HORROR MONTH #23: Courage the Cowardly Dog, by John R. Dilworth (1999)

Type of Media: Animated TV Show

The saying "a dog is a man's best friend" has been taken to heart by a lot of screenwriters. You have Toto, Sam from I Am Legend, Lassie performing ridiculous feats of heroism and saving kids from wells. If I had to put money on the most loyal dog ever created, though, I'd pick Courage.

Courage the Cowardly Dog is a horror comedy cartoon that aired on Cartoon Network. In it, little beagle Courage lives with old couple Muriel and Eustace Bagge on a desolate, isolated farm in Nowhere, Kansas. Each episode the Bagges are visited by some kind of trouble, usually in the form of a monster, that Courage will have to get rid of to save his family.

Now this may sound like it's just a tweak of Scooby Doo, but Courage the Cowardly Dog has a very surreal sense of horror. Rarely are the monsters as simple as a werewolf or a vampire, instead being more offbeat like a seductive demon who lives in a puddle, or a sadistic cat who traps people to feed them to his massive collection of spiders.

It's also surprisingly unsettling for a kid's cartoon, owing to its great use of original music to create mood and build tension (many monsters have their own theme, even ones that only appear once), as well as its visual style that works in live-action footage, computer animation, and even claymation to create memorable villains. The comedy portion of the show is similarly focused, based on funny sound effects and sight gags, with Courage morphing in all kinds of cartoony ways to express his fear to the audience.

Courage himself is a great starring character and easy to like. Though he's nearly always shaking and frightened by something, Courage always musters up his bravery to save his adopted family out of sheer love for them. He often relies on wit and kindness rather than strength to win the day, making friends with the monster of the week and helping them with their problems as often as foiling their plans and defeating them. He's able to see that, just because the creature destroying the Bagge's farm this week looks scary, that doesn't mean they're necessarily evil.

I grew up watching Courage the Cowardly Dog, and once I got over my fear of it (King Ramses and Freaky Fred in particular scared the shit out of me), I found a show that helped cement my love of cartoons. I know a lot of people of my generation who were young when Courage debuted and got too creeped out to watch it, but if you have some time this Halloween season hop on Netflix and watch a few episodes like The Tower of Dr. Zalost and Shirley the Medium.