Dark youth-oriented/children's movies that may or may not have ruined your childhood

Return to Oz gave me nightmares for years. Princess Mombi is scarier than anything in The Conjuring.

"The Watcher in the Woods" - that movie terrified me. At one point, I turned to my father and asked him if it really was a movie for children. "Return to Oz" was the movie that terrified my younger brother. Another one I found terrifying was the TV movie "The Haunting of Barney Palmer" that they showed on PBS back in the 80's.

“Return to Oz” was frightening.

“The Witches” terrified me as a child. I remember turning it off when they turned him into a mouse and I don’t think I watched it again until I was older.

I was terrified of every woman who worked at the makeup counters in department stores. They all dressed like Anjelica in that movie. In black with heavy makeup, I thought they were all witches and I was so scared of them.

I love dark children’s movies!

-Return to Oz —another vote!

-Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (a city with no children allowed and a child catcher)!

-The Secret Garden (90s version) — dark but beautiful cinematography and music

-Labyrinth has a pretty disturbing plot and is dark

-Neverending Story

-The Velveteen Rabbit (horribly sad movie about illness and having to burn infected belongings)

-Mary Poppins is actually dark in my opinion

-most Disney movies pre-1990s (Child of Glass, Bambi, etc.)

-pretty much anything in the 80s with puppets

R3, I was just about to post The Witches!

Child's Play.

Home Alone had some dark undertones if you think about it.

R2 "The Watcher in the Woods" is a straight-up horror movie IMO. There is a tiny bit of preteen filler material in it (like Lynn-Holly Johnson's romance with the local British hunk), but for the most part, it is not really geared for children in any way, shape, or form. There are images in that film that are far more terrifying than what you find in 90% of adult-oriented horror movies. Plus you have all of the bizarre occult elements (what kind of fucked up teenagers do a ritual ceremony in a church during an eclipse, by the way?), portals to other dimensions, and even a possession sequence.

My spouse refuses to watch Return to Oz with me. Just flat out refuses. Not even on my birthday or a special occasion. Says it’s way too creepy looking just from the stills/clips.

Food of the Gods

John Hough, who directed "The Watcher in the Woods", also directed a number of other horror films during his career, such as "The Legend of Hell of House" (1973) and "The Incubus" (1982), both of which are extremely fucked up (and creepy).

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Poltergeist

IT (1990 miniseries)

The Gate (with a very young Stephen Dorff)

Gremlins

Gargoyles (1972 TV movie)

The Dark Crystal

Labyrinth

Legend

The Monster Squad

R10 both The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth *made* my childhood. The darkness is part of the allure.

It's incredible how well the new series of TDC kept the epic mythic and deep dark spirit of the original.

For many years, I've been seeking a show that lives in my memory, but only as a fragment I can't place. This show would have been on in the early-mid 1990s, on British TV.

All I recall of it is an animated opening sequence that showed silhouettes of what I think were mice or rats scurrying over dark fields and wire fences, toward a high tower lit by lightning, while a string plucked theme played arpeggios up and down between organ chords. The camera tracked them into the tower and inside, where inside we saw owls perched inside with glowing glaring eyes.

Beyond that, I cannot recall what the story was, or who the characters were, or any other scenes. Just that opening sequence.

Speaking of Jennifer Connelly (‘Labyrinth’), there’s also Dario Argento’s ‘Phenomena’, released in some markets as ‘Creepers’.

This technically isn’t a kid/teen movie and shouldnt have been labelled or categorised as such, but many video stores and tv channels wrongly assumed it was.

They showed us The Peanut Butter Solution at school. A kid in the movie puts the solution on his crotch and pubes grow out of his pant legs!

"Mom... I think there's a G'MORK in my closet..."

It was made for TV, but the plot revolved around the ghost of a southern child who had a doll with gems hidden inside its porcelain head.

The hero is a bland child actor with good teeth and a bad accent - very 70s, almost Robbie Benson level acting.

