Cry Baby Lane (2000) review

Dir. Peter Lauer

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Many Halloween weekends ago – October 28, 2000 to be exact – Nickelodeon aired a special, made-for-TV movie in its primetime slot. The film was Cry Baby Lane, which starred the recognizable Frank Langella. Following its television debut, the film was never aired again, and it wasn’t until internet forums began to take off that curiosity about the film inspired a quirky, internet-based investigation into what happened to the film and why it was never reaired.

Multiple different reasons behind the film’s abrupt disappearance exist. A Nickelodeon representative once claimed that the film was simply forgotten. Others have claimed that Nickelodeon received an excessive amount of complaints from parents who said the film was far too scary for young children and that its TV-Y7 rating (a rating indicative of programming for young children over the age of seven) was misleading. However, once Nickelodeon caught wind of the cult-like publicity of the film, they made a homepage for the film on their website and claimed it was indeed banned.

Finally, after much hoopla and the circulation of a VHS print on the internet, on Halloween 2011, the film was rebroadcasted for the first time since 2000 on TeenNick’s “The 90’s are All That” block. Since then, it has aired twice, once in October 2015, and then again, on Halloween morning in 2016.

I can sort of bring myself to believe the initial statement made by a Nickelodeon representative in that the film was forgotten. The company might’ve intended it as a recurring film in their rotation of Halloween specials of shows like The Fairly Oddparents, Spongebob Squarepants, and whatever else, and with new shows debuting on the network every year boasting their own specials, the film could’ve possibly fallen out of the minds of many. Couple that with the idea that parents could’ve very well complained – since, even I’ll admit, this is probably the scariest thing I’ve seen Nickelodeon ever air – it’s a strange story all around, but it’s a pragmatic one. The idea of Nickelodeon marketing the film as “banned” on both their website and on their respective network was likely a ploy for marketing and “fan”-service.

Sixteen years later, Cry Baby Lane remains a thoroughly average and pretty unremarkable TV movie, and if it hadn’t been for the legacy of this thing, I’ll admit, I probably wouldn’t have even sought it out (especially after suffering through both Twitches films). The film does a good job of shifting from the tropes of Nickelodeon TV movies and specials, in that even ones that are made more serious or even a bit scary, are generally burdened by an aura of silliness and immaturity.

Cry Baby Lane kisses all that goodbye when it has Langella play an undertaker and give us the backstory that sets the mood and narrative basis for the entire film. The story he tells revolves around a farmer, whose wife gave birth to conjoined twins; one of the twins was a good-natured kid, while the other was evil. The farmer was ashamed of both of them, and kept them locked in their own room without changing their clothes or feeding them. After living off of rats, spiders, and other pests, the twins got sick and died, and the farmer subsequently severed them in half and buried the good one in a cemetery and the bad one in a shallow grave off their dirt-road, Cry Baby Lane. Anyone stuck on the road in the late hours of the night will hear the sounds of wailing, so the undertaker claims.

The characters we focus on are Andrew (Jase Blankfort) and his older brother Carl (Trey Rogers), who love ghost stories so much they decide to take their friends out to a cemetery and tell them the same story they heard from the local undertaker. They just so happen to tell it by the grave of one of the twins, and soon much of the town, including Carl, becomes possessed by the evil spirit of the late bad twin. This leaves the fate and wellbeing of many in the hands of the shy and fearful Andrew.

Despite being in-color, Cry Baby Lane probably could’ve gotten away with a black and white aesthetic, as much of the film is compromised of a murky color palette. Doing so would’ve made the leering green eyes of the possessed stand out more and made the color contrast more razor-sharp than it currently stands. Once again, the aesthetic of this film surprisingly doesn’t commit to looking like a generic Nickelodeon film, with cheap sets, goofy characters, and a plethora of unconvincing and childish antics. Cry Baby Lane, in some ways, is a sophisticated little horror film, on the same playing field as Are You Afraid of the Dark?.

This is another case where the backstory and legacy of a film outweighs its actual quality, but my general indifference to the film doesn’t mean that I think everyone shouldn’t at least see Cry Baby Lane, especially kids that were born sometime during the nineties and grew up on Nickelodeon’s stellar lineup at the time. There’s a unique novelty factor here, and if you can make time for a Halloween film as a weak as Hocus Pocus every year, you can certainly do the same for Cry Baby Lane.

NOTE: Cry Baby Lane is available to watch on YouTube, free of charge.

Starring: Jase Blankfort, Trey Rogers, and Frank Langella. Directed by: Peter Lauer.