Movies and TV shows aimed at children are always a delicate mix of cutesy innocence and potentially weighty subject matter—kids might get bored of endless sunshine without any conflict, but go too dark and you risk mauling delicate sensibilities, Return to Oz-style. And kid-friendly SFF can be tricky to navigate for even the most well-meaning guardian, after all what harm could be lurking in a puppet-filled fantasy adventure? Of course, there are also the traumatic moments we inflicted upon ourselves, staying up late only to peep at the screen through our fingers. Even if you had a storybook childhood, the odds are low that you escaped without being emotionally sideswiped by an intense moment or two…
We’ve polled our extended Tor.com family, and gathered up the moments that shaped us into the warped creatures we are today.
The destruction of the Fourth Wall — The Neverending Story
Sure, you can probably blame Krull for why I’m drawn to giant spiders and obviously I wear all black because of the Skywalkers; yeah, the ear-eels from Wrath of Khan are objectively terrifying and the Wheelers are the very epitome of fear itself… but nothing tops The NeverEnding Story in terms of blunt psychic force. Most people immediately jump to the horse in the swamp, or the flickering of a wolf’s head, and I get that, but I find myself haunted by the Rock Biter’s strong hands and crumbling blue sphinxes. And underneath it all, the existential trauma of the Childlike Empress’ pleading eyes, begging to be named and saved while tearing through the Fourth Wall again and again.
—Mordicai Knode, Marketing Manager at Tordotcom Publishing
There is a moment in The Neverending Story (which I think I’ve written about before? But I’ll always be writing about this moment, so, whatever) when the Childlike Empress tells Atreyu that a boy named Bastian has been watching his adventures. I remember the thrill that shot through me in that moment, as I understood that the Childlike Empress knew about Bastian, and that she was going to bring these two worlds together. Bastian and Atreyu were going to meet! Bastian was going to escape his crappy, grief-struck life and go to Fantasia! But then the Empress continued. “As he was watching your adventures, others were watching his. They were with him in the bookstore. They were with him when he took the book.” And then a moment after that she looked straight into the camera. And my mind hopped a bit, and I realized that she was talking about ME. Me. I was watching Bastian. And if I was watching Bastian was someone watching me? Was I, in fact, a real little “girl” sitting on the floor in my house and watching this movie? Or was I just a story someone else was reading? What if they close the book????
What happens if they close the book.
—Leah Schnelbach, Senior Staff Writer at Tor.com
MONSTRO — Pinocchio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89g6lJ6D64U
Whoever first decided Pinocchio would make a great children’s movie is someone I’d like to fight. This mother****** gave me my first nightmares at the tender age of three years old. LOOK AT IT. If that monster of the deep isn’t prime nightmare fuel, I don’t know what is.
—Emily Goldman, Short Fiction Coordinator at Tordotcom Publishing
The Ring WILL find you — Scary Movie 3
My whole generation of 12-year-olds was traumatized by The Ring, the biggest PG-13 movie to hit theaters just as we entered the gray area where our parents could be persuaded. I was not among them—a friend of mine had told me the concept, and just the idea of a mimetic death sentence kept my pre-teen weenie self far away from any screening. What got me was Scary Movie 3. I watched Scary Movie 3 for someone else’s birthday party, surrounded by peers I wished were friends. Scary Movie 3 isn’t a classic of cinema, but we were 12 and ready to laugh. I wasn’t ready for the section of the movie that parodied The Ring, and the horrific imagery from Samara’s video was no less devastating to me for being mashed together with gross-out humor and slapstick. For the rest of the movie I was a wreck.
