Fond Remembrances of Cinematic Child Abuse

[Napier]

I watched it for the first time at a sleep over when I was 12.

I bet their parents were the coolest in town.

[Finch]

I watched it for the first time at a sleep over when I was 12.

I bet their parents were the coolest in town.

My parents let me stay up and watch Alien when I was 8. No wonder that it now takes something like Salo and Audition to shake me up.

[aox]

Every kid should see a Guinea Pig film.. just to get all of that out of the way.

[swo17]

When I was 12, I still had to wait for my parents to watch Back to the Future II first and decide whether it was appropriate for me to watch. (It was, but begrudgingly.)

[domino harvey]

My mom saw Misery in the theatres and thought that I should see it, so she went back again and took me with her. I was seven years old at the time.

[swo17]

Ha! Misery was actually my first R-rated movie (though granted I was slightly older than 7 at the time). My junior high band teacher felt it was incumbent upon her to show it to all of us on a band trip once.

[Napier]

I was 10 and my parents left me home while they went out, (social services would probably take me away these days) but I unlocked the parental lock on the ole' HBO and to my utter most excitement was able to catch Revenge of the Ninja(I know ) and Body Double. They came home and caught me watching BD in the scene where Melanie Griffith is dancing nude.

[oldsheperd]

My Dad let me and my sister watch the Shining on cable. I was 4 and she was 8. My Dad had one of those styrofoam mannequin heads used for wigs. During one of the scenes he creeped up behind us with his head tucked in the top of his shirt and the mannequin head in place and screamed. Needless to say it was scary as all hell. My sister had nightmares involving The Shining for a month.

[Napier]

Maybe we need a new thread, (your parents let you watch what!) or something to that effect. Because I was always watching things I shouldn't have been. On topic though, I'm going to see the 6:50 Basterds tonight. Anyone care to espouse reasons why I shouldn't?

[knives]

Maybe we need a new thread, (your parents let you watch what!) or something to that effect. Because I was always watching things I shouldn't have been.

Probably.
Thinking back, my first movies were Fantastic Planet and Les Maitres du temps. I suppose showing those to three year olds wasn't my mum's best parenting decision. She also bought my sisters Akira for their tenth birthday because in her words, 'they like that anime stuff'. You have to appreciate that mentality.

[swo17]

Maybe we need a new thread, (your parents let you watch what!) or something to that effect.

Something like "Fond Remembrances of Cinematic Child Abuse."

[Napier]

Maybe we need a new thread, (your parents let you watch what!) or something to that effect.

Something like "Fond Remembrances of Cinematic Child Abuse."

I love it! Mods? Please?

[Mr Sausage]

Maybe we need a new thread, (your parents let you watch what!) or something to that effect.

Something like "Fond Remembrances of Cinematic Child Abuse."

I love it! Mods? Please?

Well, since you asked nicely....

My fond memories: being given Terminator 1 and 2 for Christmas by my uncle when I was 11, and convincing my parents it was alright to watch them with something along the lines of "Come on, I'm eleven now!" How the hell that worked I still don't know. A year later I also convinced my Dad to let me buy Predator. I didn't get to keep it for long, tho': he walked in during the spine ripping scene, and after a long discussion with my mother, decided to take the movie away. I don't know why they bothered: clearly the damage had been done.

[Murdoch]

My fondest child abuse memory was when I was five and my uncle sat me down in front of the TV and said he was going to put on Fantasia, then turned on the TV and VCR and instead of the Disney logo shining before my eyes I was treated to Robocop queued up to the exact part where the guy gets hit by the car and explodes. Apparently my uncle had forgot he left it in there, so we watched the rest of the movie, and I was scared shitless the entire time, thinking that if I ever crossed the street again I would be disemboweled. Oh well, good times...

[Zumpano]

I was 10 and my parents left me home while they went out, (social services would probably take me away these days) but I unlocked the parental lock on the ole' HBO and to my utter most excitement was able to catch Revenge of the Ninja(I know ) and Body Double. They came home and caught me watching BD in the scene where Melanie Griffith is dancing nude.

Holy shit dude, you're me! My first HBO movie was "Revenge of the Ninja" which I snuck out of my bedroom to watch. I used to be able to watch what my parents were watching on TV from a second story overlook into our living room. I had to watch "Revenge of the Ninja". I mean, it had to do with ninjas! I couldn't have been older than 7 or 8. I became a insomniac after that (and probably ruined my eyes) by staying up after I was supposed to be in bed and watched what my mom was watching on HBO via the overlook. I haven't thought about those times since I bought the 'Revenge of the Ninja' DVD (full-frame, but that makes it more like 80's HBO). But I seem to remember seeing Death Wish and Ninja III: The Domination both that way. (What is the first "Ninja" movie?)

