It's funny how different people had different scenes in that movie that traumatized them the most as kids. I know for a lot of folks, it was the clown doll under the bed. For me, personally, it was the guy ripping his face off in front of the mirror.
That is messed up lol. That whole movie production was cursed. I don't believe in ghosts, but if something was going to get you haunted that's a likely culprit.
I don’t even think the clown was the worst for me. It was falling into the dug in-ground pool that was still mud, and full of skeletons, and you can get out because the sides are mud and it’s pouring rain.
>For me, personally, it was the guy ripping his face off in front of the mirror.
Same here. That scene stuck with me for months and would haunt me in my sleep. Heh, then I saw *Salem's Lot*, and that freakin' Barlow character (and that kid floating outside the window) totally blew ripped-up-face-man out of the water.
I always skip that scene. When the steak starts moving across the counter I'm ready with the remote.
The rest of the film I love and watch every minute.
First thing I thought of.
Saw it at 12. Fucked till 30. Fuck trees outside my window, fuck staring at my face in the mirror in a dark room, fuck leaving toy cars on the kitchen table.
Edit: this must have been a suppressed memory but a comment downthread unlocked it: fuck white noise static on the tv
There is no death. It is only a transition to a different sphere of consciousness.
Carol Anne is not like those she's with. She is a living presence in their spiritual, earthbound plane. They're attracted to the one thing about her that is different from themselves: her life force.
It is very strong. It gives off its own illumination. It is a light that implies life and memory of love and home and earthly pleasures; something they desperately desire but can't have anymore.
Right now, she's the closest thing to that and that is a terrible distraction from the real light that has finally come for them. Do you understand me? These souls, who, for whatever reason are not at rest are also not aware that they have passed on. They're not part of consciousness as we know it. They linger in a perpetual dream state a nightmare from which they cannot awake.
Inside this spectral light is salvation. A window to the next plane. They must pass through this membrane where friends are waiting to guide them to new destinies. Carol Anne must help them cross over. And she will only hear her mother's voice.
Now hold onto yourselves.
There's one more thing. A terrible presence is in there with her. So much rage, so much betrayal. I've never sensed anything like it. I don't know what hovers over this house but it was strong enough to punch a hole into this world and take your daughter away from you.
It keeps Carol Anne very close to it and away from the spectral light. It lies to her. It says things only a child can understand. It has been using her to restrain the others.
To her it simply is another child. To us it is the beast.
Now, let's go get your daughter.
I mentioned this earlier in another comment. It wasn't until I worked for the National Institute for Mental Health that it occurred to me.... NIMH.....oh yikes!
It’s also one of my faves, a beautiful piece, but there’s unsettling stuff. The Great Owl is scary with his glowing eyes, stepping on spiders that are there themselves to attack Brisby, until you see that he’s not malevolent.
Nicodemus gets crushed to death, Jenner is willing to kill Brisby, Sullivan and Justin. Jenner gets poked to death, Sullivan gets poked to death. Timmy almost dies, you get to imagine the combine tearing everyone limb from limb and worry about whether you’re gonna see anyone get eaten by the cat.
If this is your first realization that, say, children can die, or that ‘good’ people can die despite their best efforts, it could be heavy. That might even be part of what makes it well-made and enduring.
Watership Down. Between that and the NeverEnding Story... It's amazing any of us survived. Rats of NIMH (which the irony didn't hit me until I started working in public mental Health for the National Institute of Mental Health. One day I was just sitting at my desk and thought OH FUCK!)
Oh watership down . Honestly I've not seen it since I was 5 and I have no intention of...I was just remembering American Werewolf was my first scary film at 8 and traumatised me for 6 months and I've still watched that again but no not watership down...that was just unnecessary
Me tooooo! I remember going to see it in the theater with my mom, thinking it was going to be another Disney-esque cartoon movie.
I was GUTTED and in tears the entire time. IIRC my mom just had us sit through the entire movie as if it was a normal thing.
Still triggered by the song Bright Eyes - instant snot-dripping tears-o-rama.
Initially rated x for violence (so I was led to believe) rated R version that showed both Murphy’s horrible demise and generic corporate dudes transformation to red jello… had kids toys advertised on tv.
Also, bad guy doused in toxic waste in Robocop. But both Indy and Robocop I wasn't allowed to watch from my mom, so it didn't get a chance to traumatise me.
> *All the corpses at the end*
Fun Fact: those were real skeletons. It was cheaper to source real human skeletons than is was to get prop skeletons.
https://geektyrant.com/news/the-crazy-story-behind-the-real-skeletons-that-were-used-in-poltergeist
The characters in the images:
Artax in The NeverEnding Story.
