Pee Wee's Big Adventure: There are many Accidental Nightmare Fuel moments in this movie, but one that sticks out as especially terrifying is when Pee-wee encounters Large Marge and catches a ride with her. She is telling him her story, when, all of a sudden, she turns toward him, and her face is all claymation and horrifying. That can give children nightmares for years.
Hook: In what is otherwise a fantastical flick with a manic-depressive Captain Hook and a vaguely Ho Yay Smee, behold the first half's kidnapping sequence. Particularly, the slashed wallpaper from the front door all the way up the stairs to the children's room—because it implies the good Captain just strolled in and took his damn time.
Even worse—the pirates stalked the children beforehand. Remember when Jack accuses Maggie of stealing his baseball?
Maggie: That mean, scary man at the window took it.
Peter: There's no mean scary man.
Maggie: But he says he's a window washer!
The children's caretaker was physically unhurt but in a near-catatonic state, reciting a Madness Mantra. "THE CHILDREN WERE SCREAMING!!!"
Also, Wendy's anguished speech here about the Peter Pan story being utterly true and the lengths Hook has gone to in his search for revenge. Think of it. A suicidal and homicidal pirate breaks into your house at night — we never learn how — and makes off with the kids. Begin freak out.
Ditto. That's essentially a Borg assimilation, right there on screen. In a campy PG-rated superhero movie.
The 1978 movie The Wiz was a more urban take on the Oz books. There's a scene in which the characters are chased through a subway station by a man with creepy puppets, wires that come out of a meter and shock the Tin Man, trashcans with teeth, and brick columns.
And the bit where the graffiti Munchkins get unstuck from the walls? The noises they make? * shudder*
The torture Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the Lion go through thanks to Evillene. * shivers* Just the sight of the Scarecrow getting pulled apart and Tin Man's body getting flattened.
Supermarionation is, arguably, the creepiest medium ever. One moment in particular just gives some the jibblies even though they're not prone to being phased by their eerily realistic doll looks. In the marionette movie Thunderbird 6, executives of the World Aircraft Corporation are seen laughing with their teeth showing and their mouths wide open!◊ Just. Plain. Freaky. Overextended, too.
And they had to construct brand new marionette heads with laughing mouths at great expense just for that one scene.
The film adaption of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, particularly the song "Potiphar" seems calculated to scar the mind.
There's also a little film called MirrorMask, also from The Jim Henson Company but with a screenplay by Neil Gaiman. It featured a scene of intentionally Uncanny Valley-tacular robots singing "Close To You" while hypnotizing the protagonist. Check it out.
Mrs. Doubtfire. Robin Williams in drag: Bad. Robin Williams in Uncanny Valley old lady makeup: REALLY BAD. There's a scene with a disgruntled Robin Williams in a Norman Bates wig muttering "I need a face. A face. A face." to himself. The menus on the Special Edition DVD are even worse than the film itself. South Park style animation of the characters with the actors heads pasted on.
How about the scene where the kids are watching that incredibly disturbing episode of The Outer Limits? This troper STILL refuses to watch that five seconds!
Jack. No real creepy visuals, but the concept that this boy is physically aging rapidly is quite disconcerting. Particularly at the end when he's graduating high school and he is physically in his late 70s.
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (the books even have their own NF page!) had the scene with the incredibly deadly viper that turned out to be really quite a softy. It's one of those scenes that comes across as cute and darkly funny in a book — and plays out a whole different way in film. According to the director's commentary, one of the babies playing Sunny almost cried. Additionally, Count Olaf is pretty much Accidental Nightmare Fuel all by himself.
She did cry. It's in the extras.
The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T by Dr. Seuss (1953). The Dungeon Elevator song. Oh, and basically the whole rest of the film. They had to cut some lines from the song, due to the increasingly horrific references. This was supposed to be a family film.
Both Scooby-Doo live action movies are filled with this stuff including the demonic possession scenes and Scrappy's transformation.
Curiously, the commentary track on the DVD reveals that it was the semi-unmasking of Mary Jane during the ATV chase sequence that creeped out Sarah Michelle Gellar more than anything else in the movie.
