Children's film or TV shows that were too F-ed up for kids?

steddyeddy · 13-03-2015 3:38pm #1

Recently seen the film Return to Oz. This was a children's film where Dorothy was sent to a mental institution, a witch has a case full of disembodied heads and there's a desert where people turn to sand if they touch it

. Retrospectively this seemed a bit adult for kids. What TV shows or films disturbed you as a kid?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBfmR4rEeHU

Mesrine65 · 13-03-2015 3:39pm

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075491/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

LookLordSugar · 13-03-2015 3:39pm

Ulysses

mariaalice · 13-03-2015 3:42pm

The witches, The little princess.

force eleven · 13-03-2015 3:43pm

HR Pufnstuf. The 60's version I knew. Apparently remade, ignore that one...

Grays Sports Almanac · 13-03-2015 3:44pm

Forty Coats was a bit warped at times.

Ruu · 13-03-2015 3:46pm

Some episodes of Worzel Gummidge. The Crowmaster kept threatening to throw him on the bonfire if he was bad.

homer911 · 13-03-2015 3:48pm

Without a doubt, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (due to the child catcher)

Grays Sports Almanac · 13-03-2015 3:48pm

Ruu wrote: »

Some episodes of Worzel Gummidge. The Crowmaster kept threatening to throw him on the bonfire if he was bad.

Not only that - but he could literally rip his own head off and stick on another one!

Birneybau · 13-03-2015 3:49pm

Also, Aunt Sally in Worzel Gummidge.

awkwardboy · 13-03-2015 3:49pm

"The Boy From Space" really freaked me out when I was a kid.
I saw it in school but I have no idea why they showed it to us. That's the early eighties for you I guess...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifqn0vursW8

Links234 · 13-03-2015 3:49pm

The Dark Crystal

Everything in those days was ****ed up and it was great.

dante2015 · 13-03-2015 3:53pm

we used to watch a program called middle english in primary school i was about 8 and they showed a ghost story

basically a family go on holiday to a cottage in the middle of nowhere everything is fine till dad turns up and thats when the crying starts,

they turn on the radio there is wailing, they go to sleep and there is wailing, everywhere in the house there is just this crying they dont know where it is coming from and then turn on the tele and an old womans face appears and is wailing and crying, turn out she thought the dad was her long dead son and she came back as a ghost and was crying over him,

scared the **** out of me i couldnt sleep for weeks after that

Duggy747 · 13-03-2015 3:54pm

Watership Down!

Ren & Stimpy fairly pushed it for a kids show, they got in trouble quite a few times with Nickelodeon about sneaking things in kids definitely wouldn't have picked up on.

One episode they were salesmen selling the old rubber nipples for milk bottles. They get to one house, a husband and wife, where the innuendo is laid on thick and the husband is told by her that he has perfectly good nipples that he never uses. He replies back that they're all old and chewed up :pac:

Falthyron · 13-03-2015 3:57pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnamFerzNvw

"Jack-a$$", children smoking cigars, drinking beer - this would be an 18s rated movie by today's certification standards. I saw this as a child and didn't think much of it, but I saw it again recently and I couldn't believe what was being shown as a 'kids' film. I know it's a cartoon and by Disney, but even still, this would not be given a kids rating today.

TerrorFirmer · 13-03-2015 3:57pm

Ren and Stimpy.

Watched it recently again and I actually could not believe this could ever have been broadcast to children. It's often inappropriate but constantly deeply disturbing.

robfowler78 · 13-03-2015 4:00pm

+1 for water ship down thought the general was going to get me for years after......

Akrasia · 13-03-2015 4:04pm

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

Ren and Stimpy.

Watched it recently again and I actually could not believe this could ever have been broadcast to children. It's often inappropriate but constantly deeply disturbing.

Disturbingly hilarious

Akrasia · 13-03-2015 4:07pm

If I was gonna pick any kids show that is totally inappropriate for kids, it has to be 'Bratz'

Horrible show

Harry Palmr · 13-03-2015 4:08pm

Children of the Stones
The Tomorrow People
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Shadows (ITV)

Theflyingegg · 13-03-2015 4:11pm

Have to admit the show Goosebumps used to scare the daylights out of me as a kid. Yet I watched it every week.

The Pheasant2 · 13-03-2015 4:12pm

The queen post transformation in Snow White scares the **** out of me to this day

A Brad Maddox Guy · 13-03-2015 4:20pm

Similar to Ren & Stimpy; Rocko's Modern Life. Watched an episode a few weeks ago where Rocko's elderly neighbour felt unloved by her husband and proceeded to spend the episode trying to seduce Rocko. Brilliant but clearly targeted towards adults on a kids channel.

chopperbyrne · 13-03-2015 4:36pm

https://defendingcontending.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/the-boy-in-the-striped-pajamas.jpg

MRnotlob606 · 13-03-2015 4:40pm

Thank this post and you will get a complimentary anema and a foot massage by a man with leprosy.

13-03-2015 5:08pm

Rimini Riddle.

