Chick Tract Review: The Little Princess

Jack Chick sez: Heidi is terribly sick. But when she gets saved on Halloween night, her whole family finds Christ too. An emotional story with a happy ending.

Every once in a while, Jack Chick gets a little meta and gives us a Chick tract that tells the story of somebody reading a Chick tract. Whoa. Is that lumpy, gray paint on your walls, or did I just BLOW YOUR MIND? It may seem a tad indulgent, but it’s that kind of self-promotion that helped Mr. Chick turn his funnybook ministry into a hate-spewing empire.

So while The Little Princess does take place on Halloween night, Chick eschews his usual rants against Satan and druids and instead focuses on the heartbreaking story of dying little girl and the elderly couple who lead her Jesus with… well, a Chick tract.

We open with adorable little Heidi Spencer (“Speidi” to her friends) getting a medical examination. The doctor, obviously concerned by the fact that Heidi’s spine is on the outside, meets with Heidi’s mom and informs her that her daughter will probably be dead in a couple of weeks.

Facing her own mortality, Heidi informs her parents there’s ONE THING she wants to do before she dies. Unfortunately, it’s not “drink champagne from the skull of Ann Coulter,” because that would have been wicked cool. No, Heidi’s last request is to go trick-or-treating. It is also here that we find out, through subtle, expository dialog, that Heidi’s family doesn’t know about Heaven™, and therefore must not be Christians™.

Come Halloween night, Heidi dresses as the titular Little Princess and goes trick-or-treating with her cowboy brother Josh. After half an hour of hitting the houses, poor Heidi cries out for help and falls to the pavement with a horrendous thud!

Fortunately, Heidi hasn’t eaten any cursed devil candy or anything like that. It’s just that pesky disease rearing its ugly head. Josh insists that they go home, but little Heidi wants to visit one more house before calling it a night. She wants to visit their new neighbors, the Smiths. The new neighbors drop some candy into the kids’ sack, along with a copy of Jack Chick’s Happy Halloween tract. And as they watch poor Heidi stagger away into the darkness, they decide the best thing to do is pray for her.

Meanwhile, as poor Heidi wastes away on her death bed, she pages through the tract she received from the Smiths. And presumably after reading the harrowing account of Timmy’s eternal damnation, she demands to see the Smiths right away. Before it’s TOO LATE!

When the Smiths arrive at Heidi’s bedside, she tells them that she asked Jesus to be her Saviour. And since she uses the European spelling, I can only assume she does it in a British accent. The Smiths congratulate her on being scared into Heaven, and Heidi gushes about how everything is perfect now. Except for one thing. As we’ve established, her parents aren’t Christians™, which means they’re going to Hell. Which, if you’ve read many Jack Chick tracts, you’ll realize is actually populated with much nicer people than Heaven. But I digress…

The Smiths make with the proselytizing. They inform Heidi’s family that they aren’t there by accident, but rather they were sent by God to save them from Hell. They smoothly segue from Heidi’s imminent death to God, who sent His only begotten Son to die. The news startles Heidi’s mom so much that her hair begins to glow.

So the Smiths tell the story about how God loves us so much that He let His Son be killed so He wouldn’t have to toss us into Hell. And the Spencers find absolutely nothing odd or implausible about that scenario. Mrs. Smith bursts into Heidi’s room and yanks her out of bed to tell her the good news. While glowing. What the hell is up with that?

That night, an angel comes to claim the soul of Heidi. Fortunately, he doesn’t cast her into a lake of fire as Chick’s angels are wont to do. Instead, he carries her up to Heaven, where she runs into the arms of Jesus, a bird, and a talking mannequin.

So that’s it. We close with a tearful Josh Spencer setting his sister’s princess crown on her tombstone, and Jack Chick leaves us with a cheerful reminder of our own mortality. All in all, a fairly tame outing for our esteemed Mr. Chick. Much more glurgy than usual. And not one single “Haw, haw, haw!”

I mean, come on, Jack! The least you could have done was have Josh get killed by druids and sent to Hell! Then you could have closed with Heidi looking down at her tormented brother from Heaven and saying, “Poor Josh. Too bad he didn’t accept Jesus as his Saviour like *I* did. Oh well…” And then we’d see her scamper off to spend eternity with all the rapists and serial killers who recanted on their death beds.

And people wonder why I quit going to church…