The 1970s version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Watcher and Something Wicked both scary children films! They are not perfect but memorable movies!

Antz & Small Soldiers. jfc. gore and military-related horror in the extreme for little kids' movies :/

i remember being five years old crying and vomiting after my first viewing of the battle scenes in Antz. fuck Woody Allen tbh

There was a TV movie (or maybe an episode from an anthology series) in the early 70s about a woman who buys couple of antique victorian dolls (boy & girl) from a doll hospital, and then everyone in her life starts meeting with tragic accidents. The dolls never move on camera, they just lay in their coffin-like boxes, IIRC. The creepy atmosphere along with the ambiguity about the dolls freaked me out more than similar movies about dolls who actually come to life and kill people.

I slept over at my friend's house (two brothers) when I was around 12 years old. Their parents told us we were going to the Open Air Drive-In Theater. It wasn't the usual one my mother took us too and the ride was a lot longer. I think maybe Middleton, MA. Just as we were pulling in, the parents told the three of us to put the blankets over ourselves in the back of the station wagon until the car was parked in its spot. Once the X-rated movie started playing we were given fruit punch and snacks. I remember seeing a few naked men and women on the big screen but don't remember anything else after that or anything, including going back to their house from that night.

Unico, sad and scary. It was the only tape we had.

Wow I was just going to post about Unico. Haunted me for years!

Anna to the Infinite Power - pointlessly creepy.

Bad Ronald - felt sorry for Ronald and afraid about what was going to happen to him.

A book rather than a movie, thank God....The Witches of Worm. I have never read a "YA book" so full of genuine malevolence.

Films my mother turned off: Don't be Afraid of the Dark; The Blood of Satan's Claw (when she realized what it was); The Mystery of the Rue Morgue (after the first killing); and some Japanese shocker about a giant jellyfish.

There was also a film I recall about a weird cult revolving around a dark-haired boy who lived with his acolytes on a ship surrounded by a fog-shrouded sea. Strange monsters attacked and at the end the boy was kllled.

R24 The Witches Of Worm does sound properly heavy tbf. As if the author just reviled her mother and her neighbour and her former bestie so much she wanted an excuse to publish dark and violent revenge fantasies about them (is she a DLer?)

[quote] Jessica, a lonely pre-teen girl, finds a blind, almost hairless kitten that she names Worm. A reclusive elderly neighbor, Mrs. Fortune, helps her to wean and raise him. Worm seems to have a terrible hold on Jessica, compelling her to do cruel and destructive things to people in her life who have upset her. Jessica's victims include her former best friend Brandon and her childish and emotionally distant divorced mother. As Jessica's destructive actions escalate, her mother attempts to send her to counseling, which further enrages and upsets her. Jessica comes to believe that Worm is possessed by a group of witches that includes Mrs. Fortune. When Jessica finds herself contemplating Mrs. Fortune's murder, she realizes she is in danger of going too far, and decides to exorcise Worm herself in order to break his hold over her. After a dramatic exorcism, culminating in a nighttime chase during a bad thunderstorm, Worm becomes a normal cat, and Jessica is reconciled with her mother and Brandon, causing her to think that she not only exorcised Worm but also herself. The book has often been banned from school libraries in the United States because of its focus on the subject of witchcraft, the description of visions or nightmares Jessica experiences, and its protagonist's disturbing inner monologues with Worm/herself.

17 years later a similar YA horror book was published called The Bone Dog, that I read in middle-school. It's more to do with necr0mancy and clever convenient nasty 'accidents' that the protagonist human doesn't consciously want (or admit to wanting), rather than outright explicit ordered attacks or possessions, but otherwise a very similar premise. As an angsty gothy and angry teen, I wanted one a bone dog my own, but of course now the thought is disturbing.

