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Films Your Parents Should Not Have Let You Watch

As a child I can remember being DESPERATE to be taken to see Bedknobs and Broomsticks, I forget why now. Possibly the entrancing live action/animation underwater sequence?

Sadly didn't catch it at the cinema but it was on TV eventually. Can't even remember now if it was worth the wait.

Angela Lansbury may actually be more disturbing than many of the banned 'video nastys'. :eek:
 
Angela Lansbury may actually be more disturbing than many of the banned 'video nastys'. :eek:

Bedknobs & Broomsticks formed my childhood impression of Angela Lansbury. It was forever shattered when, as an adult, I saw her in the original version of The Manchurian Candidate.
 
By the time of Bedknobs & Broomsticks, I was - rightly - regarded as past the Disney age. My brother went to see it.

I haven't a clue what the film is about to this day - except that Angela Lansbury was in it!

Like many a Video Nasty, however, you may struggle to find a full version!

This filmographic complexity almost makes me curious! :rolleyes:


During the dubbing process for the German version in the early '70s, it was decided to remove all scenes featuring Nazis.

:rofl:
 
"Blackbeard the Pirate"
Robert Newton does his best Long John Silver and meets a sticky end.
My parents, I assume, must have thought it was an innocuous old film to let pirate obsessed child me watch.
Oh, how wrong they were...

That sticky end I told you ol' Edward meets...?
He's beaten, stabbed, shot, and finally buried up to his neck in sand as the tide rolls over him.
If it wasn't for the lack of gore (though there is a smidgen of blood) it'd be Scorsese worthy.
For the 8 year old me it was terrifying.

Even now, it's still a little grim, especially as they show the head underwater.
Should anyone have absolutely nothing better to do, it starts at around 1hr 33mins:
 
"Blackbeard the Pirate"
Robert Newton does his best Long John Silver and meets a sticky end.
My parents, I assume, must have thought it was an innocuous old film to let pirate obsessed child me watch.
Oh, how wrong they were...

That sticky end I told you ol' Edward meets...?
He's beaten, stabbed, shot, and finally buried up to his neck in sand as the tide rolls over him.
If it wasn't for the lack of gore (though there is a smidgen of blood) it'd be Scorsese worthy.
For the 8 year old me it was terrifying.

Even now, it's still a little grim, especially as they show the head underwater.
Should anyone have absolutely nothing better to do, it starts at around 1hr 33mins:
Oh, that final tide scene!
 
Television should count here, since many of our creepy memories are of sitting safe ?!? at home in the living ?!? room. Why did my parents let me watch an Alfred Hitchcock Presents hour filmed in Guanajuato Mexico with many scenes of real dead body mummies, not special effects. When I was about four or five years old! I didn't want to be in the dark for months, and my big brother had only to suck in his cheeks and groan "Juan Diaz" to make me want to cry.
 
When Corinne Clery gets eaten by the dogs in Moonraker, I thought that was nightmarish when I was little. Maybe I shouldn't have watched that bit. It's still rated PG, though!

Moonraker has 3 scenes that for some odd reason, make me uneasy. The centrifuge scene, with those half-second flashes to 'M's office. The scene when Jaws is slowly creeping up the alley in Rio, wearing that gigantic clown outfit and that scene with the Corinne and the Dobermans.
 
I remember seeing this poster in the window of the local video shop. It used to give me nightmares!

Deathship-poster.jpeg
 
It is a very good little film that.

Nazi death ship that cruises the waves with no crew aboard sinking ships and murdering the crews, empty rooms with music still playing, stacato German tannoy announcements to a crew that isn't here.
 
Moonraker has 3 scenes that for some odd reason, make me uneasy. The centrifuge scene, with those half-second flashes to 'M's office. The scene when Jaws is slowly creeping up the alley in Rio, wearing that gigantic clown outfit and that scene with the Corinne and the Dobermans.

Yes, Jaws in the clown outfit is truly sinister, I'd forgotten about that.
 
