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A fantasy film directed by Jim Henson? Can't be that ba- OH MY GOD!Some horror-movie buffs pooh-poohed the film (Poltergeist) because "nothing really happened"; nobody got gruesomely killed. What they didn't realize is that a dozen creative slashings of teenage kids in a spatter movie won't equal the power of a single scene in which children are being dragged toward terrible death while their mother struggles vainly to try to reach them in time.
Orson Scott Card, Characters and Viewpoint
Something gives me the distinct impression this isn't what the Beatles had in mind. Or God, for that matter.
A comment describing the Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite sequence in Across the Universe
It would seem that the animated kids' movies aren't the only ones with the unknowing power to scare. For material more aimed at adults (such as horror movies), click the High Octane Nightmare Fuel icon up there.
See also the Roald Dahl, Tim Burton and Harry Potter subpages.
- Scrooged gets to this troper in many special ways. The heartwarming ending DOES NOTHING. It. DOES NOT. Make you forget the cremation scene. I forgot THE ENTIRE REST OF THE MOVIE since the first time I saw it - except. For. That. DAMN SCENE.
- Killer Klowns From Outer Space. Can't sleep, clown will eat me, indeed.
- 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.
- The children's caretaker was physically unhurt but in a near-catatonic state, reciting a Madness Mantra.
- Also, Wendy's anguished speech here[1]
 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.
- It scared me so much aged 6 that I've refused to watch the film since, so I can't remember exactly what happened, but there was a scene where a guy got some kind of torture or punishment by being locked in a box with some nasty insects or scorpions.. I think it was supposed to be funny as well.
- The boo box! A chest with a small hatch just for dropping in scorpions.
- The Rocketeer: This fabricated Nazi propaganda cartoon. Who'd have thought a 1930s-style action flick would have something so frightening?
- How about the Giant Mook Lothar (apparently) folding his victims in half?
- The Wizard Of Oz is another Nightmare Fuel champ. It has the unspeakably creepy flying monkeys... Also, the sequence where the Wicked Witch shows Dorothy an hourglass, proclaiming "This is how long you have left to be alive!", is also scary. It doesn't help that the Witch never specifies why that hourglass marks what's left of Dorothy's life...
- The scene where the flying monkeys are sent off to go and capture Dorothy was reminiscent of certain... events at the time this movie was being made; keep in mind that this was in the 1930s, about when a certain world power was emerging.
- The whole movie is Nightmare Fuel. People cheerily dance and sing about a woman's hideous death. And then there was the Witch melting... it's even worse if you've read or seen Wicked, and realize that the Witches could be sympathetic characters.
- Also amazingly funny that L Frank Baum was determined to never be the cause of a children's nightmare (he hated the scary parts of fairy tales).
- A person doesn't have to have read or seen Wicked to realize that. (If they did, then how did the author of Wicked get the idea?)
- If you've read or seen it illustrated that they could be sympathetic characters....
- There is some Nightmare Retardant, however, in knowing that the woman who played
Elphaba the Witch was a kindergarten teacher and, in real life, sweet and kind. Though that adds new levels of Nightmare Fuel to the part where she was horrifically burned on stage, for real. You know that shriek she gives when she vanishes in fire from Munchkinland? That was real, and from pain.
- She was also a lifelong advocate of animal rights, which is why that was a central theme in Wicked.
- The Emerald City. Particularly the scene where Scarecrow is being re-stuffed.
- The Wicked Witch of the West was scary, but the Giant Flaming Head of Oz could be terrifying. The worst part is when Dorothy & Co. first see him and he thunders, "I AM OZ!!!!!"
- The tornado! If you live in a tornado alley, this part will give content to the storm alerts your weatherman gives before you are old enough to get away with watching Twister.
- The Witch Of The East's feet curling up and going under the house.
- The deleted scenes, while historically interesting, were even WORSE. A bunch of high voices merrily singing about the death of a woman is one thing; the oh-WEE-oh, woahhh-oh voices singing that song...
- Um, the Winkies singing that are in the movie proper.
- The Winkies themselves, yes, but the singing? This troper distinctly remembers a deleted scene entailing them singing. Gives her the shivers still. Not to mention the deleted scene in which Dorothy, trapped in the Witch's tower and terrified, goes into a reprise of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", as she awaits her death. Gah! Also there's this chilling sequence: Tornado Sequence. I'm frightened, Auntie Em, I'm frightened!!
- The Witch finally catches Dorothy and her friends at the climax and cackles, "The last to go will see the first three go before her."
- Those talking apple trees.
- This troper was thouroughly freaked out when she learned of the potentially carcinogenic effects of the 40s makeup they wore. Much of this has been disproven, however, by a certain Mythbusters episode investigating the claim. The episode, of course, aired several years after this troper first learned about the makeup...
- The Wizard Of Oz is creepy. Pink Floyd is creepy. Therefore, "The Dark Side of the Rainbow" is very, very creepy.
- The torture scene in The Princess Bride.
- The "Ancient Booer".
