'Bleak Movies Coloring Book' replaces blood with bunnies
"Reservoir Dogs," "Seven," "The Exorcist," and other disturbing movies get a kid-friendly restyling thanks to artist Todd Spence, who wants to swap screams with smiles.
When you're a kid, seeing a creepy and gruesome film like "Seven" or "Reservoir Dogs" could warp you for life. But thanks to illustrator and artist Todd Spence, children can enjoy the same iconic scenes we love with a simple revision here and there. Spence replaces gory murder scenes and extreme violence with bunnies and jetpacks in his "Bleak Movies Coloring Book for Kids" illustrations.
"Most kids aren't allowed to watch R-rated films, especially the really dark and twisted ones with terribly bleak endings that stick with you for days and days, so I finally figured out a way to let children enjoy some of those bleak movies along with the rest of us," Spence wrote on Break.com.
Disturbing movies such as "Reservoir Dogs," "Requiem for a Dream," "The Shining," "The Exorcist," "The Fly," and "Seven" all get a chance at a happy ending instead of the horrifying moments we can never erase from our memory banks. (Spoilers ahead!)
Instead of dying from a demon attack, Father Karras waves goodbye to Regan MacNeil and flies away through the bedroom window with his jetpack in "The Exorcist." In "Reservoir Dogs," the unsettling torture scene between Mr. White and Mr. Orange is now a happy moment where the two share a messy cheeseburger together with extra ketchup.
For the thriller "Seven," Spence substitutes adorable bunny rabbits for a certain severed head in a box.
"'Seven' might have been my favorite because that ending is so dark and so iconic, and what people seem to react to the most out of the set, especially since that scene is all about a really dark relationship so it was a lot of fun to have everyone smiling at each other, just hanging out," Spence told Crave.
For other films, like the horror classic "The Fly," Spence found it challenging to give a kid-friendly makeover.
"'The Fly' was probably the toughest since I was going for a downer-movie-ending theme and I didn't know which moment to really capture," Spence told Crave. "I was going for kind of a mix between the shotgun death and puking on the guy's hand, so it became a silly coloring book 'activity' instead of one specific moment from the movie's ending."
While Spence illustrated spoofs of some of the most iconic twisted films, there are still quite a few that he wanted to cover but didn't have time.
"'The Good Son' was definitely on my list to re-create or 'Dancer in the Dark,' but I wanted to do just a few this time around, the really recognizable ones," Spence told Crave. "If enough people are interested, I'd love to do more. In fact I'm trying to see if publishers would be interested and really try to make an actual coloring book out of it. How great would that be?"
Here's hoping for the addition of uplifting coloring pages from "Eraserhead," "The Human Centipede," "A Clockwork Orange," and "Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky."