Pumpkinseeds · 13-03-2015 5:13pm

Animal farm was a bit too warped for kids. Then again a lot of stuff from the 70's and early 80's was fairly dodgy, yet we all survived. Looking back at the kids programming from those days it seems that most of the stuff was made by people off their heads on drugs.

Macavity. · 13-03-2015 5:16pm

The Animals of Farthing Wood, loved it as a child.

jacksie66 · 13-03-2015 5:17pm

This post has been deleted.

Birneybau · 13-03-2015 5:19pm

jacksie66 wrote: »

Thomas the Tank Engine

Is mean come on, talking trains..

He didn't have it easy when it finished...

http://usvsth3m.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/DdFQL3t.jpg

pragmatic1 · 13-03-2015 5:20pm

Ruu wrote: »

Some episodes of Worzel Gummidge. The Crowmaster kept threatening to throw him on the bonfire if he was bad.

Worzel Gummidge terrified me as a child. Seriously creepy stuff.

Mickeroo · 13-03-2015 5:25pm

Watership Down has already been mentioned but scared the **** out of me.

The Last Unicorn was quite traumatic for me too.

Rocko's Modern Life was great and I seem to remember Earthworm Jim being in a similar vein in terms of jokes that were aimed at adults.

In terms of more contemporary stuff I don't see how a child would truly appreciate the psychedelic weirdness of Adventure Time or Spongebob Squarepants.

keano_afc · 13-03-2015 5:27pm

Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

Its got a Universal cert! Its terrifying.

Banshee
Scary ghost coach
Eh, did I mention the banshee?
Sean Connery's Irish accent

jacksie66 · 13-03-2015 5:33pm

This post has been deleted.

13-03-2015 5:34pm

I found most fairy tales scary, none more so than The Snow Queen.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is an awful thing to watch as a small child, my parents took me to the stage show in the West End and I was terrified. I dreamt about The Child Catcher for a long time afterwards.

Good family fun.

RollieFingers · 13-03-2015 5:49pm

The Moomins used to weird me out as a kid

Simon Gruber Says · 13-03-2015 5:58pm

Macavity. wrote: »

The Animals of Farthing Wood, loved it as a child.

This was the most depressing cartoon ever. Something awful always happened in it.

brevity · 13-03-2015 6:00pm

Whenever a thread like this pops up I always end up mentioning Are you Afraid of the Dark? Some episodes (the clown one, dead ghost kid with red jacket) were just terrifying. It ended up getting banned in our house.

The first Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That scene in the tunnel was nuts and really not suitable for young children.

There was an Australian TV show, Round the Twist, that had a few eerie episodes which, I guess you could say, freaked me out.

Nothing else really springs to mind. Maybe Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories...

circadian · 13-03-2015 6:01pm

Ren and Stimpy

pragmatic1 · 13-03-2015 6:01pm

Worzel Gummidge
That scary robot/computer monster woman from superman.
The Ernest film with the troll.

circadian · 13-03-2015 6:05pm

The Batman cartoon was pretty dark, great too.

Some Animaniacs stuff was a bit close to the wire and Freakazoid was plain mental. First episode has a voyer/kid snatcher in a trenchcoat!

syklops · 13-03-2015 6:09pm

Deleted User wrote: »

Rimini Riddle.

/thread.

Its amazing how few people remember this program. Maybe some people were so traumatised by it their mind purged it from their minds.

Macavity. · 13-03-2015 6:10pm

So messed up. Poor Ash.

syklops · 13-03-2015 6:25pm

Round the Twist had some genuinely creepy episodes.

SEPT 23 1989 · 13-03-2015 6:32pm

the answers lies in what particular drugs were popular in the era that the kids programmes were made

those wild weekends that the wide eyed producers and creators experienced were not left at the studio door at 9am Monday morning

Badly Drunk Boy · 13-03-2015 6:48pm

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Animal farm was a bit too warped for kids. Then again a lot of stuff from the 70's and early 80's was fairly dodgy, yet we all survived. Looking back at the kids programming from those days it seems that most of the stuff was made by people off their heads on drugs.

I'm sure George Orwell didn't have kids as his target market when he wrote Animal Farm but it was easier to film it in animation than real life.

Rimini Riddle has already been mentioned, and when I watched it, I was probably a 20 year old student, watching along with my younger siblings. Great stuff!

This is the only clip that seems to exist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aj83EfAuAos

MikeSD · 13-03-2015 6:51pm

Don't know if anybody mentioned Courage the Cowardly Dog, but between "Return the Slab" and the fungus episode, I was fairly traumatised.

Paramite Pie · 13-03-2015 7:03pm

Animaniacs really pushed it far sometimes... the 'finger Prince' joke went waay over my head as a kid!!!:D

Santa leaving "a big load" is another one from animaniacs.:pac:

Falthyron wrote: »

"Jack-a$$", children smoking cigars, drinking beer - this would be an 18s rated movie by today's certification standards. I saw this as a child and didn't think much of it, but I saw it again recently and I couldn't believe what was being shown as a 'kids' film. I know it's a cartoon and by Disney, but even still, this would not be given a kids rating today.

Just goes to show that we're over protective these days. And yet kids are still far less innocent today!!