Nightmare Fuel / Faerie Tale Theatre

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• From a literal nightmare: In Rapunzel, a number of viewers were notably freaked out by that screaming radish Rapunzel's real mother dreamt about.
  • The scene with the prince, played by Jeff Bridges, bleeding from his eyes may look silly and fake now. But for a lot of kids of The '80s, it was really creepy — perhaps one of the creepiest things from their childhoods.
  • The Witch's abuse of Rapunzel is a case of Realism-Induced Horror. She imprisons her in the tower against her will, makes her dependent on her for food and drink, tells her that other people (especially men) can't be trusted, calls her ungrateful when she dares to want another human companion, and even slaps her during an argument in one scene. Yet all the while, she makes a show of loving Rapunzel and tells her it's all for her own good.
• While deserved, and Lighter and Softer than in the original fairy-tale, the fate of the Evil Queen in "Snow White" can still be freaky: Every mirror she looks at will turn black, causing her to scream and howl in her castle.
• When the spirit of Death comes to kill the Emperor (played by Mick Jagger) in "The Nightingale". Rather than a conventional Grim Reaper, he's portrayed as a wierd, impish little man who steals the Emperor's valuable possessions while the sick, helpless Emperor watches in horror, then leaps onto his chest, gloating and laughing.
  Emperor: Go away! You've come too soon!
  Death: They all say that. But you know what I say? Never too soon!
• Henbane's One-Winged Angel form in Sleeping Beauty. She turns herself into a fire-breathing giant with reptilian green scales, fangs, and enormous Femme Fatalons, and speaks with the Voice of the Legion.
  Henbane: Step into my reality. If you have the courage.
  • After Henbane causes the princess to prick her finger, she removes her peasant disguise to gloat. The eyes of her human mask become pitch-black before she tears it off.
• The Cave of Wonders in "Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp". Of course, is anyone surprised considering Tim Burton directed it?
• The toads in "Thumbelina" scared at least some kids.
• While "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers" has most of its horrors Played for Laughs, it still features creepy ghosts, ghouls, skeletons, swinging axes, a living gargoyle, and a sinister sorcerer played by Christopher Lee.
• Hansel and Gretel is described by Shelley Duvall as a scary story in the intro, and this adaptation lives up to it:
  • When Hansel and Gretel are lost in the woods at night, the chilling sounds of wild beasts echo around them. Then, as they wander during the day, desperately hungry and tired, Gretel's despair creates Realism-Induced Horror. When she finds some wild berries to eat and Hansel warns her that they might be poisonous, she replies "I don't care" – in other words, a little girl no older than seven or eight is almost suicidal.
  • Then there's the Witch. From her hideous Uncanny Valley makeup that fully hides Joan Collins' natural beauty, to her constant gloating about eating children, to her abuse of the children as she imprisons Hansel and forces Gretel to be her servant, to the repeated eerie closeups of her face, this woman is Nightmare Fuel personified.
  • When the Witch first locks Hansel in a shed, another little boy is in there too. The Witch takes him out and drags him into her gingerbread house as he begs her not to eat him. A few moments later, we hear him screaming from inside the house, and a little while afterwards, the Witch comes out contentedly wiping her mouth.
  • After the Witch eats her child victims, she stirs their hearts into gingerbread batter, which she bakes into child-sized gingerbread cookies that she saves as trophies.
  • Even though she deserves it, the Witch's Family-Unfriendly Death is chilling too, as she screams "I'm burning! I'm burning!" from inside the oven.
• Rip Van Winkle opens with a dark, cobweb-filled library, in which the gnarled, corpse-like hands of the otherwise unseen narrator takes an old book off a shelf and opens it to tell the story. Then, within the story, there are the cadaverous ghosts of Henry Hudson and his crew in their eerily-lit mountain hideaway, with their thunderous game of ninepins. In the end, amid ghoulish green lighting, Hudson's ghost is revealed (just in case anyone didn't know it by his voice) to be the Narrator All Along.
• Beauty and the Beast has a dark Gothic atmosphere throughout the scenes in the Beast's castle, and the two night scenes when the Beast comes back from hunting are are especially creepy, as Beauty hears animalistic shrieks and roars from offscreen, then sees the Beast enter with his hands smoking, and in the second scene in a completely disheveled, feral state, covered in animal blood. (Just like in Jean Cocteau's version.)

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