Thursday, March 18, 2010

Movies We Were Too Young To See

We've explained many times before how we were converted into Cin-Obs at a very young age. This works to our benefit, since we now have years upon years of film-obsessing experience. A hobby that long ago turned into a lifestyle.

But there were down sides to being exposed to so many types of film at such a young age. We have very vivid memories of crapping ourselves with fear during movies that shouldn't be presented to 7 and 9 year olds. Thanks Mom and Dad for the excellent supervision! (Just kidding, love love love)


This bad-boy (literally) transformed our love of dolls and all things childlike into a phobia... combined with occassional night-terrors. Child's Play (1988) might be about toys, but for the love of Pete... it ain't for kids.

We peaked out from under our covers many a time to keep an eye on our mound of dolls and stuffed animals, just to be sure they weren't weilding any weapons or planning our slaughter.


Ahhh yes. The People Under The Stairs (1991). Grrrreeeaaat, because as a 6 year old I wasn't already scared enough of the basement. Nice little cherry on top there.

Incest, burglery, funeral homes, mutiliation, child abuse, kidnapping, and generally evil shit. Now that's good wholesome family fun.

I still struggle with stairs that have that opening after each one. DON'T GRAB ME!

To this day I run up the stairs as quickly as possible, having dark fantasies about what's down there. When my dad hears the frantic thump-thumping of my stair-climbing, he's always sure to throw in a boogieman comment. Yeah Dad, well be careful what movies you rent for your impressionable children!

PS - Still love this movie.

And now we'll move on to the king of horror... Mr. Stephen King. No Dr. Seuss for us little Cin-Obs. We got the ultimate horror experience as kids.


Reasons this 1994 film (mini-series) was inappropriate for 8 year old Ang and 10 year old Chanty:
- Apocolyptic themes
- Creepy devil dude who hung out in the corn fields (side-note - we both became terrified of corn fields)


Ever since, whenever we see anything that looks abandoned, we turn to each other and go "Whoa, this is SO The Stand."


*Shiver* The Langoliers... I don't know if this Stephen King gem is as well known as the others, but this made-for-tv beauty created many anxieties in our child selves. Very irrational ones.

I did alright in airplanes until I saw this movie, and it's not until recently that I made the connection. I went for hypnosis therapy and the therapist told me after that I was screaming "THE LANGOLIERS ARE COMING! AAAHH!!!" I don't remember cuz I was hypnotized. So it must be true.

Again, this movie was full of creepy-abandoned-world imagery, and that scary feeling that things are just too quiet. See the movie if you have no idea what I'm talking about. The crap acting alone is worth a watch.

As children we were terrified. Remember Balki, the loveable bumbling immigrant from Perfect Strangers? He was a total baddie in this movie, and that fact just turned our worlds upside down. His descent into madness in this film left us going "What's happening to Balki? Noooo!"

Also, we became terrified that the world would just drop away and our faces would be torn to shreds by these mofos.




And last but definitely not least to round out the Stephen King trilogy of childhood fear, I'm sure you all know who this scary razor-toothed mother-effer is. This jerk of a movie made us scared of clowns, balloons, sewers, bathroom sinks, everything! I'm fairly certain IT is the reason so many people are phobic of clowns.


Can't very well talk about movies that scarred us without some aliens thrown in. Uh huh... Fire in the Sky (1993) was a supernatural treat for us kids. I remember laying in bed, waiting for my eventual abduction (because in my mind it was just an eventuality) and hoping to god I wasn't going to wake up in a slime cocoon. After seeing this movie I was obsessed with all things alien, every cheesy tv documentary about abduction I could find. Because I needed to study for what I was sure was my future reality.


The year - 1993. The movie - Jurassic Park. A loving father of two young girls decides to take them to the matinée of the biggest movie in theatres at the time. Because they love dinosaurs! I don't know how the logic went, but I image it to be something like this - "My girls love the Flintstones so I'm sure they'll like this dino-theme park idea!" And you know what? We were psyched. That is, until the movie began.