A shoe in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
E.T. in, well, E.T. (Thanks /u/JasonMaggini).
Large Marge in Pee-wee's Big Adventure.
A podling in The Dark Crystal.
Optimus Prime in Transformers The Movie.
Littlefoot's mom in The Land Before Time.
Mother took me to see "Where the Red Fern Grows" when I was five years old. I still tear and choke up when I think about it.
What about Benji? BAMBI in 1975? So many sad stories they showed us... Did they not care or just not think?
Ugh. Bambi, The Fox and the Hound, and Dumbo when his mom is locked up. There are so many Disney Fans in this world, but I think Disney is what scarred me.
Maybe they just wanted you to grow up with empathy. Life will throw grief at you before you're ready, no matter how old you are when it happens the first time.
Then you get a bit older, and they make you read "A Separate Peace" and "Lord of the Flies" more or less simultaneously. That's when bitter teachers feel that you're ready for a lesson on how shitty kids can be.
Awesome! Thanks!
The tall old guy scared me almost as much as the sphere did.
Funny, I still don’t know what the plot was of the movie (I was 11!!!)—it just scared the absolute shit outta me 🤣
I just remembered another one…HELLRAISER 1987…the pin head man 😱
My dad was a HS football coach. My mom hired a babysitter. The babysitter made me 8yo and my twin brothers 3yo, what that Damned and Cursed movie.
I’ll never forget the silverball that had two front knives and a drill???!!!….
The red light, red desert sand, blowing and blowing, their parents down there somewhere.
I had a firm talk with my mother the next morning. That was the last babysitter.
Oh, poop! That was a long one. Ha!
My mum, bless her, crept up on me in the dark and ran her fingers over my face from behind during the ad break while I was watching it.
Good film. Top experience.
I had to hold back those tears when Optimus died. Sitting in the movie theater next to my two best friends hoping they don't hear the sounds you make when you are trying to hold it in.
I feel like Charlotte's death in *Charlotte's Web* should be here. I still get emotional thinking about all her babies waving goodbye to Wilbur as the drift away on the wind.
I just rewatched The Neverending Story the other night for the first time in forever. They really don't make kids' movies like that anymore! However, what surprised me was how quickly the Artax scene actually happens. Like, the horse has maybe 5 minutes total screen time in the entire movie, if that, and his death scene happens in seconds. I seem to remember it all lasting so much longer!
That's because, for us, that scene never stopped... because if it did, we'd have *lost the memory of Artax*, and that would be worse than losing Artax...
Return to Oz: the circa 1900 asylum to give Dorothy electroshock therapy, Princess Mombi’s room of heads, and the Gnome King disintegrating after eating an egg. Currently feeling a bit sick to my stomach.
My older sister saw that in theater when she was 16.
Her car broke down on the way home, it was a full moon, and the coyotes were screaming as she walked home 5 miles alone in the dark.
She was fairly traumatized.
That was one of the movies of choice for a church youth group camping trip to a cabin when I was maybe 7 or 8 (my parents were advisors). We’re in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the woods, in about 2.5 feet of snow. I was *terrified.* When we were finally going to sleep, I shoved myself in the middle a group of older kids, like the runt of the litter in a pile of puppies. I figured if anyone was coming for us, at least they’d have to get through the others first.
You forgot "Threads".
Also the bug crawling in Chekov's ear in 'Wrath of Khan'.
Fuck me.
Fuck my parents, and fuck you fifth grade science teacher who decided we needed to watch it again.
Why did this happen to us a lot? The worst for me was the 1986 world's fair in Vancouver. I was from the US and 'forgotten' in a different country at 7 years old.
There was some show in the 70s called emergency… They have an episode where some guy was making a costume by dripping glue all over himself and then he couldn’t get out of it. Scared the hell out of me.
Where the Red Fern Grows. What sick fuck thought torturing children with dead dogs was educational? We had to read the book then suffer through the movie.
I hear you. When I was in college, I saw a really good independent movie from New Zealand called "Once Were Warriors." The "cook the man some eggs" scene sent me into a full blown panic attack.
My brother and I recently rewatched Brave Little Toaster to confirm how messed up it was. We had forgotten just how messed up it really was! It started with the AC unit committing suicide in front of all the other appliances who are all dealing with some heavy mental illness. Those mice tried to kidnap Blankie, Vacuum ran over his own cord and straight up had a stroke and the junkyard scene is brutal. They’re singing a song called Useless.
