My dads brother visited us one time - when I was around 7 years old - and they sent me to bed and watched a movie together on TV. I’m not sure where my mom was, perhaps taking care of my little brother, but I quietly went down the stairs and saw them watching the movie, and I stayed very quietly so they would not know I’m there.
It was a Bruce Lee movie, “The Big Boss (1971)”. In that movie Bruce works at a ice factory and his boss kills some people and puts them into the ice. That’s not the worst of it. They then have those big ice blocks and a big blade saw and that saw cuts the big blocks into smaller peaces. It also cuts those bodies in the ice blocks into smaller pieces.
I couldn’t believe what I saw and went back upstairs and couldn’t fall asleep. I never told my parents.
I had nightmares from Dawn of the Dead for weeks. I was 8 or 9 when my mom tried to show it to me, lol
Terminator 2. Also Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Oh and a glimpse of Silence of the lambs before I got caught by mum that time.
The heart part in Indiana Jones haunted me. as did the idea of a killer robot that you can’t reason with or plead mercy to.
Yeah Temple of Doom at T2 for me as well.
ToD was somehow approved by my parents (I think it was rated PG-13, not R) and we even owned it on VHS but I definitely lost some sleep over the heart scene and also the monkey brains.
T2 was definitely not approved, but I watched it at a friend’s house.
I think it was rated PG-13, not R
In fact it was rated PG. The resulting backlash, along with a similar situation with Gremlins, directly resulted in the MPAA creating the PG-13 rating.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Jones_and_the_Temple_of_Doom#PG_rating
Same!! I watched it at a friends house ahaha 😂 Mum was not pleased. Ah well. Now it’s funny.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
I couldn’t sleep…
Same. And eggplants scared the hell out of me after seeing that. I guess they looked enough like the things the aliens came out of.
Scary Movie 3. Among many reasons that’s a film you shouldn’t watch as a child, that was my introduction to the Ring, and I had a TV in my room.
An American Werewolf in London.
I stayed up watching it on my brother’s black and white TV. My parents had no idea. I nearly shit the bed afterward when my brother jumped on me in the dark and yelled “raaaah.”
Brain Damage. Scary and way too sexual for a little kid.
Jaws. Watched it when I was about 8. Now in my 40s and still don’t like being in open water or sea where I can’t see the bottom… I know what’s down there…
Same movie, same age, same irrational thoughts in water!
I live 3hrs from the coast and even swimming in a crystal clear fresh water river, it’s still in the back of my mind as an adult, as I kid, I wouldn’t even swim a alone in our pool!
Removed by mod
Good for you, I watched RoboCop on my own at around the same age and that acid scene has been forever etched into my mind, and made me avoid gore movies.
Removed by mod
So are nightmares and religion, but they still can fuck you up ;)
Removed by mod
Watching Hellraiser 2 was pretty bad. I didn’t understand what was going on, but forever remembered the scary woman with no skin!
The X-Files episode “Home”
Darkness Falls for me.
The Shining
I must have seen it at a very early age, maybe 2 or 3, because I had recurring nightmares about the chase scene that I couldn’t contextualize until I saw it again in my teens.
This was mine too. The bathtub scene with the lady gave me nightmares for weeks.
Omen, Excorcist, Nightmare on Elm St, Jason, Cujo, Friday the 13th - I was a very free range kid. The one that really sticks out is (IIRC) The Amityville Horror. There is a scene with these red glowing eyes down a dark hallway…the adult in me knows it was probably just some guy with two flashlights, but it still raises the hairs on my arms thinking about it
First horror movie ever saw was Nightmare on Elm Street. Was 5 and only reason mom allowed it was because kids were calling me Freddy Kruger and I didn’t know why. After I watched it I thought “cool” and when I went back to school I taught back to the kids that yes I was and I would visit them in their dreams. They didn’t call me that anymore.
That’s a pretty boss move, I don’t know if I’d be that quick thinking
The Lover 1992 when I was like 9 or 10. Those who know the movie, will understand that this maybe was a bit much for a boy. However it had a lasting effected on my appreciation, of what a good emotional movie looks like. I’d call it double edged sword, as obviously that movie is inappropriate for a kid to watch. However the relationship between the two is very beautifully portrait and made me a helpless romantic. It was at a time when they’d show movies like that on free TV at night and I was visiting my grandparents and they had a TV upstairs.
Akira definitely counts. I’m sure my parents were in the “all cartoons are for kids” camp that everyone was in in the 90s. Similarly, the Guyver.
My mom took me to watch Superman (with Christopher Reeves). I was 3. I had to sleep with the light on for 2 years because the moment I was in the dark, my brain would freak out giving me flashbacks of the movie very bright scenes.
Basically I had cinematic PTSD at 3yo.