Seven and nine year old ears are not prepared for the booming sound effects and ludicrious volume levels of this film. We thought we liked dinosaurs up until this point. Yeah... we liked dinosaurs that were man's best friend/appliances. Not the rip-your-face-off kind.

We cried and left the movie 15 minutes in. Money well spent, Pops.


Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight (1995) - This particular scarring experience I can attribute to our uncle, who rented it and told our parents the Cryptkeeper stories were always cheesey and not scary.
When I saw giant implant boobs on the moaning groaning blonde woman in the bathtub in the first ten minutes, I knew he had lied.

At the time, this is how the entire movie sounded "fuck fuck fuckity fucker fuckbag fuck!" At least that's how my 9 year old ears interpreted it. Remember as a kid feeling physically uncomfortable hearing cursewords? Yeah so we basically shivered the whole way through this one. Although we knew Billy Zane played the head-honcho demon bent on world destruction, we still liked him more than a friend.

(note - this is one of my top ten favourite films to this day. I got over the gratuitous boobies and fucks, and I likey me some bad boy cowboy Billy Zane more than ever)



Ah yes, the cult phenomenon Phantom of the Paradise (1974) is a "phantasy"... but not the 'pixie dust and magic wands' kind. It's the "sign your name in blood, I own your soul, terrorism, snort cocaine, get electrocuted on stage' kinda phantasy. Yes! This is the perfect film to show my 10 year old! As sarcastic as that is meant to be, it actually was. This movie is our favie of all favies. Takes the #1 spot. Our parents were smart... they knew we wouldn't take any notice (or even understand) the drugs, group orgies, and general darkness of the film. All we absorbed from it at the time was the Sublime Soundtrack and 70s feel (which was totally alien to us as 80s kids).




Once again, our parents took a risk in showing us the child-unfriendly flick. But hey... we didn't know what a transvestite was, we didn't understand that they were sexually charged aliens, we didn't notice the incestuous relationship between Riff-Raff and Magenta, or that Rocky was a sex slave, or the true meaning of the lyrics "t..t..t..t..t..touch me, I wanna be dirty!"

Watching it as an adult (and knowing how young we were when introduced to this movie) makes us gasp, but it also makes us giggle at how naive we were.

Did you ever see an inappropriate movie when you were too young?

7 comments:

holly wynne said...

My parents let me see several things they probably shouldn't have, but the one I've never let them live down is Poltergeist. I was 2. They thought I'd fall asleep in the back seat when they went to see it at at the drive-in...wrong :).

Unknown said...

The one movie I saw when I was a kid was Ghoulies II!! My aunt played it thinking it would be something we'd like...fatal error! I almost died of fright. I think I was 8 or 9. I love scary movies now though, and watching it again recently, I really wondered what in heavens name I was so scare for!

Angie said...

Holly - Yes! Poltergeist! I forgot that one, but we were definitely too young for that one when we saw it.

Jonathan - Never heard of that one!!! Must see it!

You know what's funny, my dad saw the Exorcist as a teen and it absolutely scarred him. He will NOT rewatch it, all these years later, and he maintains it's the most disturbing movie of all time. I tend to agree, but it didn't make this list because I saw it as a teenager. I could handle it at that point.

Amber said...

"Although we knew Billy Zane played the head-honcho demon bent on world destruction, we still liked him more than a friend."

Ha.

My mom actually took me to see Demon Knight. I don't know what the hell that woman was thinking!

JRL said...

Oh the memories. I still hate clowns to this day! Same with corn fields.... that might have more children of the corn... also not a fan of children. These movies have completely destroyed any chance i have of living a normal phobia free life. Sigh!

My first R-movie was Terminator 2. Can't say that one scared me, but i was WAY to young to watch it. Blew my mind!

Christina Harper said...

You know, it's kind of like we lived the same childhood. Complete with inappropriate movies for kids which developed us into the weird obsessive freaks that we are. :D

Emily Louise Church said...

Jurassic Park, Phantom of the Paradise and Rocky Horror! Three movies my children will be forced to watch.