These shows fall into the uncanny valley of kids shows: plots and images that are so frightening, information technology's shocking they were ever made, let alone targeted at children.

The Kitchen Casanova

Part of Cartoon Network's What A Drawing! series, "The Kitchen Casanova" is not only icky, but deeply unsettling. In the cartoon, a man is nervously preparing dinner for his engagement… and then it all goes straight to the 9th circumvolve of hell. As he hurriedly prepares dinner, he accidentally switches from recipe-to-horrible-recipe, creating a mishmash of nasty ingredients. Then, the Casanova presents a covered serving tray to his date.

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Image via Cartoon Network

He uncovers the dinner, and reveals an prototype that has been seared into the brains of thousands of children: an eerily detailed drawing of a rolled upward tongue, an eyeball (with lower chapeau still fastened), encarmine bones, and a severed human being foot. As Casanova and his horrified date examine the meal, the tongue slowly unfurls, and twitches every bit he quickly slams the comprehend back onto the tray. If only the cartoon ended there. Instead, they begin to ravenously eat the pile of disgusting offal, amid icky smacking, slurping, and giggling noises, leaving children haunted and questioning whether this cartoon really happened, or was just a baroque fever dream.

Oh Yeah Cartoons

Like to What A Cartoon!, Oh Yeah Cartoons is an anthology of animated shorts. This version of the serial, however, was even more chock full of disturbing cartoons. "A Kids Life" features a agglomeration of dancing, singing pimples, with a repetitive song most how they make kids lives' miserable and can't exist stopped.

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Image via YouTube

This disgusting and fatalistic prove tune that ends with a creepy, life-sized talking rabbit toy with a Donnie Darko -esque vibe. Not to be outdone, "Kenny and the Chimp" (an animated brusque that served as a precursor to The Kids Side by side Door ), features a kid who unleashes and gets infected by a multifariousness of deadly diseases, one of which causes his head to plough into a sus scrofa (which runs abroad at the sound of burning bacon).

SIniecko

In terms of pure, psychotic energy, Slniečko wins the prize. Starring a bizarre, long-armed puppet that looks similar information technology was scrapped together using junk establish in a haunted asylum's dumpster, this child'southward show ran in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. The puppet (named Raťafák Plachta, which translates to "big nose blanket") is made upward of ii men under a sheet, and a boob head that looks like the last feverish image that might flash before your eyes earlier dying of rabies.

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Prototype via YouTube

His gasping, frenetic vocalism sounds similar a serial killer vacillating between laughing and crying equally he recounts gruesome crimes. Perhaps the creepiest part is that the puppet is intentionally freaky: the puppet'south creator said, "He is an eyesore, he's ugly. I think the Goggle box station was advanced in a way considering they were not afraid to show [an] unlikable (in looks), not pretty boob on screen." In this context, "advanced" means "a seven-pes-tall terror-puppet."

Jan Svankmajer'southward Alice

Hey, Czechoslovakia? Are you doing okay? Considering here's another Czech film that is full-bodied nightmare jet-fuel. Information technology's not articulate whether this 1988 adaptation of Alice in Wonderland is really child-appropriate, which the film itself coyly hints at with the ominous narration, "Alice thought to herself...Now you will see a motion-picture show...Fabricated for children...Peradventure." The surrealist picture combines cease motility with a live activeness child-player in a manner that is deeply, primally agonizing.

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Paradigm via First Run Features

Well-nigh of the stop move puppets are existent taxidermied animals, with jutting eyes and fixed, startled expressions. Dead birds with fox skulls for heads make an appearance, skulls hatch from eggs, a piece of meat moves of its own accord, Alice turns into a creepy porcelain doll… and the sound blueprint is just as viscerally disturbing equally the visuals. Information technology's an indescribably trippy and horrifying film, and the experience of watching information technology could be nigh closely compared to getting high in a taxidermist's workshop.

