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Films Your Parents Should Not Have Let You Watch

BeatrixKiddo

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 17, 2005
Messages
123
Following on from my post re: Horror at 37,000 Feet, it made me think whether parents were a lot more easy going about what they let there children watch. Maybe 'thinking' in those days (i'm talking 70's and early 80's) was that children were too young to know what they were watching....
Apart from the aformentioned 'Horror'...i can remeber some scenes from a film that can only be Cannibal Holocaust... :shock:
Threads was another one, which i watched at school...so i can't really blame parents for that one....
 
I suppose the mian one that stands out my parents didn't actually le me watch but a judgement call on their behalf left me in a position to see it. I've mentioned it before but it was the first time my folks thought my brother and I would be OK to be elft at home without a baby sitter when they went out (God knows how old we were) but unfortunately Salem's Lot was on and they came home to find little homemade paper crucifixes blue tacked to all the windows. It would suprise me not a jot if my brother pinned that down as one of the traumatising incidents from childhood along with playing Monopoly wih me.
 
To this day, my dad makes fun of me because I covered my eyes during some parts of Raiders of the Lost Ark when he took me to see it in the theater. When I was 8.

Hmmm, people impaled on spikes, mummified corpses everywhere, heads exploding, faces melting, sudden propeller-blade mutilation, cars driving off cliffs, people getting run over by trucks, angels turning into demons, and not to mention what happened to that poor monkey....

When will you understand, you bastard??!!!! 8 years old!

Cannibal Holocaust, Bea? :eek!!!!: So how long have you been in therapy?
 
Tell me about it! :vampire: There a was a group of adults watching the video CH. The children (including me) were just playing, in and out of the room.... but to assume us kids were oblivious....
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
I got taken to see Jaws when I was about 7. Had bloody nightmares for weeks afterwards, and still can't watch that bit with the head - you know the one I mean :shock:

I don't know which Jaws film it is but in one the big old sharky crashes through an underwater walkway thingy. When my parents subsequently took us to Seaworld in Florida we walked through one with sharks in the tank surrounding and i was pretty concerned... :shock:

I saw a programme about headless horsemen when i was 4-6ish and it gave me recurring nightmares for months.
 
I was 7 when Rocky Horror Picture Show came out. My parents were fans of the play, so they took my brother and I to see it.

Now, to be fair it didn't give me nightmares, and the only scene I couldn't handle was the dinner scene, but I don't think it was really a good idea to take children along.

Then again, I didn't even understand much of the subtext.
 
theyithian said:
BlackRiverFalls said:
I got taken to see Jaws when I was about 7. Had bloody nightmares for weeks afterwards, and still can't watch that bit with the head - you know the one I mean :shock:

I don't know which Jaws film it is but in one the big old sharky crashes through an underwater walkway thingy. When my parents subsequently took us to Seaworld in Florida we walked through one with sharks in the tank surrounding and i was pretty concerned... :shock:

That was Jaws 3-D!

"Daddy, look at the big fish!" "Holy Shit!"
 
It wasn't a good idea when my mother decided to let me stay up watching all those BBC horror double bills in the early 80's. Zoltan Hound of Dracula, MR emil smit (cant remember whether that was the actor or the character) still has the power to chill, and I've not seen it since.

The end of the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, when Donald Sutherland starts emitting alien noises and you realise the baddies won.

Need to add, though that despite the hype, Dr Who never scared me at all.
 
Wanna talk about traumatic movies? Try watching two porn movies in the Autocinema. Lesbianic sex, orgies and sadism rigth on the face of a 10 year old just because your stupid Mom could not figure out a way to deal with an overly sensitive boy who just lost his father and was dealing with a lot of pressure in school "Your kid is going to turn into a fag, he's crying all the time." Bullsh*t. You guys have no idea how damaging it was for my psique and the long term effects it had on me. I am still dealing with some secuels and it's not a very good thing. It's amazing how stupid can some parents get in order to "straigthen up" a kid.
 
Salems Lot! Many, many sleepless nights expecting to see some dead kid, fresh from his box in the cemetary, floating up and scratching at the window.

