Cry Baby Lane
Nickelodeon horror film lost for over a decade, now on limited edition DVD.
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For more than ten years, the movie was considered lost, and its rarity led to a devoted cult following.[1]
Making and release
The film was originally envisioned as a $10 million theatrical release but was instead ordered as a made-for-television movie with a budget of $800,000.[2] Before Cry Baby Lane was a television film, it was nearly a $100 million theatrical release.[3] The script was forgotten for about a year until Nickelodeon contacted Lauer about producing it as a made-for-TV movie.[3] Only two scenes from the movie were cut—one alluding to skinny dipping and another depicting an old man’s head fused onto a baby’s body.[3]
The shoot lasted just over twenty days, plus one extra day for filming in Ohio.[2] Lauer's first choice for the caretaker role was Tom Waits, but Nickelodeon pushed for Frank Langella to attract more publicity.[2] Following its sole broadcast in 2000, the film was neither rebroadcast nor issued on home video.[1]
What the cited sources add
The Mental Floss account describes the plot: a father separated conjoined twins with a rusty saw and buried the good twin at a cemetery and the evil one at Cry Baby Lane.[3] According to that account, teens hold a seance and learn the father mixed up the bodies.[3] The same source notes that parents were appalled by the dark content, and Nickelodeon promptly scrubbed the film from existence after its single airing.[3] That Halloween, Nickelodeon aired Cry Baby Lane for the first time in over a decade.[3]
A Nickelodeon employee who worked on the programming block that resurrected the film said, "We tried to freak people out with it".[3] In August 2011, a Reddit user located a VHS recording made from the original 2000 broadcast and uploaded it to the internet.[1]
References
- Wikipedia, "Cry Baby Lane" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Debczak, "The Legend of Cry Baby Lane: The Lost Nickelodeon Movie That Was Too Scary for TV", Mental Floss, October 17, 2018; Kimberly Potts, "Nickelodeon airing "banned" movie on Halloween", Reuters, October 28, 2011 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Cry Baby Lane" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Debczak, "The Legend of Cry Baby Lane: The Lost Nickelodeon Movie That Was Too Scary for TV", Mental Floss, October 17, 2018 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Debczak, "The Legend of Cry Baby Lane: The Lost Nickelodeon Movie That Was Too Scary for TV", Mental Floss, October 17, 2018. facts only, no text reused. mentalfloss.com
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Cry Baby Lane (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
More in Children's horror films
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Cry Baby Lane (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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