Films that freaked you out as a kid

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T-2, and Alien, then Aliens, my dad didn´t allow me to watch Predator. I remember there was a time when I was worried some Terminator would come searching for me or that the Aliens would invade the Earth. In the case of the Aliens I concluded that I was to lazy to scape them anyway. Ah, awful!

The beginning of A Goofy Movie gave me nightmares. seriously, man. he starts laughing and then....gah...

Poltergeist. Had nightmares for six months solid after seeing the scene with the guy in front of the bathroom mirror at age 6.


M.

The Truman Show with Jim Carrey

-The Fly- (1958) version with Vincent Price and Al Hedison. That very end where the fly-human combination is about to be devoured by a spider. Hellllpppp meeee! Helllpppp meeeeeee!

Brrr.

ruveyn

Arachnophobia or however you spell it, and later I had a fear of spiders, especially big ones!

Curse you Spielberg!

Oh man, this is one of my hot buttons. I got taken to all kinds of inappropriate movies when I was a kid and they would leave me terrified for months, sometimes years. "The Other" and "Steppenwolf" were two that were especially bad and "Jaws" haunts me to this day. I was petrified with fear by it... I was literally afraid to use the damn toilet.

My son seems much tougher than I was, thank goodness, perhaps because he has such a logical brain. Except for a period when he was younger of being afraid of imaginary dogs, he doesn't seem bothered by things he knows aren't real.

When I first saw Jaws it really scared me. I thought the people who had been attacked and eaten in the film had in fact been attacked and eaten. Which is interesting to note that when I watched Jurassic Park that didn't affect me.

When I watched The Ring (out of no choice, if I did I would not have watched) in german class in school, afterwards I was very afraid. Now it's not so bad but I still wouldn't watch it.

There are even some Disney films in which they scared me.

I was freaked out by Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Now, these days, I love Gene Wilder in it and think the little bleeps were asking for it. But as a kid, I didn't really get what they had done wrong (being a rather wild and misguided thing myself) and the kid getting stuck in the tube was just horrifying. I still hate the part where Willy Wonka yells at the good kid. It always struck me as totally unprovoked and nasty. I know, it was supposed to be a test, I don't care. It was a bad call.

The films I remember haunting me the most were more obscure things. Disney did some troubling kid movies back in the day, let's face it, and even though there have always been different levels in kids' films... those more suitable for older kids, some for younger... parents back then seemed to think kids' movies were kids' movies. So I would be sitting with my older siblings while they watched little girl ghosts telling live boys to find their bones in the well (Child of Glass), or alien kids running from scary mean adults (Escape to Witch Mountain) and a lot of other silly things that a smaller kid wouldn't understand. Watership Down was another kids' movie that kids shouldn't have seen. The rabbit caught in the snare has provided me with a mental image I never forgot.

Plus, I had teenaged brothers and so pretty much any movie or show was watched by all. So I grew up watching M*A*S*H and All in the Family, tv specials and kung fu shows and made for tv movies and mini-series' like Shogun. I remember one movie about a poor family, The Dollmaker, with Jane Fonda. There's a scene where a little girl, sitting under a still train car at the railroad yard, has her legs cut off when another train bangs into the one she's under... of course she dies. And another movie we saw was just one long tale of misery... all these things seem to have little girls getting slaughtered! Carried off by indians, catching fire after being stupid and jumping over the campfire... ugh. My family was not really discriminating. The war movies left little impression, the samurai films, no big deal, M*A*S*H taught me some things I didn't need to know yet... but I remember vividly three little blond girls (which is what I was) dying horribly (or disappearing). And I used to have nightmares about being lost and alone, no one knowing what had happened to me.

What are people thinking?

I've never liked the older Disney films. They always feel like there's something not quite right about what's going on. Even now I really hate the end of ET, with all the government dudes and that. I won't watch it

True, what was considered kids stuff then was a bit odd. I remember my mom would have those ABC movies(s) of the week on, killer bees, devil stuff, the one called "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark" stuck in my mind for a long time.

That one scene in muppet christmas carol where that face comes out of the door knocker used to scare the s**t out of me when I was a kid. It's still uncomfortable to watch now but I'm not scared of it anymore.