10 Best Animated Movies for Traumatizing Kids

Duralict · Post by **Duralict** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:10 pm

Fern Gully! Man, I loved that sludge monster. But the part in the bat's rap where he goes all sparky and shadowy always made me really uncomfortable.

Johndar · Post by **Johndar** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:01 pm

God, I don't know the name of the movie, but maybe someone here knows it.

It was a movie featuring talking forest animals, mice sized, where the main characters were kids who had, like, their entire village killed by a gas leak from an overturned semi. The movie is about them venturing out after that, for some reason or another, and I think they had a blimp like device. I really loved that movie but it scared me all the same. I had daydream night mares where gas would envelop my neighbour hood and kill everybody.

Bustertheclown · Post by **Bustertheclown** » Mon Sep 24, 2007 11:12 pm

The Secret of Nimh, The Last Unicorn, pretty much any independently animated movie from the 80's actually. Not many punches pulled back then. I first saw Nausicaa for the first time when I was about six. Giant killer bugs, acidic air, and melting giants that shot massive lasers out of their mouths. Yup, that stayed with me forever.

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 12:19 am

The kid that gets traumatized by "The Incredibles", "Roger Rabbit" or "Lion king" oughta be wimpier than Rod and Tod Flanders.

If I was a kid I'd be a lot more traumatized by "Fox and hound's" character being hit by a train than relatively violent death in "Lion's king". But oh, a character in "Fox and hound" later appears miraculously alive and only with broken leg, so that makes it all right, leave it to parents to explain to kids how can someone sirvive being hit by a train with only a broken leg.
Point for "Hunchback", that film was a miscarriage from the moment someone thought of idea of making that book into a Disney cartoon. Watership Down isn't cartoon for kids anyway, I think you could with as much right put "Heavy metal" on that list. And Bambi might be traumatic, but I think that it can also teach kids a few early facts about death. There's a lot of things said about Disney, but he knew how to talk to kids. Many people who are supposedly making entertainment for kids, adress kids as if they're idiots.

This guy's gonna make a good tabloid journalist: He's a sensationalist, he did the article with practically no research - instead of finding genuinely disturbing movies, he just wrote of first ones he could think of and proceeded to overanalyze and overblow things till he make perfectly usual things sound scary.
But he didn't even find the best examples among obvious, "Madagascar" or "Wild" for one would be much more obvious choices.
Plus he has that juicy way of expressing that tabloids favour. Like this:

It doesn’t help much that the creators, much like everyone else in the '80s, were on the cheapest hallucinogenic substances they could find.

Yeah, and seven dwarves were based on seven stages of cocaine use, sure.

I dunno why Transformers are targeted so often, I remember hearing a lecture on drugs that claimed that Transformers were actually incouraging kids to take halucinogenic drugs. You could targer, I dunno, He Man, or Ninja Turtles for practically the same stuff. I personally always thought that Ninja Turtles were spectacularly morbid, with their mutations, living brains, Burt Stockman turning into a half-fly or April O'Neil turning into a cat (that was the episode that creeped me out). But I actually liked them for that, they seemed like a more mature show.

It's also funny how many people take it for granted that "Song of the South" was racist and wrong and whatnot without even watching it. Sure it was simplification of things, but I don't remember black people being represented in negative light there. I guess if you want to make a film happening in pre-civil war south, you can fill it with images of black people suffering and generally make it a more realistic portrayal, but that would probably be more traumatizing than this. The intention was not racist, it was simply to embellish things, to make them entertaining - not going for realistic portrayal of things, like Indiana Jones isn't exactly a realistic portrayal of archeologist profession. If they tried to make a wrong history period entertaining, well that might be a mistake, but the main theme of the film wasn't history anyways, it was the folk tales told, and it's really sad that these wonderful animated tales get such lousy treatment because of something that is secondary element of the movie.
Actually I'm not surprised that the film generated controversy back then, I'm surprised that its' generating some controversy nowadays too. I could find "Birth of the nation", Lenny Riefenstahl's films, Frankenheimer's "Cruising" or old SNAFU cartoons on DVD but I couldn't find "Song of the south". Time distance has rendered all messages that former films carried mostly harmless, so why didn't the same happen with mostly harmless "Song of the south"?

Escushion · Post by **Escushion** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 4:38 am

Johndar wrote:God, I don't know the name of the movie, but maybe someone here knows it.

It was a movie featuring talking forest animals, mice sized, where the main characters were kids who had, like, their entire village killed by a gas leak from an overturned semi. The movie is about them venturing out after that, for some reason or another, and I think they had a blimp like device. I really loved that movie but it scared me all the same. I had daydream night mares where gas would envelop my neighbour hood and kill everybody.

