The best years of your life are when you’re a child! The world seems like it has endless limit! Everything is amazing, fascinating and blows your mind! Unless of course you’re 7yr old me and TV/movies have ruined being alive!
No I wasn’t exposed to the horror genre too early! These were movies my parents happily picked up on a Saturday evening as a treat for my brothers and I to watch! These movies owe me so much in therapy bills! While you might have seen some or all of the films on this list and laugh, take note that even to this day I have trouble sleeping in my family home if I know I’m the only one there!
Libraries – The Pagemaster
The first Macauley Culkin movie on the list! It all sounds harmless; a story of a young boy who slips and bangs his head in a library and wakes up in a cartoon world with book friends. Sounds great and magical and lovely? Until the first world they all find themselves in is horror. The foursome encounter a Leonard Nimoy voiced Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He is the creepiest incarnation of the character I’ve ever witnessed and so my distrust of public libraries was sewn.
Being A Child – Ernest Scared Stupid
This movie did two things to my childhood. Scared me out of my wits and set me on a path obsessed with dressing up! The Ernest movies were and are still some of my favourite childhood movies. Sure they were corny as hell but that was their charm too. Jim Varney or Ernest also just seemed like the kind of adult that I wanted to be friends with! Anyway back to the childhood trauma! Ernest Scared Stupid was about a terrifying troll creature that attacked kids and turned them into wooden statues, it sounds harmless enough until you see the troll…
I thought this thing lived behind my Dad’s workshop (a carpenter by trade) until my early teens and even now you couldn’t pay me enough to go there in the dark! I was terrified out of my wits that just by being a child, this thing had it in for me!
Old People – The Witches
I spent the vast majority of my formative years terrified of older women. I was convinced my gran-aunt Josephine was a full fledged member of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children who had somehow survived the hotel massacre.
That’s right! You forget that an entire hotel full of women (okay, evil women) were slaughtered by hotel staff and non-magical guests!
Strangers – Home Alone
Christmas was a terrifying time of year for me! That stupid spider! I hate that stupid spider and it’s stupid scene so much! The prospect of being burglarised by two creeps and setting up traps sounds fun right? Wrong! I grew up in the countryside and after one too many incidents where one of my siblings almost caused their own accidental death, the house was utterly child/idiot proof. I’d have nothing but my high pitched shrieks and snappy toddler dress sense to protect me! I’d be on the side of a milk carton… I know it!
Not Hoarding – The Brave Little Toaster
I was traumatised by this movie! I was convinced for the longest time that our own appliances were in fact alive! Replacing anything in the house for the longest time was an ordeal, convinced my parents were sending sentient kettles and toasters to their graves!
Owning A Pet – Watership Down
Rabbits traumatised my childhood!
We kept them as pets until a fox took a shine to them! Dead rabbits!
My father and uncles were avid hunters/fishermen. Dead rabbits for dinner!
Cartoon movie shown in schools with some political metaphor? Dead and vicious rabbits!
Going Outside – Legend of Sleepy Hollow
To this day the sound of reeds and frogs croaking unnerve me to no end! While researching for this article, I found out this movie was in fact part of an anthology released by Disney but I don’t remember the others. We owned this on it’s own, on VHS. It was only ever watched once and that was enough. The story of Icabod Crane, a school teacher who crossed paths with a headless horseman one fateful night.
All I remember of it, is feeling utter dread, the idea of being caught outside, in the dark, on my own.
I walk home in the evenings from work and you can better I’m a little faster on those extra dark nights!
Editor-in-Chief, part-time super villain and hoarder of cats. If you can’t find me writing, I’m probably in the kitchen!
