Stephen King Considers This 1942 Heartbreaking Disney Movie a Real Horror
Surprisingly, many would indeed agree with such a statement.
Stephen King may be a true master of the horror genre, having given the world a myriad of eerie stories that kept some of his fans sleepless at nights, but his own perception of the real horror story is a bit different than it always seemed.
Though creepy movies and shows traditionally feature some supernatural stuff like ghosts or evil zombies that keep pursuing naive people who denied all of those creatures’ existence until they just had to face them, King went a little further and updated his own list of real horror movies with an old Disney cartoon. Ironically, this actually makes a lot of sense.
In one of his earlier interviews, the proclaimed author revealed that the first film he ever saw was a horror movie, and it was Disney’s Bambi.
King then continued explaining that the cartoon had a huge impact on his childish mind due to its heart-shattering storyline where a white-tailed baby deer called Bambi loses his mother and almost sacrifices himself to save his friends in the forest engulfed by fire. Additionally, the most traumatizing detail here is that all of those tragedies were caused by just one relentless hunter.
According to Stephen King, watching Bambi as a child back in the 1940s was a real stress for him as “when that little deer gets caught in a forest fire, I was terrified.” In this regard, the author would surely find a lot of supporters who share the same feelings about Bambi’s disheartening story that still leaves both adults and kids bawling their eyes out more than 80 years after the cartoon’s initial release.
Having hit cinemas during World War II back in 1942, Bambi didn’t gross as much as it was expected due to major restrictions in the European market, yet still garnered around $3 million becoming Disney’s third highest-grossing movie by that time, following only Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with $7.8 million and Pinocchio with $3.2 million.