It's been a pretty busy month for Fangoria senior editor Meredith Borders. Not only did Fangoria launch a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign, but the company also recently premiered its first bookazine, a wide-ranging exploration of Frankenstein timed to the release of Guillermo del Toro's new movie. And somehow, amidst the madness of new products and new campaigns, Meredith found time to advocate for an old favorite: Michael Rubbo's The Peanut Butter Solution, which sits alongside films like The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T in the gateway horror hall of fame.
Michael Baskin (Mathew Mackay) is an adventurous kid, which means when his best friend (Siluck Saysanasy) tells him about a spooky abandoned house, he can’t help but explore. But what Michael sees in that house is something so scary that it causes his hair to fall clean off. Thankfully, Michael is also widely recognized as a kid with a good heart, so when two ghosts give him the Peanut Butter Solution – a mysterious elixir meant to regrow his hair – father Billy (Michael Hogan) and sister Suzie (Alison Podbrey) assume that will be the end of things. Only now Michael's hair won’t stop growing, and his luxurious locks makes him a target of the Signor (Michel Maillot), a failed art teacher who wants to steal the hair’s magical properties to make him rich.
In this short excerpt from the episode, Meredith explains why The Peanut Butter Solution deserves to be considered a gateway horror movie alongside films like The Watcher in the Woods and Something Wicked This Way Comes:
There is a tragically Canadian sensibility about, for instance, The Peanut Butter Solution, that is just by itself unnerving. There's also some dubbing happening, because they were French-Canadian, and the dubbing makes everything feel a little bit strange and off. Just taking aside the plot and everything else, it feels a little bit like you're not on solid ground when you're watching this film.
The Peanut Butter Solution episode of the Certified Forgotten podcast with Meredith Borders is now available to stream on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, or the podcast platform of your choice.