Mr. Potato Caput Show

Recollect the 1999 Mr. Potato Caput Testify motion picture? If you don't, yous may take blocked out the retention. Pixar's version of Mr. Potato caput is loveable and goofy, whereas the Mr. White potato Head Show is… something else. What began every bit a Television receiver show featuring a alive activeness puppet of Mr. Potato Head, the spinoff movie's unabridged plot is a lamentation of how the Mr. Potato Head Show was cancelled.

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Image via Hasbro Studios

This weird meta-commentary might exist funnier if the movie wasn't a Frankenstein of clips and muddled half-broiled ideas that amount to the crazed rantings of the show's scorned creators. There are weird animations with live-action human lips, a half-eaten heavily-pierced anthropomorphic apple tree, a puppet who appears to be a pile of assorted intestines, a half-ham-half-lobster anathema, a fruitcake with homo teeth, aliens… watching this moving picture feels like pouring Drano into your ears and waiting for your brains to liquify.

Catdog

CatDog was a creative ninety'south Nickelodeon cartoon featuring a one-half-true cat-half-canis familiaris brute who gets into wacky hijinks, as its prissy cat-half and rambunctious canis familiaris-half are ever at odds. But the weird premise is not what makes this cartoon creepy, rather a handful of episodes that decided, "Screw it, let's send some kids to therapy."

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Prototype via Paramount Television

In 1, "Cat" attempts to sneakily castor "Dog'due south" teeth… by crawling inside his own mouth, traveling up through its trunk towards the Dog one-half, and exiting dog's oral fissure. At this bespeak, True cat is somehow inside-out, with betrayal musculus, vein, and eye tissue, that is both medically infeasible and Hellraiser levels of agonizing. Thanks, CatDog for making ten-yr-olds contemplate the frailty of the homo mind.

Help! I'one thousand a Fish

Help! I'm a Fish is a Danish children's movie that was adapted to English language, even acquiring the voice talents of Alan Rickman, Aaron Paul (before he was famous), and Terry Jones. The movie is virtually a group of kids who accidentally potable a potion that turns them into fish, and being stupid children, they lose the "antidote" that would turn them back into humans. It would be a more often than not lackluster, forgettable children's moving-picture show, if not for the villain: Joe, a fish who got a taste of the antidote potion, which apparently has the power to give fish homo-like characteristics too.

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Image via Genius Products

Joe starts out as rather frightening, with a black and white confront that looks more juggalo than fish, and a sinister voice (courtesy of the wonderfully dark Alan Rickman). Later the typical villainous arc, Joe greedily tries to swallow as much of the antitoxin equally possible to get fully human being. Instead, he becomes an uncanny fish-human being hybrid, his pare fierce apart like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly . He subsequently drowns, since he makes the error of drinking the homo-potion while underwater (it can't exist overemphasized how many bad decisions the characters in this film make).

O Canada

O Canada was a xc's Canadian-American child'due south TV show that aired on Cartoon Network. Information technology featured a series of Canadian animated shorts straight out a LSD-fueled horrorscape. In "To Be," a woman questions her ain existence, visits a wacky scientist who has invented a "transporter" which, in reality, clones the subjects and kills the original copy (the plot of The Prestige , only for kids!).

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Image via National Moving picture Board of Canada

The scientist "transports" himself, but the original isn't killed, leading to a showdown where the woman must decide if she should kill one of the scientist doubles… and she does. Then, wracked with guilt, she kills herself by stepping into the transporter, allowing herself to exist vaporized every bit her clone walks guilt-gratuitous. Is it really a kid's drawing's identify to make us question the nature of our being? Apparently, it is in Canada!

Peter Rabbit & Friends: The Royal Ballet

What more must be said than, "Alive action people dressed every bit Beatrix Potter animals doing ballet?" Peter Rabbit & Friends: The Royal Ballet is exactly that. Though the plot is mostly kid friendly, the hyper-realistic fake beast heads (with unblinking optics, don't forget those) atop the muscular, leotard-clad bodies of live dancers is simply slightly uncanny.