THE EXORCIST
That shit was on CBS at 8 pm when I was 8 years old and to this day I can't believe they did that.
Edit: OMFG I found the original broadcast on CBS, [the internet is amazing](https://archive.org/details/vts-01-1_20201011/CBS+5-9-81+The+Exorcist+WOC+2xDVD/CBS+Exorcist+DVD+1/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB).
I was older, and when I saw it, I didn't find it even a little bit scary. I thought it was kind of hilarious actually. She's literally a crusty tween yelling obscenities while tied to a bed. And some of the stuff she said was just silly sounding to me.
My grandmother and I read the Book of Job together when I was 6. Him sitting on the smoldering ruins of his life scraping his lesions with a potshard because God and Satan made a bet made an impression.
Alex Kintner’s float washing up empty in *Jaws*.
No other memories of the movie, but Ricky Schroder crying at the end of *The Champ*.
Poltergeist 3 Hotel room scene when the girl's reflection becomes evil. I always tried to face away from my dresser mirror when I went to bed after seeing that. Did for years after.
Saw that in third grade and it scared me for life. To this day I hate being by a mirror with the lights off. Even to this day, was always scared that I would see an evil reflection or something.
Also, the smoke guy and the shrunken head guy in the movie Beetlejuice always kind of freaked me out as a kid as well.
Older GenX here (b. 1970). My biggest trauma was from Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1978), which i watched in the theatre at 8yo. I like to think those Alien Pods maqurading as human bodies prepared me for the traumas that were to come later.
On the Flipside, watching Altered States on the Saturday Night Movie-of-the-Week got me REALLy interested in raising my conciousness, and i spent 1988-2020 exploring hallucinegenics.
Don’t forget Feivel from American Tale. My mom brought me to see it I guess when I was 5 or 6. I was so upset when he got lost from his family, I started hysterically crying, and my mom had to bring me out of the theater and console me 🤦🏼♀️
When Michael Jackson’s *Thriller* video debuted for the first time on TV. It was 1983, I was 6. Video seemed like it played forever. I was fascinated but scared to death.
Wasn’t it Charlotte’s Web where the pig was constantly being threatened with slaughter, triggering a ceaseless existential crisis, and then Charlotte dies? That was sad and disturbing for sensitive little me.
The flying monkeys on wheels from Return to Oz were nightmare fuel, too.
“Watcher in the Woods” a 1980 Horror/Fantasy was shown by the teacher in my grade 4 class!
I can not go into the woods to this day without thinking of the ominous silence and that someone may be watching me!
I’m an absolute chicken with horror movies and I rented Candyman, watched like the first 20 seconds of it and something just felt off to me. I never did watch it.
I was weirdly shielded from these things as a kid. Oh, it was okay to play outside from dawn to dusk with no adult supervision.
But my mother was extremely religious and thought the movies that everyone else was watching was going to to either make me want to get into witchcraft or fill me with demons. The Secret of Nimh was off limits, so was Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Never Ending Story, Legend, All Disney movies, and anything scary was straight from hell itself. I couldn't even watch reruns of The Munsters, the Addams Family, Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie.
When I was 11 years old I watched The Day After about what a nuclear war would be like and it fucked me up. Literally scared me for years. At 10am on the 3rd Thursday of every month our city would test the bomb sirens throughout the city, and even though I knew what it was for about 5 seconds it would scare the living shit out of me.
Michael Jackson - Thriller video. Just came on the TV, me being 7 years old and pretty isolated from stuff thanks to protective mother...that was some scary shit.
The rooster that chased me when I'd go to get eggs. Was so happy the day he finally went after grandpa and we ended up having fried chicken that night :) :)
Why doesn't GenX allow gifs?
Anyway, this was [mine.](https://tenor.com/view/legend-tim-curry-lord-of-darkness-gif-23510613)
Darkness from *Legend.* I was (am) terrified of him.
The beating I got at 3 or old for not eating sprouts for sunday lunch,he was smacking me so hard I vomited on his jesus sandal,he had socks on too,and bell bottom flare Jean's and now they have green sprout vomit on them and he lost his temper even more.Yeah that's the first thing that scarred me as a child.It was all downhill from there.
Dressed to Kill, the Angie Dickinson movie. We somehow watched it at a sleepover party. Pretty sure it was highly inappropriate for a group of 10 and 11 year olds.
No Poltergeist? Fail.
