I was the youngest person in The House, growing up. So I often saw parts of films and TV shows
that were not suitable for my age group.
In some cases, this was a good thing. I was familiar with things like Red Dwarf and
Blackadder from pretty much as far back as my memory goes, so I had a more
sophisticated understanding of wit than other children my age.
In some cases though, this was a very very bad thing. For example, I once saw a sketch from Not The
Nine O’Clock News in which Rowan Atkinson put his hand into a mystery box, which
contained a mincer and his hand got minced.
It was the most disturbing image I had ever seen. Until I saw some of Akira, in which a guy
grotesquely transforms really big, crushing his girlfriend until she pops, an
image that still haunts me. And then
there’s the episode of London’s Burning, in which a fireman saves a little
girl’s pet guppies by putting them into a tank of piranhas. My memory of it is this:
And thanks to Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life I still can’t
tick the ‘organ donor’ box.
And then there’s Robocop.
You know that bit where the ED-209 malfunctions and kills that guy? I was so traumatised by this scene that my
memory skewed into the robot killing everyone in the room, Saint Valentine’s
Day Massacre style.
But like I say, this stuff wasn’t suitable for me, so of
course it scared (and scarred) me.
What’s weirder is the stuff that was suitable for my
age and still managed to warp me for life.
And here it is. The
Top 10 Scariest TV/Film Moments From Childhood:
10. Jurassic Park:
Velociraptors
When I was little, I loved dinosaurs. I would totally have been a palaeontologist if
that had been a thing they taught at school.
Back in those days, dinosaurs were this cool, fun, exciting thing that
you learned about with cheap luminous toys, cutesy movies like The Land Before
Time, and lots of colourful books about the best historical era of our planet
ever.
Then, in 1993, suddenly dinosaurs stopped being every kid’s
best friend, and became the villains in a horror movie. Well, kind of. Anyway, all of a sudden dinosaurs weren’t FUN
any more, they were SCARY.
Everyone who knew me at school knew I was terrified
of dinosaurs. It was kind of a joke,
because it wasn’t like dinosaurs existed, so what’s to fear?
I didn’t even see Jurassic Park when it was at the
cinema. But I heard about it from The
Brother and I imagined it. Specifically
the scene in which Ellie goes into the maintenance shed and finds Mr Arnold has
been eaten by the velociraptors. I imagined
this scene so vividly, that I was scared of walking past any darkened doorways
for fear of what might lie within (velociraptors). So when I finally did see Jurassic Park,
although that scene was less gratuitous than my version, the velociraptors were
even more terrifying.
Skip ahead to 1:58
Sometimes I got so scared when I was on my own in a building
that there were raptors in there with me too that I couldn’t move in case that
alerted them to my location. I still
hate walking past darkened open doorways.
9. Ghost Busters: Dana’s
Abduction
I can recall as a kid that The Brother complained bitterly
about not being allowed to see Ghost Busters when all his friends could,
because The Mother knew it would give him nightmares. Considering he’d have been about six when it
came out, I think she made the right call.
I don’t know when he was finally allowed to see it. Too late, according to him.
But oddly, I don’t recall this ban applying to me. And guess how old I’d have been around the
time we got it on video.
I had this fear as a kid.
I know this whole post is about stuff that scared me when I was a kid,
but this was my biggest fear. I
was afraid of devil-wolves. These were
hounds of hell with red eyes and blood dripping off their giant fangs and claws
who were hunting me.
I don’t know where this fear started, but there are
certainly some moments in films and TV that could have been the catalyst, or
simply made the fear even worse. This is
one of them.
Dana is alone in her apartment, talking to her mum on the
telephone. We can see light glowing
behind her kitchen door. She hangs up
and slowly becomes aware of a strange growling noise. She looks at the kitchen door and sees it's
being warped as if something is trying to force its way through from the other
side. Just as she whispers ‘oh shit’ a
clawed hairy hand bursts out of the arm of the CHAIR SHE IS SITTING IN and
grabs her over the mouth. Two more hands
burst out of the chair, holding her down as she struggles and screams, as the
chair turns towards the kitchen. The
door opens, revealing a dog-like monster with glowing red eyes and huge fangs,
snarling and roaring at her, and the chair shoots into the kitchen, the door slamming
behind it.
The fact that there is something faintly rapey about this
scene makes it five thousand times more disturbing. If you can’t trust your own armchair, what’s
left?
8. Knightmare: Deaths
Kinghtmare was a children’s programme in which teams of four
kids would play a pseudo virtual reality RPG fantasy game. Three of them would give instructions to the
fourth, who couldn’t see what was going on.
Trouble is the communication between the kids was poor and the kid in
the simulation would often get killed.
The problem was, I didn’t know it wasn’t real. When that kid fell to his doom or got cut in
half by a rotating blade or eaten by a giant talking wall, I thought he
really was dead. I’m pretty sure you’d
see all four kids leave, alive, at the end, but for whatever reason I didn’t
notice or accept this. I think I thought
it was some kind of terrifying limbo for lost souls (that’s what poor green
screen can do for you). I didn’t
understand why anyone would go on this show – presumably they were forced into
it, possibly it was the punishment for children who were naughty, and every
week was a terrifying ordeal as I watched some poor kid get executed live on
TV. And you wonder why I was such a
well-behaved child.
7. Eerie, Indiana: Dogs
I love Eerie, Indiana.
It's one of my favourite TV programmes, and I’m convinced it heavily
influenced me and my writing as a child and I’m forever grateful that such an
intelligent show was made and that I got to see it when I was a kid. I adored it.
I really did. Except...
