I think my first scarring was from the episode “Dragon’s Domain”, in Space:1999, as I was only 8 when it was first broadcasted. The other scarring episode I can still recall with clarity was being at a drive-in and seeing Barbarella, the bitey little dolls seemed so scary back then.
I suspect my parents were too tolerant of my penchant for science fiction back then. But hey, fond memories of seeing Star Wars at the local cinema!
It was a mixture of paint thinners.
hmh the vast majority is facial distortions. probably why i limit mirrors to shaving.
Years ago I rewatched the entirety of Robocop in a bar after an insanely long day doing food distribution work post Hurricane Sandy and my major takeaway was that my parents were insane for letting me watch it at age 8.
Wrath of Khan. 8 year olds have no business seeing that on the big screen.
My parents put blankets over the windscreen at the drive-in for that scene (the Dark Crystal one as well). In hindsight, I should’ve trusted their judgement enough not to stick my head out of the car window and watch it anyway.
Mmmmm, roast nebri, my favorite!!
I was 46 when I saw Coraline…and Other Mother still fucked me up.
Watcher in the Wood. Disney making horror movies was a cruel easily-scared-child-of-easily-confused-parents trick of movie production.
Oh, gawd yes. I don’t think I’ve been able to watch that scene with my eyes open since. I seem to recall his hand just getting smeared off at one point.
The little dog Tiffany getting kicked in the first Benji movie. ANYTHING having to do with animals getting hurt would mess with my head.
But then there was the big 'un: For some inexplicable reason, my parents took me to see Damien III: The Final Conflict when I was 11. Having grown up in an environment of casual christianist propaganda, this whole movie fucked me up for MONTHS.
The shoe scene was indeed quite horrible but that red eyes scene was the scariest thing that I had ever seen. Our school class went to see the movie with in a theater. I do remember being troubled by the scene for days. I have to admit that I’m still not feeling completely comfortable seeing it.
I think all of these came after I was a kid.
I saw Ben Hur in a theatre about 1968, the leper scenes scared me. I had bunkbeds, and on the bottom bunk.Somehow tgat made me feel like I was in the cave.
Wait, I did see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang when it first came out, the child catcher is in the video. I didn’t feel threatened, but he came across as very unlikeable, I assume a fake nose.
But “2001” left me wondering " what was all that? ". I love it until things go bad out near Jupiter, but at eight, I couldn’t understand the ending. I still don’t and often stop watching it befire that point.
Then there was “Cold Turkey”, we probably saw that because of Dick Van Dyke. About a town giving up smoking, it just seemed bad, thiugh I’ve only seen it the one time. And implied sex, which is weird when you’re 11 and with your mother. Nothing scary, just a bad film.
But we didn’t go to movies that much when I was a kid. I think under twenty films before I was sixteen, I have most on DVD. Most were Disney.
I’m not too scarred as a kid, as I didn’t have access to widely inappropriate movies and shows for the most part.
I do have two that stick out though.
One was from I think an HBO series called the Hitchkiker. And in the story two guys are fucking around driving and hit some guy on he side of the road and then drive off. Later the guys brother finds them, buries one of them up to his shoulders, and then has the other guy drive over him.
But I think the scene to this day that makes me a bit uncomfortable is the short but too long and too real of screams torture/execution scene in the Last Starfighter.
The video pretty much covers it for me with one exception: Jaws. The idea of a shark getting me while out for an innocent swim kept me out of major bodies of water for a couple of summers, and I live in Michigan.
Yeah, some of these still fuck me up. I’ve just been re-traumatized watching that video.
Most kids movies in the 80’ and some in the 90’s had scenes that were seemingly designed to traumatize the shit out of kids. It’s so weird revisiting them now as an adult and wondering who the hell thought it’d be fine. That said i do like that a lot of these movies don’t try to sugar coat things for kids and let them experience some hard truths or feelings in a safe way.
Anyone else screwed up by the lobotomizing thing in The Black Hole?
I listened to a podcast about it (How Did This Get Made) and i honestly had forgotten all about it and it suddenly came rushing back at me. For years i thought it was a weird fever dream that i imagined because the movie was so fucking strange.