—Carl Engle-Laird, Editor at Tordotcom Publishing
Sesame Street is here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff
There’s a Sesame Street special from the ’80s where Big Bird and pals spend a night largely unsupervised at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which was definitely a cool thing I wanted to do as a kid. But in between cute songs about how delicious the paintings look and how the broken statues have a special beauty is an absolute existential nightmare: Big Bird and Snuffy come across a little boy who explains that he’s the spirit of an ancient Egyptian prince, cursed to be confined to his tomb (and now the museum where it’s located) until he can answer the riddle that will summon Osiris and let him pass into the afterlife to rejoin his family. This is awful! You are ruining my fun museum adventure with Bid Sad Thoughts about death and curses and personal responsibility! Big Bird naturally helps out, and together they manage to solve the riddle—but then Prince Sahu must pass the real test, where Osiris weighs his heart against the weight of a feather. And let me just cut to the chase here: THE KID FAILS. His heart sinks and Osiris is ready to peace out and leave the prince on earth forever until Big Bird intervenes and argues on Sahu’s behalf, reasoning that of course his heart is heavy after 4000 years alone, with no one to love him. YEAH, OSIRIS. The thing is, Osiris isn’t actually swayed—it is instead Big Bird’s act of love and friendship that lightens Sahu’s heart and allows him to pass the test. Which is great and all, but it left small-me with the distinct impression that ours is a cold and indifferent sort of universe. Thanks, Sesame Street!
—Sarah Tolf, Production Manager of Tor.com
Long live the droid revolution! — Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
When I was 6, I watched Star Wars. We’d recorded it during a two-week free sample of the sci-fi channel onto a VHS tape. It included an obscene amount of battery commercials and intros/outros with Billy Dee Williams. It was glorious. I was, naturally, transported.
A little too transported. I instantly identified with R2D2 and had a small freakout during the movie. From watery eyes, I interrogated: Why was R2 enslaved? If they wiped his memory as Uncle Owen (who small Renata thought deserved what he got) wanted, would that be the same as death? Weren’t restraining bolts just high-tech cages? How could he be bought and sold when he had feelings and goals and sentience? Why didn’t the droids rebel since they were smarter than humans and some had built in weaponry? If Luke was so great why hadn’t he freed C3PO who clearly did not want to be involved in all this mess?
My siblings glared, my sister pressed play, and I was left hiccupping in concern hoping that at least by movie 3 the heroes would have started a droid revolution.
—Renata Sweeney, Senior Marketing Manager at Tor Books
Long live the Lorge Ape revolution! — Mighty Joe Young
The beginning of this PG movie about a 15-foot, 2,000 pound gorilla consists of a double murder—of gorilla mom and primatologist mom—by poachers, in front of their respective children. If that wasn’t traumatizing enough for small Renata, Joe (the lorge gorilla boi) then chomps off the lead poacher’s thumb and pointer fingers, which sets him on a lifelong quest to avenge his inability to make finger guns.
(Then the rest of the movie is about whether or not the humans should euthanize Joe for being large and existing.)
—Renata
Just say yes! — The Secret of NIHM 2: Timmy to the Rescue
My childhood movie trauma is The Secret of NIHM 2: Timmy to the Rescue, hands down, no question. Specifically, this clip gave me many incredibly vivid nightmares for a longgggg time. I was completely horrified by any scenario where someone’s will or choice was taken away from them when I was a kid, and the forced experimentation on Martin and his spiral into insanity REALLY traumatized me, to the point where watching this clip now still sends me into a bit of a tailspin. I don’t think this movie was very popular (or well received), so hopefully not many other people have experienced this particular movie trauma…but if someone else has, COMMISERATE WITH ME, PLEASE.
—Rachel Taylor, Marketing Manager at Tor Books
Ursula’s death — The Little Mermaid
I actually don’t fully remember the last couple of minutes of The Little Mermaid, despite having seen it a million times. This was the movie I asked my mother to replay over and over and over again, and I have fond memories of wrapping myself in a blanket to recreate a mermaid tail while I sang “Part of Your World” in the living room. But I was so terrified of giant Ursula that I used to hide in another room until it was over. Once Prince Eric sets out on the boat, bowsprit sharp and pointed at the sea witch’s belly, I was up off the couch with my hands over my eyes until my mother came to tell me it was over. The original fairy tale is quite different, with the sea witch less of a bad guy and more of a conduit for Ariel’s shitty decision (look, she knew what she was getting in to, she signed a contract), which works a bit better for me. As an adult, I’m thinking a lot about Ursula’s role as “the other woman” and the stories we tell about women fighting over a man, especially as she is almost definitely a Black woman and probably also a drag queen, and the way we set Ursula up as the nemesis to Ariel’s waifishness and naivete, and…. all right, I could go on forever about the implications of her being popped like a magic balloon by Mr. Hero. But that’s not the point. The point is that it’s a horrific visual and Ursula deserved better.