[quote] Sarah doesn't believe Bryan when he says he can make her the perfect pet. Then one night he puts an old bone inside a fox fur, adds some drops of blood and brings them to life. Now Sarah has her treasured pet, which does everything she asks, including the bad things, and even she is getting scared...

R25, even the cover of The Witches of Worm is so off-puttingly ugly that I was afraid to look at it as a child.

I remember a scene where a crying infant was simply covered up with falling autumn leaves and another where the protagonist imagining tearing another girls' face into pieces "like a paper picture"....nicely captured by the pencil illustration...

R24 here...the final film is Hammer Films' "The Lost Continent" of 1968 evidently. Yeeeeeeek...

The trailer for The Lost Continent.

When I was 6 years old in 1960. I remember being terrified by the movie 13 Ghosts. You had to wear these special goggles to see all the ghosts. Even though it's only rated a 6 on IMDB, it really scared 6 year old me.

Looking back, a lot of DCOMs and Nickelodeon TV movies were fucked up, with all these morbid or sexual innuendos. At the time a lot of it flew right over my head and most kids' heads, but when you rewatch as an adult it's like....huh, damn, they really went there.

[quote] When I was 6 years old in 1960. I remember being terrified by the movie 13 Ghosts. You had to wear these special goggles to see all the ghosts.

They've really been trying for a lifetime to make 3D movies happen lol

[R1]: I’d forgotten she’s called Mombi in the movie of “Return to Oz.” In the original book, she has the more evocative name of Languidir. There’s even a pen-and-ink Art Nouveau illustration of her holding a head above her bare neck.

The movie that most terrified me as a kid was a re-release of “Snow White,” which my father took me and my 2 older brothers to in 1952. The scenes with the witch made me hide under the seats. I was 3.

In later years, I liked those scenes best, and realized Disney really created that film for an adult sensibility.

Don Bluth films, mostly.

THE SECRET OF NIMH is one of his darkest, all about animal experimentation and medical malpractice and destruction of natural habitats. It's also rather violent with some gore and death, a bleak ambiguous ending, and it looks oppressive and dark and scary in terms of art style too.

Bonus, gay icon of stage & screen Derek Jacobi provides a main character voice.

Fantastic Planet (1973), an animated Sci-Fi feature film that is pretty much a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life. I really freaked me out me as a child! The trailer says it all:

TW: The following vid may totally fuck you up as noted by some crybabies above

millennials frequently list "The Brave Little Toaster" for ruining their lives:

some parents protested films like "My Girl" and "Road To Terabithia" citing the trauma it caused their children.

Watership Down is frequently cited by X as to why they were such slackers

Anna Chlumsky had thick, beautiful hair.

many here are fat whores because of Young Sherlock Holmes

The Moomins anime adaptation from the 90s had its moments.

A few of those Shelley Duvall Faerie Tale Theatre episodes scared me as a kid. Beverly D'Angelo turning into a huge dragon and trying to kill Christopher Reeve in Sleeping Beauty came out of nowhere and freaked me out. There was also that creepy ghoul that shows up on Mick Jagger's chest in The Nightingale. That was pretty freaky.

Poltergeist was another movie my parents seemed fine with me watching as a kid because it was PG, but a lot of the scenes in that have haunted me ever since. The clown, the meat going bad and having maggots crawling out of it, and the guy ripping off his face were the scariest.

I'll also vouch for The Witches. That's a really terrifying movie.

R43 Dario Argento's 'Phenomena' with Jennifer Connelly has a hell of a maggots scene.

I hardly think of Phenomena as being a children's movie or even youth-oriented.

R45 well, neither do I and I never said that. It was incorrectly marketed or shelved in some places as a film suitable for kids/teens, though, because the main setting of the movie is a school, and pretty young ingenue Jennifer was on the cover of all the promo. Back in the day, you average backwoods BlockBuster truly would throw any title on any shelf.

Poltergeist scared the living shit out of me. So much so would g we insanely scared if the channel messed up and no one was home.