Though it wasn't my parents, but the babysitter who let me watch it, I was traumatized at the tender age of 8 by John Carpenter's The Thing. I did OK, up to the scene were the Dr.'s (?) head rips from his body as they are trying to resuscitate him, and turns into a spider!

Lost it, started shaking and had to turn my face to the couch. I couldn't watch any more after that, but weirdly, don't remember having nightmares or being afraid of the dark after that. I guess it was just too much in the moment.

I obviously have watched the whole movie since then, (many times over!) It's actually one of my faves!

But the most disturbing movie I ever watched, when still fairly young, (maybe 11?) is Xtro

In which a woman is impregnated by an alien, and she gives birth to a FULL SIZED man/alien hybrid!!
:eek::puke2:
 
Horror films didn't bother me too much, since they obviously weren't real, though I agree The Thing was pretty grim. Other kinds of films affected me more. I remember creeping into the flicks underage to see the Towering Inferno. Not sure exactly how old I was, but it upset me quite a bit, all those human torches. But I was also gripped by it, it was very suspensful.
 
It used to give me nightmares!

That poster stirred a memory. Not of the film but of a very similar image in a comic I read as a child.

The story was called "The Sludge," - it dealt with a creeping, shapeless menace which took over a ship. The whole tale was drawn in shades of fog but the personification of the encroaching ship with its hideous eyes . . .

I have looked up "The Sludge" and found only references to an American tale. The version I saw was a rip-off, I suppose.

Were I to see it again, the images might shrink back into routine-gothic but it's the age they catch you, isn't it? :psych:

edit: I have now found this page about a strip in The Lion, 1965. The date is about right, so I guess it was an episode of this!
 
my mum was really strict about not letting me buy vhs movies with age guides beyond my own age, i remember id been given a £5 gift voucher from the our price record shops, and i found a copy of the lost boys in the bargain bin and my mum wouldnt even let me get it even though i was a week away from turning 15.

but when my oldest sister got engaged and later married, i gained a big brother (inlaw) that i had always wanted. he introduced me to some very good movies and also lots of crappy bmovies.
i loved getting to stay for occasional weekends, he had, at the time, a huge box full of videos from his bacholer days.

bear in mind i was only about 10 at the time but he introduced me to american werewolf in london, barbarella, jaws, the invaders from mars, quatermass experiment, quatermass and the pit, piranas. to name just a feww and i loved them all.

the only movie i didnt like is one i cant remember the name of. all i can remember is that it had an astronaut on a mission in the solar system and he got caught in ann accident something to do with being blinded by a solar flare, and after he heals and gets his sight back, starts to have some weird things happening and changine him. it was something about his head start to pulse and swell up, when he got agitated, the atmospheric soundtrack for these parts also combined with the movie to really freak me out and scare me. i stopped the video and wouldnt watch anymore of it.
the only movie he recommended and it really did frighten me.

can anyone shed any light on this movie, i would like to try watching it again now im well and truly an adult by a few decades
 
Was it Event Horizon?
 
northstar ?

thanks henry, i just looked it up on youtube and it was northstar. i will watch it sometime soon. its weird, but this movie seems pretty lame compared to some others i watched back in the day, but this one scared me. but not anymore. haha
 
cool, a quick google search found it ... but youre apparently not alone in having caught it young and been spooked then struggled to find it as an adult, so i reckon its probably worth rediscovering ... the film that fit that bill for me was lets scare jessica to death, as mentioned upthread, now one of my favourite movies
 
the film that fit that bill for me was lets scare jessica to death, as mentioned upthread, now one of my favourite movies

Let's scare Jessica to death was an obsession for my cousin and me at 8 years old. We even made up a game out of it, called "Jessica, Jessica, let's scare Jessica..." in which we acted out ever more frightening scenarios. I suppose this was our way of dealing with something scary.
But that scene where the ghostly woman emerges from the water - Arrgh! The stuff of nightmares! :hide:
She was what we imagined Bloody Mary in the mirror must look like.