- The screaming eels. Way to ruin dolphins forever, jerk director.
- The freaking LIFE SUCKER. Holy freaking CRAP.
- 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 geting pulled apart and Tinman's body geting flattened.
- All three Never Ending Story films. Especially the Gmork from the first film.
- Also from the first movie, when Atreyu approaches body of the knight who the Sphinxes zapped and his helmet pops open, showing his charred face.
- That hideous anthropomorphic chicken thing from the second one.
- What about the part where the horse sinks in a swamp made of sadness? Tear Jerker, yes, but also prime Nightmare Fuel. If I heard right, if you let the sadness get to you, you sink! What this means is the swamp possibly subjects you to unbearably depressing images until you get sadder and sadder and sink!
- Are you forgetting the wolf-thing? God I couldn't watch that movie for ages because of that...creature.
- That was the Gmork I believe. It was kind of like the Wargs from Lord Of The Rings except it didn't have an orc riding it.
- This troper has an irrational and unexplained phobia about the Luck Dragon from these films— she thinks she must have seen parts of the movie while either very young or sick with a fever, because she remembers absolutely nothing about the story except being convinced that "that flying dog-thing" was coming to eat her face. No amount of reassurance that it's actually a good, helpful creature and most people find it cute has managed to change that first impression.
- This troper was absolutely terrified of The Nothing from the first movie. Having seen the film when he was very young, he didn't quite get that The Nothing was literally nothing, and so was absolutely certain that, in every shot of Nothing-destruction, something horrible was just offscreen
- The fact that it's literally nothing is pretty terrifying in itself. Imagine not existing. Then consider that you wouldn't be able to imagine that, because you wouldn't exist. So what would be left? Nothing, because there's nothing there. Imagine all the fanciful creatures, characters, and amazing environments, gone. Not dead. Gone. Not in the afterlife. Gone. Never there. No anything. I'll be shivering in the corner now...
- The sequence in the first one where Atreyu comes up from killing the Gmork and is COVERED IN ITS BLOOD. Not for a nine-year old child to see!
- The Nothing can destroy those creepy citizens of Fantasia for all this troper cares. Or am I the only one who recalls the scene of Atreyu's first appearance in the Ivory Tower's court full of hideous freaks? There was a man whose face was in the middle of reproduction by mitosis.
- Oddly enough, the recent (live action) Lord Of The Rings movies. Especially Gollum. He's got that kind of sweetly sad kicked-puppyness to him, and conciously I was somewhat amused by his fish song. Not so much when I ran a bath half an hour later and could distinctly hear him singing in the rushing water's sound. ARGH.
- Willow, especially the Ebersisk ...at the age of about six. Why yes, cousins (Willow) and baby sitter (Never Ending Story), all fantasy movies are for kids! Other nightmarish scenes include:
- The evil sorceress turning an army into pigs
- The evil sorceress turning into stone
- The evil sorceress 's wolves attacking the Macguffin baby's mother
- The good sorceress going through perhaps the ultimate Body Horror sequence
- Willow and his people, if you have a midget phobia
- The troll-dogs. Especially the part where Willow accidentally causes one's skin to slough off, which is followed by howls of pain, which is followed by creepy demon baby heads growing out of it's back.
- 1985's Return To Oz (featuring an 11-year-old Fairuza Balk) is often seen as Nightmare Fuel by parents who took their children along expecting singing Munchkins and jolly dance numbers. It's really closer in tone to the original printed-page (and frankly creepy) OZ novels. Examples include:
- The reference to "damaged" patients of the asylum being locked in the cellars.
- Dorothy about to undergo electroshock treatment.
- The Wheelers
- The desert that turns you into sand if you touch it.
- Jack Pumpkinhead, just for his appearance and calling Dorothy "Mom"!
- The witch changing her head (!) and trying to take Dorothy's, too.
- One theory holds that this sequence inspired the They Might Be Giants song "Hall Of Heads," which played up the Nightmare Fuel and Paranoia Fuel of the whole concept. Even if it didn't, if you're familiar with both, you'll probably think of one when you think of the other.
- The chronologies don't match up—Apollo 18 was released seven years after Return To Oz—besides which the head hall is based on one of the books.
- The Nome King gradually becoming more human, and then mutating and disintegrating after swallowing an egg while lots more 'nomes' crawl out of the walls.
- This film left this troper afraid of walls for some years.
- At age 8, this troper was freaked out by the headless Princess Mombi and this scene
- It's not too much of a stretch of the imagination to picture the entire adventure through Oz (which starts just as Dorothy is about to get electroshock) as an elaborate mental defense mechanism to shield the terrified girl fromm the unimaginable pain of having hundreds of volts surging through her skull, firing off neurons out of control through her entire brain. Yes, in reality she's still in the asylum getting her brain fried one horrific jolt at a time.
- Umm, this troper read all the Oz books as a child and never found anything particularly disturbing or creepy about them. The electroshock/asylum thing was definitely NOT in any of the books, so I think the film was trying to make them seem creepier than they were.