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Paradigm via YouTube

The ballet is pretty well-choreographed, the costumes (though creepy) are weirdly similar to the classic Beatrix Potter illustrations, and other than giving children nightmares for the residue of their lives, it's a pretty beautiful production.

Gerry Anderson'south Hoppity

What is information technology near puppets? Their creepy smiles? Their dead, shark-similar eyes? The idea that they may suddenly leap to life and rise upward against their man masters? Hoppity unwittingly goes total-throttle on the creepy puppet tropes. Created by Gerry Anderson (future creator of puppet Tv set show Thunderbirds ), Hoppity is well-nigh a magical toy from the "goblin market" who tin can move on his own and communicates by shrieking "Teedily-stomach! Deedily dum!"

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Paradigm via YouTube

His hapless homo possessor, a little daughter, is commanded to practice "naughty" acts, constantly getting in problem. In tears, she explains she'southward heeding Hoppity'southward orders, but none of the adults believe her. Information technology ends with her being sent to bed without supper, while Hoppity complains that he is hungry.

Ant Freedy

Pismire Freedy was a 1990'southward Nicktoon, with an artstyle all-time described equally "Boschian horror-vomit." Using stop motion (a class of animation that oftentimes trips into the uncanny valley), its horribly designed newspaper-maché characters look similar something out of a college educatee'due south creepy art installation.

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Image via Paramount Television

The stop motion is stilted and unsettling, the voices sound similar ambien-induced auditory hallucinations, the character'south lips, noses, and faces are grotesquely out of proportion, and the teeth… there's but way too many teeth. No child should be subjected to this cartoon, and those who were unfortunate plenty to watch this abomination should receive a lawsuit settlement to pay for their therapy.

Pingu

Pingu is a 1990's Swiss claymation well-nigh an ambrosial baby penguin. So why does it make the cut for creepiest children's shows? Pingu lulls its audience into a simulated sense of wholesome security, just to rip the rug out from under you with a freaky, giant, maniacal walrus.

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Image via BBC

This monstrosity sticks out non only because of its inexplicable human teeth, only due to how incongruous the weirdly detailed walrus is with Pingu'south normally cute, cartoonish fine art manner. To make matters worse, the walrus has a creepy, total-throated, homicidal express mirth. Equally a result, a whole generation of Swiss children have grown up to fearfulness the Antarctic.

Ringing Bell

Don't be fooled by this 1978 pic's adorable lamb VHS embrace-art. Ringing Bell begins as a movie about a cute, chubby-cheeked lamb, and then it decides to go GWAR on us. A wolf kills the lamb's mother, and the lamb decides to seek revenge past getting the wolf to train him, so that he can grow upwardly to kill the wolf. The wolf agrees to the terms, and turns the adorable lamb into a demonic, wolf-killing ram.

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Image via Discotek Media

The lamb's final form looks like some sort of precipitous-horned, shadowy, satanic creature. The lamb ends up killing his adoptive-wolf-dad, and at the end of the film is left alone and miserable. The movie is ostensibly making a point about the futility of revenge, merely here'due south an thought: maybe don't sell a story almost lamb-on-wolf-patricide to children?

Mike Huckabee's Learn Our History

Did you know Mike Huckabee helped create a children'due south show? And did y'all know that children'south testify is a weirdly on-the-nose serial of political indoctrination? And that it decided to ham-fistedly teach kids most 9/11? Well, as it turns out, all those things inexplicably happen to be truthful.

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Image via YouTube

The Larn Our History serial teaches kids well-nigh ix/11 by tactlessly animative a plane crashing into the twin towers, as an onlooker cries out (without much enthusiasm), "No!" Some other onlooker says, woodenly, "Who would do something similar this?" We'd similar to ask the same question of this "kid'southward" show's creators.

