I’ve been a fan of Danny Elfman ever since Tim Burton’s “Batman”. Film after film Elfman scored for Burton, but it wasn’t until the mid ’90s that I found out he was part of a band (Oingo Boingo). A whole new path just opened up for me.
Another path this musician has attempted to follow is directing, a number of projects have come and disappeared, one of the more promising ones was “Little Demons”.
Set in 1921, about three young kids (Cynthia, Jonathan and Bradley) who perform in a traveling carnival show. To appease their saintly dead mother, they lure young women into their crazy uncles trailer and kill them, with the belief that the souls of the dead will now help their dead mother in heaven.
The film is quite violent, and I’m not quite sure who the audience was going to be. Around the time this draft was completed, Elfman had signed a deal with Disney to direct (something with didn’t come to fruition, but musician has always had a great relationship with the studio) a few films. 
If you Google the title you’ll find demos for most of the tunes (it has a bit of a “Nightmare Before Christmas” feel, kinda…) and they seem fine, very ‘Elfman’ of course, but what did you expect.
Certainly a curious ‘what-if’, and even now it occasionally pops up in interviews with Elfman, and I believe it’s a project he regrets didn’t get off the ground.
Click the picture, have a read and maybe Google some of the songs, you’ll get a very good idea of what might have been, let me know what you think in the comments below.
Stephen Batchelor is a screenwriter. He watches movies. Reads scripts. Writes pages. Read His Blog, check out his facebook page Facebook.com/TheScriptMason and stalk him on twitter @thescriptmason.
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