Sonic X, Episode 1.19: Sonic’s Scream Test

Sonic X, Episode 1.19: Sonic’s Scream Test

Japanese Title: Ghost of the Old Castle - King Boom Boo

Japanese Air Date: August 10th, 2003

U.S. Air Date: February 7th, 2004

When I started this project, I know I said I had only watched the first one or two episodes of the "Sonic X" dub. I'm sorry, dear readers, I lied to you. Some years back, I compiled a list of spooky moments from across the "Sonic" franchise. I knew there was an episode of "Sonic X" that had ghosts in it and had a reputation for being kind of creepy. Because I do a whole-ass job on this here blog, I watched the whole episode before writing that listicle... The dubbed version, anyway. So this episode represents one of the few episodes of "Sonic X" I've seen in both the non-tampered-with original version and the screechy 4Kids English edition.

Sonic, Chris, Tails and Amy take a break from looking for Chaos Emeralds, I guess, to visit Chris' mom on her latest film set. She's currently shooting some sort of costume drama in an actual spooky old castle. A cameraman, without thinking, moves a stone hourglass from a prominent pedestal. Afterwards, strange things begin to happen around the castle. It turns out, ghostly spirits have been freed. They possess Chris' mom, suck Sonic into a vortex of some sort, and trick Amy into releasing their otherworldly lord: King Boom Boo. Can Chris and Amy undo this curse before it's too late?

Fear of possession, whether by the spirits of the dead or otherworldly entities, is common across almost all cultures. This speaks to a universal human anxiety: The realization that we do not have control over our own bodies. Disease, age, parasites, and even our own subconscious can cause our bodies and brains to betray us at any minute. Unsurprisingly, this fear has spawned a subgenre of horror fiction. From classics like "The Exorcist" to gore-fests like "Evil Dead," it's an idea horror writers and filmmakers will never stop capitalizing on.

A "Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon is probably not someplace you'd expect to see a story like this but here we are. Chris sees his mother and his friend Amy change into unrecognizable beings that attack him. Their faces twist into ghoulish visages, eyes wide and smiling. But that's not a smile of joy but one of unhinged lunacy. Amy hears Sonic say words to her she's longed to hear but it's not really him saying it. It's another entity purposely manipulating her. Whether or not "Sonic's Scream Test" utilizes these elements well is debatable but I gotta give the show some credit for even going there.

Whether you find "Sonic's Scream Test" creepy or not probably depends entirely on how old you were when you first watched it. However, I think this episode gets the ambience right, if nothing else. I'm a man with far too many opinions about gothic horror movies, so believe me way I say this is a pretty nice spooky castle. The scene of Lindsey Thorndyke wandering the dark corridors in a classy gown, lit only by a candelabra, is some good shit. A later moment of the sound guy wandering the same creepy hallway, listening for strange noises, is even better. The use of otherworldly, giggling children voices is a cliché but it works here. There's even something classical about the ghosts being unleashed by a simple stone item being removed. That gives me some "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" vibes and, ya know, I like that movie.

Ultimately though, this episode just can't work one-hundred-percent for me. After that promising first act, it starts to fall apart once the ghosts actually appear on-screen. These goofy motherfuckers just aren't scary, man. The diminutive spectres have big toothy grins that are exaggerated in a cartoonish way, not an uncanny way. Their swirly eyes are similarly more funny than spooky. These faces might've been unsettling if attached to something other than the marshmallow-y stereotypical sheet ghost body. The little ghosts in "Sonic & Knuckles" managed to be sort of creepy with a lot less than these guys.

Their giant overlord, given the less-than-intimidating name of King Boom Boo, looks like a cookie jar and has a rainbow-colored tongue for some reason. (In the Japanese audio, he's called King Booboo, which makes it sound like he's after some pic-a-nic baskets.) The annoying part is, with some slightly subtler colors or facial designs, these guys could've been genuinely creepy. Their trick of replacing normal faces with their ghost faces is a genuinely good one. The moment where Amy's face morphs into a ghostly grin is halfway to a decent jump-scare.

Another thing that bugs me about this episode is its inconsistent rules. When dealing with archetypal monsters, you either have to respect or subvert the rules. Not all werewolves are allergic to silver and not all vampires hate garlic but every iteration of these species have specific rules they abide by. These ghosts fear the stone hour glass that can imprison or free them. That's fine. But they can also produce a spooky vortex for no defined reasons. (Other than the writers needed to remove Sonic from the episode for a while.) Most vexingly, how intangible the ghosts are varies from scene-to-scene. Sometimes they pass through walls with ease. Other times, Sonic can slam King Boom Boo into a wall, burying him in rubble that he then chews his way through. Make up your mind, "Sonic X."

It also takes Chris Thorndyke way too long to figure out that the ghosts will be trapped when the hourglass is placed with the moon symbol down and the sun symbol up... Even after he reads a convenient plaque saying just that. Then again, maybe idiocy runs in the Thorndyke family. Chris' mom is, I guess, a complete dumbass. When she first meets Tails and Amy, she assumes they are special effects. Later, after her ghost is exorcised, she seems to think the entire experience has been a film shoot. That she just stumbled into starring in a fantasy movie. Oh yeah, she also complains about her feet hurting while running from the ghosts in high-heels, endangering her son in the process. Needless to say, I don't think we can owe Lindsey Thorndyke's great success as an actress to her intelligence.

Despite possibly being a little too spoopy for the really young ones, 4Kids mostly let this episode air with minimal editing... With one amusing exception. See, the moon symbol on the hourglass features a crescent moon and a star. You might notice that looks a lot like the globally recognized symbol of Islam. In order not to offend anyone, the star was digitally removed in the dub. That was probably for the best. Overall, the potential this episode shows in its first half is squandered in its second half, which is probably way I'm going to rate something that would otherwise be extremely my kind of shit on the lower end. But it's still scarier than every "Sonic" creepypasta ever written, so I guess that's worth at least a [6/10].