Parents Guide for
Corpse Bride (2005)

A corpse wears a low cut dress that reveals cleavage throughout the movie, and the dress is tattered and torn and also reveals her thigh and femur; a man dances with the corpse. A woman is laced into a tight corset that reveals cleavage and bare shoulders

Corpses are shown in sundry stages of decay and composition, with several having missing skin (that exposes teeth through a hole in the cheek, or ribs through a hole in the abdomen, or arm and leg bones), missing limbs, etc: One corpse is a severed head that moves around on the legs of beetles that are in his neck, another can spilt vertically (we see a cross-section), one corpse's eye pops out several times and there is a green, talking maggot residing in the eye socket (there are references to him eating her brain), and others are skeletons. A man inadvertently places a ring on the exposed finger of a buried corpse, the hand grabs the man by the arm and pulls him down; he pulls away and the arm comes off, he panics and runs, the arm chases him, the corpse comes out of the ground (accompanied by booming music and wind), and chases the man until he hits his head on a tree a few times and many crows swoop and caw at him. A man holds a sword to a woman's throat, another man intervenes and the two men fight, one with a sword and one with a fork: the man with the fork pokes the other man a couple of times, the man with the sword lunges at the other man, and a corpse stands in the way and is stabbed through the chest. We hear that a man murdered a woman and stole her jewels. A man says to a woman, "I left you" and she says "...for dead." A skeleton tells a corpse that she must kill a man to keep him with her. A man makes a remark about a woman dying soon (it is implied that he plans to kill her). A man drinks from a chalice, he begins to gag and gasp, he turns blue (implying that he is dying), he is surrounded by corpses carrying knives and forks, he screams and is pushed by the corpses into a room, and the door is closed. A man coughs violently, he gasps, falls off his seat on a carriage and when he lands on the ground we see his feet pointed upward and twitching (he is dead). A corpse pulls a sword out of the abdomen of another corpse, and green liquid flows from the cavity and into his drinking mug. A corpse pulls a sword out of another corpse's head. A corpse has a large hole through his chest. A man cuts the heads off many fish using a cleaver. A corpse's eye pops out of the socket (a maggot wriggles out of the socket), a skeleton's head pops off, and a corpse splits in half and we see the bloody internal organs. Corpses stir a large pot, one corpse's nose falls into the pot and his eye dangles from a string. Several corpses come to a dinner party, and one loses an eye in a man's soup bowl (we hear a pop and a splat and see it floating in the soup). A corpse's hand pops off while she plays the piano, and it moves across the keys and up a man's arm. A skeleton scratches his skull and one skull plate flaps up and down and clanks. Part of a corpse's cheek is missing and reveals her teeth inside. A man and a corpse dance together and when he twirls her, her arm pops out. A corpse dances and her leg snaps off (she hobbles back to retrieve it). Several skeletons dance, their bones clank, they remove their heads and use them as props. A man opens a box containing bones, the bones fall on the ground and come together to make a dog that wags its tail and barks. A man and a corpse climb stairs in a dark tower, many crows caw and swoop over them, and there's thunder and lightning. Many corpses surround a woman who has a walker (they're zombie-like), she swings the walker and hits one of them in the head. Two people grab a woman, pull her into a house and drag her to her room were we hear she is going to be locked in. A man drives a horse-drawn carriage recklessly and nearly hits a woman walking in the street with a walker. A woman uses a fireplace poker to try to break the lock on a door. A man drops a ring that rolls under a woman's skirt, he retrieves the ring from under her skirt but lights her skirt on fire with the candle; people panic and try to put out the flames, everyone yells at the man and glares at him in a threatening manner and one man points a gnarled finger at him. A skeleton squeezes a crow and it lays a large egg. A skeleton prepares a potion (he pulls a feather off the back of a crow and drops it in), then drinks it, burps loudly and we see the liquid pouring through his chest cavity. We hear bones rattling and clanking in many scenes as corpses move. A corpse smacks herself on the side of the head and a maggot shoots out of her ear and onto the ground. There are barrels filled with waving severed arms in a "2nd Hand Shoppe." A maggot says to a man, "I used to live in your dead mother." A corpse disintegrates into many butterflies that flutter away. Two dogs (one corpse and one living) sniff each other's rears. A spider has sharp teeth and six eyes and talks about being a "widow." A man walks into a table and another man hits him on the head with a long cane. A woman gets stuck in the door of a horse-drawn carriage and two men must push her to get her through. A woman climbs out a window, slides down a blanket, falls to the ground (she is not injured) and runs through a rainy night to a church

2 mild obscenities

Miscellaneous dead characters drink what's presumably ale. One of them drinks and another pulls a sword from the first one's body, draining the ale into a mug. He then drinks from that mug, but the ale simply flows out from his skeletal body. A character smokes a pipe in some scenes.

While practicing his vows out near a graveyard, a bunch of black birds converge in trees by him and a corpse's hand suddenly thrusts up out of the ground and grabs Victor's arm. He pulls back and the severed arm stays attached to him, and he then looks scared as a figure suddenly rises up out of the ground (but it turns out to be Emily). Victor runs, but trips and falls, hitting his head, as the arm crawls after him (and Emily picks it up as she also follows him). He continues to try to run away, but ends up twice running into the same tree, knocking himself out.

The dead and partially decomposed appearance of Emily (part of her cheek is missing, thus exposing some of her teeth/jawbone, she has a hole in her wedding dress and side that shows exposed ribs, and some of her limbs are skeletal while others are fleshy, etc.) may be unsettling or scary to younger kids. The same holds true for other dead characters that are "alive" (some of which have the weapons that killed them still inside their bodies including a sword through one, a knife in another's head, etc.; one that's just a severed head and another that's previously been cut completely in half -- thus offering several views of his internal organs and bones, including his brain etc. that have also been halved -- and some are straight skeletons).

The living panic when the dead arrive up top and some approach them like zombies. One boy, however, approaches one such dead character and everyone's nervous, but we then see that it's the boy's dead grandfather and there's a happy reunion between them (and then the rest of the dead and alive characters).

Barkis takes Victoria hostage, holding a sword to her neck. Someone throws Victor a fork and the two battle with them, with Victor avoiding the various swipes while jabbing/stabbing Barkis with the fork on his clothed butt, along his side and to the bottom of his foot from below. Barkis repeatedly jabs his sword down through a table at Victor and then kicks him aside. We then see him jab the sword forward, but Emily then pulls that sword from her body (we don't see the initial impact).