Shining Time Station

Shining Time Station was an adorable 1990's PBS testify that featured Thomas the Tank Engine and his homo friends at the railroad train station, including a tiny conductor played past George Carlin. The kids would get on imagination journeys through the train tunnels, during which the audition would be subjected to some pretty weird animations.

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Image via The Britt Allcroft Company

In one, a little boy goes through a museum of creepy looking paintings, which stick their tongues out and accident raspberries at him. The idea of sentient paintings sneakily mocking y'all, sticking out their human tongues, was an unexpected source of nightmares. The series also regularly featured puppets who lived within a jukebox, whose heavy-lidded decease mask-like faces occasionally pop up to haunt our dreams.

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Gamble

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Risk is a 1977 kid's movie, with beautiful illustrations and lavish blitheness. Unfortunately, its detail only serves to further the pitter-patter-factor during some utterly chilling sequences. Raggedy Ann & Andy, a pair of floppy fabric dolls, run away.

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Inside a pit filled with some sort of brown taffy, they run across "The Greedy," a garish, sentient pile of processed, taffy, and bubbling fluids. Information technology'south constantly hungry and tin can never be sated, eating itself over and over in a psychedelic animated sequence.  It eventually decides the simply manner to cure its hunger is to consume Raggedy Ann'south heart.

Weinerville

Weinerville was a alive 1990'south kids multifariousness/one-act show that aired on Nickelodeon, hosted past Marc Weiner. It sticks in our heads as unsettling not only due to "Boney," the skeletal mascot/hand puppet, but also due to the "Weinerizer," a automobile that "shrinks" audition members' bodies, putting their disproportionately-large heads on boob bodies.

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Image via CBS Boob tube Distribution

Information technology was a pretty uncomplicated trick (their existent bodies were hiding behind the puppet stage), but to young viewers' eyes, it was an human action of creepy sourcery. Additionally, there were a litany of weird characters, including "Socko," a puppet with a high-pitched voice and penchant for kicking people, and Marc Weiner'south human-head combined with a variety of different puppets, which was at times funny, and at other times, unsettling.

Unico In The Isle of Magic

Unico In The Island of Magic is a 1983 children's anime about a cute Unicorn-puppy-bear looking animal with pink pilus and a cheerful spirit. What could go wrong? Evil puppets, that'southward what. In the moving-picture show, "Kukuruku" is an abased puppet come to life. Instead of having some playful Toy Story -esque adventures, Kukuruku decides to seek revenge on the man race by turning every living creature into freaky, moaning wooden zombies.

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Image via YouTube

He uses these blank-faced human puppets as building blocks in his behemothic evil belfry. And Kukuruku himself is a freaky, enormous boob who eats Unico and a little girl. We guess mentally scarring children builds character?

Black Beauty

Black Beauty was 1994 live-action movie accommodation of a book by the same proper name. It's a picture virtually the adventures of a beautiful black stallion, which is another way of maxim get gear up for some dead horses! In the motion picture, Black Beauty and his best friend Ginger go through all sorts of adventures together including: virtually drowning, almost dying of pneumonia, being enslaved by evil humans, becoming securely depressed, and dying.

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Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

That's right, at 1 bespeak Ginger is bought by wicked masters, who beat her and abuse her that her spirit is eventually completely cleaved. Blackness Beauty must watch every bit they cart of her limp, bruised, lifeless body. At least she's free from hurting, Black Beauty muses. What a neat motion-picture show for kids.

iv Square

Nosotros go it, kids like vivid, colorful, surreal globe, with frenetic energy and charismatic people. But 4 Square, a Canadian kids show that aired from 2003-2015, tried to go with this formula, and somehow came upwardly with a show that feels like a cultist's brainwashing video.

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Image via YouTube

Three adults, all wearing identical bright-blue spandex unitards (which, on the men, leaves… niggling to be imagined below the waist), are commanded by a fourth adult in a brilliant-bluish spanex unitard to do a variety of "exercises." "Spread the cheeks!" she commands, and they dutifully do so. Thankfully, she means the face cheeks, otherwise we'd be leaving a tip for the FBI.

