“There’s a bunch of rumor/creepypasta swirling about this one.
First off, the movie that you’ll see is fine. It’s like a 90-minute Are You Afraid of the Dark (nothing wrong with that). Probably the best part is the opening, which is horrifying (“Two children born of one flesh”) and narrated by Frank Langella. Supposedly, the filmmakers wanted to get Tom Waits for the Langella role, but someone was like, “Nah, we need star power in this film!” Which is my first place of doubt on Nickelodeon’s take on the movie because what kid in 2000 was like, “I love me some Frank Langella”? I mean, he WAS Skeletor, but it’s not like any of us knew that, nor was that a big badge of honor.
After that grim opener, the chills slow down a bit, and we get a more typical story you’d expect out of a Nickelodeon movie of the time.
The story goes that this movie isn’t what aired, only once, in 2000 on Nick. The story goes that there was a much darker, far more horrifying version of this movie that came out, aired once, and was never seen again. It’s a pretty interesting story until the teller of the tale starts in on a haunted set of overhead projector transparencies that seem to move and such during a presentation, at which point he lost me.
This is also the explanation for why Cry Baby Lane was lost media for a couple decades.
Now, the Nickelodeon version of the story is: We forgot about it.
Yep, they are saying it wasn’t all that controversial or anything, maybe they got a couple angry letters because it was too scary, which TOTALLY tracks if you watched the first 4 minutes, but according to Nickelodeon, they pulled a Medicine Man and just sort of lost it.
Someone then put a VHS rip online, it drummed up a lot of interest, and Nick brought it back.
While I don’t find that story as unlikely as the idea of haunted pieces of plastic film that we used to do math problems on when I was in school, I DO find it suspicious that Nickelodeon would spend as much as they did on Cry Baby Lane and then just lose it. Nick seemed apt to run their shows as often as they could and run them into the ground whenever possible, so it’s a bit hard for me to imagine that they just straight-up forgot this huge-(for them)budget item for a couple decades.
As far as I’m concerned, the jury is out. No, I don’t believe that Cry Baby Lane aired one time as basically the cut scenes from Event Horizons, but I also don’t totally believe that Nick just did an Oops, we goofed! on it for like 20 years.
Which puts it in the category of great mystery and, once again, gives me something to do if I ever come across a time machine: Go back to 2000, maybe get myself a better haircut, and then see if Cry Baby Lane is, in fact, the same.”