- Well, maybe not, but this troper also remembers reading the first Oz book as a kid, an remembers how it was a hell of a lot more twisted than the well-known Wizard of Oz movie...
- This troper was (and still is) a fan of the original books by L. Frank Baum, and so was horrified upon seeing how her favorite of the series (Ozma of Oz) was transformed into horror. Because nobody needs to be that scary, not even a head-switching princess. (In the book, she was actually Princess Langwidere of Ev who changed heads because she got bored of looking at the same face every day. Way to screw my childhood up!
- It's worse, because the head-changing princess was simply a little ditzy and vain, not the freaky thing described here.
- This editor would like to argue that Supermarionation is the creepiest medium ever, but while he's not one to be that phased by their eerily realistic doll looks, one moment in particular just gives him the jibblies. 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.
- The film adaption of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, particularly the song "Potiphar" seems calculated to scar the mind.
- The recent trailer for upcoming animated zombie movie, Dear Beautiful has kept this troper away from windows at night for the past week.
- Oddly enough, one part of Star Wars! In the scene where R2 is (apparently) alone in the Jawa skiff, there's a particularly creepy looking robot that looks oddly human. There's also a robot talking to something as if it's reporting its findings, although this editor's of the opinion that whoever it was talking to was long dead.
- Although arguably less effective than the above examples due to being much less subtle, the entire "Order 66" sequence from Revenge of the Sith is so absurdly contrary to the spirit of the films that it straddles the line between quality Nightmare Fuel and quality Narm. Then there is the finale where Anakin loses his legs and remaining arm in one fell swoop, and is then promptly set on fire, complete with a close-up of his horrifically burnt face as he is burning and screaming. The movie received a higher rating for a reason.
- Jabba The Hutt's death. Then again there's also that damm rancor.
- After seeing A New Hope for the first time at age six, this troper was scared senseless by the entire first half of the movie, especially Vader and the Imperial stormtroopers.
- Darth Vader crushing the captain's throat in "A New Hope" really got to me when I was a kid. the sound effect is really graphic. I couldn't watch the scene till I was well into my teens without covering my ears.
- All of the aliens in the cantina scene in "A New Hope" made this troper immediately cover her eyes when she saw the rereleased version in theaters when she was seven. She became a major Star Wars fan anyway
- This troper's parents took her to see the 30-year anniversary release in the theaters. She made it to the part where Luke returns to find the still-smoking skeletons of his aunt and uncle, and spent the rest of the movie curled up in her seat, hiding her eyes.
- How old are you? That was less than three years ago, you big baby.
- This troper's father took her to see the re-released versions of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi in 1997, when she was seen years old. She came out of theater a Star Wars fan after A New Hope, but when Luke, Obi-Wan, and the droids entered the cantina, she immediately covered her eyes with her hands because she'd never seen anything like the aliens before, and they were scary.
- Obi-Wan's death scene in the first Star Wars movie. Despite being specifically engineered to reduce gore, this troper was freaked out by the very idea of just disappearing totally.
- Luke getting his hand cut off in the Empire Strikes back. Not as graphic as Anakin's scene in Revenge Of The Sith, but just as nightmarey.
- I'm kind of surprised Darth Vader doesn't have his own entry here, given how many children he's sent behind the couch. He's not even the first masked villain most kids encounter, but dear god the Vader Breath sends small children to bed fast. When I was growing up, a firefighter at school told the class that getting children out of burning homes is a difficult job because the hear the breath of the oxygen mask, visualize Darth Vader in their minds, and often flee the firefighter, further into the flames. The message was to trust firefighters, but it seems obvious this volunteer had an experience worthy of Brain Bleach.
- This troper was also enforced with fears of enclosed spaces by A New Hope's trash compactor scene (complete with the freaky dianoga creature) and the end of Empire Strikes Back. Being frozen in carbonite is prime Nightmare Fuel for one, but one thing that really spooked me out was the end of the battle with Vader, where Luke is desperately gripping the ledge with one arm and falls down that seemingly bottomless shaft (aaand I know vaguely remember having an actual nightmare like this) and then those endless sets of tunnels, with the fear that he could either keep falling forever or even worse, stop falling and get stuck in the tunnel forever. And then it gets worse as he is stuck on the weathervane at the very bottom of Cloud City, once more gripping for his life from another fall that would be even more impossible to survive. And he still has just one arm. Yeah, scenes like this help me feel much more comfortable around heights.
- In Episode III, the sequence where Chancellor Palpatine's face melts and he reveals himself as Darth Sidious can be unsettling for younger kids unfamiliar with the original trilogy. In fact, Palpatine himself (especially the face) would qualify as Nightmare Fuel, even more so than Vader in this troper's opinion.
- The sound of Han freezing.unfreezing in carbonite can be eerie. The visuals during his thawing in Return Of The Jedi are also creepy on their own. And heck, just look at Frozen!Han.