—Christina Orlando, Books Editor at Tor.com
The existential horror of the sea — Jaws
When I was…maybe 7?…my family and I took a vacation to Ocean City, Maryland. My dad was flipping through the channels on the hotel TV when he realized Jaws was on. An hour later, when he suggested going to the beach, there were a lot of terrified screams/refusals to swim from my brother and I.
—Amanda Melfi, Social Media at Tordotcom Publishing/Tor.com
Robert Picardo tries to eat Tom Cruise — Legend
I’ve documented my weird love of traumatic movie moments in a previous article (Artax! Ewoks! Watership Down, nooooo!), so I’ll try to keep this limited to just a couple of examples—both sudden, violent character deaths that had an intense impact on tiny, impressionable me back in the day.
First, there’s A LOT I could say about 1985’s Legend. There’s so much to love, but almost all of it is deeply weird, starting with Tim Curry as Darkness, the Magnificent Lobster-Bull(?) of Evil! Also violence against unicorns, which I did not enjoy as a tiny child, and a glittery goth makeover/interpretive dance sequence, which I absolutely did.
But let’s talk about the fate of Meg Mucklebones, who suddenly rears up out a particularly foul stretch of swamp to attack our heroes. Rejecting the “foul-tasting” fairies, she spies a tastier nugget in Jack (Tom Cruise), but he distracts her with lines like “Heavenly angels must envy your beauty”—which, ugh. (Her response, “What a fine meal you’ll make, be the rest of you as sweet as your tongue…” is some truly Hannibal-worthy repartee.) Playing on her vanity, Jack is able to dispatch Meg with his sword as she unleashes a hideous shriek and turns into a swampy nightmare-smoothie. The whole scene is nasty, brutish, and short at only about two and a half minutes long, but it’s a testament to the performance of Robert Picardo that it’s really stuck with me over the years. In just a few minutes we get a villain who is ravenous, ruthless, and vain but also sassy and surprisingly flirty, and then boom—nothing left but a slime-geyser: R.I.P. Meg Mucklebones may be a terrifying flesh-hungry, filth-covered, smack-talking predator, but she’s got personality, and part of me wouldn’t mind her taking a bite out of smirky golden boy Jack on her way out.
—Bridget McGovern, Managing Editor of Tor.com
Mommy Fortuna embraces her death — The Last Unicorn
I have loved The Last Unicorn (both book and movie) for as long as I can remember, but I’d be lying if I said that Mommy Fortuna and her violent end didn’t haunt my dreams for years. Voiced by Angela Lansbury, Mommy Fortuna is a threadbare witch dragging her “Midnight Carnival,” a collection of fabulous and mythical beasts from town to town. In reality, these attractions are simply sad, caged animals under an enchantment, with two exceptions: the Unicorn, and the Harpy, who are both very real, immortal, and desperate for freedom. With the help of Schmendrick the magician, the Unicorn escapes and frees all of her fellow creatures, including the Harpy, who immediately seeks to destroy the woman who has kept her caged for so long. Rather than running, Mommy Fortuna cackles madly, opening her arms to the Harpy’s attack from above, content in the knowledge that she’ll live on in the memory of an immortal being as the one who captured her. It’s chilling—the shrieking, and the mad laughter and then silence, as the Unicorn notes, “She chose her death long ago. It was the fate she wanted.” SO DARK. I want to give six-year-old me a hug now.
—Bridget
THE HAND — The Grudge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyNN0DKkq4s
I saw The Grudge (2004, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar [a queen]) when I was 7 and I refused to shower without a parent present afterwards because of this scene, and I still think of it as one of the scariest movies even though I haven’t seen it since I was 7.
—Giselle Gonzalez, Publicity Assistant at Tor/Forge/Tor Teen/Starscape
THE HAND — Titanic
Growing up, Friday nights were sacred to me. Like most children, I resented the healthful nature of the lovingly prepared home cooked meals my mother made for us every other night—but on Fridays, my mother needed a break, and a way to occupy her two rambunctious daughters and her equally rambunctious husband—so it was dirty, delicious New York street pizza for dinner, and a selection of action movies curated by my father. Nicholas Cage and Harrison Ford were my idols, and there was no higher power in my home than James Bond. I was about 8 years old at the time Titanic came out, and my father desperately wanted to see it, so he bought a 2-VHS bootleg from a vendor outside our subway station, and brought it home for Friday movie night. Naturally, I thought this was going to be a movie about a giant boat getting into a fight with an iceberg. It was sure to be an absolutely epic buffet of kicks, punches, and high stakes world-saving. I shoved everyone’s discarded pizza crusts into my small mouth while dad fiddled with the VHS player and my mom yelled at him in French: “you’re going to scare the little one! So many people die! You can’t make her watch this!” Around a mouthful of greasy carbohydrates, hopped up on underage bravado, I said “You can’t stop me!”
