Horror fans don't tend to mention comedies or lighter films when discussing the scariest movies ever made. It's easier to talk about movies solely dedicated to scares than to range further abroad, and admittedly, it's much harder to find chilling moments in otherwise upbeat projects. One such moment, however, often gets overlooked. Pee-wee's Big Adventure, the cult classic from 1985 aimed squarely at the family crowd, contains a jump-shock scare that rivals the most terrifying horror movies ever made.
No one who has seen it needs to be prompted about which moment it is. "Large Marge," the ghost of a dead truck driver who gives Pee-wee a lift, reveals her true nature in a sudden jolt of stop-motion animation that sends audiences into screaming fits. It's become legendary, all the more so because the film is as far away from horror as one can get. Yet, the star and the film's director had a better grasp of terror than it seemed. Their efforts created what could be the perfect surprise scare.
Pee-wee's Big Adventure Had the Right Director
Among its other notable qualities, Pee-wee's Big Adventure was the feature film debut of director Tim Burton. Before that, he had famously worked for Walt Disney Studios as an animator. It didn't prove a good fit, as the director explained in a 2012 interview with Yahoo! Movies. In 1984, he made a 30-minute live-action film called Frankenweenie about a boy who brings his dead dog back to life. It proved too dark and scary for Disney, who let the director go after seeing the results of the movie they backed.
However, the original short had an unusual side benefit. According to the book Burton on Burton, Paul Reubens -- Pee-wee's creator and alter ego -- saw it, and felt that Burton was perfect for the job. The two shared an interest in the quirky and unusual and a keen understanding of the overlap between children and adults. Both artists also possessed iconic sensibilities and prankish tendencies. The opportunity to give audiences an unexpected jolt may have been too much for either of them to resist.
Pee-wee's Large Marge Benefited from Audience Expectations
The scene itself is patterned after urban legends and campfire stories, arriving in the midst of the movie's larger plot about Pee-wee's search for his missing bike. While hitchhiking along a lonely highway, he's picked up by Large Marge, who immediately launches into a story about "the worst accident I ever seen." When she reaches the description of the body pulled from the wreck, her face briefly morphs into a monster's, with cartoonishly bulging eyes and a mouth full of rotting teeth. The patrons of the truck stop where she drops him off confirm that she herself was the victim of the wreck and killed ten years ago that very night. Pee-wee was riding with a ghost.
The specifics of the story matter less than the moment itself, which Burton crafts to slip under the audience's defense. There's an obvious suspenseful build-up, augmented by Danny Elfman's score, which gives her story a faux-serious tone. But because of the film's light-hearted plot and family-friendly atmosphere, viewers naturally expect it all to be the service of a joke. There had been no animation in the film previously, and Pee-wee's Big Adventure's low budget meant that almost all of the humor came from performance rather than effects.
In short, they caught everyone unaware by lulling them into a false sense of security. With no expectations of what was to come, viewers were left open and emotionally unprepared. It worked, and they were smart enough not to repeat the trick, leaving it a piece of good fun rather than a breach of the audience's trust. That's helped cement its reputation, and while Pee-wee's Big Adventure isn't normal Halloween viewing, Large Marge is well in keeping with the season.