Post a piece of pop culture that traumatised you as a child

stage fright horror GIF by Shudder


I’ve had a love / hate relationship with StageFright since I saw it aged 8. Petrified me at the time. 🦉
 
There was a dolls house show I watched as a child, the Internet tells me is called Tottie. During one episode a doll sets fire to another doll and one of the dolls melts and dies.

Truly horrifying shit that I still recall fairly vividly.
 
GinAg (39) said:
There was a dolls house show I watched as a child, the Internet tells me is called Tottie. During one episode a doll sets fire to another doll and one of the dolls melts and dies.

Truly horrifying shit that I still recall fairly vividly.
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As soon as I saw ‘dolls house show’ I knew you were talking about Tottie! Pure nightmare fuel.
 
funky said:
Stop the press, I've just remembered the ultimate. Why is it so horrible. What primal fear does it tap into to make every child of the 80s HATE IT SO MUCH?

:wownic:



Watching it now it's so bad :D
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Came in to post this, it honestly fucked with my head SO MUCH as a kid :D There was also an issue of the Sonic the Hedgehog comic where Tails got turned into a cyborg that frightened me for similar reasons :(
 
Zu said:
:disco: You’d have to have an extremely THIN OR FLAT LEG for that to be a risk. Another lesson is of course NEVER WEAR WELLIES in metropolitan areas
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Do you remember the one where a girl dropped her rag doll on an escalator and it got eaten by the machinery? That was truly terrifying, but I couldn't find it.

In fact I wonder if that wasn't an advert, or if it genuinely happened to me :(

Far more likely I'd have been a child carrying a rag doll than wearing wellies on a trip into C&A with my mother, anyway.
 
a nightmare on elm street horror GIF


Anyway, obviously I shouldn’t have been watching A Nightmare on Elm Street when I was 7, but that wasn’t a problem for my mother who didn’t waste any time before having to return it to the video shop, with my 10 year old brother insisting it was fine.
 
GinAg (39) said:
There was a dolls house show I watched as a child, the Internet tells me is called Tottie. During one episode a doll sets fire to another doll and one of the dolls melts and dies.

Truly horrifying shit that I still recall fairly vividly.
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Marchpane!

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Tisch said:
"turn me on dead man" and the whole "Faul" conspiracy theory



12 year old me convinced it's all real: :wownic: :ShockedSenhit: :AmandaShock: :agog: :ToneNervous:
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I had a cracking wee book about that, the whole "William Campbell" conspiracy. People think this kind of insanity is a social media phenomena - nope. People really did think Macca was deceased.
 
Jaws was mine. And the Thriller video; the bit when he turned into a werewolf. Mind you, turned out that it was appropriate for an 11 year old to be scared of Michael Jackson...
 
It seems ridiculous now but I always think of this instantly, scared the fucking shit out of me and I would often think about it when going to sleep or being alone in a room. In fact various bits of Ghostbusters were nightmare inducing for a PG or whatever it was. Apparently it was upgraded to a 12 years later. But fuck this scene

 
GinAg (39) said:
There was a dolls house show I watched as a child, the Internet tells me is called Tottie. During one episode a doll sets fire to another doll and one of the dolls melts and dies.

Truly horrifying shit that I still recall fairly vividly.
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Can't find a video but

burn.png
 
In fact speaking of certificates, how the fuck this was a PG or whatever it was in the 80s is just :D Could pick quite a few nightmare inducing scenes that I remember lots of kids my age in primary school talking about. And unlike Ghostbusters are still effective now

 
Spielberg seemed to get away with a lot more than other filmmakers when it came to PG certificates. It’s strange that Temple of Doom was one of the catalysts for PG-13 in the US when that heart scene really isn’t that bad compared to a lot of other stuff around at the time. Hence why it was originally cut out for the UK.

Still I think Poltergeist and Gremlins were 15 certificates in the UK, weren’t they? Since the 12 didn’t exist at the time.
 
There's this episode of Jonathan Creek where an old woman has a dream about a guy with one eye and the image of this monster thing absolutely TERRIFIED me (I was 9 or 10 when I saw it but I had issues and was very easily scared, okay)

I legitimately could not sleep at all the night that it was on TV, and even though I still love the show to this day, it was years and years before I'd watch that particular bit again

And then when I did... it looked like this:

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:D

There are few legitimately creepy scenes from the show (the guy who died in the cellar and "crawled" up the stairs for example) but this is NOT one of them
 
Ellie said:
Spielberg seemed to get away with a lot more than other filmmakers when it came to PG certificates. It’s strange that Temple of Doom was one of the catalysts for PG-13 in the US when that heart scene really isn’t that bad compared to a lot of other stuff around at the time. Hence why it was originally cut out for the UK.