It's even more upsetting when you know that Scrappy was evil in this movie but very much the opposite in other appearances.
This troper finds Scrappy's transformation very horrifying. I saw it at school one day when I was in first grade, being 7 at the time, and it gave me nightmares for months. Even after it all ended, I still wouldn't watch that scene again until I was 9.
Then there's the scene where Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson) is revealed to actually be a robot with Scrappy Doo controlling him.
The Leave Me Alone segment of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker is a bit freaky.
The 90's remake of the Nutty Professor. Toilet humor and Body Horror abound!
Especially near the end where Eddie Murphy's character is having a bizarre freakout and switching between fat and thin.
The Jerry Lewis original contained a really freaky sequence too: On the first night that Julius Kelp (Sherman Klump in the remake) tested his new potion, he was transformed into a hideous shaggy wild man. There were giant closeups of his bloodshot eyes and snaggly teeth. **Shudder!**
The Spiderwick Chronicles is a fairly cute movie. That is, until you get to the lacerations by invisible goblin bites. In fact, most scenes where the heroes are interacting with the goblins. We also get introduced to the sylph, creatures the size of dandelion seeds who are usually shown as white, swarming clouds. Swarms big enough to envelope a character who made them angry. It doesn't help that close-ups of the sylph show them to be screaming, eyeless insectoid creatures. I recalls the adults in the row in front of him shuddering at that shot.
Oh, and when goblins come in contact with tomato juice, every part of them (bones, skin, muscle) melts into green waste. One of them was seen blundering around (still alive)after half his head had been melted off.
Eight Below. This one scene that may or may not have been CG had a rather terrifying leopard seal in it—popping out of the carcass of a dead whale.
The ending of Time Bandits. It's been pretty much a kiddie adventure romp up to that point, with just a bit of Gilliam edge, then the kid hero wakes up in his bed with his house on fire, thinking it was All Just a Dream. The source of the fire turns out to be a part of the Source of Evil's charred, smoking, blackened heart in the microwave. The boy shouts out "It's evil! Don't touch it!" to his parents, but they do anyway and are promptly incinerated. Which goes completely unnoticed by everyone else. One of the firemen, who is also Agamemnon (Sean Connery), even winks at the kid as if it was a cheerful Or Was It a Dream? ending. The boy is left homeless and orphaned as the credits roll. It's blasted devastating.
Although it's actually a very sweet and sad film, this one scene from Portrait of Jennie (1948) is just a little bit creepy.
Seeing Double, better known as the S Club movie, has them having their identities stole by clones created by a Mad Scientist. The bit where the take some of the clones out into the real world, where they discover that they are totally unable to function as adults, being deliberately created so that they couldn't progress out of a childlike state was very disturbing.
The film based on Inkheart. It seems like a humorous and silly fantasy adventure for the first hour and Capricorn is comical(who just loves duct tape). Then they have the main character's daughter read out the Shadow. It's a giant immortal demon with red eyes and it's smokey texture makes it untangible yet it can attack. Not to mention it was made of Capricorn's prisoners ashes. We see it stand tall for ten minutes before it turns on him and goes away. Also Capricorn dies by having his body turn to paper and crinkle. Still a great PG movie but not for those under six.
Stardust has a freaky voodoo-doll swordfight near the end between the hero and an animated corpse. The big climax is intended to be thrilling and inventive, but the macabre concept can creep people out a little more than intended.
At the end of UHF Philo, turns into an alien and goes back to his home planet. It's played for comedy, but his sudden and grotesque transformation can be quite startling and unsettling.
Done by the same people who did Large Marge, actually.
Robin Williams' spot-on impression of the cartoon character Popeye in the Live-Action Adaptation. Most likely, it was so good that he invoked the Uncanny Valley effect by acting exactly like a cartoon character, but looking like a person.
In Twilight, Edward's obsession with Bella is maintained from the book. While at times he's supposed to be creepy, the creepiness can invade scenes that are supposed to be romantic or touching.
That may actually qualify as high octane, since while any such creepiness is not generally part of Meyer's intention, it is the actor's.
