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"Addams Groove" / "Family Thing"

Date range confirmed in Mike Smallcombe’s “Making Michael” (“[Michael worked] on music for the shelved Addams Family Values short-film in the summer of 1993.”)

Damien Shields, author, DamienShields.com (May 30, 2015) (archived)

According to screenwriter Paul Rudnick, the original concept was for Jackson to record a horror-themed song for Addams Family Values and film a music video to promote it, but when allegations of child molestation were made against Jackson the summer before the film was set to be released, plans changed.

“It was just a little too risky to include [the song] in the final movie at that point,” Rudnick recalls of the situation.

According to actress Shana Mangatal, the song that was set to play during the closing credits of Addams Family Values was not actually titled “Is This Scary.” Jackson’s longform music video was to be called Is This Scary, but not song, Mangatal told me.

“He dictated the lyrics of the song that was going to be used as the theme song for Addams Family Values to me, but the song was never recorded,” Mangatal explains. “It’s a completely different (to ‘Is It Scary’ – released years later) and never-before heard song.”

The song was also to be released as a brand new Michael Jackson single accompanied by a long-form music video – funded and issued independently by Jackson – to support both the single and Addams Family film.