Disney Channel's Spine-Tingling Last Original Horror Movie Released 25 Years Ago (And It's Scarier Than You Think) (2024)

With spooky season right around the corner and horror lovers anxiously awaiting all things gruesome and grisly, many people can't help but get into the Halloween spirit early and binge-watch some of their favorite chilling shows and flicks. Though Disney Channel has become known for its more wholesome and borderline cheesy original programming in recent years, the '90s were a remarkably influential and memorable time for the network, as it released some of its most beloved original movies during the period.

Though many nostalgic fans remember celebrated classics like Halloweentown, Under Wraps, and Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire that debuted during the harvest season, there is one downright frightening flick that caused quite an uproar upon its premiere: 1999's Don't Look Under the Bed. The controversial horror movie featured a brave teenage girl going head-to-head with the terrifying Boogeyman in an effort to protect her family and town, doing so with the help of an imaginary friend.

The quick and fierce backlash Don't Look Under the Bed garnered from outraged parents caused the network to stop creating tried-and-true horror films aimed at kids, and it even led to the DCOM (Disney Channel Original Movie) being banned from being re-aired (at least for a little while). Let's take a closer look at Disney's last spine-tingling original horror movie as it prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary.

Don't Look Under the Bed Featured a Chilling Premise & Storyline

Unlike fellow Halloween-inspired Disney Channel Original Movies released at the time, Don't Look under the Bed held nothing back and amped up the thrills and chills for the 1999 fantasy horror flick, pushing the envelope for what was acceptable to air on a children's network at the time. Instead of following the example that other horror-adjacent DCOMs like Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire and fan-favorite Halloweentown employed (a safe blend of spookiness and humor), Don't Look Under the Bed opted for a far more dark and sinister tone that left young viewers on the edge of their seats.

In the frightening film, the smart and level-headed teenager Frances Bacon McCausland (Erin Chambers) finds herself being accused of committing a string of peculiar pranks in her small town of Middleburg, including putting gelatin in the school's swimming pool, setting dogs on top of people's roofs, and spray-painting the letter "B" all over the community. When Frances meets a mysterious older boy named Larry Houdini (Eric "Ty" Hodges II), he tells the perplexed and skeptical girl that he is actually an imaginary friend and that she is being targeted by the one-and-only Boogeyman.

Naturally, Frances has reservations about such an idea, but when the pranks start to intensify, she must team up with Larry to help clear her name and return her town to normalcy. Things take an even more terrifying turn after Frances' little brother Darwin is kidnapped by the nefarious Boogeyman (after being frighteningly pulled under the bed) to the monster's hair-raising dimension, where an epic battle ensues between the determined heroine and infamous mythical creature, with the origins of the Boogeyman ultimately being revealed.

What Made Don't Look Under the Bed So Scary for Audiences?

Aside from the monster-hiding-under-the-bed aspect, the Boogeyman's nightmare-inducing makeup and the film's overwhelmingly ominous atmosphere were extremely unsettling for viewers (and thus their parents). '90s kids will remember all too well the spine-tingling scene in which the Boogeyman's long and ghoulish nails rapped against a rooftop as they stalked Frances, menacingly watching her every move. The Boogeyman easily became Disney's most horrific and ghastly villain because of his visually disturbing appearance, and it is one whose image was seared into the minds of young and impressionable viewers upon its release.

Not only were the unnerving visuals in Don't Look Under the Bed far too edgy for children, but the movie also tackled some pretty dark and mature themes, including the loss of innocence, fear of death, and cancer. Frances stopped believing in her imaginary friend Zoe after her brother was diagnosed with Leukemia, and she felt it was time to finally grow up, something that ultimately caused the eerie events of the film to unravel. The concept of growing up too soon and shedding childhood innocence was also front-and-center, which was pretty heavy for viewers to understand when being terrorized by the Boogeyman's antics.

While the Boogeyman alone was enough to sleep with a nightlight on, witnessing Larry's transformation into becoming a monster himself was also hard to watch, as the character's change was slow yet horrifying. The once-jovial and optimistic imaginary friend began to become angry and sinister as his nails grew into claws, his teeth became jagged and sharp, and his eyes turned a foreboding, glowing purple. When audiences realized that imaginary friends all became boogeypeople once kids stopped believing in them, it packed quite an emotional punch, and Frances was forced to reflect on her own anxieties about growing up.

Don't Look Under the Bed Sparked Major Backlash From Disney Fans

Don't Look Under the Bed debuted on Disney Channel on October 9, 1999, and was just the second movie on the network to receive a TV-PG rating due to its frightening scenes, and despite director Kenneth Johnson's attempts to make the DCOM not too scary for viewers, adults were incensed. Disney swiftly received complaints from outraged parents that the original film was far too dark and disturbing for the younger demographic and that the network failed its target audience, with Johnson retrospectively telling Entertainment Weekly in 2017:

"There were a number of meetings where we'd talked about the tone and what [Disney] wanted it to be — scary but not too scary. That's the bar we kept trying to find. Everybody thought we had hit it until they started getting derogatory mail after it aired."

The public outcry was not the first time that Disney was accused of venturing too far into spooky territory, as the 1997 made-for-TV horror film Tower of Terror (presented by The Wonderful World of Disney) also attracted some flack for being too scary for young viewers. Due to the massive number of complaints Disney Channel received from concerned parents once Don't Look Under the Bed premiered, the network largely stopped airing reruns of the movie as a result of the backlash and stopped making horror-themed original movies (aside from the more kid-friendly Halloweentown series).

In October, it will be 25 years since Don't Look Under the Bed made its highly-publicized debut, and despite the initial outcry from irate parents, the film has become regarded as a cult classic for Disney. It has landed on numerous critics' lists as one of the best DCOMs, including rankings done by Complex and Entertainment Weekly, and Collider accurately declared in their list that the creepy movie "remains in the DCOM history books for one reason: it's scary as hell." After years of being excluded from the Disney Channel Original Movie collection on Disney+, Don't Look Under the Bed was finally added to the streaming juggernaut, allowing courageous viewers to relive the hair-raising horrors of the controversial classic. Stream Don't Look Under the Bed on Disney+.