Creepy Kids' Films (1 Viewer)

[RyanAn]

Nightmare endusing: The following films have actually caused Ryan nightmares or made Ryan run-down the hallway quickly, always looking behind, when little:

Witches
Wizard of Oz
Little Mermaid

Watcher in the Woods
NeverEnding Story
Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory "NO ONE KNOWS WHERE WE ARE GOING! OR WHERE THIS BOATS A ROWING!"

Ryan

 

[Tyler Ruggeri]

Definitely The Witches for me. Scared the bejesus out of me when I was younger. Whoever thought to let Nicholas Roeg direct a kids' movie? Brilliant idea. I still think Gilliam should be doing the new Willy Wonka.

I'll also second Labyrinth as well.

Tyler Ruggeri

 

[StephenA]

Making Contact. My mom had me watch it as a kid and it made me not trust ventriloquist puppets. Seeing a posessed ventriloquist puppet can really scar one's mind.

Willow. This can scare a lot of little kids, especially those viscious poodle monsters.

 

[Ricardo C]

[Jerry Seinfeld]Mr. Marbles..? [/Jerry Seinfeld]

 

[Jody C Robins]

How about Time Bandits? I still don't quite "get it", thought I like it...I think. His parents are freaking dead at the end, how's that for a kids' movie! And then Sean Connery just smiles at him a takes off.

 

[GeorgePaul]

Oh YES, Jody, thanks for bringing back more bad memories. I remember my dad having no idea why I was so surly about the George Harrison song over the end credits. Ralph Richardson's voice behind the Supreme Being's huge face floating down the hallway was rather troubling as well.

I just remember feeling really bad for the robot in Making Contact...maybe because it only communicated in these incredibly sad-sounding electronic whistles (kind of like Bubo the Owl in Clash of the Titans) and gets pushed around the whole film.

But if you want a kids' film that is creepy simply because of the incredible suspension of disbelief even a kid has to have in the story, let me ask everyone a question: have any of you seen Lucas lately (no, not the director)?

Now THAT is a film I didn't know whether to slowly back away from or simply burn the tape in disgust. Sorry to differ with the admirers of the film that I know will spring to its defense, but I remember rolling my eyes at the ending even when I first saw it at age 11. It was all I could do to not break out in chills or gag at David Seltzer's notions of what school in the '80s was like.

(Seltzer also came up with the ending to Willy Wonka and wrote the screenplay for the adolescent antichrist film Damien: Omen II. Coincidence? I think not.)

 

[Tim Abbott]

Return to Oz - This sprang to my mind half a second after reading the title. I saw it at age 21 and was fairly creeped out.....

Watch out for those wheelies...

 

[Chris Lockwood]

>THE 5,000 FINGERS OF DR. T.

Thanks for mentioning that. I had heard of that title but didn't know Dr Seuss was involved.

 

[Ernest Rister]

Bambi. Especially the third act.

QUAIL #1
(whispering)
Listen! He's coming! We better fly!

QUAIL #2
(whispering urgently)
No! Don't fly! Whatever you do, DON'T FLY!

QUAIL #1
He's getting closer! I CAN'T STAND IT ANY LONGER!

Quail #1 flaps out of frame! There is a sudden gunshot --

BLAM!

-- and then the dead body of the Quail falls to ground. Mass panic takes the meadow.

Compared to Bambi, Willy Wonka is a trippy episode of Barney. And then we get to Fantasia. I had an old girlfriend who worked at the Village 4 in Austin, TX. She told me should could always tell when Fantasia was about to let out, because mothers would come running out with their screaming, crying children. Meaning, of course, the climactic demonic "Night on Bald Mountain" had just concluded, with all its scary images.

This just proves my longstanding point -- what we think of as "Kids' Films" are actually FAMILY FILMS, meaning, they are aimed at a mass general audience, not a narrow target audience of kids and tweeners. Adults are bigger fans of Willy Wonka than kids are. Bambi is not a kid's film, and neither is Fantasia or Snow White or Dumbo.

Kid Films are movies like Thomas the Magic Railroad or VegieTales or Care Bears in Wonderland or Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealers. Willy Wonka is a family musical. In its own way, so is Nightmare Before Christmas, and many other titles listed in this thread already.




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Willy Wonka is an episode of Barney compared to that.

 

[LanieParker]

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

Legend

 

[Seth Paxton]

Good point Ernest.


The 3 mentioned that most come to my mind are:

Willie Wonka
Return to Oz (art direction and production are just so creepy/weird due to being oddly too real)

and that rather traumatic ending to Time Bandits

I remember leaving the theater after that film thinking "WTF did I just experience" and having a very somber, weird vibe.

