Most of my clearest memories of watching movies when I was a small boy involve me being absolutely terrified.
Perhaps the censors were asleep on the job, but growing up, it felt like every feature film aimed at kids, from live-action romps to saccharine Disney flicks, all boasted at least one scene designed to scare the pants off of you.
A lot of these scenes don't really make much sense to a little child. When you revisit them as a grown-up, you realize that most of them were pretty tame and toothless.
But there are some films that take on an even more disturbing dimension when you watch them as an adult and still cause a shiver to travel down your spine. Don't believe me? Then take a look at the following examples, if you dare.
1. Toy Story 2 – Woody's Dream
There's no doubt that Toy Story 2 can tug at the heartstrings (remember Jesse's song?). But it can also raise the hairs on the back of your neck too.
Case in point, Woody's nightmare that his owner Andy will one day abandon him. Maybe it's Andy's lifeless stare or monotone voice as he says: "bye Woody!" and drops the toy into the trash, but this one still leaves me in a cold sweat.
2. The Neverending Story – The Nothing
The Neverending Story almost lives up to its name with a cavalcade of scary moments that prove the world of Fantasia is out to get you. But nothing beats the existential horror of, well, The Nothing.
As Atreyu learns in his climactic meeting with the monstrous lupine Gmork, the so-called Nothing which threatens Fantasia isn't a villain so much as a force of relentless, omnivorous, entropy.
Created from the forgotten hopes and dreams of mankind, The Nothing is a formless cloud devouring everything in its passage, and coming into contact with it will erase you from existence forever.
3. Dumbo – Pink Elephants on Parade
One of the most surreal and inadvertently creepy scenes in the history of animation, this is meant to be a light-hearted sequence where Dumbo gets accidentally tipsy.
What then ensues is a bad acid trip montage showing a parade of pink elephants formed out of bubbles, which contort into weirder and weirder shapes and forms until Dumbo finally (and mercifully) wakes up from his stupor. Phew!
4. Return To Oz – Princess Mombi
When you think of The Wizard of Oz, you think of chirpy tunes, colorful visuals, and wide-eyed optimism. But the movie's sequel, Return to Oz, is about as far removed from that tone as you can imagine.
It starts with Dorothy Gale being taken to an Arkhamesque mental asylum for electroshock therapy, due to her 'delusions' of the land of Oz. But then the girl washes away in a flood and ends up in a post-apocalyptic version of the Emerald City.
The spookiest scene of all is when we meet the wicked Princess Mombi, who has a predilection for wearing a variety of spare heads and wants to add Dorothy's to her collection...
5. The Adventures of Mark Twain - The Mysterious Stranger
The Adventures of Mark Twain boasts one of the scariest scenes of any movie, claymated or otherwise.
Taken from the short novella of the same name, the 'Mysterious Stranger' sequence sees Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Becky Thatcher accosted by a softly-spoken angel who introduces himself as Satan.
Whisking them away to an island floating in a fathomless void, Satan wields near-omnipotent power; creating diminutive living people at a whim and graphically destroying them when they displease them.
As the children run for their lives, a nihilistic Satan fades away into a twinkle of starlight, whispering: "Life itself is only a vision. A dream. Nothing exists, save empty space and you, and you are but a thought."
6. The Black Cauldron – The Horned King
The Black Cauldron wasn't exactly a hit at the box office, released in that awkward studio adolescence before Disney regained its stride with The Little Mermaid. But it remains a cult classic for its uncharacteristically moody atmosphere.
The movie's villain, The Horned King, is one of the standouts. Voiced with deep and velvety malevolence by the late Sir John Hurt, his brooding introduction still chills the blood of characters and viewers alike.
7. Snow White – The Wicked Woods
Sometimes the simplest scares are the most effective, as the following scene from Snow White shows.
Disney's first full-length animated feature proves that all you need to do to creep people out is drop a pretty girl in the woods, get her lost, and shiver as leering, laughing faces loom out of the shadows at her.
