Saturday, April 18, 2015

80's Kid's Movies that Freaked Kid's Out.

There are some movies that came out made for children that were, for all intents and purposes, scary as shit for kids. I was born in the early eighties, and grew up on movies back when they were awesome, back when they were still thinking of good ideas and before they invented the term "reboot" or "prequel". I loved a lot of movies, but some of them were… kind of creepy for kids, and yet they were catered towards people as old as my five-year-old daughter. I watch these movies now, and many of them are still as awesome as they were when I was a kid, but I remember certain things freaking me out about them when I was the "targeted audience" age.
Return to Oz is a great movie, with a talking Jack O' Lantern, a fat robot, and Fairuza Balk before she became a white trash witch and the Waterboy's love interest.

That smile kind of creeps me out.
But the movie has some really dark and creepy parts. What about the witch Mombie and the decapitated heads she keeps in glass cabinets? She takes off one head and switches it with another, and there's nothing comedic about it. Then there is the scene where the Gnome king gets a poison chicken egg dropped down his throat and he turns into a rock skeleton and rots away.
Which is pretty gruesome when only a minute ago he looked like this:

The Neverending story was AWESOME when I was a kid. A magic book that got you out of math class, luck dragons, rock biters, giant, wise turtles that sneeze every other minute while deciding whether or not to be a pain in the ass. Oh, yeah, and don't forget the creepy statues with nude female breasts that shoot lasers from their eyes and the gianormous wolf creature that wants to tear you to shreds.
This is a kid's movie. Cover up.
Gmork, the enemy, is a wolf who literally says he will tear Atreyu, the hero, to shreds. For a kid, the creature is pretty scary, and when he lunges forward from his cave, you see that he is excessively larger than Atreyu. It's like a six-year-old kid watching a full size tiger lunge towards him, claws out, ready to eat some human meat.
That's not zoomed in. His head is twice the size of yours.

 The Secret of NIMH was an kid's movie, but some parts of it I didn't get until I rewatched it as an adult. There are so many reference to adult themes that kids would be confused or disturbed about. I'm not talking about sex (like Shrek). No, more like death and murder, over and over. The kid's father died in a rescue mission against the evil experimental corporation that made lab rats smarter. The rats drugged the farmer's house cat on a regular basis, something I had to question my parents about when I watched the movie. Even worse was the Great Owl, who offered advice, but decided whether or not to eat those he gave advice to.
With his creepy-ass demon eyes.

And then there's Legend:
No explanation needed



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