sure, the wheelers scared the fuck out of me, but jack pumpkinhead was friggin' adorable

[futuresoon]

A link from Neil Gaiman: Top 10 kids' movies inappropriate for kids. And now, of course, I fully intend to subject my future children to a Return to Oz/Time Bandits/The Adventures of Mark Twain/Dark Crystal/Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory marathon, because I saw all those movies in my impressionable years and loved them to bits. Obviously I

Comments

[stunt_muppet]

I was fortunate enough to have seen only two of those movies in my youth (Time Bandits and Willy Wonka), and only the former frightened me. But it frightened me good, and it was years before I could watch it again. It didn't help that our copy of it was somewhat old and I couldn't hear the dialogue half the time, so everything about the movie - including the ending - was bizarre and inexplicable and I left not quite understanding why anything had happened.

On the other hand, the "Mysterious Stranger" segment from The Adventures of Mark Twain scared the bejeezus out of me when I saw it for the first time *a few months ago*. On *Youtube*. I can't bring myself to inflict that on my theoretical kids.

Any discussion of Watership Down reminds me of TV Tropes nowadays. "I just wanted a movie about bunnies!"

[futuresoon]

I admit to not remembering exactly what went on in Time Bandits and The Adventures of Mark Twain--the ending of Time Bandits in particular; I'd vaguely recalled that they offered the kid the chance to come travel with them forever, and then he turned them down or something, I don't know. But apparently that was not really the case.

I think I was more "intrigued" by Watership Down than I was "scared"--I remember thinking, oh, that's very frightening, but on more of an objective level. I quite liked the Black Rabbit. I was something of an odd child.

[stunt_muppet]

I think I got that the parents were gone for what seemed like an arbitrary and cruel reason, and the boy was alone with no home and no family - I grasped enough for it to frighten me. But really, even after I came back to it I'm not sure I got most of it. Terry Gilliam is quite, quite mad. :D

I...ah...still haven't seen Watership Down. Er. Yes, I know I should, but the only thing I've seen of it thus far was that video of all the gruesome bunny death set to the Marilyn Manson cover of "Sweet Dreams". Which doesn't make me want to see it in a hurry, but that's my own fault.

[selenak]

Sadly, I haven't seen any of these when I was a child younger then ten - I think I was 12 when I saw Watership Down, for example, and at that point I had already read a lot of novels in which people were poisoned, buried alive, or burned (historical novels mostly), so really, fighting rabbits weren't anything that could scare me. (I love the book Watership Down, btw. Keep rereading it as an adult

[futuresoon]

I suspect the guy who wrote the article is getting soundly trounced by the people in the comments--Neil Gaiman's army, it is mighty. *g* Likely he would prefer the Disney versions of the classic fairy tales, alas. And it honestly only occurred to me recently how distressing the changes Disney made to The Little Mermaid are; I fail at recognizing obvious symbolism. So does the article guy, probably.

[harena]

i was never scarred by any of those 'cause i wasn't a kid when i saw any of them, so i suppose that is cheating. Though, even if i had been, i still wouldn't have because my mom was so mean about letting us see movies that i remember her refusing to allow us to see Mary Poppins when it first came to town. Mary Poppins.

Now, books are another matter entirely.. don't even get me started on what happened to my brain when i read Animal Farm in complete oblivion of what it was really about when i was a pre-teen .... *shudders at the memory*

[qkellie]

Pfft, none of those movies scarred me (well, I have never seen that disgusting Garbage Pail business, but that's merely because it looked dumb). Now, E.T. scared the stuffing out of me as a kid, and nobody else on the planet agrees with me that that film is traumatizing! :(