- That was this troper's first exposure to Star Wars, aside from a pretty cool plastic Death Star (complete with miniature Chewie in the trash compactor!) a friend showed her at age four. When she was six or seven, she walked in on her entire extended family finishing up Empire Strikes Back. When the brick of carbonite came back out of the hole... And that was the end of Star Wars for her, up until about eight years later when the prequels started coming out. Now she really likes the original series, but damn if that part didn't get to her.
- The entire sequence of the Big Bad thrashing Johnny 5 up to Johnny repairing himself in Short Circuit 2 is Uncanny Valley disturbing; the attack was brutal, and coupled with Johnny's pitiful cries of mercy, could've easily drawn analogies to the Rodney King beating in its graphicness, and Johnny's silent crawl to save himself - including stealing a car battery to prolong his life and asking for help by writing it on the wall with stilted speech - still haunts this troper. Seriously, it took me months after I first saw the movie to pass by a Radio Shack and not come close to tears.
- You can't argue with the creep factor of Jim Henson's Labyrinth. This troper could just barely handle the combination of goblins in a childhood bedroom plus kidnapping plus David Bowie's aggressively bubbling sexuality, but always broke off in terror when they got to the scene with those horrible red fiery puppets who juggled and swapped their body parts and sent their grinning, disembodied heads to chase our fleeing heroine while incanting "We just want to take off your head! Let us have your head!" Horrid. They'll never take my head, dammit!
- Don't forget the face-forming Helping Hands in the tunnel to the oubliette. Creepy.
- And when Jareth first appears.
- A shockingly over looked nasty little bit is when Ludo in being hung from his feet and bitten by, what looks like, either fetuses with big nasty teeth or naked mole rats on sticks. The awful "nipper sticks" are a part of the Labyrinth I'll never be able to look at without a shudder.
- That whole spooky masquerade ball and the junklady.
- The Dark Crystal has a lot of this stuff in it including the Skeksis creatures (pictured).
- This troper is disturbed by the scene where Kira physically withers as her essence is sucked out through her eyes into digestible form. Ugh! At least she got out of the machine before it finished.
- For this troper, the Skeksis had nothing on their minions, the Garthim, immense black things with arthropod features and razor-sharp pincers. The scene where one of the Gelflings is dangling in a dark pit, and dozens of those claws reach for them is beyond terrifying.
- No one's mentioned the emperor Skeksis yet? Good grief, when he's lying in bed, looking as though he's already dead, and the chamberlain reaches for his scepter... he suddenly snaps his eyes open and whips around, screeching "MINE!!" and manages to croak out "I... am still... the emperor...!!" before dying. He then DISINTEGRATES. His body literally crumbles apart. In the novel, it's said that he decays so quickly because there is no soul within it to slow the process... See for yourself!
- I have no doubt that I would have been creeped out by the Skeksis had I seen this film as a child. As it is, they fall more into the "Fetish Fuel" for me now.
- I sometimes wonder how I watched this movie (and many others listed here) as a young child and was not traumatized by any of it. Seriously, looking back now, I realize that i should have been terrified by it.
- As one of the Skeksis falls to his death, his counterpart among the urRu just vanishes, with the rest of the tribe pausing for a moment, then traveling on with not even a shrug.
- There's also a little film called Mirror Mask, 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. This guy nearly went into convulsions on seeing it. You can too.
- Proving, yet again, that one man's Nightmare Fuel is another man's Fetish Fuel.
- This troper saw part of the scene and was unaffected. The robots are just standard CGI creatures.
- Or for that matter, another (wo)man's Narm. Maybe if they'd sung a lullaby instead....
- Well, in this tropers opinion, it is not just the song that is scary, it's also the fact that she opens her eyes at the end, and they look like black marbles. Something about that is just... Not right.
- This editor was a little more freaked out by the Sphinxes. They're the Uncanny Valley version of species mixing, by having real human faces in a cat's head. Just take a look if you really wish.
- Considering that real sphinxes in Egypt have the head of a man on the body of a lion, it does kind of come across as scary.
- Then there's the ever-encroaching, all-consuming shadows...watch this movie back to back with Vashta Nerada episodes from Doctor Who and sleep with the lights on for the rest of your life.
- Muppet Treasure Island. Specifically, Blind Pew's first scene. Billy Connelly's blood-curdling scream at the end doesn't help. This troper was scarred for life, and still can't watch that scene comfortably.
- Mrs Doubtfire. Robin Williams in drag: Good. Robin Williams in Uncanny Valley old lady makeup: BAD. Graphic shot of Robin taking a leak: Really bad.
- 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. It just doesn't sit right with this troper.
- Don't forget the scene of the movie that presented us with disgruntled Robin Williams in a Norman Bates wig muttering "I need a face. A face. A face." to himself.
- 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 80s. This troper got the feeling at the end he was going to die soon.