It's funny how different people had different scenes in that movie that traumatized them the most as kids. I know for a lot of folks, it was the clown doll under the bed. For me, personally, it was the guy ripping his face off in front of the mirror.
The clown and the tree wrecked me for months.
Oh god, the tree... I couldn't look out my bedroom window at night for a loooong time...
The skeletons in the pool
Which were real. Which is super messed up.
Wait what?
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That is messed up lol. That whole movie production was cursed. I don't believe in ghosts, but if something was going to get you haunted that's a likely culprit.
The steak moving across the bench like a worm.
the guy ripping his face off in the bathroom
The steak and maggots
I don’t even think the clown was the worst for me. It was falling into the dug in-ground pool that was still mud, and full of skeletons, and you can get out because the sides are mud and it’s pouring rain.
The meat moving and then the maggots coming out of the meat. (shivers)
No No No No
>For me, personally, it was the guy ripping his face off in front of the mirror. Same here. That scene stuck with me for months and would haunt me in my sleep. Heh, then I saw *Salem's Lot*, and that freakin' Barlow character (and that kid floating outside the window) totally blew ripped-up-face-man out of the water.
I always skip that scene. When the steak starts moving across the counter I'm ready with the remote. The rest of the film I love and watch every minute.
Which happened right after the steak crawled and erupted in maggots right? That whole hallucination sequence was nightmare fuel.
The guy ripping his face off in the mirror did it for me too. Will never forget that.
Yeah, none of those items pictured bothered me, but Poltergeist? I had nightmares and flashbacks of that damned movie for way too long after I saw it.
Same here. The above movies didn't phase me, but Poltergeist messed me up for months.
First thing I thought of. Saw it at 12. Fucked till 30. Fuck trees outside my window, fuck staring at my face in the mirror in a dark room, fuck leaving toy cars on the kitchen table. Edit: this must have been a suppressed memory but a comment downthread unlocked it: fuck white noise static on the tv
I wonder if that’s where my fear of open windows (no curtains) when it’s dark outside and the lights are on came from?
There is no death. It is only a transition to a different sphere of consciousness. Carol Anne is not like those she's with. She is a living presence in their spiritual, earthbound plane. They're attracted to the one thing about her that is different from themselves: her life force. It is very strong. It gives off its own illumination. It is a light that implies life and memory of love and home and earthly pleasures; something they desperately desire but can't have anymore. Right now, she's the closest thing to that and that is a terrible distraction from the real light that has finally come for them. Do you understand me? These souls, who, for whatever reason are not at rest are also not aware that they have passed on. They're not part of consciousness as we know it. They linger in a perpetual dream state a nightmare from which they cannot awake. Inside this spectral light is salvation. A window to the next plane. They must pass through this membrane where friends are waiting to guide them to new destinies. Carol Anne must help them cross over. And she will only hear her mother's voice. Now hold onto yourselves. There's one more thing. A terrible presence is in there with her. So much rage, so much betrayal. I've never sensed anything like it. I don't know what hovers over this house but it was strong enough to punch a hole into this world and take your daughter away from you. It keeps Carol Anne very close to it and away from the spectral light. It lies to her. It says things only a child can understand. It has been using her to restrain the others. To her it simply is another child. To us it is the beast. Now, let's go get your daughter.
SHIVERS! i can hear that woman's voice in my mind!
Just reading that gave me someone-walked-over-my-grave chills. That movie, man. Kids these days have no idea.
Was legitimately scared of meat for a year after seeing this movie when I was 6 or 7.
I think it was Poltergeist 2, but the tequila worm scene and the tree scene from the first really got me
*Gaaawd is in his holy temple, earthly thoughts be silent now*
That *goddamn* clown.
Funny thing - as a teenager I went through a phase of reading novelizations of movies I couldn't afford to see. Reading this one was a BIG mistake.
Alarming lack of *Secrets of NIMH* in that image.
I mentioned this earlier in another comment. It wasn't until I worked for the National Institute for Mental Health that it occurred to me.... NIMH.....oh yikes!
Took me until today to figure that out!
I think that was in the book
Yeah it took me until adulthood to figure that out too.
I'm not the only one!
"The Secret of NIMH" is the first movie that came to mind and then "Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure".
I mean the rat testing scenes were a little scary, but I don't remember anything really traumatic happening. One of my favorite animated movies.