The first film is supposed to be an empowering fantasy for children, but the idea of getting abandoned by your family while two dangerous strangers try to break into your home can be very alarming to a child.
In the sequel, Marv grabs a faucet handle, which is hooked up to a battery with jumper cables. It's turned on, and he starts getting electrocuted. Kevin keeps turning up the power until he becomes a screaming skeleton. It's supposed to be cartoonish, but it can be scary, even to adults.
Munchie. Looking at the DVD cover, it's obvious why this film is listed here.
Spy Kids had some creepy stuff, notably Floop's Song. Good old Danny Elfman really knows how to creep us out.
The Mask the first transformation scene, when the mask aggressively engulfs Jim Carrey's head akin to a venus fly trap, and he subsequently gives a scream of anguish through the mask pulsating around his face as it finishes binding to his face. It should come as no surprise that the movie was originally envisioned as a horror movie but was turned into a comedy before production.
The kidnapping scene in Dennis the Menace can be pretty scary to young children. Christopher Lloyd's diseased-looking drifter thief is particularly bad.
As a kid, I was horrified by a very popular french comedy called Levy and Goliath. The basic plot: a drug dealer and a diamond trader inadvertantly switch bags - the first one ends up with diamond dust and the second with heroin. Neither realize the mistake until the drug dealer snorts diamond powder, at which point his eyes light up and start sparkling. Adults found the scene funny but the 7-year-old troper had nightmares about it for weeks.
Kingdom of the Spiders is pretty much a by-the-numbers Nature's-revenge flick, except for the shots of all the victims sprawled on the streets, covered in tarantula bites and webbing.
The little animation in Ice Age about how Manny's family died. Little caveman drawings of stick man hunting down Mama Mammoth and her baby and trapping them against a cliff, throwing spears at them while more cavemen drop rocks on them from above. I once watched it after taking an Ambien and HOLY BAD IDEA.
Look Who's Talking Too included a scene where a child's fears cause him to see all of his toys come to life and turn evil. Seeing a teddy bear with glowing red eyes sprout claws and fangs provided Nightmare Fuel for I for a long time. I never slept with a teddy again.
I could probably give herself nightmares just by sitting along at night thinking about the first night in the woods from Homeward Bound, even after she knows that what was making that unearthly howling was probably an elk.
This troper is so THRILLED she was not the only one terrified of that scene.
Avatar The "Eywa has heard you!" scene. It's a Moment Of Awesome for many viewers, but for I it was also horrifying, as we are in fact watching scores of soldiers, most of whom are Punch Clock Villains at worst, being smashed under the feet of the hammerhead titanotheres, gored to death by sturmbeests, dragged to the ground and mauled by viperwolves, or pulled from their gunships by banshees and dropped thousands of feet to the ground. Deleted scenes reveal that Cameron actually shot even more footage of this, with fleeing soldiers desperately trying to reach rescue choppers, only to be dragged back by viperwolves and killed. Again, supposed to be a stand-up-and-cheer moment, but it's a little hard to applaud lots of fellow humans being ripped to shreds by alien monsters...
Harvey. Old Jimmy Stewart movie about a nice, normal guy with an invisible six foot tall rabbit friend. His human friends think he's crazy and want him to get help, but everything turns out happily one way or another, and the rabbit is supposedly proved to be real by a gate that opens of its own accord. Always scared me. I do not want to see giant bunnies that no one else can see. ESPECIALLY if they're real. A few years later I saw Donnie Darko, and it all clicked.
The Lightning Thief has this in two varieties. one fo which is the god hade's in his demon form,and the other in the scene where the cleaners turn into the hydra. who else did that scene freak out?
Oh hai, giant killer moles. I'll be hiding under the bed now if you don't mind.
IT'S A LONG WAY TO CHRISTMAS... Much of the film adaptation of Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes was sadly lacklustre, despite being scripted by the man himself, but this scene - not in the book - is downright superb and terrifying. Electrifying performances from both Pryce and Robards, and for any viewer who's even in early middle-age - as I is - downright terrifying..."Oh, OH! FORTY! FORTY! And here YOU'RE OLD!"