And Reggie Nalder as the bald-headed, vulcan-eared vampyre - pure nightmare fodder.
 
My mum took me to see the sound of music at about 6.

Even now I have to remind myself that if the bad guys are coming up the path to my house it is not the wisest move to flee in the opposite direction singing at the top of my voice.

Memo to Von-Trapp family: Kindly keep you mouths shut when fleeing from the german army you muppets.


I also saw the Evil Dead and driller killer round a friends house when I was about 11. Laughed a lot.
 
chriswsm said:
Memo to Von-Trapp family: Kindly keep you mouths shut when fleeing from the german army you muppets.
Slightly OT - reminds me of when Pia Zadora played Anne Frank on Broadway: she was so bad that when the Nazis first came to the house someone in the audience shouted "She's in the attic!"

Anyway, I saw the Amityville Horror at about 13. Didn't scare me much at the time, until I saw a reflected traffic light on my bedroom window that night :shock: .

And I let my (then) eight year old watch Scooby Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf which we got from Blockbuster. Of he trotted and put it on upstairs while I settled down to watch Top Gear. Hearing a shriek from upstairs, I thought "Blimey, Scooby Doo's gone a bit hardcore!". It wasn't Scooby Doo: some berk had put An American Werewolf in London in the box by mistake. He thought it was a trailer so kept watching. Still feel a bit guilty for not checking (mind you, Blockbuster were very apologetic and gave us five free rentals as a gesture of good will :)).
 
Anome_ said:
I was 7 when Rocky Horror Picture Show came out. My parents were fans of the play, so they took my brother and I to see it.

Now, to be fair it didn't give me nightmares, and the only scene I couldn't handle was the dinner scene, but I don't think it was really a good idea to take children along.

Then again, I didn't even understand much of the subtext.

My mother also showed me the Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was very young. I LOVED all the songs, of course, being 5, I didn't really know what they all were about...

So anyway...skip to my first year at school...in a classroom...having a singalong with our teacher playing his guitar ...and the teacher says "Has anyone got any favourite songs they'd like to sing?" So I put up my hand, and the teacher asks me what song I'd like... And I say "Do you know I'm just a sweet transvestite?"

This is one of the many things in my life for which I hold my mother wholly responsible.
 
I once gave in to my niece who assured me that Monty Python's Meaning of Life couldn't be all that rude as it had only, I think, the AA Certificate, in those days. So could we please have that one out of the video-store? She was, after all nearly eleven and all her friends had seen it.

As the film wore on, I kept saying, "Well that will have been the worst bit. It's bound to contain less sex and violence later . . ."

Besides, wouldn't it be worse to over-react and turn it off?

So we had the practical sex-lesson in the schoolroom, the bloody operation on a living woman, the obese man who vomits and explodes and to cap it all the delightful production number to the words, "Every sperm is sacred!"

"Well!" she said as the titles played, "I certainly don't think that was suitable for anyone!"

Despite which, she tried to show it to her younger sister the next day.

Luckily she seems to have had a pretty strong stomach and - as a nurse - has seen many worse sights since! :shock:
 
At my work there is a creche for worker's kids and every Friday afternoon the kids get to bring in videos.

Usually it's Tellytubbies and assorted Disney flicks and then one little three year old comes in with his favourite video: Robocop.

When they told his mother that it wasn't really suitable she just shrugged her shoulders and said "so what?"
 
JamesWhitehead said:
"Well!" she said as the titles played, "I certainly don't think that was suitable for anyone!"
:laughing:

What a fantastic thing for a 10 year-old to say! And in my mind - sweeping cultural generalisation coming up, here - a thing only a British child could word in such a manner. ;)
 
Styx remembers being terrified by Demons when he was about 10, but for some reason rented the sequel and then managed to get both bought for him on video.

Being slightly odd I remember how delighted I was when I saw these gloriously terrifying films from my childhood had been released onto DVD and quickly purchased the boxed set.
For some reason the make-up effects all looked so much more convincing when I was 10, but looking back I can't use my age as any excuse not to have noticed the appalling acting...
 
mossy_sloth said:
Anome_ said:
I was 7 when Rocky Horror Picture Show came out. My parents were fans of the play, so they took my brother and I to see it.