My dad was inordinately pleased with me, and my mother threw her hands up in surrender and left. We started the movie. It seemed like a bit of a long set up, but that boat was ENORMOUS—I was willing to believe there would be some kind of epic showdown. Soon though, my interest in the romance between Jack and Rose started to wane—but the petty stubbornness was strong in me even at that age. I couldn’t prove my mom right. So I sat and watched. The living room was in the center of our house, and my mom would periodically walk by. Clearly, the benevolent gaze of James Bond was not upon me on this night; mom walked by just as I had my eyes covered, and was peeking at the screen through my interlaced fingers. “I TOLD YOU SHE WAS TOO YOUNG! THE POOR GIRL IS TRAUMATIZED!”
My household was not prudish about the human body, which is important to note. Dad rolled his eyes and gestured expansively at the TV screen. “She’s being ridiculous.” Mom looked at the screen and saw that Rose and Jack were locked in a sweaty, carnal embrace, in the backseat of a car. They were naked. I knew they were having sex—I just didn’t fully understand what that entailed. This was in fact the closest I’d ever come to understanding what sex was—and it terrified me, because all I could think about was…The Hand. Jack or Rose, in the throes of titanic passion, slaps a hand against the inside of the backseat car window—now fully fogged up—and drags it down the pane of glass, leaving a smeared handprint. Like in a zombie movie. In that moment, I truly thought that the “little death” was actually no different from…actual death. Of course, I absolutely never think about that anymore, and you’ll be happy to know that I grew into a normal and well-adjusted person.
—Caroline Perny, Publicity Manager at Tor Books
AAAAAHHHHHHH LEECHES!!! — Rambo: First Blood Part II
The first place I ever lived in the US was a cramped grad student apartment. My parents were new immigrants, still wide-eyed and figuring out the edges of a new country, working long hours and decompressing by watching American movies late at night. The place wasn’t big enough for me to have my own room, so I’d pretend to turn around on the couch and fall asleep while sneakily watching entirely inappropriate media. (This clearly turned out fine, and I am very normal and well-adjusted.) The first movie I ever remember seeing was Rambo, at age five. My parents dutifully worked through the sequels too, and I still have frozen in my brain a scene where Rambo is strung up in a muddy pond about to be interrogated by villains who looked very much like us (no time to unpack that one here). My mother, normally quiet and reserved, always on my case about being less of a chaotic little gremlin, just deadpanned, “the leeches will get him.” I didn’t really know what a leech was, in Chinese or English, but this focused my tiny brain into a pinpoint of dread. Get him? What was going to get him? I was also supposed to be asleep, and couldn’t ask any follow-up questions without snitching on myself, so I just laid there, curled up like a shrimp, dreaming of leeches. You see, my mother came of age during the Cultural Revolution, and she did her government-ordained time working rice paddies in the countryside, a city girl figuring what lurked in country waters. The idea—not the reality—of leeches terrified me for years growing up (even after I figured what they were), but now, sometimes I’ll look at an action hero in a summer movie—all muscles and a very specific brand of masculinity—shrug, and think, whatever, the leeches will get him.
—Ruoxi Chen, Associate Editor at Tordotcom Publishing
Child’s Play (The Whole Damn Thing)
I have been scarred by plenty of viewing experiences, some more lasting than others. An early childhood showing of Arachnaphobia? Not a great idea. The opening scene of The Nightmare Before Christmas? Terrifying in the moment, but something I was over very quickly. (There’s a story there, about how my parents assumed it was safe because I’d adored Jurassic Park, and obviously that was more scary because it was more real. Reader, I posit to you that my child brain understood full well that dinosaurs were extinct and thus nowhere in my room at night, but all the terrors that sang “This is Halloween” definitely were, so how did my parents miss that crucial difference?)