8. Time Bandits – The Supreme Being
Written by Monty Python alums Michael Palin and Terry Gilliam, Time Bandits is inventive, exciting, and gut-bustlingly funny. But it doesn't pull any punches either when it comes to the fear factor.
History geek schoolboy Kevin runs away from his staid suburban home with six scheming dwarfs, who have stolen a magical map showing wormholes they plan to use to travel through time and get rich quick by looting the spoils of history.
But Kevin and his new friends are then pursued by the so-called "Supreme Being" – who appears as a gigantic, floating, deathly white face who commands them to "return the map!" Yeesh. I'd drop it right away, wouldn't you?
9. Coraline – The Other Mother
Based on Neil Gaiman's novella, Coraline Jones travels through a magical tight time portal into a parallel universe version of her family home, populated by her "Other Father" and "Other Mother" – duplicates of her own workaholic parents with black buttons in place of their eyes.
Although the Other Mother dotes on Coraline at first, it eventually becomes clear that she's some kind of interdimensional parasitic monster, luring children away and eating their souls.
When Coraline refuses to stay with her Other Mother, the smiling facsimile transforms into a spindly hag, kidnaps Coraline's parents, and threatens to sew buttons on the young girl's eyes. It's enough to give anyone koumpounophobia.
10. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – The Childcatcher
There's no doubt that the character of the Childcatcher has traumatized kids since Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was released way back in 1968.
Responsible for capturing and exterminating children in the fictional country of Vulgaria, the predatory implications of this oily and callous villain definitely stick in your memory.
11. Pinocchio – The Pony Mines
There's no doubt that Pinocchio is one of Disney's all-time classics. But that said, this scene always makes me hesitate to give it a rewatch.
The scene in question has the wooden puppet run away from his father Geppeto and ends up enlisted by a shifty-looking coachman to travel with a group of other boys to a place called Pleasure Island.
But as Pinocchio and the boys indulge in decadent vices on the island, they slowly transform into braying donkeys and are then captured in crates by the coachman to be sold to slave labor in salt mines and circuses. Pretty hardcore, huh?
12. Spy Kids – Floop's Fooglies
Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids is a pretty camp affair, with wild and over-the-top visuals and a fairly goofy plot. Yet there's something stomach-turning about TV host and demented genius Fegan Floop's minions, the Fooglies.
Although they initially appear to be warped Tellytubbies, we eventually find out that the multicolored Fooglies aren't actors in costumes. They're actually real people hideously deformed through mad science.
Worst of all is the scene where Carmen and Juni, play a video recording of the Fooglies backward and discover that their childish gibberish translates in reverse as "Floop is a madman. Help us. Save us."
13. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – The Chocolate Tunnel
Not for nothing was author Roald Dahl once called "Master of the Macabre."
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory starts off as harmless fun, but then the tone dives off the deep end when Wonka takes Charlie Bucket on a chocolate riverboat ride down a psychedelic underground tunnel, ranting and chanting all the while.
14. An American Tail – The Mouse Pogrom
An American Tail seems cute and sanitized, with anthropomorphic mice crossing the Atlantic to make a new life in the states.
But the animated feature was all about Jewish immigrants to America, and thus the film begins with a terrifying pogrom, with mice being caught and eaten by vicious cats – something which only makes the scene more shocking with the benefit of context.
15. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Claude Frollo
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is probably Disney's most mature movie (apart from, arguably, the gargoyles) and no character exemplifies this better than the psychopathic Claude Frollo.
A bigoted raving zealot, Frollo's villainous song 'Hellfire' is as haunting as it is awesome, with the sinister minister struggling with his lust for the Roma woman Esmeralda, plotting genocide, and ranting about eternal damnation.
So there you have it – the next time you're sitting down to watch a horror film, try remmebering some of the most iconic films from your childhood. See how they compare...