I'm glad to hear I wasn't the only child traumatised by The Witches!

I remember being creeped out by the death scene in All Dogs Go to Heaven. A drunken dog gets blindfolded and left on a bridge, and is merrily singing as a car smashes into him.

Disney's Pinocchio

To this day, decades later, the sound of a donkey braying freaks me the fuck out.

Case in point: Beck's Odelay has a song that ends with the sound of a jackass that so disturbs me, I have to immediately jump to the next song on the album.

Here's another example: I so want to see the movie Eo, which has become the darling of film critics and is even Oscar nominated in the foreign film category.

But something tells me the ever-so-cute creature doesn't remain silent.

I was seriously freaked out as a child by [italic]Whoever Slew Auntie Roo?[/italic]

The Electric Grandmother scared the shit out of me.

I can’t believe someone else was traumatized by Unico.

Was a Ginga Densetsu Weed bitch as a kid.

Hours of cute pet dogs on adventures in a bucolic setting....getting physically maimed and torn to bloody pieces by bears & wolves, breaking backs and necks falling down ravines or in rushing torrents, undergoing horrific torture at the hands of humans or other dogs, and then endless angst about it because the surviving cute pet dogs have existential guilt and grief they can't get past.

Not a one of you are as hardcore or as traumatised as I.

The sequence where Cruella De Ville cracks up her classic car was a pants-wetting moment for me.

R50, oh my God, me too!

The dead baby!

No hate for Rikki-Tikki-Tavi? It gave me a lifelong fear of being kidnapped by a family of snakes. That bitch Nagaina haunts my dreams.

I had to watch "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" twice every Saturday night sitting on my dad's lap because it reminded him of his early years.

What a lovely movie for kids! The field! It’s full of blood!

The Red Bull from The Last Unicorn scared me as a kid. As did the murderous Harpy bird with the boobs.

In the Neverending Story- Artax the horse drowning and Gmork the …thing… really messed me up for a while.

Otherwise, great movie.

Mame. That poor Patrick Dennis having to go live with that song-screeching aunt of his.

Not a film - but there was a children's BBC series in the 90s based on the Animals of Farthing Wood books. It featured cute talking animals - the twist being that they met realistic deaths. The hedgehogs were squished by traffic; a bird snatched the baby mice and impaled them on thorns; Mr Pheasant was shot after shrieking at the sight of his wife's roasted corpse left to cool on a windowsill...

“Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure” (1977). Someone must have taken the bad acid when they came up with this perplexingly bizarre and disturbing film.

R62 the Farthing Wood books we’re just as harowing iirc. I do think that kind of disturbing content is important for kids to see, though, as a way to teach them about the reality of death, the brutality of man, and the indifference of nature.

Related: Once Upon A Forest. Adorable little anthros wanting to protect their forest homes get squashed by diggers and gassed by exhaust fumes!

R62, I agree it's important to teach kids the truth about nature and predation, where meat comes from, etc. I'm not objecting to the Farthing Wood series - I watched it every week - I'm just saying that it's best remembered for its surprisingly graphic death scenes.

I'm watching "The Watcher in the Woods" tonight for the fist time because of this thread.

I can't believe not only what a bad actress Lynn-Holly Johnson was, but that it was her second movie and she went on to have an acting career. She is the worst.

[quote] "I’d forgotten she’s called Mombi in the movie of “Return to Oz.” In the original book, she has the more evocative name of Languidir. There’s even a pen-and-ink Art Nouveau illustration of her holding a head above her bare neck."

Yes, R32! The source material for the screenplay were the second and third books in the Oz series. In "The Land Of Oz", Mombi is a wicked witch who keeps a boy named Tip as a slave. Tip creates Jack Pumpkinhead for a companion & as a means to help him escape. Tip is later revealed to be Princess Ozma who was kidnapped and transformed by Mombi.