But the truly warping experience of my life came at the hands of the wrong babysitter. When I was roughly four years old, my parents would sometimes ask our next-door neighbor to look after me at night. (They were musicians, and often worked in the same band, so nighttime babysitters were essential.) This neighbor was a divorced mother with an eight-year-old daughter, who found me quite irritating for being smaller, I think. One night, the neighbor got called off to work last-minute and her ex-husband stepped in to take care of us. I’d never met the guy before, but he came with movies from Blockbuster. Before he put the tape into the VCR, I recall with perfect clarity asking him “Is it scary?” And he looked me, a four-year-old child, in the face and said “No.”
However hilarious the movie might be to a full grown adult, Child’s Play is confined to the horror section of video store because it is a horror movie—but by the time I realized that I had been lied to, it was far too late. I asked if we could stop the film, but his daughter was enjoying it, so their solution was to tell me I should go to sleep on my own. Which is not what you tell a four-year-old you’ve just traumatized. So I watched the entirety of Child’s Play at age four, and it messed me up for years. I had to sleep with closets open, I would lie awake each night convinced I was about to be murdered by an angry doll. A few years ago at NYCC, a couple dressed their toddler up as Chucky for the film’s anniversary panel, and I am entirely serious when I say that these people are lucky that I didn’t dropkick their child on reflex. Moral of the story is DO NOT DO EVER DO THIS.
—Emmet Asher-Perrin, News & Entertainment Editor at Tor.com
THAT GODDAMN CLIFF SCENE — Mac & Me
This is dumb, but the famous clip from Mac & Me was actually a traumatizing moment when I first saw the movie. (In…daycare? I want to say? They also showed us the first Batman movie. And some of the kids stole my Mickey Mouse underwear and the whole class had to apologize to me and oh god I’m r e m E M b E R I n G)
Anyway, I had a very similar high-cliffed pond in my neighborhood and watching, uh, Me, get inexorably pulled into it from a great height repeatedly plucked at that shaky twang you get in your stomach when you’re on a precipice and anything can happen.
Everything goes wrong so fast. His speed is too much. His wheel-lock breaks. He’s falling from too high. He’s drowning. No one knows where he went. A slimy puppet is stalking him. I miss my parents.
Of course, now the moment is hilarious, but it was traumatizing at the time. I never actually finished the movie until Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed on it in its latest Netflix season and apparently I saved myself further trauma because wow is it not afraid to continually torture its characters. But time heals. And Paul Rudd helps.
The nuclear dream from Terminator 2 is still too much, though.
—Chris Lough, Director of Tor.com
We’ve shared our most traumatic moments, but how about you, gentle readers? Gather around and tell us about the movies and television moments that haunt your dreams!
Originally published in September 2020.
When I was 7 or 8 my parents took me along when they went to see Papillion. There’s a scene where a prisoner is guillotined…
The breaking of the fourth wall in “The Neverending Story” isn’t the traumatising part of the film, it’s the existential crisis part of the film.
The traumatising bit is, and forever will be, Artax.
The scenes from Dumbo when, after defending her child from several human brats, Dumbo’s mother is locked away from Dumbo. That scene alternately make me cry and very angry.
I believe the word you’re looking for is “large”, unless you’re intimating that Joe Young is a French barley merchant.
@@.-@: Hm…I suspect “lorge” was being used in terms of internet speak, here (example: smol vs. lorge :)
The Wheelers and the Hall of Heads from “Return to Oz” (although you might as well just include the entire film, everything about it is a nightmare).
E.T. scaring Elliott in the cornfield (I firmly believe this led to my love of scary movies, but my god was I too young to see that at the time).
The brick house sinking into the mud with the kids inside in “The Secret of NIHM”.
Lois basically being crushed to death in the earthquake in “Superman”.
The death of the changling in the swamp in “Krull” (seriously, I stopped watching and didn’t actually finish the movie until I was much older).
The attack of the horrific giant spiders and their dripping, three-fanged mouths in the Ewok movie “Caravan of Courage”.
I’m sure I could go on and on, but need to go watch something funny now…
My parents thought Cabaret was an appropriate movie for children. (Also Last Tango in Paris, but we were at the drive-in and slept through it). Most of the horror slips past a child’s eyes, but when the dog was killed!!
