The Peanut Butter Solution

PG

Released Dec 4, 1985

1h 30m

Adventure

List

Reviews

57%

Audience Score

2,500+ Ratings

Ghosts restore a boy's (Mathew Mackay) hair when it falls out from fright, but then it won't stop growing.

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Jason Shawhan

Nashville Scene

One of the enduring weirdo kids classics of Canadian cinema, this 1985 film about bullying, body horror and the exploitative nature of the free market is also spry, adventurous and fun.

Sep 10, 2021

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Anthony Arrigo

Dread Central

It sounds cliche but they really don't make'em like this anymore. Weirdness abounds in this trippy Canuck kids film that left a helluva impression on me after a single haphazard viewing.

Rated: 3.3/5

Feb 25, 2020

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Ellen K

So it is a real movie! I thought I made this up in my head. 4.5 stars for the childhood memories. Very quirky movie that stuck with me for such a long time.

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

06/03/23

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Brad P

It sounds cliche but they really don't make'em like this anymore. Weirdness abounds in this trippy Canuck kids film that left a helluva impression on me after a single haphazard viewing. Have fun scaring and scarring your own kids (or someone else's)

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/26/23

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Audience Member

There are 24 movies in the Canadian series Tales for All and man, are they all this weird? Originally known as Michael's Fright, this is a movie that Skippy paid to be in, which is wild, because dude, Canadian kids movies are more frightening than American horror. Michael Baskin is an 11-year-old boy in a crisis. His mother is in Australia taking care of her father's estate and I'd like to think that she's in Next of Kin. His father is barely able to take care of Michael and his sister Susan, who has taken to wearing her mother's robe and role, which seems pretty much like the kind of behavior that CPS would question. When Michael learns that an abandoned house has burned down — I'd like to think it's the house from Cathy's Curse — he explores it and encounters the ghosts of homeless people who died in the fire, which is the plot of, again, a horror movie anywhere else but Canada, where it's a plot point in a movie — and I can't stress this enough — made expressly for kids. The ghosts give him "The Fright" and he loses all his hair. Those same ghosts feel bad and give him the cure of the title, which he takes too far against their advice and starts growing way too much hair. To hammer home that this is not for kids, his friend Connie uses the peanut butter solution all over his pre-pubes to show his friends that he's gone through juvenescence, except that he grows Sunset Strip hair metal pubic hair. Then, a teacher named The Signor knocks out and drugs Michael and kidnaps 500 children to make paintbrushes out of his ever-growing hair. Is that enough? What about Celine Dion singing two songs? Producer Rock Demers has said when he and director Michael Rubbo began the film, their goal was to create a "gentle, frightening film." He felt the theme was "If something frightens you, find out why. In most cases you'll discover it wasn't so frightening after all." Did he see the movie that he made? This was a bedtime story that Rubbo used to tell his children! And as this was Rubbo's first non-documentary film, Czech surreal director Vojtech Jasný mentored him, so maybe that explains something.

Rated 3 out of 5 stars

02/06/23

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Audience Member

My friend showed me where he was balding and I called him a baby-balder, because this film shows you what going bald is really like. I've never done acid, but I'd imagine this would not be a film you'd want to watch while on such things. It is weird and scary just based on its public access-like quality of production alone. If you are going bald you might want to try a wizard and peanut butter, but not if you're allergic to nuts cuz then you'll die...

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

02/17/23

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Audience Member

A truly hair-raising experience, the movie has all the imagination and silliness of a classic children's book, yet all the trichophilia of your worst Canadian nightmare.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

01/30/23

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Audience Member

1 star for The Peanut Butter Solution, I missed this movie as a kid thankfully. As a adult I saw this movie recently on YouTube I only seen this movie once and I think that once is enough. I thought that I was being nice to give this movie at least 1 star found it a bit odd and slow and kinda boring as a adult. The children in the movie were kinda odd as well as the adults in the movie as well. I didn't even know that this movie also is a book, a kid goes bald, something to do with peanut butter to grow hair a lot of hair?. Yea, idk about this movie. I guess that it is worth at least one watch so you can say what did I just watch?, just like I said when I seen this movie it's a weird one.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

01/16/23

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Michael Rubbo

Director

Mathew Mackay

Michael

Siluck Saysanasy

Conrad

Alison Podbrey

Suzie

Michael Hogan

Billy

Michel Maillot

Sergio

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Synopsis

Ghosts restore a boy's (Mathew Mackay) hair when it falls out from fright, but then it won't stop growing.

Director: Michael Rubbo
Rating: PG
Genre: Adventure
Original Language: English
Release Date (Theaters): Dec 4, 1985, Limited
Release Date (Streaming): Nov 22, 2017
Box Office (Gross USA): $53.3K
Runtime: 1h 30m

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