The Nightmarish Animatronics Behind the Movies

An awful lot of "family movies" (translation: for kids) involve talking animals interacting with people, or some other feature that doesn't happen in the real world. That's done almost exclusively with CGI today, but there was a period of several decades in which robots were used for those animals, often with some CGI used to smooth over the finished scenes. Working with animatronics not only displays the uncanny valley effect, but seeing these robot animals -or even humans- without their skin or with their heads removed can scar you for life. Let's hope the child actors who had to witness such carnage are okay. A few animal characters were played by humans, which can also be traumatic. See the nightmare fuel behind "live action" animations from five beloved movies at Cracked.