One of the earliest episodes, ‘The Retainer’, is about this
kid who gets one of those massive external retainers (brace) and somehow this
allows him to understand what dogs are saying.
No big deal, except it turns out that dogs hate humans and
are planning a glorious revolution. At
one point Simon is playfully wrestling with a German Shepherd, unaware that the
dog wants to eat him. Later the dogs
escape the pound and kill and eat the mean dog catcher. And during the climax, they insist that the
kid remove his retainer so he can no longer hear them. Scared, he struggles with it as the dogs get
more threatening and finally panics and runs for it. The dogs give chase. We never seen him again, but at the end, the
German Shepherd brings the retainer back to Marshall. How did those dogs get the retainer that was
attached to that boy’s face? Well I know
how.
THIS is why I’m not a dog person.
6. Round The Twist: Santa
Claws
Unlike Eerie, Indiana, Round The Twist does not live up to
rewatching it as an adult. It’s goofy,
poorly written and poorly acted. But I
watched it all the time as a kid.
Honestly, I’d watch any kids’ show with a faintly surreal premise in the
hopes that it could replace Eerie, Indiana, which had finished in the early
nineties. Nothing ever came close.
Anyway, Round The Twist was always really, really gross. People got covered in garbage and bird poo,
and ate dog food and dead flies, and kissed pigs, and peed up walls and toads
ate each other. But in one particular
episode, it went too far. Pete meets
Santa Claus – actually Santa Claws, a
revolting, dirty man with clawed fingernails.
Could only find the ENTIRE episode rather than just a clip. Watching from 9:49-11:20 should be enough to get the idea.
And I have never trusted Father Christmas since.
5. Return Of The Jedi: AT-ST Walkers
Okay, these STILL scare the hell out of me. When I was a kid, I didn’t understand that
they were vehicles. I thought they were
giant monsters who wanted to kill us.
But their jerky stride just freaks me the hell out. Oh god, they’re coming.
Nope, even this is scary.
Only in compiling this list have I realised the reason they
scare me so much is probably because ED-209 is so similar in look and
motion. That goes for velociraptors
too. Any kind of animated two-legged
thing that brings death is likely to make my brain melt in utter terror.
4. The Neverending Story: Gmork
I started watching The Neverending Story with The
Grandmother once. We turned it off when
the horse died because it was too distressing.
So many years later when I finally watched the film all the way through,
imagine my surprise when there was the exact replica of the devil-wolves I had
always been so scared of. Trouble is,
Gmork doesn’t enter the story until after the horse dies, so I couldn’t
possibly have seen it, so how could this have influenced me? Ah, but wait.
There is one tiny moment when Gmork is first called out of the
darkness. This terrifying creature
emerges in a horrifying moment.
Gmork is actually much less scary once he starts to talk. But since I never got that far, he was just a beast of darkness relentlessly pursuing the hero. Add this to that Ghost Busters scene earlier and suddenly my devil-wolf fear doesn’t seem quite so inexplicable to me. Hollywood has a lot to answer for.
3. Disney’s Alice In
Wonderland
Which moment in Alice In Wonderland scared me? All of it.
A little girl gets transported alone to a dark, trippy dreamworld full
of weirdoes who go out of their way to hinder her and no one helps her when she
gets lost and cries and then they all want to kill her. I hated this film. It was the most terrifying story I had ever
seen in my life.
The worst part was when she finds a path home and then a
dog-brush sweeps it away. See, you just
can’t trust dogs.
2. Tales Of Beatrix Potter: Squirrel
Nutkin
Tales Of Beatrix Potter is a ballet in which the dancers are
dressed in huge costumes of Beatrix Potter’s most famous characters. I used to watch this all the time when I was
tiny. I think it may have been the first
thing I ever really watched. Potter’s
stories can be a little dark, but in storybook form you can kind of gloss over
it. But translating it into giant
human-sized action makes it so much more disturbing, probably because of the lack of expression, and because they are giant monstrous freaks. Anyway.
The squirrels take tribute to the GIANT OWL. Squirrel Nutkin prances about, taking the mick. This goes on for about five minutes. Then suddenly the GIANT OWL who has been
completely stationary up until this point suddenly grabs Nutkin and drags him,
struggling, into the tree. The other
squirrels freak out. Silence falls. Then Nutkin escapes the tree, tailless, and
his tail is thrown out the top of the tree after him.
It’s the GIANT UNMOVING OWL that just lurks there, a
horrifying, threatening presence, that's so disturbing. But then it actually savages one of the
squirrels! OH MY GOD! Okay, so he wasn’t eaten, but he was ripped
apart. THIS IS SCREWED UP!
1. Sugar Puffs Adverts: Honey Monster
There was a series of sugar puffs adverts in the early
nineties or late eighties referred to as the ‘I want my honey’ adverts. Basically, a kid would see a box of sugar
puffs they couldn't reach and say ‘I want my honey’. Only
their desire for sugar puffs would cause them to hulk out and turn into the
Honey Monster. As they said ‘I want my
honey’ their voice would transform into the deep growl of the monster, they
would expand and grow yellow fur, bursting out of their clothes. The monster would then rampage and eat all
the sugar puffs.
Once again my childlike innocence was the problem. I didn’t understand that the children were
turning INTO the honey monster. I
thought the honey monster was taking them over in some kind of horrific body-snatchers way, that the monster was killing the child as it burst out of them.
SCARIEST ADVERTS EVER.
I genuinely thought that the Honey Monster ate
children. I hated the Honey Monster for
ever more. And sugar puffs are gross
anyway. They turn the milk GREY.
So compiling this list is going to give me sleepless nights
for some time. I hope you appreciated
the ride. What TV and film moments
terrified you as a kid?
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