Worst movie experiences as a kid

With talk about the appropriateness of Brave for little kids, I was wondering: what were the worst movie experiences involving you as a child or for your children?

My worst as a kid involved animal stories

1) Bambi: I'm 6. Traumatized by Bambi's mom getting shot, I come back home, only to find out my mom gave my cat away. His name? Buck. I have no idea who the hell thought that was a good idea.

2) Cujo: I'm about 10 or 11. My family had to put my pet St. Bernard down, and decide to show me the movie Cujo to explain why. Again, wha?

My wife and I don't have children, but the worst overall reaction involved two movies set during the holidays.

1) Gremlins: Rated PG and had the cute Mogwi (or whatever the hell name it was). Parents did no research on the movie, and thinking it was OK, went with their kids. The most horrific screams came when the main female character said she found out there was no Santa Claus when her father, dressed as Santa, died getting stuck down their chimney. As I remember, this is the movie that motived the PG-13 rating (along with Indiana Jones)

2) Nightmare Before Christmas: Yeah it's animated, and yeah it has Christmas in the title, but it is Tim Burton. My wife and I had some devilish fun watching the parental reaction here. The kids didn't have much trouble, it was the parents getting upset.

I wouldn't really call these "wort experiences," but I remember being terrified from watching The Gate as a kid. Poltergeist as well.

daveroswell wrote: 2) Cujo: I'm about 10 or 11. My family had to put my pet St. Bernard down, and decide to show me the movie Cujo to explain why. Again, wha?

Dude ... DUDE! I was going to post some happy-go-lucky stories in this thread until I saw that. Jesus!

my babysitter let me watch Aliens when I was pretty young and I didn't sleep for the rest of the summer

Watching Psycho on TV alone at age 11. I was scared shitless. I came to appreciate the experience, but that terror haunted me for some time.

Black Barney wrote: my babysitter let me watch Aliens when I was pretty young and I didn't sleep for the rest of the summer

Alien was the first X-rater I ever saw; legally I must add. I can still remember the woman's scream which rang out in the auditorium at the chest-burster scene!

Once, I was in the theater when someone puked over the balcony onto the lower section. All the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other.

The original Night of the Living Dead at 6. Scared the living fuck out of me. Maybe that's why I've owned guns since I was 18....

I was trying to come up with a good anecdote here but really I can't. Movies have always been a good thing in my life. Not to say I haven't seen my fair share of complete crap but movies themselves have always made me happy. Especially if we are talking about seeing movies at the theater. That was always special and exciting. I associate it with the taste of pop corn (pre food Nazi comapaign against the good oil that made it taste fantastic), going on a date as a teenager (and later of course), the anticipation if it was a movie you really wanted to see...all of it...magic.

I remember being really young, maybe 5 or 6 and going to the drive in with the family. It was a double feature of An American Tail and Harry and the Hendersons.

I liked the cartoon mouse movie quite a bit. The next movie proved to be a mistake. The opening scene where the Henderson's run over big foot, scared the living shit out of me. I proceeded to cry and then promptly fall asleep in the back of the car...only waking when the nightmare was finally over.

A few years later my older brother learned to terrorize me with horror movies. His friend let him borrow Stephen King's "It" and he convinced me to watch it. To this day clowns scare the shit out of me. Then he made me watch "Child's Play". I got through the movie without any emotional scars, but I owned one of those "My Buddy" dolls...holy shit I never trusted it again. To remove the fear I stripped the doll of all its clothing and then let the family dog rape the thing over and over again...I dunno, it made me not scared of it anymore.

repoman wrote: I associate it with the taste of pop corn (pre food Nazi comapaign against the good oil that made it taste fantastic),

My wife and I were wondering why our popcorn tasted like burnt garbage last week.

I didn't actually have any bad movie experiences as a kid, but for many years, I was afraid to watch any R-rated horror movies because I thought that they would give me horrible nightmares. Shortly before my 14th birthday, I got intensely curious about the commercials for Alien. I bought the novelization and read it quickly, and decided that I wanted to see the movie anyway. My mom took me and several friends to see it on my birthday and I loved the movie. After that, I started watching all kinds of horror movies.

Oddly enough, most of my bad movie experiences happened in my college years or just after. I was working long hours to pay my way through school, so I often dozed off during decent movies, even Stripes. One time I came down sick with the flu while on a movie date, and spent 20 minutes puking the bathroom during the final reel. I spent the night at her house, puking into a waste basket, which definitely killed the romance.

A close friend of mine in school had a very traumatic experience while watch 101 Dalmatians as a kid. His Chinese immigrant mother was laughing at all the wrong times (generally whenever Cruella de Ville was menacing a puppy). Finally, my friend asked his mother why she was laughing, and she told him that they (puppies) taste good.

We rented Jaws when i was about 7-ish (thanks Mom and Dad!). This was back in the day when you had to rent the VCR from the shop as well, and the picture was so crappy it was hard to make out a lot of the details. Screams came through nice and clear though. It may have been the root cause behind a few swimming/ocean related issues.

Dair wrote: Once, I was in the theater when someone puked over the balcony onto the lower section. All the people started getting sick and throwing up all over each other.

You goonie!

Not particularly bad experiences.

1) Had to take my brother to the movies and we watched Island of Dr. Moreau. He had a big bag of Doritos and before end of the movie threw it up. Theater was nearly empty so we didn't have to own up to it.

2) I was around 5 yrs old and my babysitter took me to a double feature: Asylum and Tales from the Crypt. I remembered images form these films growing up and had to rewatch them as a teen to make sure I indeed see these films - and I did.

3) Jaws: scared the beejeezus out of me. So much so when I got home I had my mom throw out a fish that was in the freezer.

4) Friends and I saw a few films in one day by sneaking into them after paying for the first flick. They wanted to see Pia Zadora in Butterfly and I refused to sneal into that - but they made me. Then after a little while, they wanted to leave but I forced them to stay and watch it.

I'm sure there are more.

Here's another: I remember a long line to get into Empire Strikes Back. We had just come out and one of the people from our showing started screaming out that Vader was Luke's father. I think that guy was lost under a sea of kicks and punches.