My sister is still traumatized by the moment in Silent Running when a habitat was destroyed, and the bunnies all died!
I was a sensitive child and scared of a lot of things, but here are three examples I remember. I saw these in the cinema, and then never again, except the last one:
Toy Story. The kid operating on his toys terrified me.
101 Dalmations (live action). I’m not a fan of that Home Alone-style torture-porn for children, but the worst scene was Cruella falling into the bucket of honey or oil or whatever that was, because little me was convinced she couldn’t breathe.
Hunchback of Notre Dame. The scene where the Feast of Fools gets out of hand and the crowd turns on Quasimodo was too much for me. I saw the movie again as an adult, that scene still makes my chest tight and head light.
Seeing the Ray Harrihausen Jason and he Argonauts in the theater at about 7. When the giant statue got up off the tomb I had to leave the theater.
Sleeping Beauty the scene where the wicked queen passes the skeleton reaching through the bars for the jug placed just out of reach. Gave me nightmares for years.
The salt monster in first season Star Trek. I was 10 and I was afraid of that thing jumping out of the dark for years.
@9, God, that salt monster. There was also an episode where flat things that looked like fake vomit hung in doorways and dropped on people that made me check every door frame carefully for days afterward.
At about age 10 I saw Trilogy of Terror with Karen Black battling a possessed fetish doll and to this day am very reluctant to walk through dark living rooms.
Seeing two things traumatized me as a child. One was Bambi. The famous scene where Bambi’s mother is killed. It just punches you in the gut. The second is even worse, as it was real. A Jane Goodall special on TV where she follows wild dogs in Africa. It was totally traumatizing seeing one of the weaker dogs picked on, starved, etc by the pack while she didn’t do a damned thing to help the poor thing as it was dying. I’ve hated Goodall to this day because of that show. Probably not fair of me, but I can’t watch anything with her.
As I was already an adult when The Neverending Story came out, the most traumatizing thing about it was how crushingly, terribly, disappointingly bad it was. I loved the book, and I dragged several friends who were indifferent at best to see the movie, and they made fun of me for years over wasting their time like that. It’s the one ’80s movie that I pray they’ll go back to the drawing board and remake the right way.
Adric’s death in Earthshock was one. I couldn’t believe he was dead!
There was another one that I think was Doctor Who, but I’ve never found it again. One character is being hypnotized (maybe by the Master?) and the episode ends right after they fell under the spell. I never saw the next episode, and I would flash back to that scene in dreams for years. Still gives me the creeps. Any ideas?
Yeah, Pinocchio, I see I am not the only one thinking of Monstro!
The first movie my parents took my sister to see in a theater was Wizard of Oz (I forget why they were showing it) and they had to leave before the movie started because the lion in the beginning (in the MGM logo) was too scary.
My first traumatic moment I remember was Edward Scissorhands, after the fight on the tower where the bully falls to his death – I don’t think I expected to see a dead body and I guess it freaked me out. I think we also had to leave early.
Woman getting turned into a robot in Superman 3. Hello nightmares.
I don’t remember what episode, but there was an Alvin and the Chipmonks cartoon with a set of girl Chipmonks, and the plot of the episode had something to do with lobster monsters from the moon. For years after watching that (I might’ve been five when I watched it, and I was in high school before I stopped being scared), I tried to fall asleep as fast as I could at night so I would be sleeping and not feel it when the lobster monsters came to eat me.
As a child, I loved the animated Hobbit movie by Rankin Bass. So it was awesome when my parents got The Return of the King as well. (We also owned the Ralph Bakshi LotR, but it isn’t canon. Ever.) But skip to the end, and despite the spoiler warning at the beginning (“Frodo of the NINE Fingers” … ) I was shocked and sickened by Gollum’s absolute desperate last gamble. I hid my face harder than for any yucky kissing scene for years.
The last part of Gremlins (in the movie theater) had me on the edge of my seat.
Okay, maybe I’m confused, but I just watched that Neverending Story clip, and…the Empress does not look into the camera. She keeps to the same angle throughout, just slightly offset from the camera — presumably talking to Atreyu.
BrianDolan@13: Was it also a Fifth Doctor story? Possibly “Snakedance”? The BBC episode guide gives this as the ending for Part 1:
Ring any bells?
