I vaguely remember, as a child, watching a creepy French movie about a child who undergoes immediate baldness and somehow ends up in a slavery ring. In the pre-internet age, however, I was not able to find it and eventually chocked it up to being some sort of a spooky fever dream.
So imagine my surprise when, right there in my mailbox, the French-Canadian film The Peanut Butter Solution shows up, bringing back all of those disturbing memories and, upon actually viewing it, giving me even stranger new ones.
Living in a bizarre, French-influenced town with a depressed-artist father and an Electra-complexed sister, young Billy (Michael Hogan) wakes up one morning to find his hair has completely fallen out. After numerous taunts and barbs from his soccer teammates on the field, as he sleeps, an immolated homeless couple shows up and gives him a nasty recipe for a hair tonic.
As Billy mixes and drinks the titular solution, he begins to grow long luxurious locks. His Asian friend, Connie (Siluck Saysanasy), also uses the formula, but on his pubic area, which is slightly uncomfortable.
The fact, however, that it causes his hair to grow to ridiculous lengths isn’t the weird part; it’s that his art teacher is actually a psychotic brushmaker who has kidnapped most of the neighborhood kids and put them to work in an underground sweatshop manufacturing said brushes.
As I viewed the Solution, I could feel that sense of nocturnal uneasiness come back and disturb me — perhaps even worse this time, as it’s now viewed with adult eyes — but maybe it’s that slight terror that makes some of the best kiddie fare to revisit, especially as a young Celine Dion belts out tunes about the power of being young over the end credits. —Louis Fowler
It’s Michael, not Billy. I know this because I watched this movie numerous times as a kid and have spent the last 35-ish years having nightmares about it.