Salute Your Shorts

Salute Your Shorts is a 1990's Nickelodeon Television receiver show that follows the live-action adventures of a summer army camp and its wacky attendees. Unfortunately, it takes a turn towards Texas Chainsaw Massacre after the introduction of a spooky camp fable, "Zeke the Plumber." He's the ghost of a noseless plumber who died in a gas leak (no olfactory organ—he couldn't olfactory property it).

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Epitome via CBS Television Distribution

Zeke haunts the camp, wearing a creepy, misshapen mask, with a bloody patch where his olfactory organ should be. According to the camp legend, if you affect his cursed plunger, he will haunt your dreams. Thank you for the warning, but we didn't touch whatever forbidden plungers and he's still haunting the states to this twenty-four hour period.

Reboot

ReBoot is a Canadian (oh hello over again Canada, you weirdos) 3D-animated cartoon that aired from 1994-2001. Information technology stars a bunch of fun digital characters who live inside the "mainframe" of the computer. They're constantly contesting viruses and protecting the digital citizens of their town. And certain, Hexadecimal is a pretty creepy antagonist, with a variety of motionless masks that displayed her expression. Just the truthful horror comes in the class of "game cubes."

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Image via YouTube

Whenever a user decides to play a game, a giant purple cube descends upon the metropolis. Information technology traps whatsoever digital people inside and force them to play a game against the "user." If the digital people lose, they are "nulled," aka, wiped clean from beingness. One of the characters (a child, no less) appears to die in ane of the game cubes, just to come up back afterward as developed - he survived nullification but spent decades being tortured by video games. It made u.s.a. rethink the fashion we treated our Sims.

Long Ago and Far Away

Long Ago and Far Away aired on PBS from 1989-1992. It's an album show of bedtime stories for children. Hosted past James Earl Jones, vocalism of Darth Vader, Mufasa, and probably God, information technology is a solid children's testify. Still, a few episodes stick in our minds equally creepy. "Rarg" spins an animated tale nigh a globe inhabited past strange looking citizens, superintelligent babies, and a mayor with arms growing out of his head.

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Image via YouTube

The science babies discover their unabridged earth is just a random man'south dream, and they'll all die when he wakes upward. And so they build a bridge to the waking world, kidnap the man, and trap him within his ain dream forever. Gee, way to assistance kids feel safe falling asleep.

Moomin

Moomin are adorable characters created by a Finnish artist, that were turned into an Japanese/Dutch anime in 1990. It follows the adventures of the Moomin family, a group of moo-cow-hippo-canis familiaris type creatures. The cuteness suddenly evaporates as shortly as the Groke makes an advent.

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Image via YouTube

A huge, grimacing, ghost-similar creature, the Groke haunts the Moomin valley, freezing and killing every living thing she stands upon. Her appearances in the anime are coupled with bone-chilling decease rattles and a menacing musical score. And practiced news! The Moomin take been reimagined in a 2019 3D-animated serial called, Moominvalley. And is that a Groke in the trailer? Yes, yes it is.

Vintage Sesame Street

There's goose egg more pure in this earth than Sesame Street , right? In the 90's, amidst the adorable puppets, sesame street featured cursory segments, either cartoons or playful shorts. I of which was "William Wegman's Weimaraners." Weimaraners are a stately brood of dogs with soulful, somber eyes. Dogs are cute, but not when y'all give them human torsos.

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Image via YouTube

William Wegman is an photographer famous for propping his dogs up on a human actor, making information technology appear like a person who has a dog's caput. The photographs themselves are a petty weird, merely in alive action the creep-factor is multiplied. The dogs stare woefully alee as developed actors gesticulate wildly. The dogs? Cute. The half-dog-half-man monstrosities? Not beautiful.