My big childhood fantasy movie trauma was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It was years before I managed to watch past the scene where Violet steals one little piece of gum and winds up the victim of body horror. I suspect this places me a generation older than most of the other people around.
Oh, you missed the eldritch horror that is Return to Oz. To this day, I am seriously disturbed not only by horrific electroshock therapy that they inflict on Dorothy, and but also – and nothing but nothing could have prepared me for – Mombi and the Hall of Heads. NOTHING.
(I am purposefully not mentioning the Wheelers. :shudder:)
My parents thought the first Gremlins movie was a cute kids movie with a cuddly little Gizmo, who I had as a toy for years as a kid. They apparently missed the rest of the marketing for the film and thought it’d be cure for me to see.
I was terrified of the actual gremlins and had nightmares for years afterward. I’m 41 and I don’t think I’ve seen that whole movie still.
For me;
1.When the wicked stepmother changes herself into the crone in ‘Snow White’.
2. The cybermen invade the moon in ‘Doctor Who’ and there’s this parasitic fungus which grows over someone’s face in real time. Nightmares for WEEKS. (I was 8 and hadn’t really understood yet about stop motion photography).
I’ll admit to being slightly baffled by the idea that Jaws, Titanic, and Rambo are “SFF”…
The WIzard of Oz- the flying monkeys absolutely terrified me!! The witch? meh. But those monkeys gave me nightmares.
So too, the Oompaloompas of the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Oh how I loved the book!! But those little orange men scared the poop outta little me! And worst of all was that my older sister loved the movie, so when it was on TV, we all had to watch it (the golden days of one TV for the whole family). And of course, I couldn’t admit how much it scared me, or else I’d be tortured by my sister with it.
Phantasm on Chiller Theater, first the creepy Tall Man, then his finger turns into demon fly!
My mom took me and my younger brother (8 and 6) Jurassic Park (the 1993 version) when it came out. As I remember it, I spent most of the film hiding behind my mom’s back with my fingers in my ears (it was probably only small bits, can’t imagine we wouldn’t have left otherwise). I had dinosaur-themed nightmares for years…
Ah, Don Bluth.
Even his “normal” drawings had that edge of creepiness.
But when he wanted to, say, send a dog to hell or give a Toaster a nightmare, look out.
Also, I think there may have been an entire article on this here, or somewhere, but that first episode of My Little Pony (with the dragons) traumatized a generation of little girls (including one of my own) — if you’d seen the later, harmless TV show and bought/rented the early episodes, you were in for a surprise.
Sardonicus @@@@@ 29
Ah yes! Evil Demon-Centaur Tirac and his Chariots of Midnight, pulled by harnessed dragons which were corrupted My Little Ponies, enslaved by his Rainbow of Corruption (or something). That definitely was appallingly dark for such a twee line of toys.
It’s like if the Evil Purple Pie-Man of Porcupine Peak was always after Strawberry Shortcake and her adorable trouble of patisserie-themed ragamuffins to enmesh them in human trafficking or something.
The Crawling Eye. I saw it on TV when I was 8 and it terrified me. Tentacles that tear off heads and frozen dead people that do it’s bidding? I had nightmares for months.
Not expecting “SFF we watched as children” to be so much “what we really shouldn’t have been allowed to watch”. Oh well.
@11 If you film wildlife, you don’t get involved with it. Non-interference Prime Directive. Unless relating with the critters is your main job. Anyway, most things eat other things which don’t want to be eaten. We do it, most of us, when we can.
@9 Don’t worry, the salt monster always looks exactly like your mother / father or your old girlfriend or boyfriend. Most of the guys in the episode get some dame as the salt monster, Lieutenant Uhura gets some guy.
The 1980 Flash Gordon movie. Flash and crew fly to Mongo, are quickly arrested and Flash almost immediately is put in a glass box where… that would be a twist so early in the film, but still creepy. Dr Zarkov weeping while his mind is erased (spoiler: he’s faking, could he not tell us that?) That bit where Flash and Prince Barin and that other guy take turns putting their hand into the thing where there lives the critter that stings your hand with its death sting.
Batman attacked by that shark.
@wiredog- The same movie traumatized me! a drive-in. I don’t remember the more appropriate for kids movie that was on before, but i sure remember the scene where he cut his knee and the guillotine!
