.
** Especialy ''Zombie Island'' and ''Witch's Ghost''.
* ''[[The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack]]''.
* ''[[
* ''[[Wallace and Gromit]]: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.''
* Some episodes of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
== Real Life ==
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