What kid's movie scared you when you were young and still does today?
Okay so you know the old school Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Remember the part when Charlie and his grandfather drink that stuff that makes them float? It’s all fun and games to watch them floating around laughing. Until you realize that they just keep going up and up and up and ohmyeffinggosh! There’s a fan of death above them. Honestly, watching poor Charlie and his grandpa uncontrollably float up to what was sure to be their deaths, was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen. It struck fear into my little body. And you know what? That scene still freaks me out. As well as the part where they take that creepy boat ride and Willy Wonka chants that song in a weirdly calm way. But, anyways, enough about me. What are some parts of kid’s movies that you still find frightening today?
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The Bad Seed. Not a kid’s movie, but it scared the shit out of me. It stuck with me all my life. Saw it for the second time a couple of weeks ago on TCM and I could certainly understand why.
The flying monkeys on The Wizard of Oz!
The Bad Seed was about a kid, but not a kid’s movie.
“The Wizard of Oz” really messed with me the first few go rounds but today it’s pretty predictable. “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” was upsetting when it got to the abominable snowman scenes. The original version that had Burl Ives narrating and those General Electric advertisements. Honestly nothing gives me the willies now but it’s good to think back.
I really hated the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. Still do.
I’ve seen The Bad Seed. Evil child, indeed!
This was many, many years ago, but one of the first horror movies I ever saw was one about an animated hand. That’s all I remember… it was a severed, animated hand. I made my grandmother take me out of the theatre. Heh!
Yep! That’s it! I remember that it played the piano!
Gee, thanks for bringing back the nightmares! LOL!
When I was a little kid (around the same time that you were), I wasn’t allowed to go to movies of any kind for religious reasons—except for a very rare Disney picture on the QT, and only in a town well away from our fellow churchgoers.
So I heard all about them from another little girl in the neighborhood. Her name was Marcia Higgins, and she possessed considerable narrative prowess for a five- or six-year-old. She described this one, and also Elephant Walk (the scene where the soldier ants eat a man alive), The Fly (Vincent Price, of course), and several others so vividly that I was able to recall her descriptions when I grew up and see the movies for myself. I’ve always wondered what in the world her parents were thinking, letting a small child see that stuff.
The same ‘floating’ scene you mention in your question, for sure. It doesn’t actually scare me anymore, but I still get a funny anxious kind of feeling when I see it. Those damn flying monkeys were pretty awful, too.
Watership Down. Scary rabbits man.
I don’t remember the name,but there was a movie with a tiny doll that stabbed people…then there was the walking tree with the bad attitude.I don’t remember the name of that one either.;)
James and the Giant Peach scared me a little, but “It” the movie about the clown, has scarred me for life.
Pink elephants on parade from “Dumbo”. It’s the drunk dream scene where he “flies”. I remember being soooooo scared of the snake at 2:42. Not really sure why…
Bambi I still can’t watch the opening scenes
Funny about the flying monkeys. I’ve heard so many people say the same thing over the years—terrified!
My mother read the book The Wizard of Oz to me long before I saw the movie. (The movie came out when she was a kid, but I hadn’t seen it when she introduced me to the book..) I thought the flying monkeys were wonderful in the book—the very idea of them was fascinating. So when I saw them in the movie at last, they were simply exciting. I wanted one. I wanted to go for a ride with them. I thought they did evil only because they were bidden to by the witch and that otherwise they’d have been really cool company.
@Jeruba my son adores the monkeys. We’ve read the book about 10x now :) I was always afraid of the monkeys until I read the book to my son. I never liked the movie as a kid, at all :(
In the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the scene of Augustus Gloop stuck inside that tube scared me to no end.
And the image of Andy Dufresne crawling through the sewer in Shawshank Redemption has haunted me since I was about 6.
Okay, Chocolate Factory DEATHFAN is up there, for sure. Also from that movie, the nightmarish boat ride where Gene Wilder starts shouting and there’s all that messed up imagery in the background? brr. Gloop stuck in the choco-pipe always made me uneasy. Man, that movie is just sixteen different flavors of messed up!!
The CHILD CATCHER from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang scared the absolute bejeezus out of me and still does.
Dumbo’s Pink Elephants terrified me also. That sequence is like a very unpleasant acid trip.
Ooh, I’d forgotten about the Child Catcher! <shudders>
Not a child’s movie; however, it’s stuck in my memory. Alien
We were the first, in our family, to have HBO. When new movies came on, everyone came over. Not really paying attention to the rating, or caring…not sure which one it was, I was allowed to watch the movie with the rest of the family. I’ve never recovered from the part where the alien popped up from the stomach.
It just reinforced belief that all clowns are evil.
@cak that is my husband’s scariest also. He loves Sci-f. But Alien gave him a nightmare!
Actually, the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is also on my list. That part when they’re speeding under the bridge on that boat, and then you see all these visions…millipedes, worms, bugs, some aquatic bird getting its neck snapped…and all the while, Willy Wonka’s just sitting there mumbling like a Satanist. What the fuck was that?! Why is THAT in a kid’s movie?
Doesn’t scare me today no, but my eyebrows raise everytime I see it.
@CaptainHarley in one scene did that severed hand climb up some ivy outside a house?
Was the severed hand the hand of a pianist?
I think the movie scared the crap out of me too.
So much so I remember it more as a nightmare than a movie.
You just brought it back. Mid 50s?
I was freaked out by the movie Pet Cemetary, i watched it years later, yesh I still jumped!
I was a movie where they built a pet cemetary on an old indian burial ground, dead things came back to life….evil!
@anartist and @CaptainHarley
Was it an old black&white film with Peter Lorre? I think it was The Beast with Five Fingers from 1946.
Locals in an Italian village believe evil has taken over the estate of a recently deceased pianist where several murders have taken place. The alleged killer: the pianist’s severed hand.
I saw it on TMC not long ago. It stands up well even today.
The Grinch scared me out of my mind. Still does to this day.
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