31 Days of Halloween - Day 20: Top 10 Courage Episodes

This show has always been a childhood favorite of mine and it always used to freak me out. The episodes were so dark and frightening but they were layered with black comedy to lightening the mood up. It’s because of that reason why I think Courage the Cowardly Dog has always been one of my favorite cartoons ever. Below, I have compiled a list of all the episodes that personally scared the shit out of me… and they are the perfect episodes to help get kids psyched up for Halloween.

10. Remembrance of Courage Past: This was a scary episode in the sense that it tapped into our greatest childhood fear… the fear that somebody would take us from our family or that somebody would take our family away, much like how the Vet took Courage’s family away. It’s a sad story, but also a revenge flick with justification.

9. 1000 Years of Courage: In this episode, Courage finds himself in a utopian society inhabited by Bananas. This one was more along the sci-fi lines, but it was very dark considering what the society was hiding from its people. It’s grotesque and horrifying.

8. “Car Broke, Phone Yes:” Here we have an alien that is only made up of a brain, two eyes and a brainstem and he’s dressed in a trench coat and a hat. What I found scary about this episode was the first half of the it; when the alien shoots one of his tentacles up Eustace’s nose to suck his ‘kindness’ out. I never saw it coming.

7. The Nutcracker: I always found this one frightening and funny at the same time… like a Dark comedy. You have giant, horrible looking ravenous rats kidnapping the Bagge family, but when Courage tries to save them, the rats pop out of nowhere snarling and hissing. They then dance their way towards him.

 

6. The Great Fusilli: For some reason puppets used to scare me, and when I saw this episode and the way Fusilli had strings coming out of the mouths of the overhead masks to turn the Bagges into puppets frightened me. What’s even more frightening is that he had a whole closets full of people puppets. It’s frightening. 

5. Human Habitrail: This was always a frightening episode because this solicitous Gerbil comes to the Bagge family home, kidnaps them and then takes them to his underground home to perform sadistic tests in the name of science. And what makes it even creepier is the theme to this episode. It’s so tense.

 

4. A Night at the Katz Motel: Influenced by Psycho, we find Courage’s long time villain Katz trying to kill the Bagge family buy using giant, horrifying, oozing spiders to eat them. I can’t stress about how frightening this episode was for me because of the spiders and it made me terrified of sleazy motel.s

3. Everybody Wants to Direct: Not only is this one of my favorites because it is Hollywood theme and killer is a parody of Quentin Tarantino but also because of the back story. Two killers, posing as Hollywood directors, lure unsuspecting victims to their lair and then brutally murder them. That is so suggestive for young audiences!

2. Freaky Fred: This was always a haunting episode because Freaky Fred is a psychotic barber who has an obsession with shaving. The way he smiles, the way he is so kind, it just accents his psychotic nature and makes him so freaky. He always scared me with that harlequin smile and that creepy narration. Even for a kids show, this movie can be pretty scary, especially the sequence when Courage gets shaved by him.

 

1. Heads of Beef: Why is this the most frightening episode of Courage, because, the underlining story is about a restaurant owner who kills his customers and grinds them into beef for his hamburgers. There’s an especially frightening basement sequence when Courage finds the owner and his wife making these patties in shadow, and a terrifying chase sequence. It’s heavily influenced by Motel Hell but because it’s a kid’s show, there is a light-hearted twist to this story.

So there’s the Top 10 Courage the Cowardly Dog episodes…  all terrifying stories at heart but are layered with humor so that little kids would not be too frightened. This is why I loved this show, because they are really spooky stories.  

If you want more Courage the Cowardly Dog episodes, you can click here for all of them.

Don't forget to check out Day 21 of our 31 Days of Halloween exclusively at Deadly Movies