- Jumanji is filled with Nightmare Fuel. If Alan's body warping horribly as he is drawn screaming into the game board isn't enough for you, there are gigantic mosquitoes, equally giant spiders (complete with close-ups), man eating plants, a curse that slowly turns a boy into a terrifying baboon-thing, another boy being trapped indefinitely in another dimension, a herd of wild savanna animals rampaging through the town, and a floor that promptly turns into quicksand (not to mention the end, where everything gets sucked back into the board, the hunter's head sticking for a moment with his eyes popping out. To top it all off, a girl (one of the protagonists, even) gets hit by a poisoned barb near the end of the film, and dies while gasping out "I wish mom and dad were here" ( the children are orphans). Note that none of this appears in the book, which scares almost nobody.
- Underscored by the fact that Williams himself said he wouldn't let his younger children see the film during an interview held around the time it came out in theaters.
- Just to prove Robin Williams is the king of this trope (film-wise, anyway), his scenes as the King of the Moon are one of the creepiest parts of the already freaky Adventures of Baron Munchausen, second only to the Angel of Death that chases the Baron throughout the film.
- Toys, with the grotesquely surreal factory. This troper once watched this film as a kid (on laserdisc!), but ran out during the first scene in factory, where the machines have faces. She recently watched the whole thing on DVD. She was still freaked out. Brrr.
- Lemony Snicket's A Series Of Unfortunate Events (the books even have [[ASeriesOfUnfortunateEvents 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 Nightmare Fuel all by himself.
- 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. Did I mention this was a family film?
Household appliances.
Spike beds, electric chairs,
gas chambers, roasting pots,
and scalping devices.
- 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.
- Then there's the scene where Mondavarious (Rowan Atinson) is revealed to actually be a robot with Scrappy Doo controlling him.
- This troper got chills while watching the scene where Rowan Atkinson's character tells Scooby Doo about the job of "human sacrifice" he's given him. Even in one scene Fred tells Mondavarious that he creeps him out. Also the "end of the world" party scene where Mondavarious is at his most evil.
- The pincer that removes Scooby's soul should be enough to scare any child away from claw machines. If that isn't enough, just have them watch the deleted scene that shows Daphne chained to a pillar getting her soul pulled out right before a demon opens her mouth and is absorbed into her.
- This troper here remembers being freaked out by the Leave Me Alone segment of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker.
- 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 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. This troper 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.
- This troper was very disturbed by E.T. as a little kid. Oddly enough, this is the same troper who, at that age, could watch The Nightmare Before Christmas without any problems...
- Everyone seems to be forgetting the terrifying government agents in isolation suits. You will never trust NASA again.
- You guys think American E.T. is bad? Try the Turkish copyright infringement. It's like the misshapen, bastard offspring of Chunk and a melted clay figurine.
- I didn't even get through the first three seconds. The moan did it for me.
- Thanks to the E.T. doll that used to sit on a shelf at the shoe store, this troper spent most of her childhood afraid of the movie and buying new shoes.
- Just as everything's going to hell, there's a scene where a model train starts running and emits a couple of steam whistle blasts. For years this troper knew he was having a nightmare when he heard that steam whistle in his dream.
- Having seen ghosts, demons, and other things that go bump in the night from birth, this troper completly understands her abject fear of E.T.: He very closely resembles an exceptionally nasty type of creature, sans big, sharp teeth. At age 6, when I first saw it, I was sure E.T. was going to kill everyone. The scene where he hid in the little sister's pile of stuffed animals made me terrified of *my* little sister's pile of stuffed animals, which I wouldn't approach for years.
- The first Spider-Man movie did it for this troper; that scene with the Green Goblin blowing up half of Aunt May's bedroom as she prays. AND DELIVER US FROM EVIIIIIIIL!!!
- The big scare in the second film is undoubtedly Doc Ock's tentacles first coming to life and killing all the surgeons. Especially the woman getting her fingernails torn off as she's dragged across the floor.
- In the movie version of The Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, the hag and werewolf who try to bring back the White Witch are the stuff nightmares are made of, especially when they cut Caspian's hand. Even the ghost of the White Witch, her hand reaching out, freaked this troper out. This scene is in the book, too, but each divergence the movie takes is squarely in the direction of greater intensity...
- This troper had trouble sleeping after seeing the first one; seeing this one coming out will make things worse.
- Just wait 'til they make "The Silver Chair".
- Back To The Future. The idea of a person not merely dying, but ceasing to exist in any time or place is pretty creepy when you're eight.
- It was the hellish alternate reality in Part II which did it for this troper. Especially thinking about what the that reality's version of 2015 must look like... That, and stumbling upon Doc's long-forgotten grave in Part III.
- Ugh, the worse part about the alternate 1985 was the major Mood Whiplash from the bright, colorful Zeerusty future. (And the chalk outlines on Marty's street, with gunfire in the distance...) That scene made me afraid of Sammy Hagar's "I Can't Drive 55" for a while. Also, during the scene with Biff in the tunnel, he seemed less like his usual Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain and more like a murderous, half-demented Big Bad.