Now, to be fair it didn't give me nightmares, and the only scene I couldn't handle was the dinner scene, but I don't think it was really a good idea to take children along.

Then again, I didn't even understand much of the subtext.

My mother also showed me the Rocky Horror Picture Show when I was very young. I LOVED all the songs, of course, being 5, I didn't really know what they all were about...

So anyway...skip to my first year at school...in a classroom...having a singalong with our teacher playing his guitar ...and the teacher says "Has anyone got any favourite songs they'd like to sing?" So I put up my hand, and the teacher asks me what song I'd like... And I say "Do you know I'm just a sweet transvestite?"
The truly worrying thing is that The Time Warp was a required song and/or dance at school dances and formals all through the 70s, 80s, and even 90s. (My mother once attended such a dance - which I fortunately did not attend - where she had to instruct people in the correct steps.) This includes at the dance I was supposed to go to at the end of year 6. (I didn't go to any school dances at all, which can't have helped with my social development. Then again, it was my decision.)
 
My mum and dad took me to see The Wizard of Oz when I was about five; It scared the living daylights out of me :eek!!!!:

There was a trailer for another film on before the main feature. It had something to do with a hive full of "wasp people". That was pretty scary too. Does anyone know what film it might have been? The year would have been about 1960, give or take a couple of years.
 
ArthurASCII said:
There was a trailer for another film on before the main feature. It had something to do with a hive full of "wasp people". That was pretty scary too. Does anyone know what film it might have been? The year would have been about 1960, give or take a couple of years.

Would it have been "The Wasp Woman" (1960). I remember seeing a poster for this outside our local cinema just before it shut down it would have been around 1962-63, but the place apparently only got films ages after they'd been released.
 
Please don't report my mum to social services....


EXTRO.

:shock:

I must have been about 8.

I really don't think she knew what the film was about. I only vaguely remember it now, I think I've psychologically blocked it out. :cry:
 
All I remember was being about 6 and snuggled up with my Mum and Nan watching Quatermass and the Pit, it wasn't gory, but it scared the daylights out of me,
 
My parents never let me watch anything unsuitable. I remember pleading to be allowed to stay up for Hammer House of Horror to no avail :(

I feel very deprived.
 
Watching Evil Dead II during a family sunday dinner springs to mind.

We'd just had a brand new vhs player and my brother wanted to watch the film as it had just been released on video so they said, yeah okay.

TBH as long as it wasn't pornographic, my olds didn't seem to care what I watched or indeed read.
 
badweasle said:
Please don't report my mum to social services....


EXTRO.

:shock:

I must have been about 8.

I really don't think she knew what the film was about. I only vaguely remember it now, I think I've psychologically blocked it out. :cry:

Ooh, that was banned as a video nasty! That's the one with a giant Action Man in it.

I never got to see these things as a kid being too much of a scaredycat. I did want to stay up and watch An American Werewolf in London, but wasn't allowed. Probably just as well, as Jaws frightened the life out of me when I saw it on TV.

Twenty-eight I was. Aaahhh...
 
As a nine year old my parents took me to see an Aussie movie called Razorback at the cinemas. It's about a giant pig that eats people and stars Nudge from Hey Dad and some American actor who I think was in the series Quincy M.D. (a high point in Australian Cinema). Even now I wonder what they were thinking. I remember being so scared I cried, yet we stayed for the entire movie. Seeing the movie years later I doubt I would have sat through it at the cinema even without a crying child next to me, yet thats what my olds did.
 
My parents were of the opinion that I was quite capable of differentiating fact from fantasy, I never had bad dreams after watching horror movies so as long there wasn't nudity they were chilled out about most films.

It meant I got to see a lot of the 'Video Nasties' as a child, albeit still in severely truncated versions before they were banned.
 
I wonder why it is that we allow our children (I include myself here, recently showed my 10 year old the entire Alien series) to view extreme violence on screen and go "hey that's o.k", yet as soon as there is a pair of boobs involved we go "they can't watch that". Just wondering.
 
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