Langwidere, arriving in a storm, Billina, the Wheelers, and the Nome (that's how he spelled it) King (among other things) were all taken from "Ozma of Oz", the third book. But all that happens in the Land Of Ev, not Oz, as depicted in the film.

Anyway, Princess Mombi is a mashup of the witch Mombi from book two, and Langwidere from book three. This happens all the time in film, of course. But it IS interesting. And I absolutely love the Art Nouveau illustrations.

r67 when I was in high school, I wanted to collect and read the entire Oz series (I didn't make it all the way). I loved the first one especially, since it was so different from the MGM film (which I also loved). As an aside, I remember L. Frank Baum incorporated suggestions from readers in later books.

The first half or so are the best, R68. Later on, they become formulaic. And some of the details shift, and are inconsistent. For instance: the four quadrants, and Emerald City are color-coded: Blue, Red, Yellow, Purple, and Green.

Initially, he writes that the color is the just the "favorite of the people in the region", and is used as much as possible (clothing, etc.). Later (I can't remember which book), he says that the sky, earth, grass, and everything else are also that same color. Honestly: the inconsistencies are really disappointing, and go much further than that.

So, "Lord Of The Rings" it is not. But but the first half or so are the best.

You can buy "The Oz Chronicles" in two volumes., which is what I own. They only cover the Baum books, however.

It wasn’t the scariness of the French animated fantasy Fantastic Planet that was the problem, it was the sexiness of the naked humans running around that scandalized my brother and me. My brother threatened me with death if I told my mother what had seen.

Bambi, Old Yeller, the witch from 1,001 Dalmations. I was really little watching the murder and terrorizing of animals.

I’ve never seen The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, but after reading in Sarah Polley’s memoir Run Towards the Danger what she had to endure while filming it and how traumatizing it was, it sounds terrifying. Director Terry Gilliam was an out of control maniac who didn’t really give a fuck about anyone’s safety. Eric Idol admitted as such as did the stunt coordinator. Especially a scene in a life boat that gets bombed and a real horse got spooked and jumped out and drowned sounds devastating..

R72 Sarah Polley is a brilliant, intelligent and talented filmmaker & actress. A credit to her industry.

R73 Oh trust me, I’ve been one of her biggest fans for decades since the heartbreaking Sweet Hereafter. I’m still bummed that her memoir got little to no coverage, while I’m Glad My Mom Died became a cultural phenomenon. If you want to read an indictment of what children actors are exposed to and how they are treated in the industry, Run Towards the Danger does that in spades. I’m hoping her, fingers crossed, win for best adapted screen play Oscar will lead people to her memoir. Especially how her experiences with a violent serial rapist informed her writing and directing of Women Talking.

This might sound a bit odd, but I find 'The Snowman' more frightening and dark than merely melancholy. It's upsetting, either way, and has emotionally-traumatised several generations of British children.

R75 What better way to for children to ring in the holidays by watching an animated film with the uplifting message “…and someday, you too will melt into oblivion!”

Sarah Polley is one step closer to that best adapted screenplay Oscar.

R77 wish the public could vote and make sure she gets it!

It would be a wholly-deserved accolade and achievement, which can’t often be said about Oscars.

Speaking of movies for young people, most people don’t know that Polley was the one behind the most recent production of Little Women. She wrote the script and was set to direct it. Unfortunately, a bizarre accident where she was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher left her in an extended state of concussion where she was so debilitated that she could barely function. Directing responsibilities were turned over to Greta Gerwig with the filming of Polley’s script. Gerwig of course needed to extend her creative control and put her own mark on it and rewrote the script enough to take credit as the screenwriter.

R79 that is insane. What are the odds?

Would love to know Polley’s real uncensored thoughts about the finished ‘Little Women’. I think we all know she’d probably have done a better job.

There were a lot of production issues with the Watcher in the Woods. John Hough was trying to direct a horror film while Disney just wanted a mild PG fantasy. No-one was happy with the result.