- In the Arnold Schwarzenegger comedy Junior, the main character has a dream about having the baby. The nurse brings the baby to him, he looks at it... and it's got adult Ah-nold's face computer generated on it. And it's screaming "MAMA!". *SHUDDER*
- This troper recently saw the film Eight Below, and while she could not tell if it was a CGI sequence or not, it had a rather terrifying leopard seal in it—popping out of the carcass of a dead whale, if she remembers correctly.
- 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.
- This troper agreed with the above poster at first, but another troper explained on the Downer Ending page that the wink was probably meant to imply that Agamemnon was going to adopt the kid.
- Implications count for shit when you are five.
- Even when you're in your teens, that does not make better the fact that he just lost his parents. Maybe it's because the whole idea of death of parents specifically always bothered this troper. (Making...movies in general harder to take, since that happens in a large percent of them.)
- Hell, I saw Time Bandits when I was eight and the ending still scared the bejibbers out of me. Other aspects that scared me were the hanging cage that David Warner puts the heroes in and those crazy cattle skull monsters that do David Warner's bidding. Also, the thought of being on the Titanic right before it sinks. Oh, and the Big Giant Head of the Supreme Being bellowing, "Return what you have stolen from me!" I'm 35 now and the movie still sends a giddy frisson of fear up my spine.
- Paperhouse is an interesting example of this being recognized. It was intended as a kids fantasy film and ended up being marketed as the British answer to Nightmare On Elm Street and is much scarier in this troper's opinion. If you're relationship with your father is even tiniest bit rocky, do not see this film.
- To expand on that, it's a movie about a girl retreating into the dreamworld of a house she drew because she's having a hard time with her father. It's an eerie, empty place because it's only inhabited by what she draws. She draws her father, and he appears outside. However, she gets angry and scribbles her father out of the drawing, hoping to get him to go away. Instead, he can be heard screaming at her for ruining his face, screaming that he's going to get her. She hides inside the house, but is flushed out by her father, whose face is now featureless save for bizarre cracks running through it. She runs for her life, but he chases her down, holds her down, and beats her in the chest with a hammer. Luckily, she wakes up and it's revealed she's been ill and the pain in her chest is from that, and her real father is by her bedside, concerned and ready to reconcile. The savage child-beating far outweighs the happy ending in one's memory, though... It's a truly suspenseful and disturbing film.
- Actually, the scene is more complex. The ogrish apparition of her father has a hammer alright, but when he attacks the girl, he double-handedly punches her chest, shouting "Can you hear me?! What's your name?!" etc. which is because IRL a doctor gives the ill girl a heart massage and it somehow gets projected in the dream. That's even more weird, huh? There is, however, another scene, namely when the girl takes a bath and dreams of the time she made her father's photo at the seaside. Not graphic, yet still a while back it made me jump, hence the large hole in my ceiling right next to the PC desk.
- 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.
- It was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? for this troper. Specifically, the scene with the little cartoon sneaker being veeeeery slooooowly lowered into the vat of toon-melty stuff.
- I accidentally traumatized my niece by allowing her to watch this movie. I conscientiously fast-forwarded through the shoe-murder but the scene that really got to her was the villain's horrible cartoon shrieks as he was eaten away by his own Dip.
- How come no-one hasn't mentioned Judge Doom's toon form? It was able to traumatize This Troper and many others almost out of their minds.
- This troper's having trouble deciding whether Tonguey from Kung Pow is this or Nausea Fuel. She absolutely loves the movie, but... eurgh.
- Maybe this troper is alone on this one, but in Peewee's Big Adventure, of all things... "When they finally pulled the body... from the twisted, burning wreck..." Those of you who have seen it know what follows. Also, the clowns.
- And how! I still remember how vividly that freaked me out as a kid. I would literally hide behind the living room chair when that came on— much to the amusement of my three-years-younger sister.
- Thank you so much for that. I had almost buried that childhood trauma. I'm gonna go shudder under my blankets now... can't sleep, Large Marge'll get me, can't sleep, Large Marge'll get me...
- Osmosis Jones has several nasty scenes, but the animated ones bothered this troper more than the live-action ones. Thrax turning sickly green and being horribly warped by the alcohol was incredibly disturbing.
- Then there's Frank's subconscious. To quote Thrax, "This cat was sick before I even got here!"
- Honey I Shrunk The Kids was one of this troper's favorite movies as a young child, but the scorpion, OH DEAR GOD THE SCORPION!!!!!!! What made it even worse was the moment where one of the kids is trapped in a Lego block and one of the scorpion's pincers is reaching in for him. The movie scorpion's terrifying roar, combined with the toothy look of the pincers, gave the impression that a huge set of JAWS was reaching for him.
- Curiously, the jaws-impression isn't quite unfounded - unlike crab's pincers, which are specialized forelegs, scorpions pincers are overgrown extended extra-set of jaws. .
- Three words: "DON'T EAT ME!!!" This troper was afraid to see the movie for a while, because this scene was at the end of all of the trailers for it.
- How did we miss the new Ink Heart? 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 imortal 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.
- Is this troper the only one who was severely traumatized by Fern Gully? I can't even remember it well enough to describe the scenes that freaked me out.