Once Upon a Forest.

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:04 am

This has to be a joke, right? Someone lampooning the allies of the socially-right-minded or something?

Noise Monkey · Post by **Noise Monkey** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 6:58 am

Well, it IS Cracked...though I'm not sure how right-minded the raccoon nut fighters are...

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:17 am

Noise Monkey wrote:Well, it IS Cracked...though I'm not sure how right-minded the raccoon nut fighters are...

I don't see that as scarring a child. I figure, the first time a kid grabs his testicles, and swings them like two rocks in a pillowcase into a chair or something really hard in an attempt to smash it to smithereens, he'll learn that this is an improper use of testicles.

Noise Monkey · Post by **Noise Monkey** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:20 am

we've all been there...

Escushion · Post by **Escushion** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 7:23 am

I'm not sure what you're saying, Rkolter. That the list is ridiculous?

I think the use of the word traumatizing is purposely overblown, but there are kids' movies that can disturb kids. I'd see Watership Down messing some up.

RemusShepherd · Post by **RemusShepherd** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:20 am

I loved Watership Down. Terrific movie. Definitely scarred me as a kid, but possibly in a good way.

But where is _Plague Dogs_? Same author and animators as Watership Down, the Plague Dog movie was 100% darker and more depressing. Don't remember if it had more blood in it...hard to beat blood-covered meadows. But any film about experimental animals with exposed brain cases spreading bubonic plague throughout England should be up there in the 'don't show to children' category...

And now I *have* to see the raccoon testicle film.

TheSuburbanLetdown · Post by **TheSuburbanLetdown** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:33 am

I love Miyazaki's work, but I'm afraid I may have to skip Pom Poko.

I heard the english dub Disney gave it refers to their nads as "pouches."

Dr Legostar · Post by **Dr Legostar** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:49 am

theSuburbanLetdown wrote:I love Miyazaki's work, but I'm afraid I may have to skip Pom Poko.

I heard the english dub Disney gave it refers to their nads as "pouches."

yeah.. pouches which contain TESTICLES!

Komiyan · Post by **Komiyan** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:52 am

mcDuffies wrote:The kid that gets traumatized by "The Incredibles", "Roger Rabbit" or "Lion king" oughta be wimpier than Rod and Tod Flanders.

Fer serious. And Hunchback? What sort of loser kids are we talking about here?

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:59 am

Escushion wrote:I'm not sure what you're saying, Rkolter. That the list is ridiculous?

I think the use of the word traumatizing is purposely overblown, but there are kids' movies that can disturb kids. I'd see Watership Down messing some up.

Yes, that the list is ridiculous. None of these movies are going to scar children. SCARE, maybe. For Watership Down. but SCAR? Not your average kid, I don't think so.

Komiyan · Post by **Komiyan** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:07 am

Gort watched The Wall when he was a kid. That's a bit more I think.

Escushion · Post by **Escushion** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:34 am

Rkolter, I don't think you should so lightly dismiss how a film can warp somebody's head. Doesn't mean traumatize, but you'd be surprised what influence it can have on the psyche. Like those college kids who start cutting themselves after watching Donnie Darko to get the glowing bubble out.

Komiyan wrote:Gort watched The Wall when he was a kid. That's a bit more I think.

...A bit, yes.

Friend of mine had nightmares for 3 weeks after her first and only viewing of All Dogs Go to Heaven.

MixedMyth · Post by **MixedMyth** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:37 am

Komiyan wrote:
mcDuffies wrote:The kid that gets traumatized by "The Incredibles", "Roger Rabbit" or "Lion king" oughta be wimpier than Rod and Tod Flanders.
Fer serious. And Hunchback? What sort of loser kids are we talking about here?

But...but...I was disturbed at Roger Rabbit. The villain was so scary.

And the shoe boiling!

I think this just all goes to show that you never know WHAT will stick with a kid, because not everything will stick with the same kid the same way. Like I was fine with Baron Munchhousen, Secret of Nimh, etc. But not with Roger Rabbit or Gremlins. There's no real rhyme or reason to it.

Noise Monkey · Post by **Noise Monkey** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:51 am

I was disappointed that they never revealed who Judge Doom really was.

TheSuburbanLetdown · Post by **TheSuburbanLetdown** » Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:58 am

As much as I would've liked to see him without the rubber mask and human suit, leaving his identity a mystery is fine with me.

It woulda been cool if were a cartoon version of Teddy Valiant, who killed himself with a piano so that he could become a toon.