There is a website devoted to the film, BTW
http://www.letsscarejessicatodeath.net/menu2.html
 
yes, took me a long time to find the movie as i only recalled the framed picture, the mole scene and the closing moments, but also of course the incredibly creepy vibe ... reckon i was around 8 or 10 when i saw it
Let's scare Jessica to death was an obsession for my cousin and me at 8 years old. We even made up a game out of it, called "Jessica, Jessica, let's scare Jessica..."
i was in a death-obsessed blues band in the 90s called dead bodies, one of our best songs was named for the movie
 
For the first time in decades, I watched Hell Drivers. This gritty drama of trucking-folk starred Stanley Baker.

US director Cy Endfield, a refugee from McCarthyism, certainly smuggled a few points into what is fundamentally an action movie. It got an 'A' rating at the time - 1957 - on account of the violence. It used to turn up on television however and some of the dialogue may be unintentional innuendo or deliberate fun:

Baker to Peggy Cummins*:

"I suppose you're the type who would like to see two men shooting it out over you!" :omg:

It was lost on me as a kid! :D

*Her real name, I think!
 
i remember seeing a movie which was about a group of hunters in Africa who get on the wrong side of the locals. One of the hunters is encased in clay with just a hole to breath through and then cooked over a fire on a spit. I think it was The Naked Prey with Cornell Wilde.
 
For the first time in decades, I watched Hell Drivers. This gritty drama of trucking-folk starred Stanley Baker.

US director Cy Endfield, a refugee from McCarthyism, certainly smuggled a few points into what is fundamentally an action movie. It got an 'A' rating at the time - 1957 - on account of the violence. It used to turn up on television however and some of the dialogue may be unintentional innuendo or deliberate fun:

Baker to Peggy Cummins*:

"I suppose you're the type who would like to see two men shooting it out over you!" :omg:

It was lost on me as a kid! :D

*Her real name, I think!

Hell Drivers pops up now and again on Talking Pictures on Freeview.
 
My aunt let me watch the Evil Dead and Superstition when I was far FAR too young for either (about 7 years old - I do remember proudly boasting at school, "I've seen a horror film!")
 
Although my parents weren't particularly strict when it came to letting me watch horror films, I had a friend who was allowed to watch virtually whatever he wanted. Hence, my first introduction to horror was (as has been noted here many times before) Salem's Lot - the first and only film to leave me genuinely terrified. I watched The Thing round at his house the following week and was utterly amazed by it - it's still one of my favourites.

A couple of 1980's cinema trips to watch films with my parents that have stuck with me have been Beastmaster (starring lead actor from the TV series "V"; Marc Singer) which I remember being reasonably gruesome but in an enjoyable way (if that makes sense - although I could be mis-remembering it) and Superman 3 - the bit where the woman gets sucked into the supercomputer-thing and turned into a robot - I found this to be profoundly disturbing at a young age.
 
Let's scare Jessica to death was an obsession for my cousin and me at 8 years old. We even made up a game out of it, called "Jessica, Jessica, let's scare Jessica..." in which we acted out ever more frightening scenarios. I suppose this was our way of dealing with something scary.
But that scene where the ghostly woman emerges from the water - Arrgh! The stuff of nightmares! :hide:
She was what we imagined Bloody Mary in the mirror must look like.

There is a website devoted to the film, BTW
http://www.letsscarejessicatodeath.net/menu2.html
I've never seen it but I'm tempted to now.
 
A couple of 1980's cinema trips to watch films with my parents that have stuck with me have been Beastmaster (starring lead actor from the TV series "V"; Marc Singer) which I remember being reasonably gruesome but in an enjoyable way (if that makes sense - although I could be mis-remembering it) and Superman 3 - the bit where the woman gets sucked into the supercomputer-thing and turned into a robot - I found this to be profoundly disturbing at a young age.

The unpleasant shock of seeing Scots blues singer Annie Ross turned into a robot is a common childhood trauma for 80s kids. One minute you're watching Richard Pryor arseing about, the next: Agh!
 
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