- Let me guess it was something to do with Tim Curry and the song Toxic Love, right?
- This troper's third-grade class had watched the film a couple of times in a row, and I had the Toxic Love sequence stuck in my head, so I was kind of on edge. As I was walking home from school, I happened to spot a large plume of smoke coming from what was probably someone's chimney a couple of streets away. I sprinted the rest of the way home.
- It wasn't Hexxas' creepiness that traumatized this troper, but the way he meets his end: by having a seed sprout inside him and ''grow out of his skin''. And the entire time he's screaming and trying to rip it out but it just keeps growing until he turns into a tree and it's implied that he's still alive. Oh, did we mention he was a giant black pollution-skeleton with the Leveller's fires in his ribcage at the time?
- I can't believe no one has mentioned Young Sherlock Holmes. I saw that movie when I was six and have flat out refused to ever see it again due to the part where a bunch of snacks in a refridgerator ''come to life and begin force-feeding themselves to Watson''. There's also a scene where a knight in a stained glass window comes to life and has a sword fight with (and I believe kills) a guy (which I actually thought was kind of cool, but it scared my brother).
- We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story: Though this movie is certain to be dripping with nightmare fuel, this troper still has the memories etched into his head from his childhood of the particular section of the movie when Dr. Screweyes kidnaps the dinosaurs, the kids, and the whole freak show circus. Fairly certain I'd still be creeped out if I were to watch it today.
- This troper once saw part of an adaptation of Gullivers Travels which featured a torture sequence involving wasps. Specifically, normal-sized wasps terrorising a miniature human for the sadistic pleasure of their master. In a PG-rated, family-oriented film. It was horrifying in a way that nothing else has ever come close to matching, and caused the eight-year-old troper to develop a phobia of the creatures in question; she's now 19 and is still terrified of them.
- Stardust, which is a fantastic move that everybody should see, has a freaky voodoo-doll swordfight near the end. ... After the guy has had his legs and arms broken ... and been drowned.
- How has no one mentioned Edward Scissorhands? Maybe it was just me... that scene where Edward is trying to pick up his "real" hands and just cutting them up in the process, and looking at them like... god, I quit watching then. I had nightmares for years. To this day, I have not finished that movie, and remembering that scene gives me a very uncomfortable "curling up and dying" sensation in my stomach.
- UHF has one scene that creeped me out as a kid. It wasn't the "Conan the Librarian" shot, nor was it the "Gandhi II" trailer... it was at the end when Philo, the station engineer, turns into an alien and goes back to his home planet. That shot STILL gives me the jibblies, and I've seen it a bazillion times by now.
- Done by the same people who did Large Marge, actually.
- Rememeber the Disney "Tower of Terror" movie? This troper was, for some reason, scared by the headless hotel guy, and the fact that one of the kids in my neighborhood made it as a Halloween costume didn't help either.
- This troper saw some of the live-action adaption of Popeye the other day, and was quite creeped out by Robin Williams' spot-on impression of the cartoon character. 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.
- Twilight, no matter how they tried to make the vampire villains scary I shuddered whenever Edward was on screen. I found him to be the most terrifying thing in the movie. His random obsession with Bella is maintained from the book. The movie gets extra marks though for Robert Pattinson delivering already weird lines like "It's your scent. It's like a drug to me." in a twitchy just-escaped-from-a-mental-hospital-where-he-ate-cockroaches way. Can't sleep. Edward will eat me.
- Well when Edward was freshly turned, he did eat people who thought bad thoughts. He used his mind power to search out who was naughty or nice as he still wanted some yummy blood. You better watch out...
- And let's not forget the newborn armies, 20+ fresh vampires who are blood-crazed, and super strong against even elder vampires. Every night they massacre people. Can't sleep, 20+ psychopaths will eat me...
- While New Moon was a very good comedy film, I couldn't help but be a little more than creeped out during the scene where a woman was leading a tour of families and children into the hideout of the head vampires. Screams. Yeah...
- Home Alone 2, oddly enough, had one scene scare the bejeezes out of this troper at 6-years-old, where Kevin is walking in the streets of New York and running into various creepy homeless people, hookers and cab drivers.
- What got me when I was about three in that movie was one of the traps set for Marv. He grabs a faucet handle, which is hooked up to a battery with jumper cables. It's turned on, and he starts getting electrocuted. No problem... until he becomes a screaming skeleton for a moment. It's supposed to be cartoonish, but that didn't occur to me as a kid.
- It wasn't just you. In this troper's opinion, that scene failed miserably at trying to be cartoonish and was just plain horrifying. Especially the fact that he only becomes a skeleton because Kevin keeps turning up the power of the battery! That's something Macaulay Culkin's character in The Good Son would do, but it's not appropriate for a family comedy.
- Kevin's shoes are the most terrifying pair a little movie viewer can put themselves into: Abandoned by parents, the neighbors and/or locals are not to be trusted, and two strangers are trying to intrude on the sanctuary of home. Kids will love these movies.
