Like driving in kilometers instead of miles, sipping Tim Horton’s instead of Dunkin’, or relying on universal healthcare instead of dying broke in the hospital, the cinematic output of our great white neighbors to the North feels familiar yet slightly off. Children’s entertainment, especially from the rough and tumble ‘80s, rides wild creativity to dark places. Ghost winos haunt derelict mansions, kid vampires thirst for blood, anthropomorphic freaks drag shrieking children to jail, and monster dolls spring to life. Maybe something bad seeped into the maple syrup up there, but Canada’s spin on the family moving picture scars deeper than an errant slapshot.

The Peanut Butter Solution

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Only French Canadians could produce a movie about an evil art teacher who abducts a kid with super fast growing hair to make and sell magic paint brushes. Just when I think this movie hits a weird plateau, it tops itself with another crazy, inspired, disturbing, hilarious, and occasionally inappropriate flight of fancy. After venturing into a burned down house with his fedora topped friend who loves to scarf grapes, a kid "has a fright" and loses all his hair. His no-nonsense homemaker sister buys him a wig, but a soccer bully (this is Quebec) snatches it and humiliates him in front of the entire school. Luckily, two friendly ghosts of "homeless winos" visit the kid in his kitchen one night and give him a secret recipe for hair restoration. The movie just gets odder and odder as it progresses. The fedora friend rubs the magick Rogaine on his crotch because he wants "hair down there." The kid's dad paints a bunch of frightening humanoid birds. A teacher suspends the kid and his friend for cutting hair in class. A dog wearing a sweater winks maliciously. JUST WATCH THIS DAMN MOVIE ALREADY. It feels so off and alien, like some mixed-up transmission from a backwards world we were never meant to see.

Nobody in The Peanut Butter Solution behaves like a human being. After going bald, the kid hides from the world like some l'il Billy Corgan and cries and bangs a drum set in his basement. His father seems disheveled and drunk in every scene, but the movie never drops a hint about him hitting the bottle. And the sister behaves like a middle-aged housewife. Though she looks younger than our tween protagonist, she never goes to school and spends most of her screen time scouring dishes and calculating bills. Maury material for sure.

Maybe it’s the inexperienced child actors or the nightmare plot (written by Czech surrealist Vojtech Jasný) or uncomfortable sense of humor (re: pube jokes), but after a while the film pushes through some ramshackle low-rent barrier and becomes a looney, art-damaged coming of age mind searing masterpiece. Valerie and Her Week of Wonders and Phantasm WISH they could distill the childhood experience as warped and traumatizing as The Peanut Butter Solution. As a kid, I remember the things that frightened me weren't entirely rational. The dark was off limits, a Pizza Hut Halloween commercial once spooked me, and I ran and hid whenever my little sister danced in an Alfred E. Neuman mask. So, magic paintings, going bald, abandoned houses, ghosts of homeless people, and villainous Frenchie art teachers don't seem like much of a stretch for kiddie nightmare fuel. Even the plot feels fragmented and dreamlike, swinging through tone and story lines like some made up child's game. A Celine Dion theme song, “Listen to the Magic Man,” solidifies the whole picture as a darkside otherworld ‘80s kids on bikes misadventure: The Goonies or BMX Bandits gone wrong and wonky.

V+ as a child slaver art teacher might say. Would watch again!

Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang

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Did you ever watch The Peanut Butter Solution and think, if only this movie had MORE uncomfortable scenes of abusive adults and kids in cages! Well, Jacob Two-Two fills that void in the most nightmarish dayglo Canadian way possible! That tail end of the '70s lived-in look of suburban Montreal adds an extra layer of uncomfortable grit to this fractured fairy tale featuring horrifying humanoids like: a shrieking bird woman, a raspy fish man who wears sunglasses, and a Quebecois fox-man draped in a FUR COAT OF HIMSELF? Throw in a masked wrestler, goofy songs, and a CHILDREN'S PRISON guarded by gargantuan booger blob whatsits and you've got a motion picture sure to paralyze li'l tykes with fear ‘til they’re grown and even more damaged!

I love the unreality of Jacob Two-Two once the titular stuttering kiddo gets dragged underground to an impossible smog world full of grotesques and phantasmagorical colored lighting and budget dystopian dungeons. The whole movie feels like a Saturday morning Salo performed by a mean-spirited Canadian comedy troupe for a crowd of children too terrified to look away. A Fox-Man forces Jacob Two-Two to take a shower in a freezing meat locker. A sunlight deprived kid rattles the bars of his hole of a cell and screams, "I'm hungry!" Filth slathered child prisoners attend a mess hall party where they're forced to eat rotten apples infested with worms. WHO IS THIS MOVIE FOR? WHAT CHILD WOULD ENJOY THIS? Jacob Two-Two unsettled even me, a hardened cinetrog who’s plowed through a heap of family-oriented garbage. Some of those abuse scenes, like carting around shrieking little ones in potato sacks, felt a little too real'n'perilous! But the movie still hits enough playful notes and overflows with so many ideas, that I couldn't fault it for flexing its imagination a little too hard and going to some dark places. Definitely an experience!

The Little Vampire

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You want a family friendly new wave VERY Canadian TV version of Let the Right One In, where a boy befriends an ancient vampire trapped in kid’s body, ya can’t go wrong with The Little Vampire. It’s got a nice fun-spooky atmosphere, Alfred the butler (Michael Gough) as a papa vamp, Goldfinger (Gert Fröbe) as a Van Helsing type, and the dad from The Peanut Butter Solution (Michael Hogan) as a. . . dad who balances a cocktail glass on his chin. This German/Canadian co-production filmed on location in Edmonton feels way ahead of its of kiddie entertainment time with a serialized storyline, yearning melancholic characters, frigid night moods, and ‘80s alt goth flair. One of my favorite shows, The Little Vampire stretches its wings only a season long. It’s all on YouTube, so sink your fangs into it if you’re hungry for a kid centered story not afraid to touch on some chillier feelings with a grounded, slow and steady Canadian style!

My Pet Monster: The Movie

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A hoser E.T. ripoff starring an '80s toy that once lurked at the top of my cousin's bunk bed. Dumb fun that feels more like a TV pilot setting up a kid-monster, his friends, and a bureaucratic archnemesis. But there's enough goofy transformation effects, festering man-sized puppets, and wack Great White North stabs at family fun to keep me invested throughout this brief VHS junk.

Degrassi Junior High

This Canadian middle school dramadey might not feature any cages or troubling fantasy elements, but its stable of child actors appear in many twizted family moving pictures throughout the ‘80s. A ground zero for young talent, Degrassi covers a wide swath of topics impacting real kids’ lives like abusive parents, alcoholism, pregnancy, income inequality, sexual identity, and more. The whole show almost acts like a thoughtful, personal meditation on the fears explored in cinewhatsits like The Peanut Butter Solution. Growing up and navigating the adult world can be frightening for a tween. An unplanned pregnancy or dad breaking out his belt or a wasteoid middle schooler puking her guts out can be just as troubling as a child slaver art teacher with a winking dog who wears clothes. Rats off to the Great White North for exploring tween troubles, however abstract, with compassion, humor, and welcoming warmth.

Tales for None: Canadian Family Entertainment Featuring Kids in Cages