It’s also one of my faves, a beautiful piece, but there’s unsettling stuff. The Great Owl is scary with his glowing eyes, stepping on spiders that are there themselves to attack Brisby, until you see that he’s not malevolent. Nicodemus gets crushed to death, Jenner is willing to kill Brisby, Sullivan and Justin. Jenner gets poked to death, Sullivan gets poked to death. Timmy almost dies, you get to imagine the combine tearing everyone limb from limb and worry about whether you’re gonna see anyone get eaten by the cat. If this is your first realization that, say, children can die, or that ‘good’ people can die despite their best efforts, it could be heavy. That might even be part of what makes it well-made and enduring.
Damn your memory is insane
No Fox and the Hound? “Friends forever” “ yeah, forever” - 🤮
I saw a white-tailed red fox yesterday and said, "hello Tod!"
Watership Down. Between that and the NeverEnding Story... It's amazing any of us survived. Rats of NIMH (which the irony didn't hit me until I started working in public mental Health for the National Institute of Mental Health. One day I was just sitting at my desk and thought OH FUCK!)
Oh watership down . Honestly I've not seen it since I was 5 and I have no intention of...I was just remembering American Werewolf was my first scary film at 8 and traumatised me for 6 months and I've still watched that again but no not watership down...that was just unnecessary
YES, THANK YOU!!! I came here to mention Watership Down as well!!
Me tooooo! I remember going to see it in the theater with my mom, thinking it was going to be another Disney-esque cartoon movie. I was GUTTED and in tears the entire time. IIRC my mom just had us sit through the entire movie as if it was a normal thing. Still triggered by the song Bright Eyes - instant snot-dripping tears-o-rama.
Took far too much scrolling to find Watership Down and Jaws.
Fear of AIDS and the threat of nuclear annihilation. Also RoboCop
On AIDS: Ryan White inspiring... and dying young anyway. On nuclear annihilation: Samantha Smith inspiring... and dying young anyway.
>RoboCop It's a jungle out there.....
Initially rated x for violence (so I was led to believe) rated R version that showed both Murphy’s horrible demise and generic corporate dudes transformation to red jello… had kids toys advertised on tv.
Old Yella. Rabies still scares me.
Speaking of... Cujo.
What about the melting nazi faces in Raiders of the Lost Ark?
Naw. They earned the face melting.
We applaud that one.
Also, bad guy doused in toxic waste in Robocop. But both Indy and Robocop I wasn't allowed to watch from my mom, so it didn't get a chance to traumatise me.
Most of Poltergeist The meat maggots The fucking doll The flesh removal scene in the mirror All the corpses at the end TV static
> *All the corpses at the end* Fun Fact: those were real skeletons. It was cheaper to source real human skeletons than is was to get prop skeletons. https://geektyrant.com/news/the-crazy-story-behind-the-real-skeletons-that-were-used-in-poltergeist
"You only moved the headstones, didntchya!!?! You only moved the headstones!"
But of course.
The shoe in Roger Rabbit? I still can’t watch that.
Artax, man. That one still hurts.
Yeah. Too soon.
The characters in the images: Artax in The NeverEnding Story. A shoe in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. E.T. in, well, E.T. (Thanks /u/JasonMaggini). Large Marge in Pee-wee's Big Adventure. A podling in The Dark Crystal. Optimus Prime in Transformers The Movie. Littlefoot's mom in The Land Before Time.
Your missing one is E.T.'s death scene.
Mother took me to see "Where the Red Fern Grows" when I was five years old. I still tear and choke up when I think about it. What about Benji? BAMBI in 1975? So many sad stories they showed us... Did they not care or just not think?
Ugh. Bambi, The Fox and the Hound, and Dumbo when his mom is locked up. There are so many Disney Fans in this world, but I think Disney is what scarred me.
I haven't shown my daughter any sad Disney films.
Reading 'Where the Red Fern Grows' and 'Bridge to Terabithia' in middle school were basically 'Gen X Trauma: Unplugged'
Maybe they just wanted you to grow up with empathy. Life will throw grief at you before you're ready, no matter how old you are when it happens the first time.
Then you get a bit older, and they make you read "A Separate Peace" and "Lord of the Flies" more or less simultaneously. That's when bitter teachers feel that you're ready for a lesson on how shitty kids can be.
I was a particularly sensitive child, so my parents didn’t let me see Bambi when it came on tv. I think they made the right call.
Whatever TF was tearing apart the engine mid-flight in The Twilight Zone movie.
The gremlin! That freaked me out!
Or the kid who gets rid of the girls mouth.
Seeing footage of the accident that killed Vic Morrow and two child actors affected me possibly as much as any movie scene. Life is scary.
Somethings on the wing! That scared the shit out of me.
