Something about stop motion makes chills crawl up the spine. This painstaking style of animation can lead to charming results, but more often than not, it pays off instead in unreal levels of horror. Nonetheless, there’s something entrancing about the art form. You’re probably familiar with spooky favorites like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, but we’re here to take you one step further into the dark with a selection of little known treasures of the genre.
Read on to discover three underrated stop motion horror movies from the 80s.
1. Alice (1988)
For a truly frightful take on Lewis Caroll’s classic story, fall down the rabbit hole of Jan Švankmajer’s dark imagination with Alice (1988). In this fantasy horror movie, the Czech director combines live-action and stop motion animation to make nightmares come to life. Disney this is not, and even Tim Burton’s 2010 version looks like sunshine and daisies by comparison. The story and the characters may be the same, but they are distorted into an utterly weird shape, i.e. sinister taxidermic animals, weird sock puppets with false teeth and googley eyes, and all manner of nasty critters. It’s stop motion at its creepiest, and that’s not even including the scariest White Rabbit you’ll ever see. With gnashing fangs and wielding a pair of razor-sharp scissors, it’s one bunny you don’t want to cross.
2. Street of Crocodiles (1986)
American filmmakers Brother Quay are known for producing hauntingly beautiful modern stop motion movies, and The Street of Crocodiles (1986) is an exemplar of their work. Based on the story by Bruno Schulz, this dream-like short follows a puppet as he explores a desolate world of antiquated machinery and eyeless dolls. Watch for a quietly eerie atmosphere and the inspired use of props like meat, dandelions, screws, and insects.
3. Chronopolis (1983)
This experimental sci-fi film from Polish animator Piotr Kamler is a masterpiece of stop motion spookiness. Chronopolis (1983) follows the story of powerful immortal beings who spend eternity constructing mysterious objects and machines. A gorgeous electronic score from Luc Ferrari accompanies surreal images of a dystopian city by parts futuristic and Egyptian-inspired. It’s a one-of-a-kind artifact of 80s avant-garde filmmaking you can’t miss out on.