Still I think Poltergeist and Gremlins were 15 certificates in the UK, weren’t they? Since the 12 didn’t exist at the time.
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I think you're right Poltergeist was a 15 here, maybe it was just the US it was PG then or something that was initially suggested before they changed it.

It definitely felt like something most kids saw at the time for one reason or another despite clearly being terrifying for kids :D
 
Saying that, different things scare different people. Fraggle Rock scared the bejesus out of me to the same level of Poltergeist.

Ghostbusters was a PG and Gremlins a 15 (BBFC app confirms it was changed to a 12A in 2012), but I found Ghostbusters a lot scarier.
 
I know this is rather obvious but it feels like one of those rare unanimous childhood terrors that actually trancended generations. I don't know how we all watched it as kids, we must have been 8 or 9. Obviously the teeth part was memorable but there are even loads of non-Pennywise related scenes that left a mark.

Much as I liked them I doubt the remakes have even 1% of the effect, in part because culture has moved on no doubt, but also because Tim Curry just played PURE EVIL


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This movie was on one day when I came from school. I must have been 6 or 7 and it traumatized me for years



(From 1:08:50, it’s a shit movie :D but not to child me)
 
Raining on Me said:
I know this is rather obvious but it feels like one of those rare unanimous childhood terrors that actually trancended generations. I don't know how we all watched it as kids, we must have been 8 or 9. Obviously the teeth part was memorable but there are even loads of non-Pennywise related scenes that left a mark.

Much as I liked them I doubt the remakes have even 1% of the effect, in part because culture has moved on no doubt, but also because Tim Curry just played PURE EVIL


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It’s definitely practical effects and make-up that is SO much scarier than modern equivalents. The remake didn’t even have a fraction of the impact, even though it was quite well done all things considered.
 
Also anything CHUCKY related. I remember for a friend's 10th birthday party somehow his mum had lined up the Child's Play films for us with snacks and fizzy drinks as if we were settling down to Care Bears. I don't think any kid cared or understood Halloween and slasher films, but paranormal and DEMONIC TOYS and suddenly it was relatable and terrifying :D

I think several at the party ended up in traumatised tears however and it was switched off before the first film was even half way, can't imagine why that didn't end well :eyes:
 
Raining on Me said:
Also anything CHUCKY related. I remember for a friend's 10th birthday party somehow his mum had lined up the Child's Play films for us with snacks and fizzy drinks as if we were settling down to Care Bears. I don't think any kid cared or understood Halloween and slasher films, but paranormal and DEMONIC TOYS and suddenly it was relatable and terrifying :D

I think several at the party ended up in traumatised tears however and it was switched off before the first film was even half way, can't imagine why that didn't end well :eyes:
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The weird thing is that I found Chucky scary as a child just from the concept of the talking doll. Once I actually saw the films as an adult, and knew the plot of it being possessed by a serial killer via a voodoo curse, it just wasn’t scary any more.

And of course the brilliantly comic Chucky films after the original Child’s Play trilogy totally eased off any prior terror. Oddly the comedy Nightmare on Elm Street sequels still haven’t made the first one any less scary.
 
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I was really into sci-fi as a kid, so my Dad went out of his way on a business trip to pick me up a copy of this. It terrified me for years, and I used to hate playing it when he'd ask me to put it on.

It took me ages to get over it.
 
Ellie said:
The weird thing is that I found Chucky scary as a child just from the concept of the talking doll. Once I actually saw the films as an adult, and knew the plot of it being possessed by a serial killer via a voodoo curse, it just wasn’t scary any more.

And of course the brilliantly comic Chucky films after the original Child’s Play trilogy totally eased off any prior terror. Oddly the comedy Nightmare on Elm Street sequels still haven’t made the first one any less scary.
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I guess understandably KILLER TOYS transition the worst into adulthood in terms of scariness :D although Child's Play has its moments.

Nightmare on Elm Street somehow sustained it because the concept, bizarrely, still works as an adult. That and the fact it's just really good at being scary so the sequels don't ruin it.

That dragged out Tina murder scene is still shocking to me
 
On the opposite side of the coin, I remember being quite shook up by Home & Away suddenly have some random nobody character EATEN BY A SHARK. Or at least that's how I remember it

I watched Home & Away for whatever lead girl Pippa decided to kidnap for herself that week, sauntering around in their fancy chequered uniform in the sunshine talking in an exotic accent, and suddenly murderous fish became a real storyline.

You didn’t even see anything, i just remember it haunting me for some time
 
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