The Dauntless Niggling Toaster

The Brave Little Toaster is an underappreciated 1989 animated children'due south movie, and despite its high quality and creative premise, boy oh boy does information technology have some unsettling moments. Starring personified household items such as Toaster (who is brave), Radio, Lamp, Blankie, and Kirby (a grumpy vacuum), they set out from an abased holiday abode to seek their long-lost human primary. Along the way they see terrifying moments such as being kidnapped by a man tinkerer, who traps (fully sentient and aware) electronics in a vice and rips them apart, harvesting their oil-stained inner parts.

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Paradigm via Hyperion Pictures

He also likes to create "inventions:" electronic devices that have been Frankensteined-together, who are but too enlightened of their horribly mutilated existence. Toaster & gang too current of air up in a junkyard, equally former, used-upwardly cars sing a sad chant about being resigned to their fate (of being crushed and killed by a car compactor). Hey, only Toaster makes toast in the cease, and so hurray!

Zig-Zag

Zig Zag is a 1979-1988 Canadian kids show. Canada, seriously, what the heck is going on with you lot guys? This show starts a disguised, bespectacled host whose humor feels more than like unhinged rantings and ravings than comedy. In i instance, he plays some sort of "tough guy character," staring in a photographic camera closeup that is far besides close for condolement.

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Prototype via YouTube

"You know me… Lemon's the name," he says, in an ominous vocalism more befitting of Twin Peaks than a kid's show. "You know what time it is… no, information technology's non bathroom time. It's Zig Zag fourth dimension. Then stay tuned kids! I'one thousand comin' dorsum a little afterwards. And remember… whatever you lot practice… don't… make… me… mad…" Cue the jazzy lxxx's music and thousands of kids soiling their overalls.

Jim Henson'southward The Storyteller

Jim Henson's The Storyteller is another underrated gem of a Television set show. It's hosted by the inimitable John Hurt, features a potpourri of impressive Henson puppets, and tells a series of European fairy-tale classics. Despite this, information technology's nonetheless manages to be incredibly dark,

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Epitome via The Jim Henson Visitor

Some of the creepier stories include a soldier whose actions leave him forever stuck between the gates of heaven and hell, a hedgehog-homo hybrid, and a princess who is going to exist married off to her own father in a baroque ritual. Needless to say, these themes are a bit mature for children. Don't fifty-fifty get u.s.a. started on the spinoff series The Storyteller: Greek Myths that aired in 1990. Yikes.

Darby O'Gill & The Trivial People

This little-known 1959 live-action Disney film is an Irish tale featuring leprechauns and Sean Connery. This formula should be foolproof, just oh god, the banshee. Amid the impish hijinks of the Leprechaun rex and an aging Darby O'Gill (played by the very Irish Albert Sharpe), there are startlingly horrifying elements, such as did we mention the banshee?!

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Paradigm via Buena Vista Distribution

The banshee, a ghoulish wailing specter with unpleasantly long fingers and a hollow old woman'due south face up, kills the protagonist's daughter, and calls upon a spectral carriage drawn past black horses: death. As kids, it made usa spit out our Lucky Charms.

Strawinsky and the Mysterious House

What happens when you lot give an alien masquerading as a human a humble animation budget and the directive to make a movie for kids? You lot get whatever Strawinsky and the Mysterious House (2013) is supposed to be. With horrendously ugly 3D character models, equally terrible blitheness, and soulless voice interim, this movie is an abomination of sight and sound that should be locked into a vault and hidden away in a vast warehouse.

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Paradigm via YouTube

Worst of all is the scene featuring the psychotically-named, "Globglogabgalab," a sort of half-man, half-Jabba-the-Hutt, melted slug like creature. The Globglogabgalab undulates his sickeningly turd-similar body, and sings (poorly) nearly how much he loves books. "I am the Globglogabgalab, the shwabble dabble wubble flaba blaba blab,  I'm total of shwimble glibmer-kind, I am the yeast of thoughts and mind," he rambles incoherently. This movie gets five/v stars for traumatizing your children.