When you’re a child, it’s a bit of a rite of passage to be exposed to a horror film when you’re entirely too young. Those are the moments that get etched into your brain and, for some, kickstart an obsession with the horror genre. However, for most of us, it’s not our parents who introduced us to horror films. And according to “Halloween” legend Jamie Lee Curtis, if you’re a parent that shows your underage child a horror film, you’re probably a terrible person.
Speaking to CinemaBlend, Curtis explains the horror she feels when she is told by elated parents that their decidedly underage children absolutely love her iconic “Halloween” franchise.
“I’m not demeaning children or saying they can’t handle [violence], but it’s the truth…,” said Curtis. “When I go out to talk about ‘Halloween,’ even when I was doing book tours for books for children, I would have people come… They will stand there with their five-year-old kid, and say to me, ‘My Bobby loves Halloween, Don’t you Bobby?’… and I look at them and I have the meanest, meanest JLC are-you-out-of-your-fucking-mind look of you are the worst human being on the planet that you would show your child Halloween.
She added, “I have kind of a strong opinion, as you can tell, about when is correct and incorrect to expose a child to that stuff.”
It’s not just Curtis who feels that children shouldn’t be exposed to the violence and horror of the “Halloween” franchise. The MPAA also feels that way, as the organization has routinely given the films R-ratings, which is supposed to tell parents that no one under 17 should watch the film.
READ MORE: John Carpenter Couldn’t Stand the ‘Halloween’ Sibling Storyline He Created
Now, as someone that was exposed to horror films at a very young age (I was definitely the little Bobby that Curtis describes), I can say that we don’t always turn out to be horrible people. That being said, in the long run, it’ll save a lot of therapist bills if you just wait until your kid is a reasonably mature age before showing them how Michael Myers stabs people with a huge butcher knife.
Jamie Lee Curtis can next be seen in “Knives Out,” which arrives in theaters on Thanksgiving, and she returns to her horror franchise in “Halloween Kills” on October 16, 2020.
