My dads brother visited us one time - when I was around 7 years old - and they sent me to bed and watched a movie together on TV. I’m not sure where my mom was, perhaps taking care of my little brother, but I quietly went down the stairs and saw them watching the movie, and I stayed very quietly so they would not know I’m there.
It was a Bruce Lee movie, “The Big Boss (1971)”. In that movie Bruce works at a ice factory and his boss kills some people and puts them into the ice. That’s not the worst of it. They then have those big ice blocks and a big blade saw and that saw cuts the big blocks into smaller peaces. It also cuts those bodies in the ice blocks into smaller pieces.
I couldn’t believe what I saw and went back upstairs and couldn’t fall asleep. I never told my parents.
- The Neverending Story: STARTS with a horse DYING FROM SADNESS and the movie is about existence being devoured by nothingness.
- Nightmare on Elm Street: where the fuck were my parents?!
- Time Bandits: the cages floating in the void, the dwarves being chased down a corridor, the parents die to evil at the end…don’t they? Ambiguous existential dread all around this one.
- The Thing: no clear childhood memories or nightmares but I know I saw it before I was 10.
- Reanimator: ditto for The Thing.
- The Shining
- Cat People
This really creepy Czech Alice in Wonderland movie. It used stop motion with animal skeletons, fish heads, and tons of other things.
My mom put it on when I was little in an attempt to keep me occupied.
“Would you like to watch Alice in Wonderland, Thelsim?” She’d ask.
“Yea!” I would shout enthusiastically, thinking she meant the Disney movie.
Half an hour later I’m crying and hiding under the blankets.I never did watch that movie again. Maybe it’s not so bad now, but the screenshots still make feel very queasy.
A sample 🫣
Yeah watched it too early as well. I’m watching it again now and it’s much better than I remembered.
It’s on YouTube
Thank you. I wonder how many time Tim Burton watched that.
Pretty sure that’s a horse skull, and holy fuck, why was that ever made?
Edit: probably not a horse, but some kind of ungulate.
I watched this movie in collage! It is definitely creepy and unsettling the whole way through. I never had a desire to watch it again either.
Look, it was the 80s/90s. We had one TV. My parents were not going to watch kid shit during their down time so we watched whatever they felt like watching. Thus, I have too many to list here.
But for context apparently Alien and Aliens made me squeaky and giggly/happy as a baby. To this day I sometimes have bizarrely detailed dreams with xenomorph subplots.
Yeah I still giggly at this scene in Aliens
Hudson: Hey Vasquez you ever been mistaken for a man?
Vasquez: …No…Have you…???
Best come back ever her facial expression when she says it is priceless.
There was a movie with Rosie O’Donnell called Exit to Eden. My mom was not particularly uptight about us seeing R rated stuff and the previews made it look like a slightly dirty comedy. It was Rosie O’Donnell in like…the 90’s so I mean…she did not look into it any further than that.
Turns out it’s basically a soft core porno with a couple funny bits and it was extremely awkward to sit through.
I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I saw Akira when I was four and my brother was three. Our dad picked it out because “animation is for children”.
I can’t remember much of it but it left me with a deep distate for body horror and nightmares for literal weeks.
Ninja Scroll for me, my dad let me rent it when I was very young and I was like “holy heck what is this”
Starship trooper when I was still in kindergarten. The only thing I remember from this movie is the scene where the bug drills a hole in the soldiers head to drink his brain. Don’t plan to watch this movie ever again in my life
would you like to know more?
Watership Down
The scene where they’re all buried and poisoned while the den is torn apart and the rabbits are trapped, desperately trying to push nose-first past all the bodies clogging the dead-end passages… I had a lot of bad dreams from that one!
My mom took me to watch Superman (with Christopher Reeves). I was 3. I had to sleep with the light on for 2 years because the moment I was in the dark, my brain would freak out giving me flashbacks of the movie very bright scenes.
Basically I had cinematic PTSD at 3yo.
Meh I watched Friday the 13th part 3 and RoboCop when I was like 8. The ring alone in the dark when I was 11 and the exorcist uncut at Xmas when I was 13. Movies do nothing to you, they’re fantasy.
Good for you, I watched RoboCop on my own at around the same age and that acid scene has been forever etched into my mind, and made me avoid gore movies.
That scene is hilarious 😂
So are nightmares and religion, but they still can fuck you up ;)
I bet a guy disturbed enough could pull a shoot out in an hospital for watching the teletubbies. They’re still fantasy, I won’t blame media for that in any way.
Religions on the other hand actually instigate hate.