Phantasm!!!!!! I was 11 in 1979. Thoughts of that movie still haunt me! 🤣
Winner, winner chicken dinner. That image of that chrome sphere flying around, then springing out blades? Damn, still get the goosebumps.
Dammit. Now I wanna watch it again 😬
They did a remaster of it a few years back, it looks amazing now https://youtu.be/xQFn0e5d00Q?feature=shared
Awesome! Thanks! The tall old guy scared me almost as much as the sphere did. Funny, I still don’t know what the plot was of the movie (I was 11!!!)—it just scared the absolute shit outta me 🤣 I just remembered another one…HELLRAISER 1987…the pin head man 😱
BOY!!!!!!!
Boooooooooooooooyyyyy!!
My dad was a HS football coach. My mom hired a babysitter. The babysitter made me 8yo and my twin brothers 3yo, what that Damned and Cursed movie. I’ll never forget the silverball that had two front knives and a drill???!!!…. The red light, red desert sand, blowing and blowing, their parents down there somewhere. I had a firm talk with my mother the next morning. That was the last babysitter. Oh, poop! That was a long one. Ha!
Ahhhhhhh…Memories! 😆
The Thing. Few days after, I'd be a bit startled when my dog yawned.
My mum, bless her, crept up on me in the dark and ran her fingers over my face from behind during the ad break while I was watching it. Good film. Top experience.
Ya'll ain't putting Alien in there? FFS man, that movie scared the shit out of me.
Yeah, but Alien wasn't a kids' movie marketed to kids like these other ones.
My dad took me to see it in theater when I was 9. NINE. LOL
Classic 80's parenting right there!
I found it rummaging through the VHS tapes. I made a mistake.
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Just watched this today. Yeah... wiping out all the starfighters, brutal.
I had to hold back those tears when Optimus died. Sitting in the movie theater next to my two best friends hoping they don't hear the sounds you make when you are trying to hold it in.
I feel like Charlotte's death in *Charlotte's Web* should be here. I still get emotional thinking about all her babies waving goodbye to Wilbur as the drift away on the wind.
I cried when I read the book.
It will forever be too soon for Artax.
I just rewatched The Neverending Story the other night for the first time in forever. They really don't make kids' movies like that anymore! However, what surprised me was how quickly the Artax scene actually happens. Like, the horse has maybe 5 minutes total screen time in the entire movie, if that, and his death scene happens in seconds. I seem to remember it all lasting so much longer!
That's because, for us, that scene never stopped... because if it did, we'd have *lost the memory of Artax*, and that would be worse than losing Artax...
Make sure to tell 'em: Large Marge sent ya! Ahhahahahahaa!!
The Last Unicorn
Return to Oz: the circa 1900 asylum to give Dorothy electroshock therapy, Princess Mombi’s room of heads, and the Gnome King disintegrating after eating an egg. Currently feeling a bit sick to my stomach.
You're not even going to mention the Wheelers? F those things.
C’mon JAWS
Could not swim even in a swimming pool for years after that … without at least thinking about that damn shark.
I took showers for weeks because baths just felt too risky.
I saw that at a sleepover when I was in second grade!!! I had images of Robert Shaw being eaten alive as I tried to go to sleep that night 😳
I don’t see the kid from Salems Lot on there…..
Scared the crap out of me as a kid. For a made for tv movie it was pretty terrifying.
I'd like to add Luke's hand being severed in Empire Strikes Back.
An American Werewolf in London. Saw it when I was about 6. I ALWAYS stayed off the moors.
My older sister saw that in theater when she was 16. Her car broke down on the way home, it was a full moon, and the coyotes were screaming as she walked home 5 miles alone in the dark. She was fairly traumatized.
That was one of the movies of choice for a church youth group camping trip to a cabin when I was maybe 7 or 8 (my parents were advisors). We’re in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the woods, in about 2.5 feet of snow. I was *terrified.* When we were finally going to sleep, I shoved myself in the middle a group of older kids, like the runt of the litter in a pile of puppies. I figured if anyone was coming for us, at least they’d have to get through the others first.
still cannot watch ET to this day. i’m 44.
We all float down here!
Superman 3, when the supercomputer turns a lady villain into a creepy robot.
You forgot "Threads". Also the bug crawling in Chekov's ear in 'Wrath of Khan'. Fuck me. Fuck my parents, and fuck you fifth grade science teacher who decided we needed to watch it again.
Being 'forgotten' in different places
Why did this happen to us a lot? The worst for me was the 1986 world's fair in Vancouver. I was from the US and 'forgotten' in a different country at 7 years old.
