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.
When I was roughly 10 years old I watched my next door neighbors’ parents’ home made hardcore sex tape. She had found it while snooping in her dads closet. So yeah, little old me (boy) and closest friend (girl) sitting on her parents bed watching a very graphic homemade porn.
Definitely shaped my sexual development…
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
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.
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.
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
It was a mid-90s movie on HBO called “Cyber Sex” or something like that. I was much too young to be watching. Pretty sure it started my fascination with porn and eventual addiction…
The Ring
The X-Files episode “Home”
Darkness Falls for me.
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.”
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.
Dad took me and my brother to see Predator in the theater. Would have been about 10 and my brother 8. While I applaud him wanting to share something he was excited about with his children I am sure there were better options.
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.
- The Neverending Story: STARTS with a horse DYING FROM SADNESS and the movie is about existence being devoured by nothingness.
- Nightmare on Elm Street: where the fuck were my parents?!
- Time Bandits: the cages floating in the void, the dwarves being chased down a corridor, the parents die to evil at the end…don’t they? Ambiguous existential dread all around this one.
- The Thing: no clear childhood memories or nightmares but I know I saw it before I was 10.
- Reanimator: ditto for The Thing.
- The Shining
- Cat People
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!
