A lovely trip down memory lane. I saw this film when I was a child of seven, again when I was ten and snippets of this film have followed me ever since. I just finished watching the film again moments ago, the first time as an adult. Now, this film was somewhat frightening when I was seven, it does have some spooky elements, I don't recommend it for young children. I do feel however that this movie does deserve a second look by adults. The acting isn't award winning, and the special effects certainly wouldn't stand up to today's standards, however this film does have a unique premise and the dialog rarely comes off as childish, this isn't really a childs movie and I feel it was mis-marketted as one. One notable point about this film for most Canadians in their twenties and thirties will recognize several faces from other Canadian films and television from the early 1980's. This film was produced in english, the first film released by La Fete that I am aware of, to be produced in english not just dubbed over. If you enjoyed this film I also recommend watching The Dog that Stopped the War (1984) a great film put out by La Fete immediately before the Peanut Butter Solution. The Dog who Stopped the War can also be found by its original french title Guerre des tuques, La (1984).

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.

I can't vouch for how scary this film might seem to a child - this is one of the few IMDb reviews written by someone who didn't see the movie when young - but I can confirm that it has a very weird tone that could be disturbing to kids: the way the story is told is just a little off-kilter, making the whole thing feel like a bad dream.

The bizarre plot concerns 11-year-old Michael (Mathew Mackay),who investigates a burnt-out spooky mansion where something frightens him so much that all of his hair falls out. Bullied at school for being bald, Michael is delighted when he is visited by two ghosts who give him a recipe to solve his problem, the crucial ingredient being peanut butter. Painting the concoction on his head before bedtime, he wakes the next day to discover that the mixture has worked - but having put too much peanut butter into the solution, his hair growth is rapid and unstoppable.

Matters get even more strange when Michael is abducted and used by mad painter Sergio (Michel Maillot) as the source of hair for his magic paintbrushes, which are assembled by other kidnapped children. It is up to Michael's sister Suzie (Alison Darcy) and best friend Connie (Siluck Saysanasy) to come to the rescue.

Given a bigger budget and a better cast, I could imagine this film receiving the same level of love and admiration reserved for family favourites like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Labyrinth and Coraline - it certainly has a lot of imagination - but as it stands, it's merely a curiosity remembered fondly by those who saw it at an impressionable age. I can imagine most adults struggling with the cheap production values, poor performances and awkward storytelling - factors that help to make it a surreal experience but which discerning grown-ups might not find that appealing.