Discuss: Films That Traumatized Your Youthful Eyes?
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I'm more than okay. While perusing TV Guide, I found a little -- shall I say -- flick, starring a one miss Dolly Parton. Meow! Yeah, it seems she made a racy film called The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. -- Venture Brothers
Some films just aren't what we expect. Sometimes we're misguided by a name, sometimes by faulty assumptions. In our youth, some things just go right over our heads. We groove to Grease as young tykes, then grow up and realize how utterly sex-filled and dirty the film is. We (or at least me) watch Dolly's whorehouse movie over and over and don't realize how misleading the title is (hey, I was 6 or 7!).
But sometimes we're caught off-guard in the worst possible way, traumatized during our youth so much that years later the memory is still burned into our brains. Entertainment Weekly threw up a list of 29 films their readers saw when they were too young, and it got me thinking about my own scarred adolescence.
There was the time my parents and I were away on a trip, and they ordered Terminator on the hotel's pay per view. I sat turned the entire time, reading a book, except for one part -- I turned around just as Arnold Schwarzenegger popped his eyes out of his Terminator head. I never forgot it, and I still have an extreme weakness to eyeball scenes. (One of the reasons I will never watch Saw.)
Or there was the time my friend and I covertly watched Squeeze Play, and the guy dropped trou to catch the softball/baseball/whatever in his butt crack. I can tell you nothing else about the film, but I never, ever forgot that scene.
Or there are the years when I was a little older, and rented Fire Walk with Me to watch with my dad, or having not learned my lesson, chose Lost Highway as my pick for my family's weekly movie outings. David Lynch-led sex while sitting next to your dad isn't a whole lot of fun.
This isn't mentioning the months of nightmares I had for watching Friday the 13th in kindergarten, because I successfully blocked all the scenes in my head...
What movies scarred you? What scenes or films are burned into your memories all these years later? What sights can you never unsee?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
1-30-2009 @ 1:30PM
Erin said...
It doesn't scare me anymore, but when I was 5, my family decided to watch their new VHS: Jurassic Park. I was in the other room watching Fern Gully (because that was the best movie ever) and for some reason I had to go see what my dad was watching in the other room. I happened to walk in the room when the T-Rex ate the lawyer off the toilet. I ran out of the room crying.
A few years later, I finally watched the whole movie and fell in love with it.
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1-30-2009 @ 2:48PM
Kevin said...
I remember seeing Jurassic Park on opening night at the theater. I was 11, and I only went cause my parents were having a party, so they told my brother and cousin to take me and my sister to see it. I had no idea what it was about when I walked in the theater. After the scene in which the dilophosaurus kills Newman I spent most of the movie with my hands over my eyes. Totally scared the shit out of me...and the next day I was first in line to see it again. That movie was freaking awesome.
2-01-2009 @ 12:44PM
Dan said...
I remember the first time I saw Jurassic Park, I think I was probably 6 or 7 and I just remember my mom telling me it was really "intense" it was probably one of the first movies I saw like that that I actually (mostly) understood.
1-30-2009 @ 1:31PM
Klataa said...
I'll never forget seeing Silver Bullet when I was about 5 or 6. I didn't sleep well for months and to this day, werewolf movies are the only ones that truly frighten me.
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1-30-2009 @ 1:50PM
NP said...
Yes! My experience wasn't as severe as this, but Silver Bullet is on the list of films I saw WAY too young (about same age as you and in the theater no less).
Other movies that scared the shit out of me because I saw them when I was too young (in the 4-6 ages if I'm remembering correctly):
The Exorcist
Dreamscape
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The Howling
(why the hell did my parents let me watch so many horror movies so young??)
I even remember being petrified of the wolf figure in Neverending Story when we saw it in the theater.
2-01-2009 @ 12:44PM
Dan said...
Me too! But then I watched it about a year or two ago, and found that it was campy as hell.
1-30-2009 @ 7:19PM
vegimorph said...
I watched the Terminator when I was like 10 or 11 i think. the part where Arnold appears naked then stabs the thugs for their closes kind of creeped me out and prevented me from watching the movie any more but that didn't really scare me as much. I think a film that did scar me the most was Mars Attacks because i watched it when i was like 10 and the dissentigrating ray made me sick to my stomach and the scene where the alien bites off the agent's finger, not to mention all the weird deaths and the placing of Sarah Jessica Parker's head on a chihuaha REALLY didn't help. I'm a good fan of Tim Burton's work but never again will I see Mars Attacks.