In any case, the original ending is on the internet.

My friends and I all have wonderful memories of the shows that scared us as children. There was this phase in the 70s/80s of scary kids shows. None of us are traumatised by them, which makes me not that sympathetic when parents nowadays try to limit what the kids watch in case it’s ‘too scary’. Most kids love this stuff, I think it helps them develop in some ways. Like we had an episode of Dr Who on recently and my young nephew started off hiding behind the couch just like we did, but gradually kept peering out and ended up having a grand time with the show. I think it allows kids to feel brave and like they are overcoming fears somewhat.

Obviously if they are seriously distressed you would shut it down, but mostly it seems to be a positive thing.

When I was a kid it was Dr Who, Children of the Stones, Under the Mountain, hell, even Monkey Magic. We all love reminiscing on the effect of these shows on us now.

R82 was Doctor Who actually scary back in the day?

My generation was the Eccleston & Tennant years, and while I never watched that much, I can't say that a single episode I saw ever raised so much as a hair. In fact, it seemed kiddy and silly to me even when I was a silly kid myself. Perhaps they made the show lighter and gentler and more child-friendly after the Millennium.

I was a kid in the 80s and it was all Tom Baker repeats and Sylvester McCoy. As an adult you can see the sets neatly falling down and the am dram nature of it but as a kid it was really quite creepy.

The episode where the doctor went to the circus freaked me out as a kid, all those weird clowns!

Dr. Who really scared me as a little kid - the total deadpan delivery, the eerie music, the remarkably high body count.

There have been some disturbing episodes of the Tennant years - "Blink" was especially creepy.

My Mum has mentioned how as a child she felt watching the apocalyptic 70s Brit series ‘Threads’, and I’m like cool...absolutely never looking into that myself, then. Sounds horrific.

Cloak and Dagger (1984) starring Henry Thomas was pretty dark. I loved it tho

R86 You should, it's really good. They made us watch it at school in the 80s. It's on archive.org

The implication in Bluth's 'Thumbelina' that our heroine becomes a cabaret girl is uh....a lot. And sad.

She even gets forcibly stripped and humiliated on stage in front of hundreds of audience members, and heckled as hideous.

Does anyone remember a Sunday afternoon movie called The Red Room Riddle? I remember nothing about it except it scared me.

“Disney is indoctrinating them plain and simple! There’s only one way to breathe, through your mouth.”

Tom’s screams in early ‘Tom & Jerry’

Pee Wee as so fucked up.

The Phoenix and the Carpet. Creepy.

The Wizard of Oz always freaked me out. There was another movie called 'Don't be Afraid of the Dark', starring Kim Darby, that scared me to death. I found it on YouTube recently and have watched it 4 times, lol. Death of her innocence, was another disturbing movie. It started Pamela Sue Martin and I forget who else. It was about teen pregnancy and abortion. I'll never forget that movie.

R90, my gift to you.

It is a surprisingly nasty piece of work.

R63 I'm lining that up for my next trip. It looks amazing!

R82 as a Pagan, I’ve been recommended ‘Children Of The Stones’ a few times. What did you think of it?

The Black Cauldron

R85 tbf the torchwood sex gas alien episode that aired when I was about 13 was bloody traumatising

Brainscan was a kind of sad and dark and real subtextually, once you got past the silliness.

WeHateMovies podcast dissolved any residual heebies I had from childhood about it, though. You cannot take it seriously.

[quote] "Promotional CDs, Jeremy! I had 100,000 pressed! Jeremy, let me ask you this, it's a serious question now--how many people in the world do you think can resist 100 free hours of America Online? The answer Jeremy is NONE. That's why it's a foolproof plan!"

R98, I enjoyed it as a kid, and I watched it again as an adult for nostalgia and I think it holds up. It is a show for young people, but I don't remember it being too dumbed down or anything. Quite eerie. I wish they made more stuff for kids like that now.