I enjoy all of these films now and basically did the first time I can remember seeing them too, but they did put that feeling of oddness in you.


The book version of this effect, by far, is Alice in Wonderland. Holy cripes is that creepy and troubling, especially with the famous artwork that was published with them (forget the artist now). Even Disney's take is somewhat disturbing.


That's not to be confused with "adult themes" like Bambi though. Bambi might scare a kid because of the trauma, but it won't scare a kid out of sheer bizareness like Wonka or Return to Oz.

Oh, let me add the child kidnapping scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I always found that creepy as a kid.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

The Alice illustrator was John Tenniel.
(Alice was my favourite book as a kid, and even today I can tell you that without checking.)

I can't really think of any films that haven't already been listed. I will say that I loved Ernest's story about Fantasia. I remember when I first saw it, even at the age of 14, I was astonished by how completely out there it was. You see a poster for the film, you see Mickey Mouse, oh, that'll be good for the kids. And then you're confornted with a 100-foot demon, dancing naked spirit being, it's bloody terifying, it is.

 

[Andrew Schwarz]

The Witches did it for me. I could never get past the scene when the grandmother tells the story about the little girl who got trapped in a painting.

 

[Ernest Rister]

OOMPA LOOMPAS
(singing)
Oompa Loompa
Doop-a-dee-doo
What is a kids film?
I will tell you.

Oompa Loompa
Doop-a-dee-dee
Films made for children
about age 3.

TENOR OOMPA
What do we get from a bad ad campaign?
Bad information burned in our brains.
Fantasia was not made for your brats.
Who should we all now blame for that?

FAT BASS OOMPA
I blame Michael Ei-sen-er.

OOMPA LOOMPAS
Oompa Loompa
Doop-a-dee-doo
One final soapbox statement for you.

Oompa Loompa
Doop-a-dee-dee
When it comes to "kids films"
keep your mind free.

 

[Lynda-Marie]

Ernest, you naughty boy! A warning would have been nice. Fortunately, I missed spewing my drink all over my computer, but honestly! Maybe you should post a copy of the above parody on the thread about Eisner's leaving Disney too?

As mentioned above, I detested the Oompa Loompa song because of its incredibly overt righteousness, and for the fact that the damned thing stuck in my head and occasionally STILL acts as the main theme for some nastier nightmares.

 

[Moe Maishlish]

Ernest,

MWAH!!

A big fat juicy kiss on your forehead for making my day!



Moe.

 

[Lynda-Marie]

I just watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit the other day and remembered the otherwise well adjusted four year old I was babysitting around the time this came out on video.

The Judge Doom bits at the end, when he was revealing himself as the murderer and as a toon had the kid holding on to me and screaming like a banshee. The hell of it was, he had watched it already with his mom and dad, and seemed to be okay with it. Delayed reaction?

There is also the Jessica controversy that really hit the fan on this one, too. When she and Eddie are being thrown from the Taxi, there is a short bit where her skirt flies up, and it looks like she is NOT wearing undies. Whether people who go frame by frame have filthy imaginations and need to get a life are kind of beside the point. Not a film I would recommend for a kid, in spite of the "kid friendly" cartoon characters.

For more on the Jessica controversy, check out www.snopes.com[/url] There is a link where they discuss all sorts of good urban legends about Disney, including some rather interesting ones about Walt himself. My personal favorite is the Donald Duck "F*&k you!" controversy.

 

[george kaplan]

Darby O'Gill & the Little People

My 4 year old son has watched a lot of movies mentioned in this thread with no problem. And he was really enjoying Darby O'Gill. But when the Banshee came for the girl at the end, he got scared and when the movie was over, told me that he didn't want to watch it again.

 

[RobertR]

My favorite “creepy kid’s movie” is the original Invaders from Mars. No one who saw it as a kid can ever forget that haunting choral sound as victims of the Martians are swallowed up by the sand pit, or the ominous scene of Dr. Blake about to be “zombified” from the Martian implant.

 

[Paul Sandhu]

There are two movies that I remember freaky me out as a child, but I can't remember what they were called. Maybe someone can help me out.

1) I remember two scenes, one where a group of kids is walking through a meadow but are stopped at a point because there seems to be an invisible force field that is like glass. Another scene is where they are going towards a wall and the closer they get the farther it gets.

2) This movie is another weird one, this kid is dared to go into the creepy place and he sees something that gaves him a fright that makes his hair go white and he loses it. Then for some reason his hair grows back and it becomes really, really long.