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1-30-2009 @ 1:36PM
WendyD said...
I saw 'Time Bandits' when I was 4 or 5 and had nightmares that my mom would disappear for years afterwards. Literally. I've still never watched it again.
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1-30-2009 @ 3:17PM
Ian said...
Ohhhh. The part with they touch the concentrated evil? Nightmares like you wouldn't believe...
1-30-2009 @ 10:23PM
nate said...
time bandits totally messed me up. the end with the microwave blew the kids parents up. i didn't use a microwave forever.
2-01-2009 @ 12:44PM
Dan said...
It's a pretty intense movie, but you should watch it again, it's fantastic!
1-30-2009 @ 3:14PM
Mijo said...
Wow let me just say that The Venture Bros. is the best thing to ever happen to man. That show is only reason i have illegal cable.
My dad took me and my brothers (me being the youngest, 8 at the time) to see Candyman. Holy crap i could not sleep with the lights off for at least a year and it traumatized me big time. I still have never watched the whole movie through to this day.
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1-30-2009 @ 1:45PM
Key Rick said...
Basically any movie featuring sideshows, disfigured people in general and carneys, eversince, as an eight- or nine-year-old child I was taken to see a movie titled either Asylum or Asylum For The Insane. I didn't know at the time, but I believe now it was supposed to be an update of the classic Freaks. That film I finally agreed to watch since becoming an adult and can appreciate on some level; however, I was scarred for life by that Asylum-ish remake. I couldn't re-watch it now for any amount of money in the world. I'm sure it's pure schlock, but when you're a little guy and caught by total surprise actually trying to pay attention to the movie your older sibs or parents brought you to...
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1-30-2009 @ 1:48PM
Scott Weinberg said...
Hate to be so obvious, but ... "The Exorcist" scared / scarred the living poop out of me.
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1-30-2009 @ 2:31PM
Monika said...
But the non-living poop was okay?
1-30-2009 @ 1:49PM
Mike said...
Stephen King's IT. I've never been much of a fan of scary movies, but I remember watching most or all of this with my friends when I was younger. I think it was mostly during the day time, which was a nice consolation. But, still, a movie about a creepy killer clown is not something a child should be watching.
Looking back, I actually wonder if I watched other types of movies too young, and didn't fully appreciate them. Not that they scared me, just bored me. I might look at them differently now. I'm thinking of movies a lot of other people seem to like, such as Quick Change and L.A. Story.
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1-30-2009 @ 2:31PM
Monika said...
Funny, Stephen King's movies never did it for me. I remember being tres annoyed when I had a birthday slumber party and everyone agreed to watch Pet Sematary, only to wimp out pronto so that only one other person watched it all with me.
1-30-2009 @ 3:55PM
hayson said...
IT totally got me too. I remember being a little kid, maybe 8?, watching some animated version of Tom Sawyer on VHS, some time later at night, and then that was over, the tape stopped, and it switched to the TV. Well, Stephen King's IT was on, and it was the scene with Pennywise coming out of the shower-drain.... I changed the channel rather quickly, but that little snippet made me pretty afraid of showers - or at least overly observant of the shower drain - for quite some time. I've watched it since, and it's a rather lame movie (could've been better), but yeah, thank you Tim Curry, you creepy bastard!
Other movies that got me a bit freaked out:
ARACHNOPHOBIA - It's one of those that I HAVE to watch if it's on, it's so campy (John Goodman's Barney Fife-ish theme music), but those spiders still give me shivers...
GREMLINS / GREMLINS 2 - I LOVE these movies, but as a young kid, as much as I loved them, I still got a bit creeped out never knowing what was hiding in the dark...
OOH and I just remembered another one - I never saw the movie, but I do recall being totally disturbed by a trailer for FLESH EATING MOTHERS - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097364/ - I think I was 5, and it seriously terrified me!
1-30-2009 @ 1:58PM
larry said...
loving the rusty venture quote i would have to say fire in the sky traumitized me as a child the scene where travis is abducted. first time i saw that i thought he was vaperised and the aliens were so creepy looking couldent watch it again untill i turned 15.
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1-30-2009 @ 3:59PM
Ashley said...
Oh, wow. Fire in the Sky terrified me! I can still remember how horrified I was when you see the syrup dripping on the counter and it cuts to the goo being poured into his eyes... Yeah, scarred for life. I finally watched it again about a year ago, and laughed about how silly it was. But I was still squirming in my seat during that syrup flashback...