Dumbo. It wasn’t just the fact that the mother got hauled away, it was that she was mute. All the other adult elephants, females all, could speak. They were cruel. Even as a child, the message that Disney was telling children, that women shouldn’t talk, wasn’t lost on me. And that both frightened and depressed me
Poltergeist had some pretty gnarly moments (especially the guy looking into a mirror and peeling his own face off) and I also have to give a shout out to the Flash Gordon tree stump scene and the Willy Wonka boat through the tunnel, but for me it’ll always be the 1980 Disney flick The Watcher in the Woods, most especially the scene where Jan falls into the river and is briefly trapped underwater beneath some tree branches.
(Now could we please get Watcher in the Woods on Blu-ray or on Disney+ in HD? Please?)
I dodged a bullet not watching the Neverending Story till I was an adult, but it was a close call. I was in preschool, and they got as far as the opening music but had technical difficulties and gave up. I was so relieved, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to be stuck watching this movie for all eternity.
In the early 1970s, I remember watching The Invasion of the Saucer Men on Chiller Theater on WPIX Channel 11 in NYC. That movie scared the hell out of me!
The Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang still gives me the creeps.
fuzzipueo @@@@@ 38
Holy shit, yes. Yes yes yes.
Oh wow. It’s been years and years since I saw the movie of The Neverending Story (which I saw before I read the book, and still loved after having read the book; all the disappointment for book/movie mismatch was, for me, reserved for the second movie completely botching any tentative relationship it may have had with the 2nd half of the book)… and I completely forgot about the 4th-wall breaking scene described here. Yes, yes, Artax’s death turned me into, simultaneously, a puddle of ugly-crying and the laughingstock of my so-called friends (who obviously had no HEARTS), but this moment? Yeah. Total uncanny shivers. Hard agree.
I mean, obviously, if you’re going to leave out the bit about the Old Man of Wandering Mountain and his Egg and his Book, you’re going to have to approach “Bastian realizes (or is forced to admit) that the people in the book he is reading know about him” in a different way. But I’d totally forgotten that was the way they did it. It’s characters and readers all the way down and that includes me! *wibble*
The other media experience I recall getting that shiver of They see me!!! over, was in Sandman: The Doll’s House, issue 10 or 11, when Rose is napping in the back of the car, overhearing Dream talking about how a new Vortex of Dreams has arisen, whatever that is, and, by the way, “She’s looking at us right now…” Brr! It hit especially hard because this was after I’d acquired the high-school nickname The Vortex (long-ish story) and had begun using it or variants thereof as my handle on proto-internet/usenet/BBS-type spaces. I slammed the book shut, as effectively as one can slam a comic book issue, and sat there breathing heavily and staring at a wall for a few a minutes. I later lent the issue to a friend, who reported that she out-and-out screamed when she got to that panel.
[edited because apparently I can’t get it through my head that I don’t have to bring my own HTML code to this party]
Two movies traumatized me. When I was really young, probably around the age of four, it was The Land Before Time. The thing was, I don’t really know what bothered me so badly about it. I know I was sad because his mom dies, but it wasn’t until the end of movie, when according to my mom, I would start crying and demand that we turn it off.
The second movie? Freaking Beetlejuice. And probably not for any of the reasons you would normally suspect either. Nope, my issue was that the couple in the film died, drowning in what looked like four feet of water. Let’s just say I still have major issues driving over bridges or around bodies of water.
@38/39 — Yes! And I didn’t catch it at the time, obviously, but the Child Catcher gets bonus points for being a really unfortunate ethnic stereotype.
Those of us who were little kids in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s will remember when “kiddie cartoon shows” on local TV meant old theatrical cartoons. Mixed in with the more kid-friendly stuff from the 1940’s like Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry, there would would be creepy, surreal stuff from the 1930’s. The ones that frightened me the most, I have since found out, were from a now-forgotten New York-based studio called Van Beuren, that shuttered in 1936. They almost always seemed to work in a gag or gags that involved characters opening a door or a chest, and a skeleton would come walking out and start dancing around, or chasing them, which frightened me more than anything else.
Most of Star Wars: A New Hope enthralled 8-year old me, but I had to cover my eyes for most of the trash compactor sequence.
I had to leave the theater during the destruction of Krypton in Superman: The Movie. Returned once that part was over. Lois getting buried alive disturbed me too but I got through that one.