My dads brother visited us one time - when I was around 7 years old - and they sent me to bed and watched a movie together on TV. I’m not sure where my mom was, perhaps taking care of my little brother, but I quietly went down the stairs and saw them watching the movie, and I stayed very quietly so they would not know I’m there.

It was a Bruce Lee movie, “The Big Boss (1971)”. In that movie Bruce works at a ice factory and his boss kills some people and puts them into the ice. That’s not the worst of it. They then have those big ice blocks and a big blade saw and that saw cuts the big blocks into smaller peaces. It also cuts those bodies in the ice blocks into smaller pieces.

I couldn’t believe what I saw and went back upstairs and couldn’t fall asleep. I never told my parents.

  • hushable@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I watched Event Horizon when I was 10 not knowing it was an horror movie and I had recurring nightmares for weeks

    • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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      4 months ago

      Same but I was in my mid twenties.

      The director’s cut would have been a classic for the ages.

      • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        I saw this in my 20s as well, somehow never having heard a thing about it. I thought it was gonna be a standard sci-fi movie. Boy was I surprised.

        Also, I’ve heard about that lost footage that they filmed but never released. Shit sounds wild.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Watch a movie called Demon Wind when I was 9. Only scary movie that ever got to me and I had been watching them since I was 5. But for whatever reason that movie fuck me up that I had accident in bed.

      Funny watch that movie as an adult and it so bad and corny but it disturb me at 9.

    • Aielman15@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      The brothers Grimm for me. I don’t see many people discussing it online, but I enjoyed it. That scene where the horse eats a kid is still distressing to me years later.

  • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    The Brave Little Toaster. I loved that movie cause what little kid doesn’t want to watch a bunch of singing appliances? It’s actually a really good movie but the themes about existential crisis and the need for purpose are way over a kids head. Also, the clown scene gave me nightmares.

  • ladytaters@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I saw Akira when I was four and my brother was three. Our dad picked it out because “animation is for children”.

    I can’t remember much of it but it left me with a deep distate for body horror and nightmares for literal weeks.

    • Tiefa@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I wasn’t that young, maybe 8 but that movie still fucked me up. The hospital scene with the stuffed animals coming alive and breaking apart was and is super scary.

    • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Ninja Scroll for me, my dad let me rent it when I was very young and I was like “holy heck what is this”

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    4 months ago

    Jaws. Watched it when I was about 8. Now in my 40s and still don’t like being in open water or sea where I can’t see the bottom… I know what’s down there…

    • cleverusername@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Same movie, same age, same irrational thoughts in water!

      I live 3hrs from the coast and even swimming in a crystal clear fresh water river, it’s still in the back of my mind as an adult, as I kid, I wouldn’t even swim a alone in our pool!

  • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Stephen King’s IT was broadcast on network TV during primetime. I remember being excited to gather around the TV to watch a movie and oooooh boy was not prepared. I don’t think my parents let me finish.

    • Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I remember hearing about IT from other kids, and them describing all these horrific things that happen. When I watched it as an adult I couldn’t believe how tame it was. Everything had been exaggerated, and some of it was probably being confused with things from other movies.

    • ivanafterall ☑️@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I finished it! Couldn’t take a shower without fear or let my feet stick out from the blankets for years. Definitely the one that scarred me most, likely because I was in 1st grade.

    • tobogganablaze@lemmus.org
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      3 months ago

      I was watching IT at my grandma’s and she just saw the clown at the beginning and thought it must be kids movie. But eventually my mum came home and stopped it (also my grandma got yelled at).

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    4 months ago

    This really creepy Czech Alice in Wonderland movie. It used stop motion with animal skeletons, fish heads, and tons of other things.

    My mom put it on when I was little in an attempt to keep me occupied.
    “Would you like to watch Alice in Wonderland, Thelsim?” She’d ask.
    “Yea!” I would shout enthusiastically, thinking she meant the Disney movie.
    Half an hour later I’m crying and hiding under the blankets.

    I never did watch that movie again. Maybe it’s not so bad now, but the screenshots still make feel very queasy.

    A sample 🫣

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The Shining

    I must have seen it at a very early age, maybe 2 or 3, because I had recurring nightmares about the chase scene that I couldn’t contextualize until I saw it again in my teens.

  • SkaraBrae@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    An American Werewolf in London.

    I stayed up watching it on my brother’s black and white TV. My parents had no idea. I nearly shit the bed afterward when my brother jumped on me in the dark and yelled “raaaah.”

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    4 months ago

    My parents told me that I could watch any movie in theatres for my 13th birthday. I didn’t know anything about it and picked The Devil’s Advocate. They took me, my older brother, and my two younger brothers.

    On the way home they yelled at me for picking an inappropriate movie.

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    4 months ago

    Terminator 2. Also Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Oh and a glimpse of Silence of the lambs before I got caught by mum that time.

    The heart part in Indiana Jones haunted me. as did the idea of a killer robot that you can’t reason with or plead mercy to.

    • Deconceptualist@lemm.ee
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      3 months ago

      Yeah Temple of Doom and T2 for me as well.

      ToD was somehow approved by my parents (I think it was rated PG-13, not R) and we even owned it on VHS but I definitely lost some sleep over the heart scene and also the monkey brains.

      T2 was definitely not approved, but I watched it at a friend’s house.

  • MattTheProgrammer@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    E.T. --specifically the scenes starting with the government showing up to take care of him while he’s dying. E.T. being lifeless in that clear body bag will never be removed from my mind.

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      E.T. is a funny one. It was the first movie I saw in a theater, as a smallish child on a school outing. And I was traumatized by it. That weird alien skin and eyes, those creepy bony fingers. As I remember, it literally gave me nightmares. But to this day I have never met anyone who didn’t find E.T. “cute” as a child. Possibly I was just too young.

    • Veneroso@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      That color… How pale he was. Mom used to buy frozen burritos at the time. I felt uncomfortable eating them for months…

  • daddy32@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I saw a nasty horror movie as a kid of around 7-8. My friend had this weird uncle who was living with his mother house next to ours. He was the only one at street with VHS player. One day, instead of our favorite Tom & Jerry, he put a cassette with the movie into the player. It was some weird horror called “the spirit of the Forest” or something like that, about a cabin in the forest and a spirit possessing its visitors, making them kill each other. I had trouble getting back home in the middle of the day. Fortunately, no nightmares. Few years later, the uncle killed his mother, because voices told him to. He got locked up in the psychiatric ward and my friend moved in with his parents, yay.