Don't Look Under the Bed

Don't Look Under the Bed

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Written by Mark Edward Evans
Directed by Kenneth Johnson
Starring Erin Chambers
Jake Sakson
Eric "Ty" Hodges II
Robin Riker
Steve Valentine
Stephen Tobolowsky
Theme music composer Daniel Licht
Country of origin United States
Original language(s) English
Production
Producer(s) Don Schain
Editor(s) David Strohmaier
Running time 92 minutes
Release
Original network Disney Channel
Original release October 9, 1999 (1999-10-09)

Don't Look Under The Bed is a 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie. It is also the Disney Channel's second and final attempt at a horror film (the first being Tower of Terror) released by Disney (who also created similar themed films such as Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Watcher in the Woods). This film was the first DCOM to be rated TV-PG due to scary scenes.

Plot

Frances McCausland (Erin Chambers), an intelligent and level-headed girl, is starting high school a year early. Strange things have been going on in her town of Middleberg: dogs appearing on people's roofs, alarm clocks going off hours early, eggs all over a teacher's car, gelatin in the swimming pool, and B's spray-painted all over town. The B's also appear on the school lockers—except for Frances', which has a B on the inside. These pranks seem to point to Frances, who doesn't understand what is happening or why. An older boy named Larry Houdini (Eric "Ty" Hodges II) offers to help Frances, telling her that he is an imaginary friend, which is proven true as children are the only other people who can see him. Larry tells Frances that she is being framed by the Boogeyman. Frances has a difficult time believing this, because she has tried to look at the world like an adult, using logic and facts to explain everything, since her little brother, Darwin, almost died from leukemia a few years before.

The Boogeyman causes a blackout, foreshadowed by the "B"s he spray-painted; however, the McCausland home is unaffected, with all its Christmas lights remaining on. Frances then loses her friendship with Joanne, makes an idiot of herself trying to convince others that Larry exists, and causes her family to question her sanity. At wits end, Frances checks out "The Boogey Book" from the library for Larry, who decides to build a tetra-fuse detailed in the book which will age the Boogeyman into a harmless old geezer. Frances later learns Larry was Darwin's imaginary friend, who still cares about him, but Frances convinced Darwin to grow up and stop believing in him. Larry also cooks up Boogey Goo to use as bait and finds it delicious, which scares Frances. She looks for Boogeyman origins in the book, learning that a Boogeyman is created when the creator of an imaginary friend stops believing too soon.

Having accidentally stepped in Boogey Goo, Darwin attracts the Boogeyman and gets kidnapped while sitting in Frances' room. Frances and Larry follow him to the Boogeyworld dimension, which exists underneath Frances' bed. During the skirmish, Larry turns into a Boogeyman due to Darwin's lack of belief in him, while the other Boogeyman drags Darwin towards a cliff. However, Frances convinces Darwin to believe in Larry again, reverting him to normal. After using the tetra-fuse on the Boogeyman, Frances realizes it's her old imaginary friend, Zoey. Frances stopped believing in her when Darwin fell ill, deciding it was time to grow up. Frances proves she still cares about Zoey, holding her hand and causing her to revert to normal. Frances and Darwin return to the real world, where her parents reveal the same antics that occurred in Middleburg are occurring in another city. Larry reveals that "the guy in his head" just ordered him to go take care of the other Boogeyman; Zoey offers to assist as she was rather inexperienced as a Boogeyman and was thus easy to fight.

Frances is distraught as it was not easy for her to believe in them again. Before Larry and Zoey leave, Larry kisses Frances as a way of showing her that childhood was great, but so is adulthood if she keeps a sense of wonder. He then turns on the Christmas lights outside, allowing him and Zoey to leave. That night, Darwin is scared and is sent to Frances by Larry; she allows him to sleep with her. Larry and Zoey watch this with smiles.

Imaginary Friends

In the film, imaginary friends are beings assigned to children who require their aid and companionship for some reason. Imaginary friends are invisible to adults and children who don't believe in them, but visible to small children, their assigned children, and the imaginative. Imaginary friends do not age and are virtually indestructible; this is shown when Larry survives an attack by the Boogeyman that would have killed a human. If a child stops believing in an imaginary friend before they are meant to, the imaginary friend will transform into a boogeyman. Once transformed they are dark, monstrous parodies of the beings they once were, with exceptionally powerful ones holding grudges against their former charges and seeking them out with intent to destroy them. The only known cure is for the child to believe in the Imaginary friend again.

When Zoey reverts from a Boogeyman back into an imaginary friend, she apologizes for her actions and states that she was unable to resist causing so much trouble.

Cast

Reception

Though the movie was well liked by some fans and critics, it allegedly received some complaints by parents who felt the movie was too scary and dark for such a young target audience. Disney apparently had similar problems when producing films with dark themes in the 1980s, especially the 1983 film Something Wicked This Way Comes. Once Disney made the switch to primarily producing comedies, these movies and others geared toward horror, such as Tower of Terror, were taken out of rotation, even during Halloween. Although Tower of Terror was presented by Disney, it is not part of the DCOM collection. However, the movie is sometimes shown around midnight on the Disney Channel.[1]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.imdb.com/tvgrid/2012-07-01/2000/?start_date=2012-07-02&start_time=0200&channel=&x=22&y=10#DISN

External links

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