- Oliver! Is there no one else in the world who is terrified of Bill Sykes? For this troper he is probably the only movie villain to give her nightmares.
- Munchie. Looking at the DVD cover◊, it's obvious why this film is listed here.
- Mr. B Natural◊. Nightmare Fuel or Stupid Sexy Flanders - you decide.
- Spy Kids had some creepy stuff, notably Floop's Song. Good old Danny Elfman really knows how to creep us out.
- When this troper watched The Mask as a five year old, she gawked in horror during the first transformation scene. To elaborate, 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. Needless to say, this scene made the troper more than a little paranoid of masks taking control of her body if she ever tried to put them on.
- This troper remembers seeing the trailer for The Mask as a kid and being so traumatized by it that he was terrified to go to the movies afterward. For years.
- What on earth could be frightening about Dennis The Menace? It's a charming live-action adaptation of a beloved family-friendly comic strip, after all. Well, it turns out the kidnapping scene was Nightmare Fuel for this troper's brother when he was 4. For over a week, he had nightmares of skateboarding down the street as fast as he could, never daring to look back at the nameless terror behind him. Meanwhile, I saw the film at close to the same age (six) and didn't find it the least bit scary. Yet another example of how Your Mileage May Vary.
- This troper is told by his parents that upon seeing Dennis the Menace in a theater as a child, he had to be taken out after the first appearance of Christopher Lloyd's diseased-looking drifter thief.
- As a kid, this troper 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.
- For this troper, Mr. Sardonicus. I know, it's already a horror movie, so putting it here defeats the purpose. But it was how I found out about it that makes it nightmare fuel. As my fellow Chicago-based tropers know, most of the movies Svengoolie shows are cheesy and/or unintentionally funny (unless they involve Abbott & Costello, in which case they're intentionally funny). Mr. Sardonicus, on the other hand, was surprisingly frightening. Look it up on The Other Wiki if you don't believe me. But don't say I didn't warn you.
- The Robert Zemeckis Christmas Carol. Christmas Future is Christmas Future as usual. But Christmas Present dies by having all of his skin dissolve and leaving his skeleton which was STILL LAUGHING! Talk about trauma
- Oh my GOD. This movie should be retitled "A Ghost Carol!" The Future Ghost is the least scariest, though partly because you know he's going to be scary (As if ANYONE has managed to escape one of the TRILLION adaptions Carol has), but the other two ghosts... Past has a really creepy voice, I mean REALLY CREEPY. The kind that you imagine the Man Next Door has that mommy told you to stay away from. His head is on fire, which is unsettling realistic. And his face KEEPS CHANGING TO PEOPLE Scrooge knew, whether they're DEAD OR NOT. Scrooge smothering the little sucker was a Crowning Moment Of Awesome. And the Ghost of Christmas Present... It's hard not to find him a bigger Jerk Ass then Scrooge, he takes "teach Scrooge a lesson" a little to far and almost makes him border on Woobie. There's the above mention death scene, but you see him age from Brian Blessed-esque figure to a dude older than Father Time, clutching at his chest as he has a heart attack. Then their are his little wards Ignorance and Want, who are brutal, BRUTAL subversions of Children Are Innocent. And special mention goes to Marley, who's jaw UNHINGES as he's talking to Scrooge, which removed all doubt in This Troper's mind this was going to be a campy adaption for the family from Disnety. Oh no no no...
- 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 Film adaptation of Where the Wild Things are. One of the Wild things rips off another one's arm! And SAND pours out!
- 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. This troper once watched it after taking an Ambien and HOLY BAD IDEA.
- At about age 9, this troper walked in on her parents watching Mission To Mars (at least, reading the bit about it on Space Is Cold makes her fairly positive it was, right time period and all), right at the point where a drifting astronaut takes his helmet off as his friends beg him not to; his face then gains this hideous, horrifying red cracked sort of appearance as he instantly freezes to death and serenely drifts into space, smiling. AND IT'S A PG FILM. Terrified the shit out of said troper and made her swear off ever traveling in space.
- 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 this troper for a long time. I never slept with a teddy again.
- This troper 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.
- For this troper, the largest source of Nightmare Fuel in Avatar came from the HUGE arrows. They are in proportion to the Na'vi, who are ten feet-plus tall, so when they stick into a human they are like spears. There's also many of the creatures, who all want to kill you and are very much suited for the task.
- Certain HBO viewers of the early 1980's may remember this scene in The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, depicting The End Of The World As We Know It.
- 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?
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial: This Troper would always hide in the bathroom during the part where Michael finds E.T. in the stream, and oh my good god the invasion of the astronauts. The astronauts. It was the first time she'd ever seen a parent unable to protect their children, and the ineffectual screaming of Elliot's mom did. Not. Help.
- The only thing this troper remembered about The Last Unicorn was the terrifying Red Bull, but she didn't remember what movie it was from until she read the book as an adult and had an "Oh my God it's that!" moment.
- Oh hai, giant killer moles. I'll be hiding under the bed now if you don't mind.
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