My own "Body Double" story has to do with me watching it on HBO while my parents were away. When it came to the point in which Craig Wasson is looking through the telescope at seeing the undressing, my much younger sister (who was also watching) said: "We're not supposed to be watching this!" and made me turn it off. What a buzzkill.

[Ovader]

I was eight when I saw Jaws when it was first released in theaters. My oldest brother worked at the theater which explains how I and my other older siblings (still underaged) were able to see the movie (for free I think). Definitely scared the piss out of me and of course made me afraid of the water which was hell especially since the following year my family moved to a Loran Station on an isolated island and I had to travel by boat for errands etc. etc. I was not amused! Of course on that island I saw other movies for free such as Blow Up (I always remembered the "orgy scene"). Frogs scarred me and I remember saying "gross" when a frog landed in a man's mouth and one of the adults in the audience said to another adult that maybe I shouldn't be watching this. The Big Bounce and I loved Leigh Taylor-Young's nudity but strangely no one complained that I was watching this! Kid Blue scarred me and my brother because we thought Dennis Hopper was one of the ugliest actors we saw in the movies at that time! hahaha! Finally Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid greatly disturbed me with the violence especially during the whipping scene and the topless Mexican woman weeping and possibly already raped (has been years since I saw the film).

[puxzkkx]

My parents kind of gave up trying to control my viewing habits when I was about 14. I watched Lust, Caution with my dad and Antichrist with my mum & stepdad so I don't really have an awkward time watching things with them, either.

Can't really point out something non-age-appropriate that I saw when I was a really tiny kid, though. I used to go into the horror movie section at the video store as a 5/6/7/8yo and get really scared after looking at the backs of all the DVDs.

Oh, yeah, saw "Felidae" when i was about 8 or 9... probably not the best idea. But I can't really say I was scarred by it.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

My family was had no restrictions about the movies I'd watch as a kid. Infact, my dad had me watch a ton of action movies when I was a kid. I mean the really bloody ones full of swearing like Rambo, Robocop and Dirty Harry. I remember specifically that the way ED-209 moved in Robocop scared the shit out of me. My dad jammed in my head that it's all fiction, the robot wasn't real and that it was just a movie. That's stuck with me ever since. I can't think of the last time a movie has honestly disturbed me or scared me. When I was 8, in the heyday of VHS, I would always rent horror and slasher films with friends and just look at the images while my friends were screaming. Often I was laughing over how ridiculous a movie would be.

Now I'm 21, and even movies like Salo can't get scared because I know it's fiction. It still bothers me a bit when a movie has death that I feel is unnecessary though, like if an innocent person gets harmed. The most recent case of this I can think of is the waitress in Inglorious Basterds, the end of Salo and a bystander getting shot in the head while her friend screams in Takeshi Kitano's Violent Cop. But even then, the feelings aren't extreme. I guess I'm too desensitized to certain amounts of violence.

Oh, and the first movie to truly make me re-evaluate cinema as an art form was Dr. Strangelove and I saw that when I was ten. I just remembered it being a perfect mix of comedy and the horror of nuclear warfare. I still remember being absolutely silent at the end of the film. Still resonates with me to this day.

Around the same time, I use to watch IFC a lot. I remember seeing a lot of Russian animated shorts and Bill Plympton's The Tune a couple of times. I specifically remember trying to watch Blue but I didn't have the attention span. I'm sure I saw other films, but can't exactly remember.

One last thing. I remember late at night on Cinemax, they would play softcore pornography and I remember staying up and just watching it in fascination. Then again, when you're ten, you're easily impressed!

[Gregory]

I watched Hitchcock's Psycho at the age of seven and was only very mildly creeped out. Seeing it on a smallish TV during daylight surely took away most of the film's visceral impact for me (fortunately). However, I also remember being horrified out of my wits around the same time by an episode of the television series "V" that had some Cronenberg-esque touches, viewed on that same TV set under similar conditions.

[Mr. Ned]

Remember when cable television wasn't dominated by Ted Turner and all the other corporate channels that run through the same cycle of Hollywood crap every six months (and all of it stuff that's been released within the last five-six years)? It was great; you could turn on the TV at any point of the day and see something unexpected and exciting: a John Wayne movie one day, Swiss Family Robinson another, and of course the slew of horror movies old and new around Halloween time.

My dad let me watch John Carpenter's Halloween on TV with him when I was about four and I was completely taken in by it--not frightened at all, just kind of...awestruck. After that I always looked forward to early October because that was the time all the channels would pile on horror movies. You'd get the Friday the 13th movies, some Freddy movies, the classics with Legosi and Karloff, the occasional Vincent Price. You couldn't tear me from the family room around Halloween--I was hooked to horror movies.

