How to scar a poor kid for life (Numbers 10-8)

This list started to bounce around my brain right after exiting a 3-D showing of Coraline, which I thought was excellent. It should not, however, been rated PG. This movie creeped me out. If I was a kid, and I saw this movie, I probably would've pissed my pants and then had one of those seizures like in The Ring. My face probably would've inverted. So I've attempted to point fingers. Starting at ten, and counting down, I'm going to name the top 10 movies or tv shows that messed me up as kid, either in atmosphere, general plot, or maybe just because of a certain scene. The order here is mostly arbitrary, but number one is there for a reason (and will be included in a subsequent post). I firmly believe most of these deserve to rot in hell. The rest just freaked me the fuck out, and in a lot of cases, still do. Most I only remember in bits and pieces (and occasionally, incorrectly), and when they come to me at all, it's in a haze - a jumble of faces and inappropriate situations that shouldn't have been shown to anyone in the age range of 3-10. Even now, the thought of a few of these make me shudder.

10. Millennium (1989)

I don't think I saw this movie in theaters. At least I hope not (I was four). Probably on HBO. I remember it had something to do with abducting people off airplanes and taking them to the future. There were weird hairstyles. Everyone looked like David Bowie. People smoked those weird cigarettes like something out of Watchmen. It was like Blade Runner, except it sucked. Kris Kristofferson, a Mulder-wannabe FAA agent, looked like a homeless person (does he ever not?). It succeeded in turning me off airplanes for a bit, since I thought they were being used to ferry me to a shitty future where there were robots with annoying accents, and everyone was about to die from timequakes (pretty sure this one didn't pick up an Academy Award for screenwriting).

9. Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

This one is included just because I remember loving cartoons (who didn't) around the time of its release. I also remember loving crossover live-action with cartoons. When Space Jams came out, it made my year. So who, exactly, decided that it would be a good idea to have cute little cartoons being killed off via a poisonous green liquid by the absolutely terrifying Christopher Lloyd (Judge Doom)? I mean, I found this guy freaky in Back to the Future, so having him hold some poor, hand-drawn bunny rabbit over his bubbling concoction of death played more like the end of Terminator 2 than an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Also, Bob Hoskins should never play the likable guy. Bob Hoskins scares the shit out of me almost as much as Christopher Lloyd.

8. Time Bandits (1981)


Dear Terry Gilliam,

If anyone ever asks you to direct a kids movie again, please, please, jump out the nearest window. I can understand if you're looking to cause an increase in suicides for the 8-12 emo-kid demographic, but you literally only know how to make movies that depress, in brutal efficiency. You're currently batting a thousand at getting people to cut themselves after downing a handle of Jim Beam with a mixture of horse tranquilizers. So when you decided to go out and make the 'kids' movie Time Bandits, whose brilliant idea was it to have the parents of the kids die during the last five minutes after touching a devil toaster!?! Do you have any idea how fucked up this was for me? Here we have a group of kids going through a ton of terrible shit with midgets, and hanging cages, and weird looking sailing boats, and demonic figures, and when they finally get home, you BLOW THEIR PARENTS UP INTO A PIECE OF MOLTEN METAL. Maybe that's how they teach lessons to kids over on your side of the pond, but over here, we like our kids to use toasters for Pop Tarts and breakfast burritos, not as a weapon to blow their parents to shit.

Thanks.

[7-5 to follow]