Radio Flyer. It's a cute movie about a kid who tries to turn his Radio Flyer wagon into a plane. The terrifying part? At some point in the movie a buffalo sticks his head in the kid's window in the middle of the night. I had nightmares for weeks about that damn buffalo, and hasn't seen the movie since.
The 1985 film Runaway Train has its share of Family Unfriendly Violence, imminent death, and a really depressing existentialist Humans Are Bastards theme. The Cool Train also looks rather spooky as well after being partly sideswiped, with jagged pieces of metal waving in the wind, and sillouhetted against a driving snowstorm. It gives one the impression of a ghost train on its way to hell.
In The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West (played by Miss Piggy) doesn't melt at the end. She becomes extremely skinny and gets sucked down a drain. Should be hilarious, and it was upon seeing it again, but it's actually rather creepy-looking for a kid, because everything but her nose and mouth disappears from her face, and the rest of her body looks like a worm. Here's a picture.◊ I wouldn't be surprised if some kids found the fact that she gets sucked down the drain of a bathtub scary as well.
The scene in Small Soldiers where the G.I. Joe stand-ins mourn for their fallen comrade...and then take the chip he used for a brain and start using it to make the Gwen dolls into soldiers. It goes over the edge of Mood Whiplash and into "oh god, they can make more of themselves". And it just gets worse if you think about it, because are the Gwen-soldiers zombies? Are they clones? Does this qualify as ritual cannibalism? What's stopping them from doing this again, asides from "we'd rather not sacrifice a good soldier"?
Why think too hard about such things, the Gwen dolls themselves are terrifying enough, especially when they attack one of the kids:
Killer Klowns from Outer Space - the scene at "Big Top Burger" where one of the Klowns is trying to lure a little girl outside... while holding a mallet behind his back. Doubly so for Fridge Horror - after all, it's trying to lure a child into its clutches.
That entire movie scared this troper crapless. And she saw it at age 25!
Mouse Hunt. Ok basically this man owns a string factory, and dies. The factory gets inherited by both of his sons, who can't seem to work together. There's a painted portrait of the previous owner, the late father, frowning in the house. Later on, without giving spoilers, the two sons accept their differences and finally work as one. The painting, has now changed to the deceased father smiling, the painting changed. This is what Accidental Nightmare Fuel really is, something that starts off completely innocent, simply showing that the father (now in heaven) is looking down at his two sons in now happiness at their unity, it's actually a beautiful thing in essence... but something about it is just un-nerving. It's Accidental Nightmare Fuel because it wasn't supposed to be scary, it just became so.
The whole movie is quite full of Accidental Nightmare Fuel, actually. The opening at the funeral where the main characters accidentally fling their father's corpse into the sewer, the cockroach-infested food that ends up killing the mayor, the creepy Jack-in-the-box at the house...the list could go on.
The scene in Superman II where the Man of Steel goes into the molecular chamber and gives up his powers. It may be cheesy for some, but as a 6 year old seeing your hero glow red and yellow, then transform from head to skull to whatever the hell his last state was-all backed by an inferno-is prime scar-you-for-life material.
The Land That Time Forgot is a PG-rated Doug McClure movie about a U-Boat finding a lost world where dinosaurs still exist. UK TV networks would gladly screen it in prime-time timeslots. It could be, um, "educational" for young children to have a dinosaur movie block that transitioned straight from The Land Before Time to this movie, which has a scene where the U-Boat opens fire on two Styracosaurs and is probably the only PG rated movie to feature explosions of shattered bone.
The Russian fairy-tale film The Magic Weaver features a terrifying enchanted harp with articulated eyes that moves of its own volition and goes out of control.
The Adventures of Milo and Otis was an absolute nightmare for I. Milo's naptime with the creepy owl in the Deadwood Swamp and the bearfight aside, the fact that animals were plainly being mistreated and mounting allegations that animals were actively being killed on set made this movie practically unwatchable, even now. Also, the original (albeit edited-out sequence) with Milo and Otis encountering a dying calf in the field quite frankly unnerved the shit out of yours truly.