Of course there were a few that gave me nightmares, but it wasn't until one movie in particular that this little pastime of mine came back to haunt me (pun intended). Anyone ever seen The Amityville Horror II: The Possession? Forget the original, the first sequel is fucking nuts.

Spoiler

The boy who gets possessed has a sexual relationship with his sister at one point and also goes on a terrifying rampage with a shotgun during a thunderstorm. It's still one of the most well executed scenes I've ever seen in this type of movie.

The infamous murder spree scene scared me to death, mainly because

Spoiler

it ends with the possessed son shooting his little brother, who was around my age at the time, in the head with a shotgun and then kills the sister.

I don't have an older brother, but I couldn't sleep with the lights on for about a month. And of course, there was a thunderstorm a couple nights later. Needless to say, my little Halloween tradition changed a bit after that....

Here's the scene for those curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d1Pfu5ztaU


A quick addition: I also remember seeing "Private Pyle's" mental breakdown from Full Metal Jacket when I was pretty young as well, uncut late night on Bravo or some such station. I didn't understand what the situation was but watching someone blow their brains out when you're 10 years old is traumatizing to say the least.

[MichaelB]

I was scared shitless the entire time, thinking that if I ever crossed the street again I would be disemboweled.

That's pretty much the tactic used by Britain's Central Office of Information in their various safety campaigns about wearing seatbelts, crossing the road properly, etc.

The only difference is that these actually were aimed at children!

Here's one of my favourites - admittedly aimed at women, but I suspect kids would have been watching too.

[Sloper]

The first 15-rated film I saw was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when I was seven – a pretty good intro to sex and violence for kids, I think. I remember being really excited about it, as if I were being allowed to break the law. In the next couple of years my dad showed me all the classics – the Alien movies (which quickly became my favourites), Terminator movies (second favourites), the Robocops, Misery, The Wild Bunch, Dirty Harry, the Coppolas, the Carpenters, Poltergeist (another good one for kids), and of course Spinal Tap, many of whose jokes I mercifully did not ask my dad to explain. I remember before we sat down to watch Die Hard, my dad made me and my brother promise we would never use any of the bad words we heard in this film. I dutifully swore like a trooper for several years afterwards. My parents were (and indeed still are) divorced, and my mum wasn’t too happy about all this. She still blames the movies for screwing me up. (I blame the iron maiden in the cellar.)

When I was nine, my brother and I were bored one day and stuck a video in which had ‘Postman Pat’ written on the label, thinking it would be good for a laugh (my god we were bored), and it turned out to be The Meaning of Life. Now that really was an education...

I saw Psycho at around the same age, and thought it was pretty scary. The Shining, when I was ten, was a real landmark – by far the scariest thing I’d ever seen. I was given the video for my next birthday, and took to watching it once a week for over a year. Then we saw The Vanishing (the original), and that re-defined the word ‘scary’ for me – new favourite film. There were a few restrictions, like Don’t Look Now, which I wasn’t allowed to see until I was thirteen. I begged to be allowed to see it for years before then, thinking it looked like a great horror film. When I finally did see it, I realised why it had been held back – firstly the sex, secondly the arty obscurity. Quite disappointing, really.

There was a great video rental store near where I lived in Birmingham called Cinephilia (don’t look for it, it’s not there anymore), which my mum always called ‘Paedophilia’ because of the slightly dodgy pot-heads who ran the place, and who were kind enough to let me raid their stores of 18-rated horror films (Wicker Man, Videodrome, etc) when I was only 13/14. After a while they got cold feet and asked me to tone things down a bit, though in the light of recent revelations I should have told them not to worry! God I miss that place. I watch better films these days, but back then it was all so much more fun.

[MichaelB]

The first 15-rated film I saw was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when I was seven – a pretty good intro to sex and violence for kids, I think. I remember being really excited about it, as if I were being allowed to break the law.

It was only a PG (or old-fashioned A) when I saw it in the cinema at the age of about ten - I think there were a couple of tiny cuts for language, but certainly nothing major.

[tojoed]

The first X-rated film I saw was "The Killing of Sister George". Perhaps that's why I have slightly more affection for it than I should have.

[skuhn8]

My brother is almost 9 years older than me. I remember he and his crew taking me to see Damnation Alley at a drive-in when I was seven in 1977. That along with seeing Race with Devil* on TV around the same time fueled my nightmares for years and years. My parents contributed by letting me watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on TV a year or so later; I have very vivid memories of being upset about the suicide aftermath.

* Took me a long time to identify this Peter Fonda/Warren Oates vehicle: "Frank and Roger and their wives take off for Colorado in a recreational vehicle, looking forward to some skiing and dirt biking. While camping en route, they witness a Satanic ritual sacrifice, but the local sheriff finds no evidence to support their claims and urges them to continue on their vacation. On the way, however, they find themselves repeatedly attacked by cult members, and they take measures to defend themselves."