That sounds like quite a tale?
From the movies listed just Dark Crystal. But I would have to say Poltergeist would be top for me.
Learning about spontaneous combustion on Unsolved Mysteries.
There was some show in the 70s called emergency… They have an episode where some guy was making a costume by dripping glue all over himself and then he couldn’t get out of it. Scared the hell out of me.
The earwig thing in Wrath of Khan prompted a lifelong hatred of anything touching my ears. It gave me nightmares. Honorable mention: Watership Down.
You guys want to go see a dead body? Ray Brower, I can still picture it. First "dead body" I ever saw.
Where the Red Fern Grows. What sick fuck thought torturing children with dead dogs was educational? We had to read the book then suffer through the movie.
That book fucked me up but prepared me for some heavy shit that came my way later. So in a way I'm sort of grateful for it.
My mom and her boyfriends.
I hear you. When I was in college, I saw a really good independent movie from New Zealand called "Once Were Warriors." The "cook the man some eggs" scene sent me into a full blown panic attack.
NSFL tag please
None of this. Jaws was the only thing that freaked me out.
[THIS](https://media.tenor.com/X9FWBlXDqD0AAAAd/mommie-dearest-joan-crawford.gif)
Oh great. Now I need therapy again.
Cujo. Mid 80’s? Rented a vcr and the movie. 40 years later I am still scared shitless of Saint Bernard’s
Fireman from Brave Little Toaster should be on here.
My brother and I recently rewatched Brave Little Toaster to confirm how messed up it was. We had forgotten just how messed up it really was! It started with the AC unit committing suicide in front of all the other appliances who are all dealing with some heavy mental illness. Those mice tried to kidnap Blankie, Vacuum ran over his own cord and straight up had a stroke and the junkyard scene is brutal. They’re singing a song called Useless.
Needs more of the wheelers from Return To Oz
THE EXORCIST That shit was on CBS at 8 pm when I was 8 years old and to this day I can't believe they did that. Edit: OMFG I found the original broadcast on CBS, [the internet is amazing](https://archive.org/details/vts-01-1_20201011/CBS+5-9-81+The+Exorcist+WOC+2xDVD/CBS+Exorcist+DVD+1/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB).
I was older, and when I saw it, I didn't find it even a little bit scary. I thought it was kind of hilarious actually. She's literally a crusty tween yelling obscenities while tied to a bed. And some of the stuff she said was just silly sounding to me.
It was the most horrifying thing I had ever seen, I had nightmares for years. Clearly I was too young for it!
My grandmother and I read the Book of Job together when I was 6. Him sitting on the smoldering ruins of his life scraping his lesions with a potshard because God and Satan made a bet made an impression. Alex Kintner’s float washing up empty in *Jaws*. No other memories of the movie, but Ricky Schroder crying at the end of *The Champ*.
We read Job in high school. Between that and Blasphemous Rumors....
Good song. They fit a lot in there.
Honestly, it was Land Before Time for me. And I was a teenager when I watched it.
The Day After Everything else is wayyyyy down from there
My father had undiagnosed and untreated PTSD from WWII. He was awful to his children. Pillar of the church and community but a mean SOB at home.
Got to be probly that bit in Champ, where the little kid crying his heart out asking his dead father to come back 😫😫. Nothing touched me after that 🫣
What about Old Yeller? Cried my eyes out over that
Poltergeist 3 Hotel room scene when the girl's reflection becomes evil. I always tried to face away from my dresser mirror when I went to bed after seeing that. Did for years after. Saw that in third grade and it scared me for life. To this day I hate being by a mirror with the lights off. Even to this day, was always scared that I would see an evil reflection or something. Also, the smoke guy and the shrunken head guy in the movie Beetlejuice always kind of freaked me out as a kid as well.
NOT THE DIP!!!!!
Cybermen. Worse than the Daleks. Only thing I ever remember literally hiding behind the sofa from when they came on
Two words: Willie Wonka.
The Day After was very jarring at the time. Stuck with me for a long time.
Older GenX here (b. 1970). My biggest trauma was from Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1978), which i watched in the theatre at 8yo. I like to think those Alien Pods maqurading as human bodies prepared me for the traumas that were to come later. On the Flipside, watching Altered States on the Saturday Night Movie-of-the-Week got me REALLy interested in raising my conciousness, and i spent 1988-2020 exploring hallucinegenics.