The Mexican film Santa Claus. Words cannot describe how creepy this film is. From puppets, to closew up shots of Santa, this film will keep you awake for the rest of the week. Also, Santa WATCHES YOU WHILE YOU SLEEP (and through a machine with very creepy lips). Another reason why it is so damn spooky is because how cheap it is. At one point in the MST3K version, Crow states during a rather spooky close up of Santa, "That's some good old fashioned nightmare fuel!"
He says that in response to a very creepy animatronic Santa in a department store window. The actual Santa isn't much better...
National Treasure has a prologue where we discover the Charlotte clue for the first time via a flashback story to 1832 with the dying Charles Carrol and his stageboy, John Gates. Right when Grandfather Gates says "Charlotte," we cut to a close-up of the dying elder signer of the Declaration. Just seeing his sunken face immediatly with no warning can make one jump.
The factory scene in Sleeper where the defective robots have their heads bashed in.
There was the 1986 version of Babes in Toyland that gave I nightmare for years. Barnabee's layer in the forest, with the creepy black creatures, and that bird with one eye that spied on the heros! They were all so gross looking.
The Sharp Dressed Men in S&T's Point A. That progressive close up to its face in the woods, followed by the thing running STRAIGHT AT YOU...!
This still◊ from Risky Business gave I nightmares as a child. Something about Tom Cruise's unnaturally wide mouth and large teeth is terrifying. The fact that you can't see his eyes doesn't help. Brrrr...
Yeah, I'm sure it was meant to be creepy, but not as completely terrifying as it turned out - even now the thought of the banshee gives me the shivers! And what about the ghostly carriage that comes for Darby? Especially as Darby reminded me of (a crazier version of) my grandad!
Rango. An armadillo is run over by a car, and it's still alive and talking, with its entire midsection completely flattened. A fly drinks some cactus juice, dies, and it's eye pops out and rolls across the table as it does so! There is one character with an arrow through its freaking eye and out the other side of its head.
Howard the Duck is creepy even when it's trying to be charming.
The original 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' is loaded with nightmare fuel. I saw the movie in the theater when I was five, and when Violet plumped out into a blueberry, she entered Uncanny Valley, and I freaked out had to be taken out of the theater. The movie is essentially haunted house horror movie written for kids. Other examples of nightmare fuel include the mysterious Slugworth character, Augustus Glup gets sucked up the tube, the nightmarish boat ride, Charlie and Grampa almost getting chopped up by the propellor, and the Oompa Loompas who pop up and sing a taunting tune every time a kid just got "wacked". Even Veruca getting sent down the hatch, and Mike TV becomming miniature creeped me out. The movie never really resolved what happend to them. Willy Wonka also doesn't seem to care that all these kids are suffering a horrible fate, and that's kind of creepy in itself. I know I am not the only one who got nightmares after seeing that movie.
This troper was highly allergic to milk and couldn't talk himself out of seeing this movie because it was a birthday cinema visit. The thought of such a huge chocolate factory really gave me nightmares.
The animated Statue of Liberty in Ghostbusters2, despite being charged with positive slime, just looks pissed off, and when its eyes appear to move as it looks around at the crowds below, I was more creeped out by it than any of the ghosts.
The 2009 kids' movie Gooby's only claim to fame is being absolutely terrifying. This is because the title character is a 6-foot-tall living teddy bear that crawled right out of the Uncanny Valley and acts like a stalker/serial killer, and the way some scenes are filmed had Obscurus Lupa comparing him to Slender Man.
Rosemary's Baby: In the film, the large black crib is much creepier than in the book.
In The Muppets,, we see Gary and Walter brushing their teeth together. But then we see Walter with teeth that seemed to be stuck in Slasher Smile mode.
Autism Every Day, a documentary funded by Autism Speaks, features Alison Tepper Singer talking about how she was sitting in the car with her autistic daughter and was contemplating driving it off the bridge they were on, killing them both, but didn't for the sake of her non-autistic daughter. It was intended as sympathy bait, but she was still openly talking about wanting to kill her own child and playing it up as sympathetic and normal.
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