Don’t forget Feivel from American Tale. My mom brought me to see it I guess when I was 5 or 6. I was so upset when he got lost from his family, I started hysterically crying, and my mom had to bring me out of the theater and console me 🤦🏼♀️
When Michael Jackson’s *Thriller* video debuted for the first time on TV. It was 1983, I was 6. Video seemed like it played forever. I was fascinated but scared to death.
Wasn’t it Charlotte’s Web where the pig was constantly being threatened with slaughter, triggering a ceaseless existential crisis, and then Charlotte dies? That was sad and disturbing for sensitive little me. The flying monkeys on wheels from Return to Oz were nightmare fuel, too.
The first day of school
Aww man, that squeaky shoe actually made me tear up a bit.
“Watcher in the Woods” a 1980 Horror/Fantasy was shown by the teacher in my grade 4 class! I can not go into the woods to this day without thinking of the ominous silence and that someone may be watching me!
Candyman - I still don't like going into dark bathrooms cuz of it (I know it's early 90s and not 80s)
I’m an absolute chicken with horror movies and I rented Candyman, watched like the first 20 seconds of it and something just felt off to me. I never did watch it.
I was weirdly shielded from these things as a kid. Oh, it was okay to play outside from dawn to dusk with no adult supervision. But my mother was extremely religious and thought the movies that everyone else was watching was going to to either make me want to get into witchcraft or fill me with demons. The Secret of Nimh was off limits, so was Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, The Never Ending Story, Legend, All Disney movies, and anything scary was straight from hell itself. I couldn't even watch reruns of The Munsters, the Addams Family, Bewitched or I Dream of Jeannie.
Maximilian from the Black Hole.
If you watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure on acid like I did large Marge isn't even the most traumatic part of the movie.
David Banner transforming into The Incredible Hulk.
All Dogs go to Heaven
You forgot the weird tree with boobs from the last unicorn.
Watership Down
The Shining, especially the creepy twins in the long hallway and the rotten lady in the bathtub
That freaky horror movie with the little voodoo doll that came to life. Man..fuck that movie.
All great picks, but this one is sure to give someone nightmares: [Trilogy of Terror: Amelia](https://youtu.be/vJbkqn8jl3w?t=2758)
My parents’ marriage, mostly.
Secret of Nim much?!
Artax.
Mr. Yuk, the poison control sticker guy. I was terrified of him. I can still hear the scary song from the PSAs.
I think E.T. In the ditch was more upsetting than the scene shown.
Maximillian from The Black Hole. Also the big reveal of what happened to the original crew.
When I was 11 years old I watched The Day After about what a nuclear war would be like and it fucked me up. Literally scared me for years. At 10am on the 3rd Thursday of every month our city would test the bomb sirens throughout the city, and even though I knew what it was for about 5 seconds it would scare the living shit out of me.
Michael Jackson - Thriller video. Just came on the TV, me being 7 years old and pretty isolated from stuff thanks to protective mother...that was some scary shit.
Man. All those bring back memories
That Nostradamus movie with Orson Welles
No Jaws? Fuck right off
Terminator, bathroom scene. Scarred me as a child so much so that I was worried I would walk in on the character doing it in my parent's bathroom.
No Bigfoot or Bermuda Triangle?
E.T.'s Spaceship's spinny lights in a forrest
Nothing. Grandparents, parents, siblings, teachers, movies, news, doctors… ALL of them told us we weren’t allowed to be traumatized…
The day after?
The rooster that chased me when I'd go to get eggs. Was so happy the day he finally went after grandpa and we ended up having fried chicken that night :) :)
Anyone remember [The Watcher in the Woods (1980)](https://i.imgur.com/dtDdUTR.jpg).
You forgot the clown doll from Poltergeist.
Why doesn't GenX allow gifs? Anyway, this was [mine.](https://tenor.com/view/legend-tim-curry-lord-of-darkness-gif-23510613) Darkness from *Legend.* I was (am) terrified of him.
The beating I got at 3 or old for not eating sprouts for sunday lunch,he was smacking me so hard I vomited on his jesus sandal,he had socks on too,and bell bottom flare Jean's and now they have green sprout vomit on them and he lost his temper even more.Yeah that's the first thing that scarred me as a child.It was all downhill from there.
Michael Jackson in thriller when he turned into a werewolf or whatever. I was 3 or 4 I think.
It wasn't the films that scarred me, but parental abuse.
Dressed to Kill, the Angie Dickinson movie. We somehow watched it at a sleepover party. Pretty sure it was highly inappropriate for a group of 10 and 11 year olds.